I think I meant Christianity as a whole, though I was not thinking with great clarity and precision. But then, there is the question I asked in the OP...
I am not at all sure it's fair to class this as a Christian website, as it has never been fully so to my knowledge even from the beginning, and our non-Christians are some of the best and brightest of us. So, not the site.
The church.... well, that gets messy, since there are so many meanings for church, and as I see it, the church ought to be open to everybody, not just believers.
Perhaps you can take what I was saying (about the weird avoidance of Jesus) as a statement of a general trend I was seeing on this particular website, even in highly Biblical, faith- and church-related threads?
I would no more expect the non-Christians among us to mention him or engage him in any way than ... my imagination fails me here, you'll have to fill in the blanks. That wouldn't be reasonable. But there were many threads where the majority of the conversation was carried on by people who named their affiliation to Christianity very clearly, and still, the odd sense of something missing. To me, at least.
I seem to remember being taught that salvation comes about by being a member of the Body of Christ and that membership is by baptism. And that common membership is celebrated in the Liturgy where we worship the Father through Christ.
Well, this is a shared Catholic perspective, perhaps? We go to Mass because the Eucharist is what matters. It isn't about 'feelings' although most of us experience awe and reverence at certain times over the years. Mostly it is about yawning half-asleep Catholics trying to remember if the car needs new spark plugs or it's time to pay the son's university fees. Among ourselves, we're all savagely critical of the hierarchy or complain about the priest or the choice of hymns. In ecumenical gatherings, it's probably safe to assume most Protestants have never taken the time to find out what the Roman Catholic Church teaches so we expect to be misunderstood. So much that is deeply felt is left unsaid.
A difference for me is coming from a missionary Catholic background (Zimbabwe) mixed up with Presbyterian Sunday school and years of doing post-grad biblical studies with Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans and Congregationalists. I wouldn't find generalisations about confessional churches vs communion churches that helpful, but it might be a starting point for people looking beyond Eurocentric traditions and cultures. The stronger ecumenical movements I know focus on social justice and the 21st-century spirituality of many Catholics and Anglicans tends to focus on the unknowability of God and silence around what isn't easily put into words.
For me the question is flipped: can you have Christ without Christianity? I consider myself a follower of Jesus, but I have no interest in the church or Christianity as an institution. I won’t call myself a Christian because I do not consider myself to be in any way in fellowship with the most prominent wearers of that label, and most of them would probably say that even when I wore it, I wasn’t really a Christian anyway. So I’ve let them have the trademark; I don’t care about labels anyway.
To address the "we don't talk about the Master of the house" point specifically, I'm wondering how much that would happen in other circumstances?
If we attend a large party, would we spend all our time talking about the host? Or, would we not spend a lot of time catching up with mutual acquaintances we've not seen since the last time we were at a party? Of course, we'd say hello to the host as we enter, as we leave and at times as they circulate making sure everyone is enjoying the party, but most of the time talking about the host is reserved for small talk getting to know someone we've not met "how do you know X?" etc.
Or, at a wedding the focus is on the happy couple. But, come the meal and sitting at a table towards the back of the room after the obligatory comments about how beautiful the bride looked conversation will cover lots of topics - if the bride and groom have done the job of assigning tables well then you'll have something in common you can talk about. With the conversation including rating the hymns, the sermon, the decoration of the church etc.
Christ is like the air we breathe. Without Him we wouldn't be here to have conversations, we wouldn't have church. But, for the vast majority of our time we simply breathe without thinking about this essential function. We only comment when something draws our attention to the air, when it smells different or when we've been exercising and breathing more heavily. Attending worship at church, our own personal devotions (in whatever form they take), group discussion of Christ are times when we notice the Christ-air we're breathing. Every conversation, even the majority, starting off with noting how good it is to be breathing would be very artificial. It might do us good to stop and think more about the Christ-air we're breathing, but that we aren't doing that doesn't mean we aren't breathing.
The claim that Anglicans consider "faith in Jesus" to be evangelical is utter tosh.
I suppose it depends how it's expressed.
In the Eucharist: perfectly fine.
As the focus of every Sunday sermon: eccentric if not problematic.
Well yes, because one would expect that the faithful present on a Sunday morning would need a bit more than repetition. That's not a matter of evangelical or not, but of high quality preaching. Even most evangelicals don't focus every sermon on faith in the way you seem to be suggesting. The only thing I can think of that comes close is the Faith Mission's conversionist preaching, but I think even they would acknowledge that the steady diet of preaching Sunday by Sunday (as opposed to their infrequent visits) requires a bit more than a plea to be saved.
tl;dr: I think my original description was accurate.
Forgive me, but I think there's a bit of 'talking past each other' going on here.
@Leaf, yes of course US Anglicans brought their spiritual as well as literal baggage with them - as well as customs and assumptions. I'm still taken aback when I come across US Episcopalians who made a big deal of the Monarchy and who are big aficionados of British tea and beer. Ok, I get that ... 😉
But the same surely applies to US Lutherans who brought a German or Scandinavian vibe with them.
Or US Catholics or whatever else.
On the 'evangelical' thing - as has been discussed here many times, although they are closely related US and UK evangelicalism are different beasts and are no more monolithic than other Christian traditions. Evangelicalism these days is a 'moveable feast' around a small number of fixed markers.
But yes, I still hold to my contention that Lamb Chopped would essentially be considered evangelical in UK terms.
On the issue of the 'Master of the house' receiving scant direct references in Kerygmania. I suspect this will depend on which passage is under consideration. If it was a discussion of a saying attributed to Christ in one of the Gospels, then surely he'd feature in the discussion more than if it were a discussion of church practice or something.
I think, though, that although this isn't a 'Christian' site as such, certainly insofar that not all participants are signed-up members of particular faith communities, it would generally be taken as 'read' that Christ is there whether we are discussing the fixtures and fittings or the number of tassles on the paraphernalia in the Tabernacle.
