I understand why you think sheep and goats is damnationism but I think it was a shot at the complacent of his time. And it works pretty well that way in our time. Essentially it says to the religious. “Why should you think you’ll do better eternally than those outside your group who do better with kindness now than you do?”
I quite like that. It’s intended as a wake up call to the indifferent.
You've done it again. Spoken with the voice of wisdom. And that's what I'd have said when I believed. Truly. I did. One can deconstruct Jesus' hard sayings and reconstruct them according to taste. And we both have excellent taste.
... but. It's... grandiose. Not of him. But of us. We can come nowhere near. But we delude ourselves that we do. Wellllll, we're on the side of those who do. Whoever they are.
We come nowhere near, and that's OK. Reach and grasp. He projected our ideal self. And he could only deliver supernaturally.
Ah well.
Impossible possibilities? Or too morally demanding? Similar things have been said about the sermon on the mount.
I seem to lack perfectionist fear, Martin. I’m happy to keep on trying. I find the impossible possibilities useful, not a paralysing straitjacket. They serve as a reminder of the cost to others and myself of indifference, a lack of kindness, a lack of fairness. Humility about my own imperfections keeps me from both arrogance and despair, keeps me hopeful. I think these are signs that grace trumps karma, mercy triumphs over judgment, unselfish love trumps selfishness.
I have met perfectionists who have become fearful and paralysed by these impossible possibilities. It’s often seem to me that they have paid a high price for harsh, or absent, parenting. They feel forced to strive but know in their knower that they are doomed to fail and deserve to be punished. Hell is something they fear, and also something they deserve. For me, that seems like hell on earth. But it hasn’t been my experience.
I appreciate that is a very personal summary and I see it as a result of over 50 years of discipleship. I’ve talked the talk inconsistently and walked the walk inconsistently. But it feels like a well spent journey and I’m glad about that.
You will find Orthodox who are very suspicious of both liberal and evangelical Protestants as they feel they are iffy and inconsistent on the Trinity. Early dissenting groups like the Independents and Baptists were riddled with all sorts of ancient heresies - Arianism, adoptionism, Appollinarianism, Sabellianism ...
Some of their leading lights spent their lives combating such things.
Heck, even in our own day the late Douglas McBain said that the Baptists were 'inconsistently orthodox.'
There were Christological controversies back in Spurgeon's time and again across the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland during the 1970s.
I regard my Baptist brothers and sisters as small o orthodox but without the 'ring-fence' of Creeds and Councils - which doesn't necessarily imply a straitjacket - they can easily topple into error - from a Big O perspective.
That doesn't mean I'd anatematise them or consider them to be going to hell in a hand-cart.
Oh absolutely! My possibly generous perspective is that lots of nonconformists repeat in part and personally the argumentative journey of the first half millenia of the church, often because they are not all that interested early church history. Some just get stuck. Those who have a historical interest tend to spend more time looking at the Reformation.
Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them?
Well, maybe not. Maybe there is also some forward progress? Without the reformation we wouldn’t have this praise of Love Divine?
(By the way, I appreciate only too well that some will be irritated by that rendition. Some modernisation of the lyrics and omission of verses. Some raising of hands. And Matt Redman, guitar around his neck and white shoes, joining joyfully in the singing just as a member of the congregation. But it is sung to Blaenwern, so that should make you happy! Personally I can set all that aside. I love it, just get caught up in the “joy of heaven to earth come down”)
I have no idea how orthodox Charles Wesley was re the Trinity. But deep within him, he knew the Divinity of Jesus. And the world is a richer place because of his faith and his hymns. The relentless and critical pursuit of orthodoxy (or Orthodoxy) may both save us from error and keep us from Joy.
I understand why you think sheep and goats is damnationism but I think it was a shot at the complacent of his time. And it works pretty well that way in our time. Essentially it says to the religious. “Why should you think you’ll do better eternally than those outside your group who do better with kindness now than you do?”
I quite like that. It’s intended as a wake up call to the indifferent.
You've done it again. Spoken with the voice of wisdom. And that's what I'd have said when I believed. Truly. I did. One can deconstruct Jesus' hard sayings and reconstruct them according to taste. And we both have excellent taste.
... but. It's... grandiose. Not of him. But of us. We can come nowhere near. But we delude ourselves that we do. Wellllll, we're on the side of those who do. Whoever they are.
We come nowhere near, and that's OK. Reach and grasp. He projected our ideal self. And he could only deliver supernaturally.
Ah well.
Impossible possibilities? Or too morally demanding? Similar things have been said about the sermon on the mount.
I seem to lack perfectionist fear, Martin. I’m happy to keep on trying. I find the impossible possibilities useful, not a paralysing straitjacket. They serve as a reminder of the cost to others and myself of indifference, a lack of kindness, a lack of fairness. Humility about my own imperfections keeps me from both arrogance and despair, keeps me hopeful. I think these are signs that grace trumps karma, mercy triumphs over judgment, unselfish love trumps selfishness.
I have met perfectionists who have become fearful and paralysed by these impossible possibilities. It’s often seem to me that they have paid a high price for harsh, or absent, parenting. They feel forced to strive but know in their knower that they are doomed to fail and deserve to be punished. Hell is something they fear, and also something they deserve. For me, that seems like hell on earth. But it hasn’t been my experience.
