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The Shape of Classical Christianity: Part 2

April 6, 2020 / / Comments Off on The Shape of Classical Christianity: Part 2

Consensus Christianity
Central to what is being said here is the idea that classical Christianity is characterized by consensus –– not always a perfect consensus to be sure but a consensus nevertheless. While, for example, any two patristic writers may not agree with one another in every instance there is a common understanding of what Christianity is –– of the beliefs and practices which inform, shape, and determine the life of the believing community. Indeed, the community of faith is itself crucial in determining the parameters of this consensus. So Thomas Oden wrote:

Consent was not ecumenical if it was not found worldwide in all twenty centuries. The clergy did not create this consent; it was achieved by an act of the worshipping community confirmed by the laity in song, prayer and Scripture. If all of the clergy in Christian history had agreed on a point of Christian doctrine that had received no universal consent by the worshipping community it would not be ecumenical consent.”

The first agreement in this historical and ecumenical consensus is, of course, that “We are made for God, made to love and to be loved by God, and our hearts are always restless until they find their rest in God.”

The God Beyond Belief
The entire Judeo-Christian tradition is a common and continuous declaration that God is beyond human comprehension, thought, imagination, feelings, concepts, or ideas. Whatever notions I have of God, whatever I believe about God, no matter how true, whatever feelings of the sacred I experience, no matter how genuine, and regardless of any qualities I attribute to God, no matter how accurate or appropriate, that is not God. God is always more than what I can conceive or say. Nevertheless, learning to speak well and truly of God is a part of our spiritual progress. And so the consensus of classical Christianity is that God is:

The Uncreated One –– God is Self-sufficient, Independent, Necessary, Underived Being. God is the Source, the Beginning and the End of all things (Psalm 90; Isaiah 40:28;i Corinthians 1:30). Isaiah speaking as the voice of God declares, “Before me there was no god fashioned nor shall ever be after me. I am the Lord, I myself” (Isaiah 43:10). God’s name as Yahweh, “I Am,” suggests God “simply and incomparably” is.

The Unity of God –– there is no pantheon of gods. “I am God, there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22). “For us,” wrote Saint Paul, “there is one God, the Father from whom all being comes, toward whom we move and for whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6).

Indivisibly Simple –– since God is not composed of parts the whole of God is present in all that God does. Whatever distinctions the human mind may make regarding the qualities of Divinity, God remains one. All the attributes of God are “interfused and joined together in one indivisible essence in a way that transcends partial human perception.”
Immensity, Immeasurability, and Infinity –– “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and of his greatness there is no end” (Psalm 145:3). “God’s center,” said Saint Bonaventure in the Middle Ages, “is everywhere, and God’s circumference is nowhere.” And Julian of Norwich, the Medieval English Christian mystic, wrote: “Human imagination stands in numbed silence in the Presence of the Measurement of all our measures.” The Latin root of immense means “unmeasured” (im – mensus, not to measure). To classical Christians this has always suggested what is beyond measurement, unfathomable, boundless.

Eternal –– God is without beginning or end; and, therefore, the guarantee of unending life: “Because I live, you shall live also” (John 14:199)”. But what is envisioned is more than life of unending duration. The Divine life, the life of God is shalom, harmony, peace. To have eternal life is not only timeless existence but is to enjoy the same quality of life, the same joy, peace, and harmony as God. Augustine said, “Join yourself to the eternal God, and you will be eternal.”

Omnipresent –– God is everywhere and always present. When Paul was invited to address the philosophers gathered on Mars Hill one of the key things he said to them was: “God is not far from each one of us, for in God we live, move, and have our very being” (Acts 17:28). And Scripture is filled with the kind of thing we find in the writing of the Prophet Jeremiah: “‘Am I a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away. . . Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:24). “No atomic particle is so small that God is not fully present to and in it, and no galaxy so vast that God does not circumscribe it. No space is without the divine presence. God cannot be excluded from any location or object in creation” (Thomas Oden in cc ). Classical Christianity believes that God is a constant presence with them on the best and worst of life’s ways as an enjoyable and comforting companion and friendly help.

Omnipotent –– God is not limited by anything external to God. There are no limitations upon God’s ability to influence the world; or, to do all that is consistent with the divine character. Nothing that God conceives or wills is beyond God’s power to accomplish. Yet, God’s power over all things is such that it empowers, encourages, and enables the freedom of all creation. Scripture points not simply to God’s limitless power, but to the way in which God’s power is employed for the good of humanity and the whole of creation. The question is not simply whether God has power, but whether God has the power to help me in my darkest and most despairing moments. To put it in evangelical terms does God have the power to save humanity? Rudolf Otto spoke of primal spiritual experience as mysterium tremendum et fascinans — that is, a mystery before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated. God’s power, when recognized, elicits feelings of overwhelming awe, simultaneously accompanied by a sense of absolute safety, graciousness, and of being loved.