Ok, I'm Orthodox and ideally at least all the 'signifying elements' in fittings and fixtures, in liturgical gestures and practices, in the scriptures, hymnody, iconography and so on are meant to point to Christ.
So in that sense - and not at all in a piously superior way - I'm increasingly wired to finding Christ in any theological discussion, whether he is mentioned specifically or not.
I'm sure people from other Christian traditions would say the same.
That doesn't mean I ignore insights or contributions from those who think differently.
But I can certainly see where you are coming from, Lamb Chopped.
.......
But there were many threads where the majority of the conversation was carried on by people who named their affiliation to Christianity very clearly, and still, the odd sense of something missing. To me, at least.
It's not clear to me what you feel is missing.
Looking at your post (which I tried to truncate carefully to keep your point):
.....Surely it's odd to never mention Jesus at all, except in a passing way while we argue about some passage in Kerygmania? To never wonder (this is me being naive again) what his personal opinion on the subject at hand might be? Or what the ramifications might be for me, as his servant
..........
But it seems--odd--verging on rude, occasionally, to talk all around the master of the house, the host of the party, the groom at his own wedding--and never mention him. For going on years, it feels like. And it made me uneasy. And so I asked.
It seems like you might be expecting something the forum can't give, at least as a whole.
Even at Christian seminary, the students have classes where they hash over ideas and technicalities. They go to chapel for worship. They may pray together at times throughout the day. They may burst into song moving between classes. But not during the lectures, or an oral exam, while researching and studying in the library, etc.
At church, after service, even after (monthly for us) Communion, during coffee, I hear a lot more about parenting and football (Ami style) than the work of Christ, etc.
There are threads here, where people talk more about personal aspects of life in Christ, and centered on Christ. But as in other areas of Christian life, it's not all the time and everywhere. I don't know if that's humanly possible.
The claim that Anglicans consider "faith in Jesus" to be evangelical is utter tosh.
I suppose it depends how it's expressed.
In the Eucharist: perfectly fine.
As the focus of every Sunday sermon: eccentric if not problematic.
Mmm. Do you mean that the topic of the sermon is Jesus, or faith in Jesus?
Sermons about Jesus, about what Jesus taught, about how to understand and apply those teachings to contemporary life: those things would be completely normal and expected in every Anglican church I've been part of.
Banging on about having a personal relationship with Jesus? Not so much. Part of that is not really addressing faith in those terms; part of that is a general English reticence about talking about feelings
It depends on 'churchmanship' of course and if it's an evangelical parish it would depend on what 'flavour' of evangelical.
Evangelical Anglicans do tend to wear their evangelical credentials on their sleeves rather more, in my experience, than evangelical Baptists here in the UK where such a position would go without saying, as it were.
But even with heavy-duty Reform style Anglicans or the New Wine crowd you'd hear a reasonably wide range of material and not just 'repent and believe the Gospel.'
Sticking my neck out, and prepared to draw it back in if necessary ...
Hear me right on this but from what Lamb Chopped has told us she has a very vivid and lively faith and is involved in quite challenging ministry among a migrant group with all manner of economic and other challenges - as well as culture shock, alienation, PTSD and much else besides.
So it's going to feel uncomfortable coming into a situation where many of us - myself included- sound very 'armchair' and take-it-or-leave-it. I hope I've conveyed something there without causing offence.
Forgive me, but I think there's a bit of 'talking past each other' going on here.
Agreed. It's likely unavoidable, because (1) broad stereotypes, such as the ones I noted about confessional and communion, are always untrue in some ways (2) the language and ideas we may have about each other don't necessarily map to the lived reality (3) it's hard to see, let alone own up to, the problematic aspects of one's own faith perspective.
The only Christians I know who talk about Jesus a lot are my cousins who are young Earth creationists, and it's to the level that it's creepy and sad. At my aunt and uncle's 50th anniversary party that whole branch of the family invoked God and Jesus in every other sentence and didn't talk about my aunt and uncle as people - nothing about how they met, no fun or heartwarming stories about things that had happened over the course of 50 years, nothing about their abiding love for each other. They just all went on and on about the blessings of God and personal relationships with Jesus. And their regular conversation is like that too - a couple of different times last year some of them were passing through town and I met them for breakfast, and I swear they don't go 15 minutes at a time without mentioning God. It's weird. They are the nicest people, they do real good in the world, and I will always be grateful to my cousin's husband for taking my mother's funeral, but I brace myself for the conversations so weird looks don't float across my face when they talk.
Sure, I knew people in South Wales who talked like that. Anyone would think the Almighty was there to advise them what to have for breakfast each morning.
At the risk of stepping on toes, I think it's a 'dialect' thing - the 'argot' that goes with particular faith positions.
It's also generally a more 'blue collar' / working class thing which is why, apart from middle class charismatics, fundamentalist evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are largely found within lower socioeconomic demographics. They are exceptions of course.
But you generally wouldn't find nice, middle class people talking like that and frightening the horses.
😉
The exception over here in the UK are New Wine-y Anglicans and students going through an evangelical phase.
All that aside, when it comes to theological discourse my own adopted tradition emphasises that we can't engage in 'proper' theology unless we do it in a relational sense - that is, not as a dry, academic exercise but something we engage in to develop our knowledge of God and to work towards union with Christ.
That applies equally to academic eggheads and poorly educated peasants.
As an aside, I don't think 'folk religion' is a purely RC or Orthodox phenomenon.
There are evangelical equivalents. I'm sure there are equivalents in other traditions. My mother's aunts and uncles on her father's side were pretty much 'folk Anglicans' in a way you don't tend to come across these days.
Their faith was very, very real but not anything you'd come across in a theological seminary.