I appreciate that is a very personal summary and I see it as a result of over 50 years of discipleship. I’ve talked the talk inconsistently and walked the walk inconsistently. But it feels like a well spent journey and I’m glad about that.
I'm happy for you. Truly. Envious. In working for the destitute I learned that everything is true, but it isn't the truth, which even God doesn't know. That nothing is anyone's fault. Although they all blame themselves. That you cannot help people on their terms: That we are helplessly, unhelpfully privileged. We have the impulse to charity with nowhere to go; that we have nothing to offer but goodwill, and, we're shamed by their gratitude.
Both Wesleys were steeped in Patristics and thoroughly Big O Orthodox in terms of their Trinitarian theology I'd suggest.
Ok, they'd have gone along with the filioque clause but I won't hold that against them.
Not listened to the clip but 'Love Divine' to 'Blaenwern' is one of my favourite hymns.
There was that very odd incident with John Wesley and the 'Bishop of Arcadia' - supposedly or apparently a visiting Greek Bishop- with the 'laying on of hands' to ensure 'Apostolic Succession.'
I've read differing accounts and heard different explanations of that.
Don't forget that both John and Charles were High Church Anglicans in the 18th century 'Church and King' sense - not the ritualistic late-Oxford Movement sense.
Generally speaking, I'd suggest that early Methodism tended not to suffer so much from Christological and Trinitarian heresies as much as 'Old Dissent' did. The problems it had tended to be around 'religious enthusiasm' and emotional excesses, and some very harsh attitudes towards the raising of children.
Well, they were certainly orthodox on the divinity of Christ, that's for sure!
So I hope that brings us back on track.
Coming back to the Arian issue, I've always felt that to assert that Christ was a 'created being' was to immediately cast doubt on his divinity.
If he was 'created' then surely he can't be divine in the eternal sense?
@Barnabas62 seems to be suggesting otherwise and that Rowan Williams is inviting us to take a closer look.
Without reading Williams's book, I can't comment on his position, but I am intrigued.
I would have thought, though, that it was axiomatic that if Christ were not the Eternal Word but was created at some point then he isn't divine in any primary sense.
We've had a Wesleyan hymn, here's a quote from another attributed to several authors, 'Very God, begotten not created.' (From 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful.'
Anything less than that and we're slipping into iffy territory I'd have thought.
But I'll look at what Williams has to say at some point.
Rowan Williams' argument if I remember correctly is that most "Arians" weren't followers of Arius and took themselves to be defending a traditional position. But that because Arius had forced the issue, the ambiguities in the traditional position were no longer tenable. Thus Williams argues sometimes orthodoxy means innovating.
Some nonconformists understandings of the early church history which led to the clarification of what Jesus’s Divinity meant.
We have entered the thought world of the little “i”!
In Greek it was ultimately the resolution of the distinction between “homoousious” and “homoiousious” which took place, particularly in the 4th century.
It was all about the meaning of Divine in the nature of Jesus. The former word meant “of the same substance” and the latter with the extra “i” meant “of similar substance”. Did that extra “i” make a jot of difference? It sure did!
Part of the problem was that the words used in the debates were not found directly in scripture. They were words used in the process of interpreting scripture. For example, in the original Greek, neither word is John 1, which is kind of the master proof text that Jesus was indeed God. (I say kind of because there are some disputes about translation but we won’t go there!)
The history is remarkably confusing and subject to argumentation itself.
The term “homoousious” was found first in some Gnostic teaching in describing Jesus, but was associated with a very different cosmology, the upshot of which was that Jesus was certainly Divine but therefore could not be human. He only appeared to be so. And many Christians argued that this was wrong, since it denied the reality of Christ’s incarnation as a real human being. And, in particular, the reality of His redemptive suffering.
My reading is that in the later disputes, Christ’s full humanity was not really an issue amongst the major debaters. The real issue was His Divinity. What did that really mean? How could he be both fully Divine and fully human. What did Divinity mean?
And that question could not be resolved purely by reference to scripture, since the wording of scripture was open to various interpretations.
After lots of ups and downs, the Nicene Creed wording (including “homoousious”rather than “homoiousios” or a few other options, was upheld and the use of “same substance” rather than “like substance” was upheld as Orthodox.
So we arrived at “consubstantial, co-eternal. God is One in Three Persons”. Viewed purely from a human historical perspective, the result could have been different.
From the point of view of the Roman emperors involved, the important thing was to create an authoritative definition of Christian belief in its establishment as the state religion. From the point of view of the Christian leaders, it was inportant to create safe boundaries and thereby exclude as heresies those variations of Christian belief which were outside those safe boundaries. The authority of the ecumenical councils and the consequential creeds provided those safe boundaries.
And it was out of those considerations that Jesus’s Divinity became authoritatively defined.
But I do not want to leave it there. The Orthodox clearly understood and still believe that God in His essence is a Mystery beyond human comprehension. This is classically summarised in the ancient hymn.
“Immortal , invisible. God only Wise. In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes”.
The classic Orthodox formulation is that God is made known to us not in His essence but His energies.
So in our day how do we come to terms with both God as Mystery and the Trinity as authoritatively defined?
The Orthodox clearly understood and still believe that God in His essence is a Mystery beyond human comprehension. This is classically summarised in the ancient hymn.
