I dislike the phrase ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ to describe contemporary worship songs as I think it belittles Christians, such as myself, who have a non-traditional worship style. It is not exactly inclusive, on a thread which discusses core Christian beliefs which unite us.
A tangent of course.
I don’t think it’s about contemporary worship style. My local congo rarely sings anything written before 1980!
Nor do I knock the value of personal adoration. Like for example “Oceans”. Or from a slightly earlier period “Breathe”.
Echoing Matt Redman, however, exclusive use of songs of personal adoration can lead to the worship of worship. Which songs like Michael J Smith’s “Agnus Dei” or Andrew Peterson’s “Is He worthy” do not. They focus on the Lord.
Mind you, I probably overstated! What contemporary worship songs have been good at is moving the sung focus more away from songs about the Deity to songs to the Deity. And that’s been a good thing. I don’t want to knock that.
Get stroppy when the creed is left out or changed, or if a newfangled version of the Lord's Prayer is used. *yuk*
Stroppy as in a bit grumpy, I take it. Not an American expression for me.
It’s completely understandable to feel unsettled when familiar words in worship change. These prayers and creeds have carried us through childhood, crisis, joy, and ordinary Sundays; they become part of how we know God and how we know ourselves. When wording shifts, it can feel like losing a piece of home. Your reaction isn’t resistance to faith—it’s love for what has shaped you. God meets us in both the old and the new, and the heart of worship remains the same: trust, gratitude, and the shared life of the community.
However, the dropping of the filioque clause is going back to the original language that was approved by the Council of Constantine in 381 CE.
The changing of the petition "Lead us not into temptation." to "Save us from the time of trial" is also an attempt to get back to the original koine Greek of the prayer. Personally, I never liked the "Lead us not into temptation." Does God cause temptation? Does not compute, for me. "Save us from the time of trial" recognizes we all face trials through no fault of our own or of God's.
Other ways of saying the same petition
"Do not let us fall into temptation" (Pope Francis preferred this rendition.
Emphasizes God's protection, not God's causing).
"Keep us from the path of temptation."
"Guard us in times of testing" (I kind of like this one).
"Protect us when trials come."
"Do not abandon us to temptation" (Common in French, Spanish and Italian liturgical translations).
At least in the Lutheran liturgy the rubric for reciting the creed says it may be recited at a certain point in the liturgy. Funny, when I grew up it was always after the Gospel reading. Now it is after the sermon/homily. Last Sunday we did not recite it at all.
At the risk of continuing the tangent, a friend of mine says that when he was in a conservative evangelical context he sang songs 'about' God. In an evangelical charismatic setting he sang songs 'to' God but also tried to work himself up to 'feel' God's presence in some way.
Now he's in a more liturgical and sacramental setting he doesn't have to do either because God is 'there'.
I can see what he's getting at but feel he's over-stating the case. I would say that God is 'there' in all those settings and indeed is 'present everywhere and fills all things.'
The 'worship of worship' thing can happen anywhere and everywhere. There are plenty of liturgical geeks about who make a big deal about the minutiae of vestments or Psalm settings or particular gestures and rituals.
Whichever Christian tradition we're involved with there are going to be examples of that or parallels of some kind. It's not for us to determine who is worshipping with sincerity and authenticity or otherwise, whether it's drum'n'bass or bells and smells.
That’s obviously right. And worship is definitely not just songs.
I’m pretty eclectic about the means folk use to practise the presence of God. They all have value and dangers.
I’ve got into trouble for saying this before but I don’t throw stones at other peoples’ windows. My opinion re “Jesus is my boyfriend” is personal and subjective, and not without qualification.
In Canada, I got used to "save us from the time of trial" and it was hard switching back again on our return to the UK.
I don't like too much messing around with "the basics" of liturgy (Lord's Prayer etc). These are things where you shouldn't need to be reading from the service booklet (or whatever) as you will know them by heart. That's where good liturgy succeeds - you know enough by heart to stop reading the words and start really praying them - if you know what I mean.
That’s obviously right. And worship is definitely not just songs.
I’m pretty eclectic about the means folk use to practise the presence of God. They all have value and dangers.
I’ve got into trouble for saying this before but I don’t throw stones at other peoples’ windows. My opinion re “Jesus is my boyfriend” is personal and subjective, and not without qualification.