@Lamb Chopped I wouldn’t say that I stay with Christianity for the history, liturgy, music, etc., although I do feel drawn to those things. Actually, one of the things I have been trying to get at in posts on other threads on the Ship is that I feel that my Christianity is insincere, hypocritical, and, frankly, not Christian. I feel that any attempt to deepen my relationship with Jesus, to make my Christianity Christian, that I try to do is just empty words, emotional self-manipulation, and even worse hypocrisy. This isn’t because I suspect that Christianity is false, but rather that I suspect that I am false.
I have a very hard time relating to Jesus because he is male, mainly because I am (but maybe am not entirely?) male. This further complicates things. But if I identify Jesus as the Eucharist, or as the human divine (with a body, sure, and sex organs and all that, but with gender as some fuzzy cloud I don’t have to worry about) that I can reach in prayer through His female, not divine, mother, or through one of the other Persons of the Trinity. But I don’t think that this means that Christianity is false. I just think it means that there is something else wrong with me, and that I am participating in the Patriarchy in a way that makes me one of history’s bad guys (not by being Christian or having a deep connection with the fully-fleshed human Jesus Christ, but by not having come to terms with maleness in a way that liberates others).
And the last and biggest struggle that I have is that because I see myself as just a big ball of narcissistic self-delusion any faith that is largely individual (ie, based on just me and Jesus, not on being part of a Christian family and a deeply interconnected Christian community just feels like a kind of self-worship. But unless I get divorced, I’ll never live in a Christian family. I know plenty of the most famous Christians in history have not had close Christian family or friends. But because the way my mind works is to assume that any Christianity that includes me must be false and evil, I have to start with a valid, living Christianity that exists outside me among other people and try to find Christ, and maybe whatever in myself is made in God’s image, by participating in that. But I haven’t been able to find that yet through other people in Church in a way that is any different than meeting people who aren’t Christian or don’t go to Church. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I can’t possibly trust anyone who doesn’t think I am evil.
When I say that I’m not sure if I have any faith, I mean that if I am the person having the faith, it must be false, not that Christianity is false. When I say that I’m not sure that I have any relationship with Jesus, it means that any relationship that involves at least minimal consent from me must be false, not that Jesus is false. Does that make any sense?
I also have a hard time saying that just because Christianity is true means that other religions, or even atheism, are false, even if that seems to make no sense. I developed a sense of moral and even metaphysical relativism as a way of surviving when I was overwhelmed by thoughts that I was an evil monster, not a human, and that the best I could do was to isolate myself from others so as not to harm them before I was inevitably dragged back to Hell where I belonged. I know that those thoughts are textbook OCD, especially because I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I don’t think they will ever completely go away.
A thought I had an the "How do you know if you believe?" thread was that while what we believe, deep down in the one hand, and how much insight we have into that, on the other, are two different things, there's a relationship between them. The problem with the "if" in the question is it seems to introduce a binary choice. But belief isn't binary. I believe strongly that I'll be having pasta for tea tonight because I'm about to go and make it, so barring unforeseen circumstances it's what will happen. But we can believe things less confidently too.
I think how clear we are about what we believe tends to reflect the strength of the belief in question; if we're not sure what we believe, the belief itself is quite tentative and uncertain.
@Lamb Chopped I wouldn’t say that I stay with Christianity for the history, liturgy, music, etc., although I do feel drawn to those things. Actually, one of the things I have been trying to get at in posts on other threads on the Ship is that I feel that my Christianity is insincere, hypocritical, and, frankly, not Christian. I feel that any attempt to deepen my relationship with Jesus, to make my Christianity Christian, that I try to do is just empty words, emotional self-manipulation, and even worse hypocrisy. This isn’t because I suspect that Christianity is false, but rather that I suspect that I am false.
I have a very hard time relating to Jesus because he is male, mainly because I am (but maybe am not entirely?) male. This further complicates things. But if I identify Jesus as the Eucharist, or as the human divine (with a body, sure, and sex organs and all that, but with gender as some fuzzy cloud I don’t have to worry about) that I can reach in prayer through His female, not divine, mother, or through one of the other Persons of the Trinity. But I don’t think that this means that Christianity is false. I just think it means that there is something else wrong with me, and that I am participating in the Patriarchy in a way that makes me one of history’s bad guys (not by being Christian or having a deep connection with the fully-fleshed human Jesus Christ, but by not having come to terms with maleness in a way that liberates others).
And the last and biggest struggle that I have is that because I see myself as just a big ball of narcissistic self-delusion any faith that is largely individual (ie, based on just me and Jesus, not on being part of a Christian family and a deeply interconnected Christian community just feels like a kind of self-worship. But unless I get divorced, I’ll never live in a Christian family. I know plenty of the most famous Christians in history have not had close Christian family or friends. But because the way my mind works is to assume that any Christianity that includes me must be false and evil, I have to start with a valid, living Christianity that exists outside me among other people and try to find Christ, and maybe whatever in myself is made in God’s image, by participating in that. But I haven’t been able to find that yet through other people in Church in a way that is any different than meeting people who aren’t Christian or don’t go to Church. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I can’t possibly trust anyone who doesn’t think I am evil.
When I say that I’m not sure if I have any faith, I mean that if I am the person having the faith, it must be false, not that Christianity is false. When I say that I’m not sure that I have any relationship with Jesus, it means that any relationship that involves at least minimal consent from me must be false, not that Jesus is false. Does that make any sense?
I also have a hard time saying that just because Christianity is true means that other religions, or even atheism, are false, even if that seems to make no sense. I developed a sense of moral and even metaphysical relativism as a way of surviving when I was overwhelmed by thoughts that I was an evil monster, not a human, and that the best I could do was to isolate myself from others so as not to harm them before I was inevitably dragged back to Hell where I belonged. I know that those thoughts are textbook OCD, especially because I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I don’t think they will ever completely go away.
Stonespring--Going to DM you a bit later, but we have an enormous amount of stuff in common, I think, and I have no negative views of you or your faith at all. Just for what it's worth, till I can DM.