“Immortal , invisible. God only Wise. In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes”.
The 19th century version is based, as I understand it, on an ancient hymn going back to the 6th century. My source for this understanding was the late Orthodox Shipmate Leetle Masha, from a long ago debate. But I admit I didn’t check. I’ll do a bit of digging. Suffice to say that I am sure I’m right that the Orthodox understanding of God as Mystery goes back a very long way.
I suppose the obvious ancient reference which was no doubt the source of ancient worship is 1 Timothy 6v16.
“ 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.”
The fact that our 19th century version was written by a Free Church minister should not obscure the great age of the understanding. Augustin of Hippo (4th C) said quite clearly that God was beyond human understanding.
I probably should not have used that hymn! But it does incorporate a very ancient understanding.
But it does incorporate a very ancient understanding.
Agreed!
(And fwiw, I think the reference is 1 Timothy 1:17: “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” At least that’s the reference that hymnary.org and other sources I have give. The later verse in Timothy you cite certainly fits.)
(Wearing my hair shirt). A good source to the Orthodox understanding of God as Mystery is The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware It’s on my book shelf and a favourite read.
(Wearing my hair shirt). A good source to the Orthodox understanding of God as Mystery is The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware It’s on my book shelf and a favourite read.
Yes, it is a good, and easy to follow, read. It’s on my shelf too.
(Wearing my hair shirt). A good source to the Orthodox understanding of God as Mystery is The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware It’s on my book shelf and a favourite read.
The Orthodox Way had a profound influence on me too.
RIP both Leetle Masha and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware!
I met him several times and has some very fruitful PMs with Leetle Masha.
On the Mystery thing and its antiquity. Well yes, of course it's ancient. It's Orthodox isn't it? 😉
That's what we do. Ancient Faith Radio and so on.
Now, I'm not one of those who believes that everything was cut and dried and exactly as it would turn out to be as soon as everyone went home on the Day of Pentecost.
Of course there was development and debate.
@Barnabas62 has summarised things pretty well, I think and far more succinctly than I could given my loquacity.
The only thing that rankles from an Orthodox perspective, if I understand him correctly, is an apparent or implied dislocation between scripture and tradition.
He is right to highlight a kind of 'dialogue' with scripture. We interrogate the texts. But we do so through the lens of accumulated commentary, debate and tradition. It's not a stand-alone exercise. It's something we do in 'fellowship' as it were with all who have gone before us, whether orthodox, heterodox or heretical.
They are all our dialogue partners as it were. Bringing in hymnody, whether ancient or modern, is a legitimate exercise and part of the debate as these hymns were written in the context of received tradition, whether mediated down through the historic Churches or what we know as 'nonconformist' routes here in the UK.
That's why I'm not 'sola scriptura', because scripture does not stand alone. It forms part of tradition for all of us, whether small t or Big T.
Yes, it's normative and authoritive but it never stands alone. And yes, I appreciate that 'sola scriptura' advocates are more nuanced on that also.
I like @Twangist's 'clarification' rather than 'innovation' distinction and I certainly don't think it's wrong to reexamine or reassess Creedal statements or what Arius may have been saying etc.
Would that mean abandoning or modifying the Creed? From an Orthodox perspective that would have to be a conciliar matter. Remember the sticking point that came up over and over in the filioque thread?
I felt like a stuck gramophone needle. But it's not conciliar... it's not conciliar ... it's not concilar ...
I don't want to sound like that here, but what I would say in response to @Barnabas62's question as to how we 'come to terms with God as Mystery or the Trinity as authoritively defined' is:
1) By entering into the worship of the Trinity in the context of a community of faith.
2) Through 'dialogue' with T/tradition through study and debate - the scriptures, Patristics, theological and devotional writings, commentary and discussion over coffee with friends.
3) Personal study and prayer in the context of the above.
We may riff with the authoritive and received T/tradition free jazz style or we may settle for a more conventional approach.
What we won't do in either case is proceed without it.
Yes. I’m a firm believer in the metaphor of wrestling. With scripture AND. traditional. And I agree entirely with “in community”. Personally I am “in communities”. Of which Ship of Fools in one. For a pretty amazing 20 years. My local church is the primary one. For an even more amazing 50 years. The Northumbrian Community. For an amazing 25 years. I’ve benefitted from all three and hope to have contributed to all three. They teach me that I am not the only one, that I am not alone, that I have learned a few things but far short of everything. I believe all three wrestle with the Divinity of Christ and so I’m a communal wrestler!
One of the things I’ve learned is that some communities are definitely toxic and to be avoided. The other is that none are perfect! But kindness and goodwill can help. And we all need to belong. Be careful what you belong to.
For me re the Divinity of Christ, I wrestle on from an accepting viewpoint. I’m a Nicene lamb. And in their formation, mainline Protestant groups are too, My personal insight about the history is that it is valuable to recognise the politicking which went on in the ecumenical councils, both through governmental interference and sometimes pretty vicious internal wrangling by pressure groups. They were far short of perfect processes. And there were casualties.
But that does not hide the fact that something remarkably good emerged! We all owe a debt of gratitude to their prolonged and profound wrestling.
Re Leetle Masha of blessed and certainly for me very happy memory. I’ve remembered the link.