Omniscient –– The omniscience of God is the recognition that God’s consciousness is all inclusive, –– that God knows completely, limitlessly, holistically, exhaustively, and knows it simultaneously. I think it is J. B. Philips, one of the first to translate the New Testament into modern English, who told in his book Your God Is Too Small, of an Oxford University Professor who liked to ask his students to shout out their spontaneous response to the following question as soon as they heard it. “Does God understand nuclear fission?” Invariably the majority of the class would shout out “No!” Everyone would then laugh since obviously if there is a God then all physical processes are known to God as the all-knowing Creator. God’s understanding says Psalm 147:5, is without limit. And Paul wrote, “O the depth and wealth of the wisdom and knowledge in God! How unsearchable God’s judgement, how untraceable God’s ways!” (Romans 11:33-34). Unfortunately, this attribute has frequently been used negatively to frighten children with the image of a God who is always watching to catch them doing something wrong, rather than as kind assurance of God’s caring. “God knows all,” said Saint Augustine, “and is greater than our self-condemning conscience.” “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Jesus in Matthew 10:29-31).

Holy –– Unlike the “force” in Star Wars God has no dark side everything about God’s character is light. ¬¬God is perfect in goodness, truth, justice, love, wisdom, and mercy. To describe God as perfect is to portray God as entire, whole, and complete in goodness. It is what many theologians mean in speaking of God as “Wholly Other;” that is, God in these moral qualities, or characterological excellence is not like anything we know or can describe. Indeed, the best way to understand the holiness, the sacred mystery, the otherness of God is through awe, wonder, gratitude, and reverence.

Just –– God gives to all things what is right. Pause briefly and read Psalm 23 slowly and carefully. It is a wonderful portrait of God’s justice. When in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus talks about God’s care for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, he is picturing God’s justice. When the Apostle Peter wrote, “God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), he was writing of God’s justice. When workers are paid a sustainable wage that is justice. When the earth is cared for like a natural garden that is justice. When there is food for the hungry, medicine for the sick, and shelter for the homeless that is justice. Because God is holy and just it is expected that we too will be holy (different or other than the avaricious world) and just. No one can claim to be spiritual, or a Christian, who is unjust.

Loving –– The classic consensual Christian attempt at a definition of God in human terms, which unfortunately fail us in the end, can be stated concisely this way: God is the uncreated source and end of all things; one; incomparably alive; insurmountable in presence, knowledge, and power; personal, eternal, spirit, who in holy love freely creates, sustains, and governs all things. However, there is no more concise, simple, or profound statement of the character of God than 1 John 4:16, “God is love.” It is in, through, and with sacred love that God creates, sustains, and governs or guides all things. That God, as shown in Christ, is loving means that you were made in love, by love, through love, for love; and, when you die you go into love –– not as a sentimental abstraction but as the concrete reality of your ultimate destiny.

Notice that John says God is love, not that love is God. To say the latter would be to worship our idea and image of love, or a single characteristic of God rather than God. But to say that God is love is to say that God’s every intention for us is kind, that God’s every action toward us is meant to sustain and nurture our life and the creation of which we are a part. “The glory of God,” said Irenaeus, “is a man or woman fully alive.”

Living and Personal –– In biblical Greek life has three meanings:1. Bios refers to the life of the physical body. It is used in Luke 8:14: “… the anxieties and riches and pleasures of this life.” 2. Psuche refers to the psychological life of the human soul, that is, the mind, emotions, and will. It is where we get the word psychology. It is found in passages like Matt. 16:25: “For whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it.” 3. Zoe is the uncreated and eternal life of God, the divine life uniquely possessed by God. It is divine bliss, and light. It is the beatific peace, love, and joy that God is. Zoe is the kind of life meant in John 1:4: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of humanity.” Since God is Spirit and not a physical being (John 4:24) bios is obviously not what is meant when we speak of the Living   God. At the risk of being misunderstood we not only may, but find it necessary to describe God as living in the psychological sense –– as aware, willing, choosing, loving, communicating. The only way that classical Christianity, following ancient Judaism, knows how to describe God is relationally, as the sort of encounter of mutuality and reciprocity, and even intimacy, that exists only between persons. Father, Son, Paraclete (Helper or Comforter), shepherd, friend, forgiving, loving, kind, are, of course, only metaphors, but they are necessary metaphors and refer to something quite real. “God is not a nameless energy or abstract idea. God is not an ‘it.’ God is inadequately described by impersonal philosophical and theological terms such as, ground of being, the Unconditioned, eternal infinity, Space – Time Deity, Reality Idealized, Phenomenology of Mind, or the Center Event.”