I'm not telling you off.
I've been one of the worst offenders here for dissing other people's worship song lyrics and so on and once drove someone away from the Ship by being crude, snarky and unpleasant - something I deeply regret.
That doesn't mean I think 'anything goes' and I'd draw the line on some material both liberal and conservative.
Heck, I'd even take an editorial red pen to some Orthodox liturgical texts if I could ...
Big T Tradition and small t traditions have to provide a framework not a straitjacket.
How flexible we are with all that will vary according to all sorts of factors.
We can state preferences and convictions without causing offence and I know I don't always live up to that standard.
I’m OK with a reverent copy. I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that Godspell (an interesting play on Gospel) made the original better known.
Maybe it should have been better acknowledged? That’s always an issue with uncopyrighted (or no longer copyrighted) stuff. It’s pretty hard to do it in the middle of musical drama.
That’s why it’s done in the playbill/program for the musical.
Stephen Schwartz was always very clear that the lyrics for many of the songs in Godspell, including “Day by Day,” came from the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1940. (It was also in the American Presbyterians’ 1955 Hymnbook.)
I have a strong ecumenical
sense and have found it very helpful to worship in congregations which are not my own and in ways with which I’m not accustomed. It’s very rare for me to emerge without some sense of experiencing, often in surprising ways, something of the presence of God.
I would also add that there are many hymns and songs from earlier times which express our relationship with Jesus in equally intimate terms.
'Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly...' :-) A real fave of mine, and full of the 'I', 'me' stuff which I tell myself is what irks me about some modern worship songs. I'm inconsistent, but that's aesthetics for you...
I’m OK with a reverent copy. I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that Godspell (an interesting play on Gospel) made the original better known.
Maybe it should have been better acknowledged? That’s always an issue with uncopyrighted (or no longer copyrighted) stuff. It’s pretty hard to do it in the middle of musical drama.
That’s why it’s done in the playbill/program for the musical.
Stephen Schwartz was always very clear that the lyrics for many of the songs in Godspell, including “Day by Day,” came from the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1940. (It was also in the American Presbyterians’ 1955 Hymnbook.)
That’s very good to hear! I never saw it on stage so I never saw a programme.
Get stroppy when the creed is left out or changed, or if a newfangled version of the Lord's Prayer is used. *yuk*
I’m like that about alterations to the creeds, references to the Trinity, and possibly the Lord’s Prayer if I believe the theology/meaning is changed. I also don’t like having to quickly scan ahead in the leaflet (if a church isn’t using the standard Book of Common Prayer) to make sure that I actually understand and can agree enough with what is being said to say it aloud. (When you find yourself thinking “No! That’s modalism! I can’t say that!” and it also takes you out of the whole ritual mentally…)
@Barnabas62 - it's my fault but I find I'm often taken more literally than I intend on these boards.
I don't have any problem with the idea of a 'journey'. Nor am I suggesting we simply recite Creeds by rote without thinking about them. Far from it.
It's simply that I've heard the term 'journey' bandied around in a somewhat glib way and in some quarters it can mean, 'You don't have to believe anything much it's all about the journey ...'
I'm not actually disagreeing with anything you've posted.
@Baptist Trainfan - yes, I often quote the 'opposite of faith isn't doubt but certainty' thing. I've heard it attributed to an RC source.
I think the idea of a Journey is a very good one. Weren’t they the ones who told us, “Don’t stop believin’”? 😛
Joking aside, I have no problem with “Jesus as our boyfriend”—I’d go further as Jesus is our Bridegroom, and no, I’m not joking. He’s more than that (our Lord, our God, our Master, our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sanctifier), but not less.
Change happens. It's a question of quality. I mean...filioque happened and...we're still here, right?
Yes, I think it depends on what it is. I mean, if one says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, it doesn’t exclude Him proceeding from the Son, though I’m a bit awkward about changing it in our own western churches (I’m inclined to wait for Rome to change it first—are there theological reasons to keep it? I don’t know for sure, etc.). But that’s still following the Creed of a definitively orthodox (big O orthodox, even) church that goes back over a thousand years, not just changing it around for various stylistic, modern or even political reasons.
Change happens. It's a question of quality. I mean...filioque happened and...we're still here, right?