We were discussing something and Immortal Invisible came up. Leetle Masha observed that it was a very Orthodox hymn. Later, Leetle Masha, Lamb Chopped and I agreed for fun that we would write a verse characterising our respective denominational backgrounds. And what I recall from LM and it made me laugh was this line.
“We’ve sung the same hymns since 503.” I think the three was there to rhyme with the preceding line!
So I think I put 2 and 2 together and made 5!
She was very kind to me when I first joined and I found her warm, accepting and funny, while being faithful to Orthodoxy. She led me, inadvertently, to Kallistos Ware, and I’ve always been grateful for that.
Yes. I have fond memories of her too. I upset her a bit sometimes and I regret that. I desperately sent her some emails apologising and wishing her well before she died - we'd exchanged contact details and had a lively correspondence. I don't know whether they reached her on time. 😞
Beyond time, I hope we will all meet her.
On the community thing and the 'wrestling', yes to both. It's the way our Jewish friends do theology. It's the way the Christian Church has always done theology.
Neither the scriptures nor the deliberations of synods and councils dropped out of heaven on golden tablets.
Yes, I'm a Big O, Big T person but I have a lot of time for how the Baptists, for instance, reach consensus at a congregational level and for groups like the Northumbria Community and for online communities like this one.
Obviously I'd see there as being a Big C Community too - Big C Church - and Big C Creeds too.
It's easy to replace a biblical fundamentalism with a 'Church fundamentalism' and I think many Protestant converts to the RCC or Orthodoxy do fall into that.
And there are also elements of it among many 'cradle' RCs and Orthodox too.
One of the things I 'wrestle' with is accepting the Creeds as authoritive whilst - in a both/and way 😉 - acknowledging the political interference, internal rivalries and shenanigans that went on both behind the scenes and centre stage.
But life is messy. So are the scriptures. So are Tradition and traditions.
I do see the Divinity of Christ and the Divinity of the Holy Spirit as non-negotiables. That would make me a fundie in some people's eyes.
Ultimately, to quote a 'Western' source, 'All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.'
I think it’s a shock to some people to discover how messy and how political the processes were! It was to me! But once I got over it, I realised that the behaviour was typically human, when considering something of immense importance to the future of the Church. So I conclude they got there in the end. One of those situations where the history we inherit was not completely sanitised by the “winners”.
Curiously enough, I see something similar in the New Testament. Reading the letters it’s perfectly clear that the early Christians were an argumentative lot about what’s what. Galatians is quite nasty at times and the gospels could have done with an editor. If you want to present a picture of sweetness and light and uniformity.
And yes @Barnabas62 the politicking and shenanigans came as a shock to me too.
There are, of course, Orthodox who do sanitise these things and to my mind some of the language we use doesn't help. Lots of Capital Letters all over the place for anything Sacred or Holy ...
Of course, I use these myself when referring to Mystery or Tradition and so on but their use can create an odour of sanctity that makes it sound as if these things dropped down out of heaven ready made.
There are also Orthodox who seem to treat Saint's hagiographies in a highly literal way, although the mileage does seem to vary as they say aboard Ship.
Interestingly, although I've not read much Anabaptist commentary, what little I've read appears to take the wrestling / struggling/ debating aspects seriously in a way I've not seen in some conservative evangelical material.
I’ve heard a sermon about it, based on Jacob’s wrestling, in my local congo. It was pretty good.
Maybe I’ll give another this year? I still get occasional opportunities to preach, despite my health and age. (They think I’m wise, despite my advice that the appearance of wisdom in the elderly may actually be an early sign of marginal brain death).
Wrestling is an important reality of the life of faith. It deserves a sermon or two.
Where does the name "chosen people" or "chosen race" or whatever come from? Is it one that was invented by the ancient Israelites, or modern Jews, or was it pasted upon Judaism by Christians?
I'm normally quite reluctant to recommend a Wikipedia article but I think this one is OK.
It majors on the understanding within Judaism (rather than Christianity) and that I think makes it a helpful preliminary read before any consideration of Christian understanding. There is a short paragraph re Christian understanding towards the end of the article but I don't think it is adequate.
Personally, I'm curious why you raised the topic in this thread but no doubt you'll have more to say.
I’ve heard a sermon about it, based on Jacob’s wrestling, in my local congo. It was pretty good.
Maybe I’ll give another this year? I still get occasional opportunities to preach, despite my health and age. (They think I’m wise, despite my advice that the appearance of wisdom in the elderly may actually be an early sign of marginal brain death).
Wrestling is an important reality of the life of faith. It deserves a sermon or two.
I'm normally quite reluctant to recommend a Wikipedia article but I think this one is OK.
It majors on the understanding within Judaism (rather than Christianity) and that I think makes it a helpful preliminary read before any consideration of Christian understanding. There is a short paragraph re Christian understanding towards the end of the article but I don't think it is adequate.
Personally, I'm curious why you raised the topic in this thread but no doubt you'll have more to say.
I also live the image of wrestling. I've wrestled with Jesus all my life, and cry out to him, " I will not let you go unless you bless me" (Gen32.26). Israel has acquired many connotations down the millennia, but "one who struggles with God, its original meaning is apt for many of us.
I'm not in any way defending the Arian heresy, but seeing Jesus as God's first creation is a perfectly valid reading of Colossians 1.18 IMO. Just another example of what is being discussed on the Sola Scriptura thread.