Trinitarian–– Classic Christianity worships the “Three Personal God,” the Holy Trinity of what has traditionally been known as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The New Testament itself contains no formal doctrinal statement of the Trinity. In fact, it is not until the second century that the term occurs in the works of Theophilus (trias) and Tertullian (trinitas) and it is not until the fourth century that it becomes a fully developed theological concept with technical disputes over the meaning of words like “person” and “essence.” What the earliest Christians were aware of is the paradox in their absolute belief that God is one while also believing Jesus was divine. The paradox was further heightened by their recognition of the Spirit as a “person.” So, how could God be three and one at the same time? The writers of the New Testament did not look to Greek metaphysics or esoteric philosophy for understanding the paradox. Their understanding was shaped more by how they had experienced God; that is, the approach of the writers of the New Testament was more practical than speculative, and more focused on understanding in terms of relationship and how it functions, and on the character of God than on the metaphysical complexities of the divine nature. Their concern was more about what the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit meant for them in spiritual, relational, and functional terms. If the center, the heart, of reality is personal and relational, that obviously determines and affects absolutely everything in ways that cannot be fathomed. And when we say God is love we are saying infinitely more than that God has a warm attitude of benevolence. We are saying, among other things, that God is the very rhythm, music, dance, flowing movement of love. No wonder Thomas à Kempis said he would rather experience the Trinity than to be able to discuss it learnedly.

The Names of God–– The names of God are important both because they maintain the continuity of the Christian Way with the ancient Hebrew spiritual tradition, and because they tell us something about the nature of God. In looking at the Hebrew names for God it is helpful to note in Hebrew thinking the world was seen and understood in concrete ways –– ways that can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard. There are three different words in the Bible that are translated into English as God.
El is the most frequent name in the Hebrew Scriptures translated into English as “God.” El means the strong and mighty one who shows or teaches the way. In its original pictograph form what is now the “E” in English represented the head of an ox –– a symbol of strength. The “L” originally represented both a yoke and shepherd’s staff. Two oxen were normally in the yoke together when pulling a plow. An older more experienced ox was matched with a younger and inexperience one who learned the task of plowing from the older one. God (El) is the “strong leader” (the older and stronger ox) who teaches the people (the younger ox) how to plow by working along with them (Genesis 26:28). Elohim is the plural form of El. However, the plural is not quantitative but qualitative, so that it is intensifies or emphasizes the might and creative power of God. If, for example, this form were used of a tree it would mean the largest, strongest, tallest tree. Elohim suggests the wonder, the majesty, the fullness and completeness of all God’s powers. Sometimes El is combined with Shaddai. Translators usually render El Shaddai as “God Almighty.” This is because the translators of the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) thought that Shaddai came from a word meaning “to overpower” or “to destroy.” More recent scholarship indicates it may actually related to the word shadaim –– “breasts.” In this case what is pictured is sufficiency and nourishment. God is enough, completely sufficient, to nourish the life that is really life in both the individual and in the community of faith.

The name Yahweh is an intensification of the Hebrew verb to be. In Moses’s mystical encounter with God at the burning bush he asks what he shall say when the Israelites inevitably ask, “What is the name of the God that sent you?” And God answers, “Tell them I Am has sent you to them.” I Am as a name, is as awesome as it is mysterious. It may be translated as “He Who Is,” or I Will Be What I Will Be,” or “I Am the One Who Is.” Thomas Oden therefore concludes, “Yahweh incomparably IS.”

Because they regarded the very name of God with such reverence the ancient Hebrews were reluctant to write it; instead, in copying the Old Testament they often substituted Adonai meaning “Lord.” In reference to God the Hebrews used the plural form as an intensifier so that it means something like: “the Lord –– the greatest one. It is translated into Greek as Kyrios. “Christ is Lord” is generally considered to be the oldest Christian confession. When the Apostle Thomas sees the resurrected Christ in the Upper Room and is invited to touch the wounds in Jesus’s hands and feet, all his doubt is overwhelmed and he cries out, “My Lord, and my God.” It is this insistence of Christians that Jesus is Lord that brought the enmity of Caesar and the wrath of the Roman empire upon them. No dictator or totalitarian regime can tolerate the possibility of a subject having a loyalty to anyone or anything greater than themselves, and that is exactly what is means to confess Jesus Christ as Lord.

I want to offer one more observation on the names of God. The word for “name” in the Hebrew is shem and can also mean “character.” The name of someone, then, can say something about their character, as for example when Jacob’s name (meaning manipulator, deceiver, or cheat) changes to Israel (meaning one who has struggled with and seen God). So, we can therefore translate God’s response to Moses’s question (Exodus 3:15) like this:

And God said to Moses, You shall say to the children of Israel, “He That Is,” the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you: this is my character forever, and this is my memorial to all generations.”