Yes, I think it depends on what it is. I mean, if one says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, it doesn’t exclude Him proceeding from the Son, though I’m a bit awkward about changing it in our own western churches (I’m inclined to wait for Rome to change it first—are there theological reasons to keep it? I don’t know for sure, etc.). But that’s still following the Creed of a definitively orthodox (big O orthodox, even) church that goes back over a thousand years, not just changing it around for various stylistic, modern or even political reasons.
I get that, but I also get that there have always been "stylistic, political" reasons for changing things; and "modern" is a subjective word.
That said, I also personally see value in constancy and appreciate the value of the Nicene Creed as an historical covenant that grounds the church and provides a solid theological anthropology on which to ground ourselves.
So, while I might seem to mock your position, I think we are roughly on the same page. I may mock myself as well, being a good, self-aware Episcopalian.
Heck, I was just teasing a Catholic friend of mine about how watching JD Vance thumb his nose at the Pope so awkwardly was making me feel a really strange urge to hop the Tiber. I was pretty sure that was a joke.
Change happens. It's a question of quality. I mean...filioque happened and...we're still here, right?
Still here but still there?
We are in danger of another tangent.
You'll find some Orthodox who blame the filioque for almost every ill in society. Everything went down-hill after it was adopted unilaterally in the Christian West.
Heck, if I stub my toe later today then it'll be Charlemagne's fault or the Pope's or Duns Scotus or ...
'Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly...' :-) A real fave of mine, and full of the 'I', 'me' stuff which I tell myself is what irks me about some modern worship songs. I'm inconsistent, but that's aesthetics for you...
I noticed a few years back that it doesn't end up in the same place it started. It turns at the start of the third verse: when Wesley writes Thou O Lord art all I want/ More than all in thee I find - "More than all" isn't a hyperbolic 110% - he means he's found something more than he knew he wanted. Also, Wesley writes "lead the blind" where a lesser writer would write "cure" or shift "heal" about.
Despite having had kind people attempt to explain it, I have yet to understand what this procession of the Holy Spirit even means, much less what the significance of his doing it from the Father and Son compared with the Father only. And yet it split the church.
The biblical basis (John 15v26) has the Greek ἐκπορεύεται (ekporeuetai) which in New Testament Greek means comes from, flows from, emanates from, proceeds from.
There’s certainly a human aspect at work! I think the crafters of the Creed wanted to preserve two things. Firstly, the Holy Spirit was not created by God the Father so they had to avoid language which suggested that. So the John 15v26 language gave them ἐκπορεύεται (ekporeuetai).
Secondly, they wanted to draw a distinction in the Godhead from Jesus, who was also not created by the Father but “eternally begotten”.
I’m not an expert on the Filioque controversy! (I’m not really an expert on anything) but it’s simple to see that there is biblical support for “proceeds from the Father” and “proceeds from the Father and the Son” is more implied, therefore less justified. I guess it’s a matter of authoritative Tradition? Did Western Catholicism have the “right” to go beyond the Ecumenical Councils? Or was it just a logical conclusion? People fell out big time and some even died as a result of this, which seems very weird, not to say tragic, to those of us who don’t share the mindset.
What’s the significance today? If you’re a Protestant and don’t really get that het up over Tradition with a capital T, not a lot really. Low church Protestants who emphasise the authority of scripture rather than the Creeds will be quite happy with John 15v 26 as it stands.
Yes, but what does it really mean? I’ll leave that up to you! I guess it depends on whether the term Holy Spirit says anything to you about how God works in this world. Does Spirit just mean Divine influence? In colloquial terms, the word spirit (e.g. spirit of the age) seem to be an abstract rather than in any sense a person,
Not sure whether it helps at all @KarlLB but I thought it may be worth a try.
Not really. It's probably a limitation of my brain; I tend to need concrete examples to understand a concept, or failing that analogies, but some things are too unique* to have meaningful analogies and too abstract to be concrete and that's generally where my thinking hits the rocks.
At best it's like the Reason sought by the Dwellers in the Forest about the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Mountains (Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything) - makes perfect sense when explained, but evaporates soon after.
*yes I know. And people are wrong about it; some unique things absolutely are more unique than others.