I think Jesus welcomes comments and questions about him and his house. To say we are not to question the host is verging on fascism, in my mind. It is like the story of the king with no clothes. No one wanted to embarrass the king and praised him for his finery, but then a child spoke up--the kid did not know the rules.
Once, if you asked questions or challenged assumptions, you could be tried as a heretic. Now, people are able to consider alternatives. The church has thrived through that. It is now in a bit of a slump now with various competing thoughts and activities, but even Hawkins acknowledged the church is the basic foundation of Western civilization and he would not want to change that if he could.
EDIT I had intended to post this much earlier, but apparently forgot to post it.
This thread reminds me of that thing where an author (songwriter, poet or whatever) writes an opaque phrase and fans later ask him what it meant.
And the author refuses to answer - because that original thing was very personal to them and (being honest) he thinks the contexts and interpretations that the fans put into the phrase are vastly more interesting than the original meaning.
I don't see anyone here saying we shouldn't 'question the host' @Gramps49. And I don't mean the SoF Hosts and Admins either.
There has been a question as to why Christ himself may not feature in Kerymanic discussion as much as some may expect or wish.
That's hardly tantamount to a fascistic moratorium on asking questions. It was simply a Shipmate asking a question without any intention of closing down debate as far as I could see.
This thread reminds me of that thing where an author (songwriter, poet or whatever) writes an opaque phrase and fans later ask him what it meant.
And the author refuses to answer - because that original thing was very personal to them and (being honest) he thinks the contexts and interpretations that the fans put into the phrase are vastly more interesting than the original meaning.
Student: Mr Eliot, when in Ash Wednesday, you write,
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper three,
could you tell us what you meant?
T S Eliot: Certainly. I meant, Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree.
I'm flailing around in my own difficult, protracted religious deconstruction, so I'll beg your pardons in advance for anything that seems inconsistent or self serving,
How is it for you? If you are committed to some other aspect of Christianity but could do without Christ himself, what is that aspect? And do you think there ought to be a different name for that faith?
I enjoy a number of aspects of social Christianity, a la Richard Dawkins. And I appreciate many of the humanizing byproducts of Christianity: its music, its art, its architecture, its literature, a la Christopher Hitchens. But I also nod my head when I remember the quote attributed to Ghandi that goes something like, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Mind you, I don't dislike people, it's just that I dislike the religiosity of people. I dislike religion. But I draw a marked distinction between attempting to live according to a particular ethic as described by someone (in this case Jesus of Nazareth) and the full, conscious, active (as well as acrimonious and competing) participations delineated by the legion of denominations active today. I read about the incredible varieties of pre-orthodox Christianities and wonder if they were really so, so wrong. I read about the power struggles of the great Councils, and the earliest politicizations of the Church. I read about how the Bible was cobbled together, and particularly about what was excluded and why. I read about how the Bible, as a document, has since come to be understood over the past two centuries, including notable academic consensuses that Genesis 1 was very likely an add-on (that Genesis 2 was probably the original 1st chapter of the OT); that the Gospel of Mark (the first gospel) originally ended with the women remaining silent after leaving the empty tomb; that barely half of Paul's letters are now understood to be authored by Paul, etc. -- old news to many on these boards. And that last one is significant to me, because I think at the end of the day, all of Paul's writings are pretty much optional. He certainly wouldn't agree very much at all with the author of Matthew. And since his letters were written before any of the Gospels were even marginally known one has to wonder how much about Jesus' teachings Paul actually knew! It's anybody's guess, and that's not solid enough ground for me any more. Even so, I'm still hanging onto the synoptic Gospels for their red letter content. For me any more, that's plenty. No, we can't actually know that Jesus said those things. No, we can't know how what he may have said was changed or lost in translation. But it's still more than enough to try to live by.
So, if this isn't splitting hairs too much, you can keep pretty much all of your theological, supernatural, and dogmatic Christianity, many Christians, and maybe even your Christ. How does the song go? Jesus is just alright with me... Jesus is just alright with me...
To which we could add that the authorship of the Petrine corpus is also disputed, not just the Pauline texts.
We can either live with the paradoxes and contradictions or we can't. I'm not sure we have to be either a rigid fundamentalist, of the biblical variety or the more Catholic / Orthodox equivalent, a 'Church Fundamentalist' or 'Patristic Fundamentalist' to hold on to more than the Beatitudes and the 'words of our Lord in red.'
If nothing else, those jewels need some kind of setting. They don't just lie there on the ground.
But as the saying aboard Ship goes, 'Your mileage may vary.'
I admire @Lamb Chopped's imaginative leaps and glosses but see no need to speculate as to what may or may not have happened to those who apparently rose from the dead at the Resurrection.
I confess to some puzzlement over that particular part of the story but then again a single Resurrection sounds pretty far-fetched. The whole thing does. And yet ... and yet ...
Or maybe it's a perfectly reasonable thing to leave them in their raw state. I can still admire them that way. Set jewels are most often cut to fit, and in the cutting, part of them is lost. And then it can become as much about the setting as it does the (lesser) jewel itself.
But that's the point I'm making. We don't have them in their raw state.
We only have them as they've been handed down in their settings.
Sure, there are Russian icons that are so overlaid with filigree and tat that the actual image itself is obscured and barely visible. Ifvwe wanted to see the icon as originally painted we'd have to strip away the metal work around it.
But the point I'm getting at is that we can't have the red print without the black print around it.
The only reason we have 'the words of our Lord in red' is because they've been selected and preserved by someone who belonged to a particular faith tradition who wrote them down, presumably in black ink on papyrus. Those texts were then accepted as canonical or authoritative over and above other texts, again by a particular faith community (or communities). It's called tradition / Tradition.
What we don't have are uncut gems lying around on the ground.
But that's the point I'm making. We don't have them in their raw state... the point I'm getting at is that we can't have the red print without the black print around it.
