Tag Archives: church unity

Responding to the Pope

28 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Bible, Faith, Pope

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Light of Life Image

I had caught Pope Francis’ comments, but am grateful to Chalcedon for the link, as well as for his comments. Let me try to respond from within my own tradition of English nonconfomity.

The Baptists rejected the Church of England’s way of being Christian. My forefathers were unable to accept the idea of a State Church or the hierarchy it brought. For us the example of the Apostles was all – we all have different missions in the family of God, but we are all one; we have elders, but they are not in some way set apart from other men; in that sense we are congregational. We see the church where we worship as our family, and whilst we’re happy to be part of a wider family, we’re not much into the idea of a central organisation; we agree with the Creed and we’re not great ones for the idea of sacraments or things like transubstantiation.

Now in some ways, the Anglicans have become much closer to our way of being, and, however much some Roman Catholics dislike it, even Catholics have come closer to us in some ways. But do we need to stop and take stock and see where we need to be more open than we are?

We’ve just finished Christian unity week, and as ever, the ‘usual suspects’ turned up to the events, which amounted to little more than a common service of worship and a lunch. It would, I have argued for some time, be preferable for us to have ‘open church’ events, and some talks. Nothing helps us all more than to know more about each other and our ways of worshipping the same God. This is where I’ve the strongest objection to quivideruntoculi’s line of telling me I’m a heretic. Coming from a fellow who’s been a Catholic five minutes and now thinks his Pope is a heretic, I guess I could construe it as a compliment.

I believe in Jesus, and Jesus told me that was sufficient. Now, I take entirely Chalcedon’s point about the importance of the Church which Jesus founded, but like many Protestants, would take the view that the Church does not depend on some magic hands on head act of men, but upon the spirit of belief of the faithful. The idea that the formal signs matter than the spiritual reality is not, I know, what C is saying, but that’s what it amounts to if it denies that those who abide by the Creed worship Jesus Christ.

I am certainly one of those who has come to a better understanding of the RCC thanks to what has happened since Vatican II. I am impressed by the way in which Popes are happy to talk to other churches without attacking their beliefs; it helps stop the natural sinful reaction of attacking back.

So, for me, I am happy to respond by trying to understand more about the sacramental  aspects of Christianity of which I have little experience, and to try to understand how the claims of the Pope might be used to help all Christians against the forces of the Lord of This World. I no longer feel the need to do a Bosco on the RCC, and that, in itself, is a gain. I am happy to listen, speak as needed, and to talk about how, in this fallen world, we might give a better witness to the Hope that is in us.

We are all Corinthians now

26 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by in Bible, Early Church, Faith

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Paul

Our friend, quiavideruntoculi, whose comments I always enjoy, event when they are criticisms directed at my views, has essayed the view that Paul’s comments were directed at Christians with a mature spirituality; I think if one examines Paul’s letters, one can see that Corinth was little different from ourselves now, and that whatever might have been the case for individuals, the church, even though it was in one city, was quite as badly divided as our different churches are now – and equally prone to hypocrisy and scandal.

Paul spent about eighteen months in Corinth before going off the Ephesus, where he spent about three and a half years. It was whilst he was there that reports reached him that things were not faring well in Corinth. He wrote a first letter to them, which has not survived, but in which he seems to have warned them against keeping company with those who were sexually immoral, but in this letter, he has much with which to reproach them.

He had picked up that there were factions within the church which claimed to be following the way of one of the Christian leaders, and he told them in no uncertain terms that there was unity only in Christ. In the three years Paul had been absent, the Corinthians had managed to succumb to the sins of spiritual pride. They had also succumbed to hypocrisy. There was a serious case of immorality in the church (5:1), and that some of the Corinthian saints were taking their brothers to court (6:1ff.). In addition, Paul received questions concerning marriage (7:1), virgins (7:25), foods sacrificed to idols (8:1ff.), spiritual gifts (12:1ff.) and more. The church was, as we might now say, dysfunctional.

Its members had become arrogant – ‘puffed up’ with pride, knowing better than the Apostles themselves, adapting the message they had received so that the Jews and the Gentiles would receive it with greater ease; in the process they had grown rich. As he would tell them in a second letter it was not for profit that the believer preached the word of God, but for the truth of the salvation contained in Christ crucified. He asked them to remember their own humble origins and adjured them to boast of nothing save Christ, and Him crucified. If that made them unpopular with the Jews and the Gentiles, so much the worse for the latter. It was time for Paul to send someone, in this case Timothy, to sort them out.

For those in our society who claim the Church is obsessed with sex, it is only doing what Paul had to do with the Corinthians – and for precisely the same reasons: it is we, as it was the Corinthians, who were obsessed with it, and it was a distraction from the Christian life they were supposed to be leading.