I don’t think you’re alone! Personally I had to do a lot of hard work, including a lot of reading, to understand what was going on in the Creeds, the significance of the Trinity and what was all the fuss about.
I’ve said earlier that the hard work enabled me not just to understand the arguments better but also to “get” the mindset better. That’s where my curiosity took me. I’m probably quite rare in that.
I don’t think it’s wrong to believe that surely it should be easier than that. Truth is, I don’t think it is.
Folks don’t need to go down the route I went but there’s quite a lot of abstract thought involved. Most concrete examples about the meaning of the Trinitytend to get Traditional folks to say “Yes, but” or “that’s misleading about a Divine Mystery” or something similar.
One of C S Lewis’s good rules was to ask after any explanation “Could you say that again?” And then see if folks managed to contradict themselves.
Personally, I’m OK with Divine Mystery. I think we’re grasping at stuff we can at best only partially understand. The major 3rd and 4th Century contributors to the understanding that led to the Creeds were pretty aware of their own human limitations.
Not really. It's probably a limitation of my brain; I tend to need concrete examples to understand a concept, or failing that analogies, but some things are too unique* to have meaningful analogies and too abstract to be concrete and that's generally where my thinking hits the rocks.
I think the Western arrangement allows for the analogy with a parent and child and the Spirit as the love between them, of which the Eastern Orthodox would say that it makes the Spirit less of a real entity than the other two; to which the Western response would be that all three are spiritual not material entities and it's an analogy.
I wonder whether a political analogy may be better than a physical analogy.
We have a monarch who is the source of political authority. Then we have two chief ministers.
Now the Eastern analogy would be that minister one and minister two have different spheres of authority and responsibility which work in different ways both granted by the monarch.
The Western analogy would say that in some ways but not others minister two is subordinate to minister one.
Eastern arguments that I've seen are that the Western arrangement risks becoming a strict hierarchy: all relations are hierarchical. Translated into earthly politics this favours a strict arrangement where power flows down and obedience flows up. On the other hand, other Eastern arguments would say that if it avoids a picture of a strict hierarchy it becomes no longer clear where authority lies (how much authority over the Spirit does the Son have).
I think I would say that the hierarchical picture seems just as much true of the Eastern arrangement; and that the idea that the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son introduces a kink into the hierarchy in that in some sense authority returns towards the Father from the Son. That is, it seems to me that complicating the idea of hierarchy and authority in the Trinity is politically a good thing.
Those analogies all seem to fall into the “Yes but” or “misleading about the Trinity” according to Traditional understanding.
I don’t personally need concrete examples or suitable analogies, but that’s just the way my mind works. Which doesn’t mean I don’t use analogies in conversations but equally I’m conscious of their limitations and capability to unintentionally mislead.
(I remember when learning about sub-atomic structure that I realised the limitations and misleading nature of the “planets around the sun” analogy. It didn’t mean it wasn’t helpful in the learning process but a time came when I had to leave it behind. There’s a lot of that in learning).
Additionally, you need another abstract step in coping with hierarchical analogies.
The orthodox understanding is that the three Persons of the Trinity are co-equal but for functional reasons, the second and third Person voluntarily accept subordinate roles. That’s pretty hard to get your head around anyway, without coming to terms with the hierarchical aspects of analogies.
Quite tough stuff, all of this. I’m not surprised that lots of folks drop out of the journey of understanding. “Oh that’s just too complicated for me”.
Grasping the meaning of abstractions isn’t for everyone. My school physics teacher taught me that the understanding of pressure was like that. Many of his students just couldn’t “get” it.
Do you get stroppy? Or are you wondering if others do?
I don’t. I think that the language and utility of liturgy needs to be considered in terms of its comprehensibility to folks on the edges or outside the faith.
Sure it may cause them to ask questions. Or just leave, wondering what on earth is the value today of such pronouncements.
I get stroppy. But hey I'm a word person.
I don't mind if you change the vestments or move the furniture. I mind when you change the words.
It's the familiarity of the liturgy in my tradition that takes you to a "different place" as I believe CS Lewis once said. You don't have to think about it. It's innate.
As for comprehensibility, well Christianity has always been rather hard on that score. Religion of paradox (Chesterton), Mysterium Tremendum etc.
In my church there are plenty of resources if you want to get some contemporary understanding of the creed.