Much of the writings of Arianism are only available in the reports against them. But I seem to recall that this verse formed a significant part of the Arian case.
Without getting too academic, the word translated as “firstborn” is “prototokos” which is used a lot in the Greek Bible. In the Old Testament it is sometimes used to describe Israel as the “firstborn” people of faith. Which tends to confirm the Arian view of Jesus as a created person. But there’s a lot more to it. It does however provide some evidence for the phrase in the creed “begotten not made”. Being true to scripture, I’m pretty sure the Nicenes argued that it was wrong to say that human analogies (like firstborn) could be applied to the Godhead. Hence “begotten not made”.
From this remove, I think it explains “begotten not made”. After all, there is a lot of “begetting” in the language of Old and New Testaments! In the end the Nicenes won the argument in the ecumenical councils, but there is also evidence that Constantine’s son and successor was sympathetic to the Arian position (or at least a part of that position). Intellectually, I think it’s right to classify it as a close call. Politically it did get quite vicious. But personally I’m glad the Nicenes won. The Trinity, despite being a Mystery, and the full Divinity of Jesus both make sense that way. I speak as a self confessed Nicene lamb!
That’s part of the argument Martin54. Calvin and Luther both argued that the doctrine of the Trinity was self evident from scripture and all the key ecumenical councils did was to affirm that. Personally I think that’s a stretch and it was possible to draw other conclusions. That’s certainly the way it looks from the records of early Church history.
But whatever way, it wasn’t deterministic, simply determined.
The Trinity is orthodox, minimal, parsimonious; logical from the text, intellectually rigorous predicated on the text. And therefore deterministic. Inevitable. I don't see any alternative.
Sounds like residual Calvinism to me. But whatever! Determinism, in my dictionary means that all events are determined by causes external to the human will.
As an alternative to Calvin’s view of predestination, some philosophers have argued the implication that human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.
Calvin seems to argue that we do retain free will and do have personal responsibility but God knows the end from the beginning. He has therefore predetermined that some will be saved and some will be condemned, something Calvin regards as a great mystery.
So far as the meaning of the Trinity, the “horrible history” of the ecumenical councils show that human wills, and the conflicts between people as a result, were very much involved in the outcome. I definitely don’t see them as puppets going through a predetermined dance.
Of course some argue that free will is a myth. Is that what you believe now?
Sounds like residual Calvinism to me. But whatever! Determinism, in my dictionary means that all events are determined by causes external to the human will.
As an alternative to Calvin’s view of predestination, some philosophers have argued the implication that human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.
Calvin seems to argue that we do retain free will and do have personal responsibility but God knows the end from the beginning. He has therefore predetermined that some will be saved and some will be condemned, something Calvin regards as a great mystery.
So far as the meaning of the Trinity, the “horrible history” of the ecumenical councils show that human wills, and the conflicts between people as a result, were very much involved in the outcome. I definitely don’t see them as puppets going through a predetermined dance.
Of course some argue that free will is a myth. Is that what you believe now?
Human will is predetermined, hard wired, to be rational despite itself. I'm not one of those philosophers: the will is free at the moment before action, and we're personally responsible for those actions. Or we don't exist. Morality is a social construct and free will is an illusion apart from that.
Many have said that. Personally I think it’s a counsel of despair about the human condition. My hope may be a piece of cockeyed optimism but I choose it rather than despair. Isn’t choosing despair a choice of the will. Maybe you think it’s honest, truthful, reading of the human condition but aren’t those conscious choices of your asserted, if illusory, free will. It’s a bit like locked in syndrome. I can’t move but, dammit, I can still think!
We have constrained liberty, but freedom? To do something new? Something different? For ourselves, in our own story, but it will be referenced, borrowed, common to all men. I choose distraction over despair, where I can. I'm a very superficial man. Waking today was grim, compulsively trawling through the last forty years of privileged ignorant mediocre chaos. The previous thirty subconscious. But the sun is shining, the sky is blue. I'm muscling up to climb nearly 30 feet up to a gutter. In my fall gear of course. I like what I'm reading, watching. The Shining Girls, brilliant. Elizabeth Moss. Wagner Moura. Jamie Bell! Existential anxiety hovers, but what the heck. Coffee. And I have you of course. Thank you. One cannot be grateful enough. In the absence of the divinity of Christ.
Comments
Impossible possibilities? Or too morally demanding? Similar things have been said about the sermon on the mount.
I seem to lack perfectionist fear, Martin. I’m happy to keep on trying. I find the impossible possibilities useful, not a paralysing straitjacket. They serve as a reminder of the cost to others and myself of indifference, a lack of kindness, a lack of fairness. Humility about my own imperfections keeps me from both arrogance and despair, keeps me hopeful. I think these are signs that grace trumps karma, mercy triumphs over judgment, unselfish love trumps selfishness.
I have met perfectionists who have become fearful and paralysed by these impossible possibilities. It’s often seem to me that they have paid a high price for harsh, or absent, parenting. They feel forced to strive but know in their knower that they are doomed to fail and deserve to be punished. Hell is something they fear, and also something they deserve. For me, that seems like hell on earth. But it hasn’t been my experience.
I appreciate that is a very personal summary and I see it as a result of over 50 years of discipleship. I’ve talked the talk inconsistently and walked the walk inconsistently. But it feels like a well spent journey and I’m glad about that.