Although the Corinthians were suing each other in the pagan courts, they were quite happy for one of their members to be living with his father’s wife; this is the sort of hypocrisy with which we are all familiar; we compound for the sins to which we are inclined by condemning those to which we are not; has someone transgressed a rubric? That we protest; are they supporting abortion? Well let us not be hasty, who are we to judge? All sorts of things are, he reminds them, lawful, but not to be done by Christians. Perhaps the laws in Corinth allowed the kind of incest being practised, or some of the other sexual sins he mentions, but that did not mean Christians should practice them; not everything which was lawful was moral in a Christian sense.

He reminds the Corinthians, as we need reminding, that the body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and we should not demean or degrade it in unworthy and immoral actions. Again, not doubt such and such an act is not forbidden to married couples, but does it celebrate love and creation?  Does it bring the couple together, or is it an act of selfishness in which one uses the other, and where the Holy Spirit is absent?  if so, even if it is lawful Christians should reject it.

Whether it is marriage, divorce, sacrificing to the idols (in our case of contemporary wisdom) or doubting the central tenets of the faith such as the resurrection, we are the Corinthians, as we are even when it comes to the solemnity with with the Eucharist is celebrated. We lack that love which Paul celebrates in 1 Corinthians 13. Until we recover it, and until we listen to what Paul told the Corinthians, we shall continue to be like them.

The Scandal of Division

26 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by in Early Church, Faith, Pope

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jesus weeps

1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17

The homily given by the Pope on 25 January echoed the words of Paul here. How weak we are in the face of the wiles of the enemy. Moments in time after Paul had preached there, and with the Apostles available, the men and women of Corinth had managed to set up factions in which they made claims for Paul, or another Christian leader, Apollos, or for Peter (Cehpas); worst of all some claimed alone to be ‘of Christ’. As St John Chrysostom pointed out, this was a great scandal since they made baptism, the point of unity, the cause of division.

Origen pointed out, in words which resonate as much with us as they did when he wrote them in the second century, that the Church is a mixed body which contains the righteous and the unrighteous; this is why Paul praises some members and criticises others. The person who agrees with right doctrine and the teaching of the church concerning the Trinity, and with the Creed, is not in schism. That was easier to say in his day than it is in ours, when we have a number of Churches who can say they preserve right doctrine and believe in the Creed, and yet are still not united and say that they are ‘of Peter’ or of ‘Constantinople’, or of ‘Luther’ and of ‘Calvin’ and claim for themselves the name ‘Christian’ which some of them would arrogate to themselves alone. It was then, as the Pope says it is now:

In other words, the particular experience of each individual, or an attachment to certain significant persons in the community, had become a yardstick for judging the faith of others.

The Holy Father rightly asks:

may we realize that Christ, who cannot be divided, wants to draw us to himself, to the sentiments of his heart, to his complete and confident surrender into the hands of the Father, to his radical self-emptying for love of humanity. Christ alone can be the principle, the cause and the driving force behind our unity.

He is right, and in Pauline mode when he points out:

 Our divisions wound Christ’s body, they impair the witness which we are called to give to him before the world. The Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, appealing to the text of Saint Paul which we have reflected on, significantly states: “Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many Christian communities present themselves to people as the true inheritance of Jesus Christ; all indeed profess to be followers of the Lord but they differ in outlook and go their different ways, as if Christ were divided”. And the Council continues: “Such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the sacred cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature” (Unitatis Redintegratio, 1)

There is no doubt, as even readers of the comments boxes here know, that this division damages us; it makes us all a scandal in the eyes of the world, and asks us all to look again at what divides us – as well as what unites us – Christ Jesus.

Pope Francis does not ignore the place of the Papacy in these divisions, but, referring to three of of his four predecessors says:

The work of these, my predecessors, enabled ecumenical dialogue to become an essential dimension of the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, so that today the Petrine ministry cannot be fully understood without this openness to dialogue with all believers in Christ. We can say also that the journey of ecumenism has allowed us to come to a deeper understanding of the ministry of the Successor of Peter, and we must be confident that it will continue to do so in the future.

There is only one Christian leader who can command the attention of the world every time he speaks, and only one who can speak for the majority of the world’s Christians, and if he will not talk to others, then unity has no hope. But unity requires others to talk, and, of course, for the Pope to listen as well as talk.

Can there really be unity? We have Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, but we know from Clement’s letter to them, written probably before the end of the first century, that they had once more lapsed into quarrelling with each other; jealousy and envy had even led to the deaths of the Apostles, Peter and Paul. What happened to the church in Corinth is lost in the mists of history, but where it could have been a noble example of Christians pulling together in the cause of Christ, it disappears from the scene; the answer is not far to seek.

We have not been good at learning the lessons of history, and no impartial historian can absolve ‘The Church of God which sojourneth in Rome’ from its part in the scandal of division. Pope Francis, like his immediate predecessors is determined to do what he can in the cause of unity. Are such hopes doomed? Not if we believe St Paul:

 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Christmas – God Promises Kept!