History matters, similarity of liturgy across the tradition matters. Otherwise you're just rootless and making it up as you go along.
And that's fine. Some people like that. I don't.
Of course, I could be considered idolatrous for loving the words of my liturgy. But I'd give it up if absolutely necessary. Of course God matters more. So I'm okay with my idolatry.
Comments
A tangent of course.
I don’t think it’s about contemporary worship style. My local congo rarely sings anything written before 1980!
Nor do I knock the value of personal adoration. Like for example “Oceans”. Or from a slightly earlier period “Breathe”.
Echoing Matt Redman, however, exclusive use of songs of personal adoration can lead to the worship of worship. Which songs like Michael J Smith’s “Agnus Dei” or Andrew Peterson’s “Is He worthy” do not. They focus on the Lord.
Mind you, I probably overstated! What contemporary worship songs have been good at is moving the sung focus more away from songs about the Deity to songs to the Deity. And that’s been a good thing. I don’t want to knock that.
Stroppy as in a bit grumpy, I take it. Not an American expression for me.
It’s completely understandable to feel unsettled when familiar words in worship change. These prayers and creeds have carried us through childhood, crisis, joy, and ordinary Sundays; they become part of how we know God and how we know ourselves. When wording shifts, it can feel like losing a piece of home. Your reaction isn’t resistance to faith—it’s love for what has shaped you. God meets us in both the old and the new, and the heart of worship remains the same: trust, gratitude, and the shared life of the community.
However, the dropping of the filioque clause is going back to the original language that was approved by the Council of Constantine in 381 CE.
The changing of the petition "Lead us not into temptation." to "Save us from the time of trial" is also an attempt to get back to the original koine Greek of the prayer. Personally, I never liked the "Lead us not into temptation." Does God cause temptation? Does not compute, for me. "Save us from the time of trial" recognizes we all face trials through no fault of our own or of God's.
Other ways of saying the same petition
"Do not let us fall into temptation" (Pope Francis preferred this rendition.
Emphasizes God's protection, not God's causing).
"Keep us from the path of temptation."
"Guard us in times of testing" (I kind of like this one).
"Protect us when trials come."
"Do not abandon us to temptation" (Common in French, Spanish and Italian liturgical translations).
At least in the Lutheran liturgy the rubric for reciting the creed says it may be recited at a certain point in the liturgy. Funny, when I grew up it was always after the Gospel reading. Now it is after the sermon/homily. Last Sunday we did not recite it at all.
Now he's in a more liturgical and sacramental setting he doesn't have to do either because God is 'there'.
I can see what he's getting at but feel he's over-stating the case. I would say that God is 'there' in all those settings and indeed is 'present everywhere and fills all things.'
The 'worship of worship' thing can happen anywhere and everywhere. There are plenty of liturgical geeks about who make a big deal about the minutiae of vestments or Psalm settings or particular gestures and rituals.
Whichever Christian tradition we're involved with there are going to be examples of that or parallels of some kind. It's not for us to determine who is worshipping with sincerity and authenticity or otherwise, whether it's drum'n'bass or bells and smells.
That's God's call not ours.
That’s obviously right. And worship is definitely not just songs.
I’m pretty eclectic about the means folk use to practise the presence of God. They all have value and dangers.
I’ve got into trouble for saying this before but I don’t throw stones at other peoples’ windows. My opinion re “Jesus is my boyfriend” is personal and subjective, and not without qualification.
I don't like too much messing around with "the basics" of liturgy (Lord's Prayer etc). These are things where you shouldn't need to be reading from the service booklet (or whatever) as you will know them by heart. That's where good liturgy succeeds - you know enough by heart to stop reading the words and start really praying them - if you know what I mean.
I'm not telling you off.
I've been one of the worst offenders here for dissing other people's worship song lyrics and so on and once drove someone away from the Ship by being crude, snarky and unpleasant - something I deeply regret.
That doesn't mean I think 'anything goes' and I'd draw the line on some material both liberal and conservative.
Heck, I'd even take an editorial red pen to some Orthodox liturgical texts if I could ...
Big T Tradition and small t traditions have to provide a framework not a straitjacket.
How flexible we are with all that will vary according to all sorts of factors.
We can state preferences and convictions without causing offence and I know I don't always live up to that standard.