I suppose some of us have enough to feel so. I don't need any of the black ink around it to appreciate "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Purely objective exactitude isn't ever going to be an option, but I can be satisfied with the collective scholarly effort that gets us as close as we can possibly can get right now. At least, that's what I'm claiming for myself.
The central narrative of Christianity being salvation, with Jesus being the saviour, I'm intrigued it hasn't come up more often on this thread.
And as much as communal expressions of the Body of Christ are essential, the purpose of church is not to have church services (liturgical or otherwise).
The central narrative of Christianity being salvation, with Jesus being the saviour, I'm intrigued it hasn't come up more often on this thread.
And as much as communal expressions of the Body of Christ are essential, the purpose of church is not to have church services (liturgical or otherwise).
Excellent point, @Pease and I'm kicking myself for not having raised it.
@Caissa could that be because the salvific element is implicit or taken for granted when the Creed was formulated?
@The_Riv - I can see where you are coming from but wouldn't be as reductionist about it as you appear to be. 'I don't like everything else, I'll just have this bit.' Up to you though, of course.
Theosis is not salvation. The centrality of salvation is a very protestant concept and not one I shared.
I’d say it’s not so much an issue of the centrality of salvation—the Creed seems to make it pretty central when it says “who for us [men] and our salvation”—as it is an issue of what is meant by salvation. As others have noted, some Protestant traditions seem to have a very narrow and, in my opinion, impoverished view of what salvation is.
Yes, which is usually the one meant by simply “the Creed,” and which is the one accepted by Eastern Orthodoxy as well as Western Christianity. That latter fact is relevant to the assertion that “the centrality of salvation is a Protestant concept,” which is what I was responding to.
Intriguingly, on the Apostles' Creed (via the Old Roman Creed), wikipedia has:
The earliest known formula is found within Testamentum in Galilaca D[ominus]. N[oster]. I[esu]. Christi written between 150 and 180. This formula states: "[I believe] in the Father almighty, - and in Jesus Christ, our Savior; - and in the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, in the holy Church, and in the remission of sins."
I think 'Jesus Christ our Saviour' gives us something of a clue ...
Meanwhile, if Theosis isn't about salvation, what is it about?
As I understand it, salvation is all about being 'made whole.' You can't get much more 'whole' than union with God, which is what Theosis is all about.
Really, you're all being so Protestant about this stuff ... 🙄
@Gamma Gamaliel -- well, if anything, I'd say that's right in line with the entire corpus of Christianity.
Sure. We all pick and choose. It just depends on far you take it. If you only want the words in red without any context and the black ones around them that's up to you.
I don't see how that's any less problematic than taking a less reductionist approach.
When all's said and done though, we'll all be judged on the extent to which we responded to those words and not how many church services we attended, or how many prostrations we made etc.
And that's perfectly Orthodox too.
St Mother Maria of Paris said it so it must be true.
If y'all want to argue salvation vs. theosis, could you take it to another thread? I'm hoping this one isn't quite done yet, as I'd like to hear from others on the original issue. And I can't help noticing that we are always sliding away from Christ to safer topics to discuss--ones where we can argue in circles for days, without (probably) exposing too much of ourselves.
But I think that's a risk worth taking, to find out what people on board think about Jesus.
If y'all want to argue salvation vs. theosis, could you take it to another thread? I'm hoping this one isn't quite done yet, as I'd like to hear from others on the original issue. And I can't help noticing that we are always sliding away from Christ to safer topics to discuss--ones where we can argue in circles for days, without (probably) exposing too much of ourselves.
But I think that's a risk worth taking, to find out what people on board think about Jesus.
I think he'd be nothing like anything we were expecting. He'd shock our outrage with compassion, our sensitivity with bluntness, our tolerance with anger and our intolerance with unconditional acceptance.
And my assumptions with a weird story about kings and stewards and shepherds. And my expectation of a parable with straight talking. And... well you get the picture.
Anent Lamb Chopped's "master of the house" and others' distinction between a Christianity of individual belief vs. a Christianity of communal belief, I offer this anecdote: I once went to a "Foursquare" Church (look it up if you want; it basically meant in their terms "bible-believing and tongues-speaking"). They celebrated something they called communion, but bizarrely in the whole ritual, no single verse of Scripture, nor recognizeable phrase from Scripture (e.g. "my body") was spoken. It was as if their Bible reading/preaching and their sacramental (or whatever word they'd use) actions were in airtight containers, and never the twain met. I refused to partake, much to the angerment of my then-wife.
But liberally backslid as I am I can’t quite visualise a Christianity as a believed in, followed religion that isn't somehow focused and founded on Jesus. Even if I take the progressive line I'm also drawn to - that Christianity is an approach amongst many to God, it's still an approach whose distinctive and defining point is that it's informed by the corpus of holy writings about Jesus we call the New Testament.
It seems to me that the vast majority of the writings of Paul or pseudo-Paul aren't about Jesus at all. Sometimes he gets thrown in (via a word or two) as an imprimatur, but the passages are still about something else. Given what % of the NT those writings make up, I wonder if writings about Jesus even work up to a majority (although certainly it's a plurality).
My poor husband got dragged to a prosperity Gospel Vietnamese church in California, and he said that all the hymns were centered on Jesus--and absolutely not a word was said about him at any other time. Yikes.
Comments
I am not at all sure it's fair to class this as a Christian website, as it has never been fully so to my knowledge even from the beginning, and our non-Christians are some of the best and brightest of us. So, not the site.
The church.... well, that gets messy, since there are so many meanings for church, and as I see it, the church ought to be open to everybody, not just believers.
Perhaps you can take what I was saying (about the weird avoidance of Jesus) as a statement of a general trend I was seeing on this particular website, even in highly Biblical, faith- and church-related threads?
I would no more expect the non-Christians among us to mention him or engage him in any way than ... my imagination fails me here, you'll have to fill in the blanks. That wouldn't be reasonable. But there were many threads where the majority of the conversation was carried on by people who named their affiliation to Christianity very clearly, and still, the odd sense of something missing. To me, at least.