The names for God are not merely abstract or academic labels, but affirmations of who and what God is –– attempts to say something, as limited as it is, about the essence of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Knowing and Knowing About
In Classical Christianity there is a distinction between knowing about and knowing God. One may know in the sense of having an intellectual grasp on numerous sophisticated theological and philosophical ideas about God, and even be expert at explaining complicated concepts without knowing God. When Jesus says, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3), he is talking about a knowing as deep and as mysterious and as personal and as intimate as when a couple’s love making is truly making love.

The Shape of Classical Christianity: Part 1

April 1, 2020 / / Comments Off on The Shape of Classical Christianity: Part 1

The Hitchhiker’s Question

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, earthman Arthur Dent and his three friends, after many comic adventures, find their way to the Planet Magrathea. There, they learn that in the distant past a race of “hyperintelligent, pan-dimensional beings” created a supercomputer named Deep Thought to determine the answer to the “Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything.” After having worked on the answer for 7.5 million years, Deep Thought has determined the answer to be 42. It is an answer which makes absolutely no sense because no one remembers what the “Ultimate Question” was in the first place. Was it the question I was told in my first college philosophy course the early Greek philosophers asked: “What is the world made of –– water? fire? ether? or tiny indivisible pieces of matter called atoms?” Was it one or all four of the fundamental philosophical questions: “Where did I come from? Who am I? What am I doing here? Where am I going?” Or maybe as everyone who has ever looked up and wondered at a full moon has asked, “What does it all mean?” For the ancient Hebrew sages and prophets and for the Christian apostles, saints and early church fathers  the ultimate question was and is: “Where is God to be found, where is God to be seen, how is experiential knowledge of God gained and the presence of God realized?” For them, as well as contemporary Christian mystics and contemplatives, to desire God is the greatest of passions, to seek God the greatest of adventures, to find God the greatest of all discoveries. That, as I understand it, is the essence of classical Christian spirituality.

A Working Definition
The following working definition of classical Christianity is a fairly standard one among theologians and historians and at least initially offers no major surprises.

By classical Christianity is meant the central Christian tradition as commonly understood by most believers, in most places, and on which there has generally been substantial consensus now for over two millennia; and, which has been received and celebrated by the vastly different cultures of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe, including Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants, as well as many who would also identify themselves as liberal or evangelical.

While there is nothing startling in this brief definition, there are for most people who have never read or studied patristics, that is the writings of the early church fathers, numerous surprises. For example, the Bible itself says nothing about the doctrine of inerrancy, and the generation of Christian leaders (the church fathers) following the Apostles and those who composed the New Testament, clearly did not embrace the notion of inerrancy. In fact, in reading patristics, say from Ignatius of Antioch (35 C. E.-108 C. E.) to Augustine of Hippo (354 C. E. – 430 C. E.) the notion of an inerrant text is not only absent but explicitly disregarded.

One of the amazing things for me personally in reading the patristic writings and historical theology up to the present, is how what any number of modern writers characterize as “traditional” is often actually less than two-hundred-years-old and therefore not really part of the ancient tradition at all; while what they describe as “emerging Christianity” is often already there in the patristics. It can be said, then, that classical Christianity is traditional Christianity; however, in saying this it is absolutely necessary to understand that tradition is not in any way synonymous with conservatism, or resistance to change as a kind of blind rigidity. Tradition is that which has been discovered, or received by one generation and faithfully passed on to another.

How Do We Know Anything?
The disciples of Jesus, students of his teaching and life and heart, were filled with questions: “What,” they asked, “can this mean?” “How should we pray?” “How can this be?” “What is the meaning of this teaching?” “What is the single most important precept to live by?” “What is the one necessary thing?” “How can we know Jesus is the messiah?” “How can anyone possibly be born a second time?” It seems to me that the great haunting question of all philosophy and theology is how do we know anything? How do we know what we know, and how do we know it with any certainty or confidence? How do we know there is a good and gracious God who is ever present to us and for us, how do we know that the God who created the cosmos cares about our little life, how do we know Jesus is the Christ and resurrected Lord of Life, and how do we know our life is meaningful when lived in love for God and others? All human thinking is riddled with finitude and filled with ambiguity, uncertainty, and contingency. And, we are frequently blinded by our own idiosyncrasies and deluded by conflicting desires, obsessions and compulsions. We long to know where we can find a secure hand hold, a solid footing. But, how is it possible to be sure we know what we think we know? These are perennial questions of epistemology, but in certain crucial times, especially amid sorrow, illness, and death, our usual rational explanations become stretched to their limit. These crucial moments make it especially difficult to answer the question and. . . ‘Life constantly undoes our theories of knowing”’

Christian knowing has often been caricatured as “blind faith,” meaning that it is completely disconnected from real evidence and rationality. In one episode of “All in the Family,”  Archie Bunker replied to religiously naïve Edith’s assertion, “You just gotta have faith!” that, “Faith ain’t nothin’ but believin’ what no one in his right mind would believe otherwise!” And it has to be admitted that when one listens to some of the utter nonsense of modern American fundamentalism, Archie’s brutal assessment of faith seems pretty accurate. It just boggles the mind, for example, to think that any marginally reasonable person living in the twenty-first century could believe that the world was created in six literal days –– or even that the Bible says such a thing. Perhaps a clarification of terms might be helpful at this point, particularly in regard to the meaning of the words “faith” and “reason.”