Mea culpa!
Stephen Schwartz was always very clear that the lyrics for many of the songs in Godspell, including “Day by Day,” came from the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1940. (It was also in the American Presbyterians’ 1955 Hymnbook.)
sense and have found it very helpful to worship in congregations which are not my own and in ways with which I’m not accustomed. It’s very rare for me to emerge without some sense of experiencing, often in surprising ways, something of the presence of God.
Try this out for size.
(You may have to be patient with a brief prior advert.)
'Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly...' :-) A real fave of mine, and full of the 'I', 'me' stuff which I tell myself is what irks me about some modern worship songs. I'm inconsistent, but that's aesthetics for you...
That’s very good to hear! I never saw it on stage so I never saw a programme.
I’m like that about alterations to the creeds, references to the Trinity, and possibly the Lord’s Prayer if I believe the theology/meaning is changed. I also don’t like having to quickly scan ahead in the leaflet (if a church isn’t using the standard Book of Common Prayer) to make sure that I actually understand and can agree enough with what is being said to say it aloud. (When you find yourself thinking “No! That’s modalism! I can’t say that!” and it also takes you out of the whole ritual mentally…)
I think the idea of a Journey is a very good one. Weren’t they the ones who told us, “Don’t stop believin’”? 😛
Joking aside, I have no problem with “Jesus as our boyfriend”—I’d go further as Jesus is our Bridegroom, and no, I’m not joking. He’s more than that (our Lord, our God, our Master, our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sanctifier), but not less.
Yes, I think it depends on what it is. I mean, if one says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, it doesn’t exclude Him proceeding from the Son, though I’m a bit awkward about changing it in our own western churches (I’m inclined to wait for Rome to change it first—are there theological reasons to keep it? I don’t know for sure, etc.). But that’s still following the Creed of a definitively orthodox (big O orthodox, even) church that goes back over a thousand years, not just changing it around for various stylistic, modern or even political reasons.
Which is much longer than the Godspell song, but probably the root of it.
Lyrics and story found here
I get that, but I also get that there have always been "stylistic, political" reasons for changing things; and "modern" is a subjective word.
That said, I also personally see value in constancy and appreciate the value of the Nicene Creed as an historical covenant that grounds the church and provides a solid theological anthropology on which to ground ourselves.
So, while I might seem to mock your position, I think we are roughly on the same page. I may mock myself as well, being a good, self-aware Episcopalian.
Heck, I was just teasing a Catholic friend of mine about how watching JD Vance thumb his nose at the Pope so awkwardly was making me feel a really strange urge to hop the Tiber. I was pretty sure that was a joke.
Still here but still there?
We are in danger of another tangent.
You'll find some Orthodox who blame the filioque for almost every ill in society. Everything went down-hill after it was adopted unilaterally in the Christian West.
Heck, if I stub my toe later today then it'll be Charlemagne's fault or the Pope's or Duns Scotus or ...
Or that nice Mr Putin.
It says more about us than it does God I think.
(Insert People's Front of Judaea joke here)
The biblical basis (John 15v26) has the Greek ἐκπορεύεται (ekporeuetai) which in New Testament Greek means comes from, flows from, emanates from, proceeds from.
There’s certainly a human aspect at work! I think the crafters of the Creed wanted to preserve two things. Firstly, the Holy Spirit was not created by God the Father so they had to avoid language which suggested that. So the John 15v26 language gave them ἐκπορεύεται (ekporeuetai).
Secondly, they wanted to draw a distinction in the Godhead from Jesus, who was also not created by the Father but “eternally begotten”.
I’m not an expert on the Filioque controversy! (I’m not really an expert on anything) but it’s simple to see that there is biblical support for “proceeds from the Father” and “proceeds from the Father and the Son” is more implied, therefore less justified. I guess it’s a matter of authoritative Tradition? Did Western Catholicism have the “right” to go beyond the Ecumenical Councils? Or was it just a logical conclusion? People fell out big time and some even died as a result of this, which seems very weird, not to say tragic, to those of us who don’t share the mindset.
What’s the significance today? If you’re a Protestant and don’t really get that het up over Tradition with a capital T, not a lot really. Low church Protestants who emphasise the authority of scripture rather than the Creeds will be quite happy with John 15v 26 as it stands.