Oh absolutely! My possibly generous perspective is that lots of nonconformists repeat in part and personally the argumentative journey of the first half millenia of the church, often because they are not all that interested early church history. Some just get stuck. Those who have a historical interest tend to spend more time looking at the Reformation.
Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them?
Well, maybe not. Maybe there is also some forward progress? Without the reformation we wouldn’t have this praise of Love Divine?
(By the way, I appreciate only too well that some will be irritated by that rendition. Some modernisation of the lyrics and omission of verses. Some raising of hands. And Matt Redman, guitar around his neck and white shoes, joining joyfully in the singing just as a member of the congregation. But it is sung to Blaenwern, so that should make you happy! Personally I can set all that aside. I love it, just get caught up in the “joy of heaven to earth come down”)
I have no idea how orthodox Charles Wesley was re the Trinity. But deep within him, he knew the Divinity of Jesus. And the world is a richer place because of his faith and his hymns. The relentless and critical pursuit of orthodoxy (or Orthodoxy) may both save us from error and keep us from Joy.
I'm happy for you. Truly. Envious. In working for the destitute I learned that everything is true, but it isn't the truth, which even God doesn't know. That nothing is anyone's fault. Although they all blame themselves. That you cannot help people on their terms: That we are helplessly, unhelpfully privileged. We have the impulse to charity with nowhere to go; that we have nothing to offer but goodwill, and, we're shamed by their gratitude.
Ok, they'd have gone along with the filioque clause but I won't hold that against them.
Not listened to the clip but 'Love Divine' to 'Blaenwern' is one of my favourite hymns.
There was that very odd incident with John Wesley and the 'Bishop of Arcadia' - supposedly or apparently a visiting Greek Bishop- with the 'laying on of hands' to ensure 'Apostolic Succession.'
I've read differing accounts and heard different explanations of that.
Don't forget that both John and Charles were High Church Anglicans in the 18th century 'Church and King' sense - not the ritualistic late-Oxford Movement sense.
Generally speaking, I'd suggest that early Methodism tended not to suffer so much from Christological and Trinitarian heresies as much as 'Old Dissent' did. The problems it had tended to be around 'religious enthusiasm' and emotional excesses, and some very harsh attitudes towards the raising of children.
There are echoes or parallels to Orthodox ideas on 'theosis' of course.
As an aside, the Orthodox are generally more comfortable with the Wesleyan tradition than the Calvinist side of things.
But we are getting off topic.
That "we" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, LOL.
BroJames, Purgatory Host
So I hope that brings us back on track.
Coming back to the Arian issue, I've always felt that to assert that Christ was a 'created being' was to immediately cast doubt on his divinity.
If he was 'created' then surely he can't be divine in the eternal sense?
@Barnabas62 seems to be suggesting otherwise and that Rowan Williams is inviting us to take a closer look.
Without reading Williams's book, I can't comment on his position, but I am intrigued.
I would have thought, though, that it was axiomatic that if Christ were not the Eternal Word but was created at some point then he isn't divine in any primary sense.
We've had a Wesleyan hymn, here's a quote from another attributed to several authors, 'Very God, begotten not created.' (From 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful.'
Anything less than that and we're slipping into iffy territory I'd have thought.
But I'll look at what Williams has to say at some point.
Ok. I can see where Williams is going with that, I think.
Maybe it's more "clarification " than innovation?
We have entered the thought world of the little “i”!
In Greek it was ultimately the resolution of the distinction between “homoousious” and “homoiousious” which took place, particularly in the 4th century.
It was all about the meaning of Divine in the nature of Jesus. The former word meant “of the same substance” and the latter with the extra “i” meant “of similar substance”. Did that extra “i” make a jot of difference? It sure did!
Part of the problem was that the words used in the debates were not found directly in scripture. They were words used in the process of interpreting scripture. For example, in the original Greek, neither word is John 1, which is kind of the master proof text that Jesus was indeed God. (I say kind of because there are some disputes about translation but we won’t go there!)
The history is remarkably confusing and subject to argumentation itself.
The term “homoousious” was found first in some Gnostic teaching in describing Jesus, but was associated with a very different cosmology, the upshot of which was that Jesus was certainly Divine but therefore could not be human. He only appeared to be so. And many Christians argued that this was wrong, since it denied the reality of Christ’s incarnation as a real human being. And, in particular, the reality of His redemptive suffering.
My reading is that in the later disputes, Christ’s full humanity was not really an issue amongst the major debaters. The real issue was His Divinity. What did that really mean? How could he be both fully Divine and fully human. What did Divinity mean?
And that question could not be resolved purely by reference to scripture, since the wording of scripture was open to various interpretations.
After lots of ups and downs, the Nicene Creed wording (including “homoousious”rather than “homoiousios” or a few other options, was upheld and the use of “same substance” rather than “like substance” was upheld as Orthodox.
So we arrived at “consubstantial, co-eternal. God is One in Three Persons”. Viewed purely from a human historical perspective, the result could have been different.
From the point of view of the Roman emperors involved, the important thing was to create an authoritative definition of Christian belief in its establishment as the state religion. From the point of view of the Christian leaders, it was inportant to create safe boundaries and thereby exclude as heresies those variations of Christian belief which were outside those safe boundaries. The authority of the ecumenical councils and the consequential creeds provided those safe boundaries.