Recognizing Reasonable Reason
So, what is reason? When we talk about reason we may really have what is properly known as “cognition” in mind. “Cognition” is a term that refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge and understanding, or in comprehending something. These processes include pattern recognition, memory, sensory perceptions and imagination. Reason obviously involves all of these cognitive functions but reason itself is usually defined a little more narrowly and specifically as the capacity to consciously make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, apply logic, and to adapt or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information. The cognitive functioning of an individual may be at a high level, or it might be extremely low, but what is certain is that to be human, is to perceive and think and reason. And what we think and reason about is absolutely everything –– including thinking itself. That is, we think a lot about thinking and do a good deal of reasoning about reason. And, we spend large amounts of time thinking about faith –– pondering the reasonableness of faith.

Seeing Faith
Faith, according to the New Testament and the early church fathers, is itself a way of looking at things and of seeing with a deep seeing. The English word “faith” comes from the Greek term “pistis.” Like a lot of words you might look up in any dictionary it has several meanings; and, is therefore, translated differently in different biblical passages. For example, depending on the context it may be translated as “belief” or as “faith.” Look at Hebrews 11:6:

“Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches God must believe that God exists and rewards those who seriously and passionately seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).

“Without faith (pistis), it is impossible to please God . . .”  Here at the beginning of verse six the writer uses the word “faith” with most all of its meanings in mind –– intellectual assent that something is true; confidence not only in something or someone’s “factuality” but also in something or someone’s reliability, trustworthiness, and dependability; entrusting ourselves to what or who we find reliable; and, faith as loyalty––faithfulness.

“Anyone who approaches God must believe (pistis) that God exists. . .” Here, in its second occurrence, the word “faith” (pistis) is used in its more limited meaning of intellectual assent. It is a common sense and down to earth assertion requiring no effort to grasp. It is even a little comic to think about seeking or searching for what is not there, for what does not exist. It is rather like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
“. . . and rewards those who seriously seek Him.”  With the conjunctive “and” the word “faith” (pistis) is implied rather than actually used a third time. In its final implied use in verse six,  pistis again indicates two or more ideas. First it refers again to intellectual belief (to what one thinks true or in some sense factual) and then again to that which can be trusted, counted upon, depended upon, relied upon. Theologically, it therefore also alludes to the faithfulness or trust worthiness of God; that is, we trust what is trust worthy.

An Ancient Faith Paradigm
In verse eight through twelve Abraham and Sarah are presented as a paradigm for how this works in actual life. Abraham and Sarah become convinced that God has spoken to them. The text doesn’t say whether this was in a dream, or vision, an inner experience, or an audible voice; nor, does it tell us anything about what must have been an intense discussion between Abraham, Sarah, their old father and head of the clan Terah, their nephew Lot and his family who went with them, their uncle Laban who decided to stay in Mesopotamia, and their whole large extended family; or by what logic, what reasoning, Abraham and Sarah concluded they had correctly understood and ought to leave family and friends, their country which at that time was the geographical center of wealth and power, break with their culture, and forsake their thriving business. It does appear that the family discussion went on for some time. But at some point they became convinced that their God –– the God honored by their family, whom they probably called El or Elohim, was inviting them to do something incredibly audacious –– to leave everything, and journey to a distant and unfamiliar land without knowing for sure what would happen (Hebrews 11:8-12). Thomas Cahill therefore writes:

So, “wayyelekh Avram (“Avram went”) –– two of the boldest words in all literature. They signal a complete departure from everything that has gone before in the long evolution of culture and sensibility. Out of Sumer , civilized repository of the predictable, comes a man who does not know where he is going but goes forth into the unknown wilderness under the prompting of his god. Out of Mesopotamia, home of canny, self-serving merchants who use their gods to ensure prosperity and favor, comes a wealthy caravan with no material goal. Out of ancient humanity, which from the dim beginning of its consciousness has read its eternal verities in the stars, comes a party travelling by no known compass. Out of the human race, which knows in its bones that all it strivings must end in death, comes a leader who says he has been given an impossible promise. Out of mortal imagination comes a dream of something new, something better, something yet to happen, something –– in the future.

