The Power of Love

I finally had my first class last night, and i really enjoyed it.  I am often skeptical of historical study, not in exegesis per say, but in the post-biblical world.  This is because i feel that tradition is often held too highly, sometimes even to the point of being equal to scripture.  However, a lot of my fears were lessened greatly when during the initial hour we talked about the rationale for study church history.

One of the reasons for studying church history was to help us learn from our past mistakes and successes.  My professor pointed out how foolish it would be of us to not learn from our past so that we can be all that God can make us as a body today.  I had always heard this line of thought in regards to theological discussions, and i felt that it was at times nothing more than a trump card for the weaker position.

However, my view of this rationale changed later in the lecture.  We were talking about why the church exploded initially, and about the Roman Empire in which it grew.  The Empire was powerful, impersonal, and cold.  It didn’t feel like a home, but something to obey and fear.  Into this context the early church was born, preaching a message of a loving father who wanted to interact with these gentiles intimately.  The idea of a loving, benevolent authority and community resonated within these love-starved people.  Persecution came after the obscure “Jewish” sect had been growing rapidly, but that only caused them to fall to their knees and seek intimacy with their loving father even more, and empowered by His love they went on to grow even more, until less than 50 after the heavy persecutions began they “conquered” this great Roman Empire.

This stuff made me realize that history helps us learn how to do ministry, not just to justify our systematic theologies.  These were real Christians, and we can learn from them by “exegeting the church” to see how Christ would have us live today.

The applications of this excursion into church history are 1) When we love, we grow (Jn 13:34-35), 2) Love, real love, is worth dying for (1 Jn 3:16), and 3) Love conquers all (1 Cor 13:13).  This lesson has helped make concrete for me the fact that the scriptures attached aren’t just rational propositions, or life-guiding principles, but are real truths that history demonstrates to be true.  Christianity is more than a system of belief, it is something more valuable than my life.

Rhetoric, Tradition, & Theology

Today I was reading through a post by Rebecca Merrill Groothius.  She is one of the leading proponents of “biblical Feminism,” which is another way to say that she is a egalitarian when it comes to spiritual authority.  I say biblical because she makes her appeal primarily through what she calls a proper and consistent interpretation of the relevant Biblical data.

Her post i have been combing through earlier today is called “Strange Bedfellows: Strategies Shared by Darwinists and Traditionalists.”  She points out how Darwinists and traditionalists use the same rhetorical strategies to advance, and more often than not, demonize/marginalize the opposing view.  While there are many different tactics she addresses, i will only mention one here.

 1.   The first device employed she calls an appeal to authority.  These people simply try to win the argument by appealing to an authority that everyone in the debate accepts, then makes a blanket statement about what that authority asserts.  And since they are the experts, or the orthodoxy’s priests, as Groothius’ calls them, no one wants to question their assertion.  In fact, to do so renders one a heretic or unscientific.  But Groothius’ point, which is a good one i think, is that no one in the ID-Evolution debate or the Traditional-Egalitarian debate is calling the authority into question.  Rather, the interpretation by the “guardians” of the authority are what the dissenters take issue with.

This point is very significant and reveals one of my main issues with the use of tradition in doing theology or Biblical exegesis.  Let me assert that i do believe in the great value of tradition.  In fact, my reading of the church fathers has done me a world of good in this regard.  I actually have enjoyed much of what they said (including Augustine Chris!), and even when i disagreed i found myself engaged and challenged by the depth of thought and genuine love and respect for God and His word.

The problem for me occurs when the father’s interpretations of God’s word is characterized as completely accurate regarding God’s word.  The two seem to be held in equal esteem by some segments of Christianity.  To question traditional interpretations of the Bible is to question the bible itself.  I would agree with proponents of traditionalism who say that we must have some very strong reasons for going against classical Christianity, but no one who says this gives any criteria for how much is enough.  This leads me to believe that all we are doing is giving the idea that the father’s could be wrong lip-service. 

My hope is that we honor tradition but be genuinely open to new possibilities.  Tradition can be a real source of strength and set healthy boundaries for us to prevent us from going astray.  I pray that it will do so for me.  However, i also earnestly desire that the comforting walls of safety they provide don’t become our prison.

Doing Theology with the Early Church

Gregory of Nyssa

I have been reading some of the church father’s writings for my Church History class (it begins in only a few weeks!), and i recently read a fascinating passage from the father Gregory of Nyssa.

Let me start by saying that i know nothing about Greg except what i have learned from this book. He was heavily influenced by Neoplatonism (as were most, if ont all of the fathers at this time), which led him to have a deeply spiritual view of the intellect. However, he thought that the “knowledge” of God transcends not only the senses but even someone’s cognitive thoughts.

To illustrate this, he talks about Moses encountering God on Mt Sinai in the “darkness.” He teaches that in the initial stages of someone’s religious knowledge comes to them as illumination, but “the closer it (the believer’s mind) approaches the vision of God the more it recognizes the invisible character of the divine nature.”

Pretty heavy stuff i think. It seems that Greg is saying that the pinnacle of knowing God transcends not only the senses but even the mind. I am not sure whether Greg refers to the human soul or to the core of the nature of God when he says that God is most profoundly found in the interior, in a place beyond our senses and thoughts to to the “unseeable, and the incomprehensable.” As he puts it: “For the goal of our search is beyond all knowledge; it is surrounded on all sides by a wall of incomprehensibility like a kind of darkness.”

This paradoxical idea of seeing God in the dark is really intriguing, but i find its (over, in my mind)emphasis on transcendence to be a bit frightening. Of course, Greg would say that is the point: “So the very first commandment of God is that the divine is not to be likened to anything within the range of human knowledge.” This idea lays significant groundwork for deterministic thinking, although i don’t know if Greg endorsed such thought (most of the fathers didn’t).

However, maybe the incarnation solves this problem; the unkowable God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ: “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known (John 1:18).

Wow, this was way too long. Any Thoughts?