Well, this is a shared Catholic perspective, perhaps? We go to Mass because the Eucharist is what matters. It isn't about 'feelings' although most of us experience awe and reverence at certain times over the years. Mostly it is about yawning half-asleep Catholics trying to remember if the car needs new spark plugs or it's time to pay the son's university fees. Among ourselves, we're all savagely critical of the hierarchy or complain about the priest or the choice of hymns. In ecumenical gatherings, it's probably safe to assume most Protestants have never taken the time to find out what the Roman Catholic Church teaches so we expect to be misunderstood. So much that is deeply felt is left unsaid.
A difference for me is coming from a missionary Catholic background (Zimbabwe) mixed up with Presbyterian Sunday school and years of doing post-grad biblical studies with Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans and Congregationalists. I wouldn't find generalisations about confessional churches vs communion churches that helpful, but it might be a starting point for people looking beyond Eurocentric traditions and cultures. The stronger ecumenical movements I know focus on social justice and the 21st-century spirituality of many Catholics and Anglicans tends to focus on the unknowability of God and silence around what isn't easily put into words.
If we attend a large party, would we spend all our time talking about the host? Or, would we not spend a lot of time catching up with mutual acquaintances we've not seen since the last time we were at a party? Of course, we'd say hello to the host as we enter, as we leave and at times as they circulate making sure everyone is enjoying the party, but most of the time talking about the host is reserved for small talk getting to know someone we've not met "how do you know X?" etc.
Or, at a wedding the focus is on the happy couple. But, come the meal and sitting at a table towards the back of the room after the obligatory comments about how beautiful the bride looked conversation will cover lots of topics - if the bride and groom have done the job of assigning tables well then you'll have something in common you can talk about. With the conversation including rating the hymns, the sermon, the decoration of the church etc.
Christ is like the air we breathe. Without Him we wouldn't be here to have conversations, we wouldn't have church. But, for the vast majority of our time we simply breathe without thinking about this essential function. We only comment when something draws our attention to the air, when it smells different or when we've been exercising and breathing more heavily. Attending worship at church, our own personal devotions (in whatever form they take), group discussion of Christ are times when we notice the Christ-air we're breathing. Every conversation, even the majority, starting off with noting how good it is to be breathing would be very artificial. It might do us good to stop and think more about the Christ-air we're breathing, but that we aren't doing that doesn't mean we aren't breathing.
Well yes, because one would expect that the faithful present on a Sunday morning would need a bit more than repetition. That's not a matter of evangelical or not, but of high quality preaching. Even most evangelicals don't focus every sermon on faith in the way you seem to be suggesting. The only thing I can think of that comes close is the Faith Mission's conversionist preaching, but I think even they would acknowledge that the steady diet of preaching Sunday by Sunday (as opposed to their infrequent visits) requires a bit more than a plea to be saved.
tl;dr: I think my original description was accurate.
@Leaf, yes of course US Anglicans brought their spiritual as well as literal baggage with them - as well as customs and assumptions. I'm still taken aback when I come across US Episcopalians who made a big deal of the Monarchy and who are big aficionados of British tea and beer. Ok, I get that ... 😉
But the same surely applies to US Lutherans who brought a German or Scandinavian vibe with them.
Or US Catholics or whatever else.
On the 'evangelical' thing - as has been discussed here many times, although they are closely related US and UK evangelicalism are different beasts and are no more monolithic than other Christian traditions. Evangelicalism these days is a 'moveable feast' around a small number of fixed markers.
But yes, I still hold to my contention that Lamb Chopped would essentially be considered evangelical in UK terms.
On the issue of the 'Master of the house' receiving scant direct references in Kerygmania. I suspect this will depend on which passage is under consideration. If it was a discussion of a saying attributed to Christ in one of the Gospels, then surely he'd feature in the discussion more than if it were a discussion of church practice or something.
I think, though, that although this isn't a 'Christian' site as such, certainly insofar that not all participants are signed-up members of particular faith communities, it would generally be taken as 'read' that Christ is there whether we are discussing the fixtures and fittings or the number of tassles on the paraphernalia in the Tabernacle.
Ok, I'm Orthodox and ideally at least all the 'signifying elements' in fittings and fixtures, in liturgical gestures and practices, in the scriptures, hymnody, iconography and so on are meant to point to Christ.
So in that sense - and not at all in a piously superior way - I'm increasingly wired to finding Christ in any theological discussion, whether he is mentioned specifically or not.
I'm sure people from other Christian traditions would say the same.
That doesn't mean I ignore insights or contributions from those who think differently.
But I can certainly see where you are coming from, Lamb Chopped.
It's not clear to me what you feel is missing.
Looking at your post (which I tried to truncate carefully to keep your point):
It seems like you might be expecting something the forum can't give, at least as a whole.
Even at Christian seminary, the students have classes where they hash over ideas and technicalities. They go to chapel for worship. They may pray together at times throughout the day. They may burst into song moving between classes. But not during the lectures, or an oral exam, while researching and studying in the library, etc.
At church, after service, even after (monthly for us) Communion, during coffee, I hear a lot more about parenting and football (Ami style) than the work of Christ, etc.
There are threads here, where people talk more about personal aspects of life in Christ, and centered on Christ. But as in other areas of Christian life, it's not all the time and everywhere. I don't know if that's humanly possible.
Mmm. Do you mean that the topic of the sermon is Jesus, or faith in Jesus?
Sermons about Jesus, about what Jesus taught, about how to understand and apply those teachings to contemporary life: those things would be completely normal and expected in every Anglican church I've been part of.
Banging on about having a personal relationship with Jesus? Not so much. Part of that is not really addressing faith in those terms; part of that is a general English reticence about talking about feelings
Evangelical Anglicans do tend to wear their evangelical credentials on their sleeves rather more, in my experience, than evangelical Baptists here in the UK where such a position would go without saying, as it were.