The writer of the Book of Hebrews concludes that Abraham trusted in his God, and God counted it as righteousness. Indeed, this account of Abraham and Sarah’s trust does not stand alone as a single incident but is part of a continuing and progressive story of total reliance on the goodness and fidelity of God. We are not told how Abraham may have responded had he been queried as to his epistemology –– how he knew that his God existed in the first place. Perhaps he would have replied with some version of the moral argument somewhat like Psalms or Proverbs. Maybe he would have presented some form of the cosmological or teleological argument as in the Epistle to the Romans:

“But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being” (Romans 1:20).

What we do know is that in time whatever intellectual reasons Abraham and Sarah might have initially provided were transcended (not contradicted but transcended) as they lived into lives of profound trust. The Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book is correct, “The essence of all spiritual progress is willingness (faith, trust, self-surrender).” My point is that reason and faith are essentially one thing –– complimentary ways of knowing. In classical Christianity reason, faith, revelation, experience, tradition, feeling, intuition all represent converging lines of wisdom and of knowing the mysterious reality we call God –– “the one in whom we live move and have our very being” (Acts 17:28).

Beyond Reason
We may debate the intellectual merits of God’s existence all we want, and in some ways such intellectual reflection is even necessary. As Thomas Oden noted, “No one can be required to believe absurdities. The mind is God given and has a responsibility to reject falsity. . . . Christian faith opposes anti-intellectual obscurantism as much as it does extreme skepticism.” At the same time classical Christianity insists that beyond this mental or intellectual reflection is living moment by moment and day by day in a conscious connection of trust in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Augustine Bishop of Hippo, who is thought to be among the last of the classical scholars, experienced three “breakthroughs” which can be found in his Confessions as well as other literary works. These breakthroughs or “conversions” may be thought of as intellectual, moral, and religious. Augustine identified as an intellectual conversion the ability to differentiate between that which can be grasped by the five physical senses and that which can be grasped by the mind or intellect alone. Intellectual conversion results in the awareness that the reality of material things is caused by something that is not physical; and, therefore is a reality that can be grasped only by intelligence. Furthermore, intellectual conversion leads to the two things most worth knowing –– God and soul. However, to live justly requires a second kind of conversion which may be considered as moral. Moral conversion enables us to see, know, feel, and do the good –– to act in a way that is consistent with wisdom as a way of life. The third “conversion,” religious conversion, as Augustine described it, enables us to love God with our entire being. It is religious in the original sense of the meaning of the word “religious” as that which binds the soul to God. “For Augustine such a binding in the Christian religion does not involve a restriction but an expansion of one’s freedom as well as a perfection or completion of the other two conversions.”

The classical Christian thinkers, and their present day heirs, are not inclined to a one workshop, one theory, one method, one way of seeking truth and knowledge. While using logic, employing the techniques of the scientific method, and all the cognitive processes by which we usually define as “reason,” their concept of “reason” is characterized by the principle of congruity or what is sometimes referred to as “comprehensive complementarity.” Following the tenet of congruity or comprehensive complementarity, simply means that the search for knowledge does not depend on any single approach, argument, or method, but rather that an explanation which gathers a great many disparate facts and accounts for them intelligently from multiple ways of knowing is more likely true than one that accounts for fewer facts and is limited to a single methodology.

Remembering the Question Before Continuing
With the Age of Enlightenment it became more and more common for secular philosophers to juxtaposition reason over against faith and revelation. But it is a contrast which often obscures more than it enlightens. More and more psychologists, philosophers, theologians, and scientists embrace what has always been known by saints, sages, mystics and ordinary men and women living every-day life; namely, that the way of knowing anything is multifaceted; and, that “pure reason,” by itself simply does not exist. Indeed, there are ways of knowing, as suggested by the famous humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, that transcend but do not contradict objective reason as scientifically defined. Similarly Thomas Oden observed:

The study of God and delight in knowing God requires a mode of understanding that transcends simply empirical data gathering, logical deduction, or the dutiful organization of scriptural or traditional texts into a coherent sequence. It involve a mode of knowing from the heart. . . Faith’s knowing is distinguishable from objective, testable, scientific knowledge, although not necessarily inimical to it. It is a form of knowing the embraces the practical question of how we choose to live in the presence of this Source and End of all. . .

To all this classical Christianity says, “Yes!” for classical Christianity remembers the primordial question which Stephen Hawking once suggested is, “Why was the universe made?” He said in A Brief History of Time, “We are very close to knowing how the universe was made. But if we knew why we would know the mind of God.” Classical Christianity knows the question is closer, more personal and intimate than what Hawking thought –– knows the question for each of us is: “Why was I made?” And, therefore knows that the answer 42 must equal, in the words of the Catechism, “To know, love, and enjoy God forever.”