Yes, but what does it really mean? I’ll leave that up to you! I guess it depends on whether the term Holy Spirit says anything to you about how God works in this world. Does Spirit just mean Divine influence? In colloquial terms, the word spirit (e.g. spirit of the age) seem to be an abstract rather than in any sense a person,
Not sure whether it helps at all @KarlLB but I thought it may be worth a try.
At best it's like the Reason sought by the Dwellers in the Forest about the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Mountains (Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything) - makes perfect sense when explained, but evaporates soon after.
*yes I know. And people are wrong about it; some unique things absolutely are more unique than others.
I’ve said earlier that the hard work enabled me not just to understand the arguments better but also to “get” the mindset better. That’s where my curiosity took me. I’m probably quite rare in that.
I don’t think it’s wrong to believe that surely it should be easier than that. Truth is, I don’t think it is.
Folks don’t need to go down the route I went but there’s quite a lot of abstract thought involved. Most concrete examples about the meaning of the Trinitytend to get Traditional folks to say “Yes, but” or “that’s misleading about a Divine Mystery” or something similar.
One of C S Lewis’s good rules was to ask after any explanation “Could you say that again?” And then see if folks managed to contradict themselves.
Personally, I’m OK with Divine Mystery. I think we’re grasping at stuff we can at best only partially understand. The major 3rd and 4th Century contributors to the understanding that led to the Creeds were pretty aware of their own human limitations.
I wonder whether a political analogy may be better than a physical analogy.
We have a monarch who is the source of political authority. Then we have two chief ministers.
Now the Eastern analogy would be that minister one and minister two have different spheres of authority and responsibility which work in different ways both granted by the monarch.
The Western analogy would say that in some ways but not others minister two is subordinate to minister one.
Eastern arguments that I've seen are that the Western arrangement risks becoming a strict hierarchy: all relations are hierarchical. Translated into earthly politics this favours a strict arrangement where power flows down and obedience flows up. On the other hand, other Eastern arguments would say that if it avoids a picture of a strict hierarchy it becomes no longer clear where authority lies (how much authority over the Spirit does the Son have).
I think I would say that the hierarchical picture seems just as much true of the Eastern arrangement; and that the idea that the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son introduces a kink into the hierarchy in that in some sense authority returns towards the Father from the Son. That is, it seems to me that complicating the idea of hierarchy and authority in the Trinity is politically a good thing.
Those analogies all seem to fall into the “Yes but” or “misleading about the Trinity” according to Traditional understanding.
I don’t personally need concrete examples or suitable analogies, but that’s just the way my mind works. Which doesn’t mean I don’t use analogies in conversations but equally I’m conscious of their limitations and capability to unintentionally mislead.
(I remember when learning about sub-atomic structure that I realised the limitations and misleading nature of the “planets around the sun” analogy. It didn’t mean it wasn’t helpful in the learning process but a time came when I had to leave it behind. There’s a lot of that in learning).
The orthodox understanding is that the three Persons of the Trinity are co-equal but for functional reasons, the second and third Person voluntarily accept subordinate roles. That’s pretty hard to get your head around anyway, without coming to terms with the hierarchical aspects of analogies.
Quite tough stuff, all of this. I’m not surprised that lots of folks drop out of the journey of understanding. “Oh that’s just too complicated for me”.
Grasping the meaning of abstractions isn’t for everyone. My school physics teacher taught me that the understanding of pressure was like that. Many of his students just couldn’t “get” it.
I get stroppy. But hey I'm a word person.
I don't mind if you change the vestments or move the furniture. I mind when you change the words.
It's the familiarity of the liturgy in my tradition that takes you to a "different place" as I believe CS Lewis once said. You don't have to think about it. It's innate.
As for comprehensibility, well Christianity has always been rather hard on that score. Religion of paradox (Chesterton), Mysterium Tremendum etc.
In my church there are plenty of resources if you want to get some contemporary understanding of the creed.
History matters, similarity of liturgy across the tradition matters. Otherwise you're just rootless and making it up as you go along.
And that's fine. Some people like that. I don't.
Of course, I could be considered idolatrous for loving the words of my liturgy. But I'd give it up if absolutely necessary. Of course God matters more. So I'm okay with my idolatry.