But even with heavy-duty Reform style Anglicans or the New Wine crowd you'd hear a reasonably wide range of material and not just 'repent and believe the Gospel.'
Actually, I wish they'd do more of that ... 😉
Hear me right on this but from what Lamb Chopped has told us she has a very vivid and lively faith and is involved in quite challenging ministry among a migrant group with all manner of economic and other challenges - as well as culture shock, alienation, PTSD and much else besides.
So it's going to feel uncomfortable coming into a situation where many of us - myself included- sound very 'armchair' and take-it-or-leave-it. I hope I've conveyed something there without causing offence.
Agreed. It's likely unavoidable, because (1) broad stereotypes, such as the ones I noted about confessional and communion, are always untrue in some ways (2) the language and ideas we may have about each other don't necessarily map to the lived reality (3) it's hard to see, let alone own up to, the problematic aspects of one's own faith perspective.
Ooh I would not advise such a thread outside of Epiphanies. It's a hotbed of personal and sensitive perspectives.
At the risk of stepping on toes, I think it's a 'dialect' thing - the 'argot' that goes with particular faith positions.
It's also generally a more 'blue collar' / working class thing which is why, apart from middle class charismatics, fundamentalist evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are largely found within lower socioeconomic demographics. They are exceptions of course.
But you generally wouldn't find nice, middle class people talking like that and frightening the horses.
😉
The exception over here in the UK are New Wine-y Anglicans and students going through an evangelical phase.
All that aside, when it comes to theological discourse my own adopted tradition emphasises that we can't engage in 'proper' theology unless we do it in a relational sense - that is, not as a dry, academic exercise but something we engage in to develop our knowledge of God and to work towards union with Christ.
That applies equally to academic eggheads and poorly educated peasants.
As an aside, I don't think 'folk religion' is a purely RC or Orthodox phenomenon.
There are evangelical equivalents. I'm sure there are equivalents in other traditions. My mother's aunts and uncles on her father's side were pretty much 'folk Anglicans' in a way you don't tend to come across these days.
Their faith was very, very real but not anything you'd come across in a theological seminary.
I have a very hard time relating to Jesus because he is male, mainly because I am (but maybe am not entirely?) male. This further complicates things. But if I identify Jesus as the Eucharist, or as the human divine (with a body, sure, and sex organs and all that, but with gender as some fuzzy cloud I don’t have to worry about) that I can reach in prayer through His female, not divine, mother, or through one of the other Persons of the Trinity. But I don’t think that this means that Christianity is false. I just think it means that there is something else wrong with me, and that I am participating in the Patriarchy in a way that makes me one of history’s bad guys (not by being Christian or having a deep connection with the fully-fleshed human Jesus Christ, but by not having come to terms with maleness in a way that liberates others).
And the last and biggest struggle that I have is that because I see myself as just a big ball of narcissistic self-delusion any faith that is largely individual (ie, based on just me and Jesus, not on being part of a Christian family and a deeply interconnected Christian community just feels like a kind of self-worship. But unless I get divorced, I’ll never live in a Christian family. I know plenty of the most famous Christians in history have not had close Christian family or friends. But because the way my mind works is to assume that any Christianity that includes me must be false and evil, I have to start with a valid, living Christianity that exists outside me among other people and try to find Christ, and maybe whatever in myself is made in God’s image, by participating in that. But I haven’t been able to find that yet through other people in Church in a way that is any different than meeting people who aren’t Christian or don’t go to Church. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I can’t possibly trust anyone who doesn’t think I am evil.
When I say that I’m not sure if I have any faith, I mean that if I am the person having the faith, it must be false, not that Christianity is false. When I say that I’m not sure that I have any relationship with Jesus, it means that any relationship that involves at least minimal consent from me must be false, not that Jesus is false. Does that make any sense?
I also have a hard time saying that just because Christianity is true means that other religions, or even atheism, are false, even if that seems to make no sense. I developed a sense of moral and even metaphysical relativism as a way of surviving when I was overwhelmed by thoughts that I was an evil monster, not a human, and that the best I could do was to isolate myself from others so as not to harm them before I was inevitably dragged back to Hell where I belonged. I know that those thoughts are textbook OCD, especially because I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I don’t think they will ever completely go away.
A thought I had an the "How do you know if you believe?" thread was that while what we believe, deep down in the one hand, and how much insight we have into that, on the other, are two different things, there's a relationship between them. The problem with the "if" in the question is it seems to introduce a binary choice. But belief isn't binary. I believe strongly that I'll be having pasta for tea tonight because I'm about to go and make it, so barring unforeseen circumstances it's what will happen. But we can believe things less confidently too.
I think how clear we are about what we believe tends to reflect the strength of the belief in question; if we're not sure what we believe, the belief itself is quite tentative and uncertain.
Stonespring--Going to DM you a bit later, but we have an enormous amount of stuff in common, I think, and I have no negative views of you or your faith at all. Just for what it's worth, till I can DM.
Once, if you asked questions or challenged assumptions, you could be tried as a heretic. Now, people are able to consider alternatives. The church has thrived through that. It is now in a bit of a slump now with various competing thoughts and activities, but even Hawkins acknowledged the church is the basic foundation of Western civilization and he would not want to change that if he could.
EDIT I had intended to post this much earlier, but apparently forgot to post it.
Do you mean Dawkins?
And the author refuses to answer - because that original thing was very personal to them and (being honest) he thinks the contexts and interpretations that the fans put into the phrase are vastly more interesting than the original meaning.
There has been a question as to why Christ himself may not feature in Kerymanic discussion as much as some may expect or wish.
That's hardly tantamount to a fascistic moratorium on asking questions. It was simply a Shipmate asking a question without any intention of closing down debate as far as I could see.
Student: Mr Eliot, when in Ash Wednesday, you write,
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper three,
could you tell us what you meant?
T S Eliot: Certainly. I meant, Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree.