The Politics of Jesus in an Apocalyptic Age

March 29, 2020 / / Comments Off on The Politics of Jesus in an Apocalyptic Age

What’s Politics Got to Do With It?

There is no avoiding politics. The moment one life impinges upon another politics begin. And our lives do impinge on others whether we will it or not. We are centers of power––power that can bless or curse––and are responsible for managing and directing that power. Power doesn’t diminish or disappear when we enter the way of faith. If we are naive with power or disdainful of it, we will certainly either misuse or allow it to be used by others who are neither innocent or scrupulous. No action is private. The more religious or value charged, the less private. Matters associated with Christ and Antichrist are, then, the least private and therefore the most political of all. Everything we think gets out of our skulls, and everything we do goes beyond our skins, entering a crisscrossing network of complex interaction. Our actions and beliefs connect with others and gather momentum for justice and peace, goodness and holiness, war and oppressions, blasphemy and desecration––a confounding intermixture of means and motives.
Eugene Peterson – Reversed Thunder

Notice from Saint Paul’s Pastoral Letter to Timothy, referred to two posts ago, that the events of catastrophic times, perilous times, are the consequences of human behavior––self-absorbed, narcissistic, greedy, brutal, abusive, vengeful, reckless, irreverent behavior. The catastrophe is neither random nor capricious. It is a consequence. As I write the whole world of common men and women is gripped in fear––and especially if we are in the vulnerable category because of age or health or both we may wonder, “Will I be alive in a month, in two months, or in three.” Or, “Will the child I love more than my own life, or the mother or father who has loved me more than words can say, be dead?” Yet, our government and the media, wealthy and educated people that they all are and detached from common human concerns, have not been focused as much on the possible human loss, as on the possible financial loss––what the coronavirus will do to the economy. Already there is talk of who is expendable, of who can be sacrificed for the profit of Wall Street billionaires. Senators, both Republican and Democratic, briefed early on what was coming sold off stocks likely to sink in a pandemic. And in developing and distributing test kits and vaccine, the first questions were not about what it would take to get this done, but how supply, demand, and profits are to be calculated. Early on a number of health and government officials announced that they were not going to be tested, that they didn’t think everyone needed to be tested. And they were right. But here is the thing. When they decide they do want or need to be tested they are tested. In your case, even if you are in a vulnerable category, you are not necessarily going to be tested. And should you need a ventilator you can be sure that a rich politician who also needs one will get it before you if you are not one of the elite. That my friends is politics in an apocalyptic age––an age in which one fear is that some disease or virus for which there is no medical answer will circumvent the globe like a moonless night. Scientists are now concerned with what deadly bacteria or viruses may be lurking beneath the melting ice cap. I guess one point I am attempting to make here is that the dangers we face are not just individual consequences, they are also social, communal, institutional, and political. In short, you cannot separate the various aspects of your existence into zip-lock bags. Everything, absolutely everything is connected. There is no separation in the political, religious, philosophical, spiritual, or social dimensions of your existence. The parent who refuses to be vaccinated, or to have her child vaccinated, for the flu is not making a purely personal and private decision, but one which affects the whole world. Every budget decision made at every level of government, every housing and zoning plan adopted by a city council, every school board decision affecting the education of children and every school lunch program is a moral, ethical, religious and spiritual decision––everyone without exception.

The Unavoidability of Politics is the Unavoidability of Ethics
The English word “politics” comes from the Greek “politiká” or “polis” meaning “affairs of the city or the state –– or city-state .” Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) in his book Politikos or Politics, described what he saw as the ethical or moral role of governments and citizens in bringing about the virtuous life, those qualities or characteristics that he thought led to the good and greatness of both the state and its individual citizens. In fact, for Aristotle politics was a subcategory under the study of ethics. When you think about what is in the genuine best interest of people as a whole, what best serves the needs of every man, woman, and child, that is “good” politics in the positive sense of Aristotle. It simply would never have occurred to the ancients that religious faith or spirituality and politics were two separate things. Eugene Peterson, quoted above goes on to say, that the same “dragon politics” that battered the faithful in John’s “Revelation” batters us. “The Lamb politics that we are covenanted to practice require sinewy endurance and sapient discernment. The details of the difficulties in which we live change, but the gravity does not: we must persevere in submitting to the powers of the Kingdom, practicing the means of the Kingdom of peace.” The question is not whether we will, or should engage in politics, but what sort of politics we will practice.

The Politics of Jesus
Here are some of the characteristics of what the Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder famously described as “The Politics of Jesus.” They are characteristics of both what we are to be as individual men and women of spiritual faith and in our life together as Christ’s beloved community––the church. Although formulated a little differently than Yoder originally stated them, I think you might nevertheless find them helpful––helpful in discovering how to live your life and how to be church in an apocalyptic age:

• Jesus’s politics is a rejection and renunciation of worldly power, control, manipulation, deception, violence, of selfish-ambition and greed, and of coercion of any kind in favor of the practice of transformative love. This is what it means to take up our cross and follow Christ daily.