And it was out of those considerations that Jesus’s Divinity became authoritatively defined.
But I do not want to leave it there. The Orthodox clearly understood and still believe that God in His essence is a Mystery beyond human comprehension. This is classically summarised in the ancient hymn.
“Immortal , invisible. God only Wise. In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes”.
The classic Orthodox formulation is that God is made known to us not in His essence but His energies.
So in our day how do we come to terms with both God as Mystery and the Trinity as authoritatively defined?
“ 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.”
The fact that our 19th century version was written by a Free Church minister should not obscure the great age of the understanding. Augustin of Hippo (4th C) said quite clearly that God was beyond human understanding.
I probably should not have used that hymn! But it does incorporate a very ancient understanding.
(And fwiw, I think the reference is 1 Timothy 1:17: “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” At least that’s the reference that hymnary.org and other sources I have give. The later verse in Timothy you cite certainly fits.)
That's the book that made me Orthodox.
. . .
😢🕯
I’m not sure I knew.
May she rest in peace and rise in glory.
Er, back to the thread…
RIP both Leetle Masha and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware!
I met him several times and has some very fruitful PMs with Leetle Masha.
On the Mystery thing and its antiquity. Well yes, of course it's ancient. It's Orthodox isn't it? 😉
That's what we do. Ancient Faith Radio and so on.
Now, I'm not one of those who believes that everything was cut and dried and exactly as it would turn out to be as soon as everyone went home on the Day of Pentecost.
Of course there was development and debate.
@Barnabas62 has summarised things pretty well, I think and far more succinctly than I could given my loquacity.
The only thing that rankles from an Orthodox perspective, if I understand him correctly, is an apparent or implied dislocation between scripture and tradition.
He is right to highlight a kind of 'dialogue' with scripture. We interrogate the texts. But we do so through the lens of accumulated commentary, debate and tradition. It's not a stand-alone exercise. It's something we do in 'fellowship' as it were with all who have gone before us, whether orthodox, heterodox or heretical.
They are all our dialogue partners as it were. Bringing in hymnody, whether ancient or modern, is a legitimate exercise and part of the debate as these hymns were written in the context of received tradition, whether mediated down through the historic Churches or what we know as 'nonconformist' routes here in the UK.
That's why I'm not 'sola scriptura', because scripture does not stand alone. It forms part of tradition for all of us, whether small t or Big T.
Yes, it's normative and authoritive but it never stands alone. And yes, I appreciate that 'sola scriptura' advocates are more nuanced on that also.
I like @Twangist's 'clarification' rather than 'innovation' distinction and I certainly don't think it's wrong to reexamine or reassess Creedal statements or what Arius may have been saying etc.
Would that mean abandoning or modifying the Creed? From an Orthodox perspective that would have to be a conciliar matter. Remember the sticking point that came up over and over in the filioque thread?
I felt like a stuck gramophone needle. But it's not conciliar... it's not conciliar ... it's not concilar ...
I don't want to sound like that here, but what I would say in response to @Barnabas62's question as to how we 'come to terms with God as Mystery or the Trinity as authoritively defined' is:
1) By entering into the worship of the Trinity in the context of a community of faith.
2) Through 'dialogue' with T/tradition through study and debate - the scriptures, Patristics, theological and devotional writings, commentary and discussion over coffee with friends.
3) Personal study and prayer in the context of the above.
We may riff with the authoritive and received T/tradition free jazz style or we may settle for a more conventional approach.
What we won't do in either case is proceed without it.
Yes. I’m a firm believer in the metaphor of wrestling. With scripture AND. traditional. And I agree entirely with “in community”. Personally I am “in communities”. Of which Ship of Fools in one. For a pretty amazing 20 years. My local church is the primary one. For an even more amazing 50 years. The Northumbrian Community. For an amazing 25 years. I’ve benefitted from all three and hope to have contributed to all three. They teach me that I am not the only one, that I am not alone, that I have learned a few things but far short of everything. I believe all three wrestle with the Divinity of Christ and so I’m a communal wrestler!
One of the things I’ve learned is that some communities are definitely toxic and to be avoided. The other is that none are perfect! But kindness and goodwill can help. And we all need to belong. Be careful what you belong to.
For me re the Divinity of Christ, I wrestle on from an accepting viewpoint. I’m a Nicene lamb. And in their formation, mainline Protestant groups are too, My personal insight about the history is that it is valuable to recognise the politicking which went on in the ecumenical councils, both through governmental interference and sometimes pretty vicious internal wrangling by pressure groups. They were far short of perfect processes. And there were casualties.
But that does not hide the fact that something remarkably good emerged! We all owe a debt of gratitude to their prolonged and profound wrestling.
We were discussing something and Immortal Invisible came up. Leetle Masha observed that it was a very Orthodox hymn. Later, Leetle Masha, Lamb Chopped and I agreed for fun that we would write a verse characterising our respective denominational backgrounds. And what I recall from LM and it made me laugh was this line.
“We’ve sung the same hymns since 503.” I think the three was there to rhyme with the preceding line!
So I think I put 2 and 2 together and made 5!
She was very kind to me when I first joined and I found her warm, accepting and funny, while being faithful to Orthodoxy. She led me, inadvertently, to Kallistos Ware, and I’ve always been grateful for that.