Nevertheless, I think the OP raises some valid questions.
Anyone whose had to guide a student through GCSE English can sympathise.
Sometimes, the curtains just happened to be blue.
I enjoy a number of aspects of social Christianity, a la Richard Dawkins. And I appreciate many of the humanizing byproducts of Christianity: its music, its art, its architecture, its literature, a la Christopher Hitchens. But I also nod my head when I remember the quote attributed to Ghandi that goes something like, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Mind you, I don't dislike people, it's just that I dislike the religiosity of people. I dislike religion. But I draw a marked distinction between attempting to live according to a particular ethic as described by someone (in this case Jesus of Nazareth) and the full, conscious, active (as well as acrimonious and competing) participations delineated by the legion of denominations active today. I read about the incredible varieties of pre-orthodox Christianities and wonder if they were really so, so wrong. I read about the power struggles of the great Councils, and the earliest politicizations of the Church. I read about how the Bible was cobbled together, and particularly about what was excluded and why. I read about how the Bible, as a document, has since come to be understood over the past two centuries, including notable academic consensuses that Genesis 1 was very likely an add-on (that Genesis 2 was probably the original 1st chapter of the OT); that the Gospel of Mark (the first gospel) originally ended with the women remaining silent after leaving the empty tomb; that barely half of Paul's letters are now understood to be authored by Paul, etc. -- old news to many on these boards. And that last one is significant to me, because I think at the end of the day, all of Paul's writings are pretty much optional. He certainly wouldn't agree very much at all with the author of Matthew. And since his letters were written before any of the Gospels were even marginally known one has to wonder how much about Jesus' teachings Paul actually knew! It's anybody's guess, and that's not solid enough ground for me any more. Even so, I'm still hanging onto the synoptic Gospels for their red letter content. For me any more, that's plenty. No, we can't actually know that Jesus said those things. No, we can't know how what he may have said was changed or lost in translation. But it's still more than enough to try to live by.
So, if this isn't splitting hairs too much, you can keep pretty much all of your theological, supernatural, and dogmatic Christianity, many Christians, and maybe even your Christ. How does the song go? Jesus is just alright with me... Jesus is just alright with me...
We can either live with the paradoxes and contradictions or we can't. I'm not sure we have to be either a rigid fundamentalist, of the biblical variety or the more Catholic / Orthodox equivalent, a 'Church Fundamentalist' or 'Patristic Fundamentalist' to hold on to more than the Beatitudes and the 'words of our Lord in red.'
If nothing else, those jewels need some kind of setting. They don't just lie there on the ground.
But as the saying aboard Ship goes, 'Your mileage may vary.'
I admire @Lamb Chopped's imaginative leaps and glosses but see no need to speculate as to what may or may not have happened to those who apparently rose from the dead at the Resurrection.
I confess to some puzzlement over that particular part of the story but then again a single Resurrection sounds pretty far-fetched. The whole thing does. And yet ... and yet ...
We only have them as they've been handed down in their settings.
Sure, there are Russian icons that are so overlaid with filigree and tat that the actual image itself is obscured and barely visible. Ifvwe wanted to see the icon as originally painted we'd have to strip away the metal work around it.
But the point I'm getting at is that we can't have the red print without the black print around it.
The only reason we have 'the words of our Lord in red' is because they've been selected and preserved by someone who belonged to a particular faith tradition who wrote them down, presumably in black ink on papyrus. Those texts were then accepted as canonical or authoritative over and above other texts, again by a particular faith community (or communities). It's called tradition / Tradition.
What we don't have are uncut gems lying around on the ground.
I suppose some of us have enough to feel so. I don't need any of the black ink around it to appreciate "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Purely objective exactitude isn't ever going to be an option, but I can be satisfied with the collective scholarly effort that gets us as close as we can possibly can get right now. At least, that's what I'm claiming for myself.
The central narrative of Christianity being salvation, with Jesus being the saviour, I'm intrigued it hasn't come up more often on this thread.
And as much as communal expressions of the Body of Christ are essential, the purpose of church is not to have church services (liturgical or otherwise).
Back up a bit. What do you mean by salvation?
@Caissa could that be because the salvific element is implicit or taken for granted when the Creed was formulated?
@The_Riv - I can see where you are coming from but wouldn't be as reductionist about it as you appear to be. 'I don't like everything else, I'll just have this bit.' Up to you though, of course.
Yes, I was just thinking that. Of course, you can interpret salvation in different ways, but often taken in a Protestant way.
Meanwhile, if Theosis isn't about salvation, what is it about?
As I understand it, salvation is all about being 'made whole.' You can't get much more 'whole' than union with God, which is what Theosis is all about.
Really, you're all being so Protestant about this stuff ... 🙄
Salvation is an honest-to-God theme in the Bible as well, so it's not Protestant. Check out the prophets. Check out Acts 2, and Peter's speech...
Sure. We all pick and choose. It just depends on far you take it. If you only want the words in red without any context and the black ones around them that's up to you.
I don't see how that's any less problematic than taking a less reductionist approach.
When all's said and done though, we'll all be judged on the extent to which we responded to those words and not how many church services we attended, or how many prostrations we made etc.
And that's perfectly Orthodox too.
St Mother Maria of Paris said it so it must be true.
But I think that's a risk worth taking, to find out what people on board think about Jesus.
I think he'd be nothing like anything we were expecting. He'd shock our outrage with compassion, our sensitivity with bluntness, our tolerance with anger and our intolerance with unconditional acceptance.
And my assumptions with a weird story about kings and stewards and shepherds. And my expectation of a parable with straight talking. And... well you get the picture.
It seems to me that the vast majority of the writings of Paul or pseudo-Paul aren't about Jesus at all. Sometimes he gets thrown in (via a word or two) as an imprimatur, but the passages are still about something else. Given what % of the NT those writings make up, I wonder if writings about Jesus even work up to a majority (although certainly it's a plurality).