• The church, which is the visible presence of the invisible Christ, is a subversive community focused on living the values of the Kingdom of God; indeed; it is only by unswerving adherence to the way of Christ as taught in the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5- 7 of the Gospel According to Saint Matthew) that the church becomes the light of the world radiating hope and bringing enlightenment. However, it is my guess that the majority of professed Christians today have never even read the Sermon on the Mount, and that even fewer have ever contemplated its words with any depth.

• The spiritual politics of Jesus requires creative concern for the person who is bent on doing us and others evil, fused with a refusal to adopt their goals, accede to their demands, assume their attitudes, espouse their values or implement their methods.

• The Jesus Way, the Way of the Cross, cannot be understood apart from that perspective which recognizes the dignity and value, not just of our own life or the lives of those who are near and precious to us, but of every human life, even the life of our enemy. To seek the doing of God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, is not to attempt to replace one oppressor with another, not even another who “sounds” Christian, but to dissolve the categories of oppressed and oppressor altogether.

• Christians in every age and in every season, whether that age is congenial or hostile, can work to fulfill the purpose of God only by genuinely being the church, rather than following compromised moral systems or trying to reconcile biblical revelation with the pragmatic necessities of “managing” the country .

• The politics of Jesus is moral without being moralistic; that is, it is alluring in a wholesome and healthy way and recognizable as being about what is genuinely right and good, rather than dissolving into self-righteous, judgmental, and simplistic explanations, lectures, or rants about right and wrong by people who believe themselves morally superior experts on human nature, but who, in actuality, know nothing about the reality of the human condition.

• The responsibility of Christians is not to take over society and impose their convictions and values on people who don’t share their faith, but rather to “be the church” by refusing to return evil for evil, living in peace, sharing goods, caring for the poor, the oppressed, victims of violence, the sick, the vulnerable and the unwanted. The church invites, but does not demand or attempt to force the rest of the world to join it in walking this path.

• Jesus taught his followers a new way to live in community: To deal with offenses by forgiving, to deal with attacks by renouncing revenge and retaliation, to deal with the problems of leadership through humility and service rather than authoritarian dominance, and by valuing and drawing on the gifts of every member. And he gave them a new way of doing relationships based on a love that seeks what is in the legitimate best interest of others.

• The church, which is simply another name for the collective people of God, is called to stand in contradiction to the way of the world. Jesus’s most severe criticism was for the religious establishment of his day and its obsession with money, status and power. He accused them of “devouring the houses” of poor widows, of making prayer and worship a lucrative business, and of pretending to be wise and spiritual in order to be admired. When the church of the fourth century decided it could both align itself, and its own self-serving interests, with the agenda of the Roman Empire under Constantine, and at the same time somehow remain faithful to its call to be a sacred light of hope and sanity, it made the most egregious error of its history.

The politics of Jesus is ultimately nothing less than a new way of being human and a revolutionary form of community. It is not an easy way. “The gate is small, and the path narrow and rugged,” it is “a razor’s edge––hard to find and difficult to tread;” but it is the only answer sufficiently radical enough to answer the honest question: “How, then, should we live, both as individuals and as faith communities, in an apocalyptic age.”

The Church of the Diaspora
The great Catholic theologian Karl Rahner believed faith communities of the future, churches, in what in this post I have called an apocalyptic age, will be small––little flocks of Christians dispersed thought-out the world. They will be a little flocks because the world population expands so much faster than Christianity even in those places where the church is growing. And, we can certainly add, because of the growing defections of Christians in the Western world who find the contemporary church to be so banal that it cannot possibly be about anything of real consequence –– or who have succumbed to the values of the “Western Creed” without necessarily having ever realized it. Men and women of the future church, this church of the diaspora, are unlikely to be Christians because of custom, or public opinion, or social conditions, but “because of their own act of faith attained in a difficult struggle and perpetually achieved anew.” In some places the little flock may be respected and have full legal rights with non-Christians and anti-Christians, but it is unlikely it will enjoy more rights than others anywhere –– nor should it desire to do so. In other places the little flock may live under constant threat and opposition. In either case it will live as the light and the voice of Christ in the “cacophony of competing ideologies,” which most certainly means it will practice, in its own inner-life and in its advocacy to the wide world, the politics of Jesus. The Church of the diaspora will not mourn or complain over its loss of worldly power, “but will obediently and thankfully accept its own age as what is apportioned to it by its Lord and His Spirit and not merely what is forced on it by the wicked world.”

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