Beyond time, I hope we will all meet her.
On the community thing and the 'wrestling', yes to both. It's the way our Jewish friends do theology. It's the way the Christian Church has always done theology.
Neither the scriptures nor the deliberations of synods and councils dropped out of heaven on golden tablets.
Yes, I'm a Big O, Big T person but I have a lot of time for how the Baptists, for instance, reach consensus at a congregational level and for groups like the Northumbria Community and for online communities like this one.
Obviously I'd see there as being a Big C Community too - Big C Church - and Big C Creeds too.
It's easy to replace a biblical fundamentalism with a 'Church fundamentalism' and I think many Protestant converts to the RCC or Orthodoxy do fall into that.
And there are also elements of it among many 'cradle' RCs and Orthodox too.
One of the things I 'wrestle' with is accepting the Creeds as authoritive whilst - in a both/and way 😉 - acknowledging the political interference, internal rivalries and shenanigans that went on both behind the scenes and centre stage.
But life is messy. So are the scriptures. So are Tradition and traditions.
I do see the Divinity of Christ and the Divinity of the Holy Spirit as non-negotiables. That would make me a fundie in some people's eyes.
Ultimately, to quote a 'Western' source, 'All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.'
I think it’s a shock to some people to discover how messy and how political the processes were! It was to me! But once I got over it, I realised that the behaviour was typically human, when considering something of immense importance to the future of the Church. So I conclude they got there in the end. One of those situations where the history we inherit was not completely sanitised by the “winners”.
Curiously enough, I see something similar in the New Testament. Reading the letters it’s perfectly clear that the early Christians were an argumentative lot about what’s what. Galatians is quite nasty at times and the gospels could have done with an editor. If you want to present a picture of sweetness and light and uniformity.
Likewise. She was lovely.
And yes @Barnabas62 the politicking and shenanigans came as a shock to me too.
There are, of course, Orthodox who do sanitise these things and to my mind some of the language we use doesn't help. Lots of Capital Letters all over the place for anything Sacred or Holy ...
Of course, I use these myself when referring to Mystery or Tradition and so on but their use can create an odour of sanctity that makes it sound as if these things dropped down out of heaven ready made.
There are also Orthodox who seem to treat Saint's hagiographies in a highly literal way, although the mileage does seem to vary as they say aboard Ship.
Interestingly, although I've not read much Anabaptist commentary, what little I've read appears to take the wrestling / struggling/ debating aspects seriously in a way I've not seen in some conservative evangelical material.
Peace be to all!
Maybe I’ll give another this year? I still get occasional opportunities to preach, despite my health and age. (They think I’m wise, despite my advice that the appearance of wisdom in the elderly may actually be an early sign of marginal brain death).
Wrestling is an important reality of the life of faith. It deserves a sermon or two.
I'm normally quite reluctant to recommend a Wikipedia article but I think this one is OK.
It majors on the understanding within Judaism (rather than Christianity) and that I think makes it a helpful preliminary read before any consideration of Christian understanding. There is a short paragraph re Christian understanding towards the end of the article but I don't think it is adequate.
Personally, I'm curious why you raised the topic in this thread but no doubt you'll have more to say.
If you do. I'd love to read a transcript
Because @Nick Tamen used the term.
I'm not in any way defending the Arian heresy, but seeing Jesus as God's first creation is a perfectly valid reading of Colossians 1.18 IMO. Just another example of what is being discussed on the Sola Scriptura thread.
Without getting too academic, the word translated as “firstborn” is “prototokos” which is used a lot in the Greek Bible. In the Old Testament it is sometimes used to describe Israel as the “firstborn” people of faith. Which tends to confirm the Arian view of Jesus as a created person. But there’s a lot more to it. It does however provide some evidence for the phrase in the creed “begotten not made”. Being true to scripture, I’m pretty sure the Nicenes argued that it was wrong to say that human analogies (like firstborn) could be applied to the Godhead. Hence “begotten not made”.
From this remove, I think it explains “begotten not made”. After all, there is a lot of “begetting” in the language of Old and New Testaments! In the end the Nicenes won the argument in the ecumenical councils, but there is also evidence that Constantine’s son and successor was sympathetic to the Arian position (or at least a part of that position). Intellectually, I think it’s right to classify it as a close call. Politically it did get quite vicious. But personally I’m glad the Nicenes won. The Trinity, despite being a Mystery, and the full Divinity of Jesus both make sense that way. I speak as a self confessed Nicene lamb!
But whatever way, it wasn’t deterministic, simply determined.
As an alternative to Calvin’s view of predestination, some philosophers have argued the implication that human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.
Calvin seems to argue that we do retain free will and do have personal responsibility but God knows the end from the beginning. He has therefore predetermined that some will be saved and some will be condemned, something Calvin regards as a great mystery.
So far as the meaning of the Trinity, the “horrible history” of the ecumenical councils show that human wills, and the conflicts between people as a result, were very much involved in the outcome. I definitely don’t see them as puppets going through a predetermined dance.
Of course some argue that free will is a myth. Is that what you believe now?
Human will is predetermined, hard wired, to be rational despite itself. I'm not one of those philosophers: the will is free at the moment before action, and we're personally responsible for those actions. Or we don't exist. Morality is a social construct and free will is an illusion apart from that.