25 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Faith

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The promise of a deliver a Messiah who would reverse the effects of the fall was first made to Eve – Gen. 3:15. This was the first of a multitude of promised made with the purpose of identifying the Messiah when He finally arrived. A useful analogy is to consider them as ‘The Messiah’s Address’.

The postal service narrows down your location and identity reading your address backwards for mail to reach you i.e. country – city – area – street- house – particular occupant.

The identity of the coming Messiah is similarly narrowed down from the more general to a specific individual i.e. male – descendant of Abraham – of Isaac (i.e. Jew not Arab) – of Jacob’s son Judah (one out of 12) – of Jesse – of David – place of birth Bethlehem – place of residence Nazareth – manner, time and facts of death and many more identifying facts are supplied.

At this time of year TV documentaries frequently try to reinterpret Christ and His mission, presenting the rise of the Christian religion over the next few centuries as a response to the failure of the coming of God’s kingdom and Israel’s national deliverance from Roman domination. The Jesus of faith or of Paul is contrasted with the Jesus of history.

However if we simply read the Messiah’s address carefully and follow the apostles identification of Him and of His agenda, that they came to understand we answer these objections.

The principle in Biblical understanding of the first mention of a matter is important and if the Jews at the time of Christ and today’s re-interpreters of Christ were to follow the principle they would see clearly that the deliverance was to be primarily one of universal deliverance from the effects of sin Gen. 3:15, a far more radical prospect than a national or political deliverance.

This concept should then be born in mind when interpreting further prophecies of the Messiah’s coming. In Isaiah 9:7 we read:

“There will be no end to the increase of His government of peace … from then on and for evermore”.

Jesus taught that His government/kingdom must be understood as ‘not of this world’ or its worldly kings and their ways Christ’s mission and its continuation through humble servant disciples entering His kingdom by a new and spiritual birth from above requires no reinterpretation when Christ’s words are taken at face value. At the first Christmas this kingdom was inaugurated and its increase has been never ending.

One commentator on this year’s CNN presentation of Jesus and Christianity stated “Jesus did not come to found a new religion but to establish a kingdom”. I have previously heard the same from several ‘Charismatic Evangelical’ church leaders and embrace it as an important guideline. Another person I know was impressed at the start of his ministry with the thought – “Bill (not his real name) you seek My kingdom and I will build My church”. The kingdom was constantly on Christ’s lips but never once did he mention founding a new religion.

On this site it is generally not Christ or matters of His Kingdom that divide us but interpretations of His church. For the sake of that kingdom John the Baptist decreased, became less visible and is commended for doing so while for some the visibility of the church is oh so important!

The church is no more than the totality of those who should decrease in their own self obsession and importance while displaying the good works, power and wonders of Christ’s ever increasing government/ kingdom, that the Father might be glorified.

As kingdom living and demonstration becomes the priority of those who follow Christ they find themselves united with one another in a living active organism while their various organizational units simply provide the minimum necessary skeleton. It seems illogical to me to advocate ‘small government’ for nations and great bureaucracy and hierarchy for churches.

‘The government is on His shoulders’ and passed to Him at His incarnation. There is a fascinating prophesy of the Messiah’s kingdom/government in Jacob’s blessing of his son Judah.

“THE SCEPTER SHALL NOT DEPART FROM JUDAH, NOR THE RULER’S STAFF FROM BETWEEN HIS FEET, UNTIL SHILOH COMES AND TO HIM SHALL BE THE OBEDIENCE OF THE PEOPLES GEN. 49:10.”

The Jewish sources Targum Jonathan 8/331 and Targum Pseudo Jonathan 2/278 identify Gen. 49:10 & 11 as Messianic prophecies.

According to this scripture and the Jews of the time the suppression of Israel’s national judicial power would take place following the appearance of the Messiah to Israel. The event that the Jews took to mark this was their loss of the supreme judicial power the ‘jus gladii’ i.e. the right to pass the death sentence.

There is some debate in Jewish sources about when this took place as being either: –

a) As one source gives the date as 7AD. or

b) According to Josephus Ant. Book 17 Ch 13, 1.5 it took place in 11 AD. or

b) Talmud, Jerusalem, Sanhedrin, fol. 24 recto – states that it took place “A little more than forty years before the destruction of the temple”

Placing the birth of Jesus at 6BC this would give the age of Jesus, at the time, in each case as 1yr, 5yrs or 24yrs respectively.

The amazing thing is that the Jews knew the implications of this themselves – Talmud, Bab, Sanhedrin, Chap. 4, fol. 37, recto states

“Woe unto us for the scepter has been taken away from Judah and the Messiah has not yet appeared.”  Another Jewish source says that “When the members of the Sanhedrin found themselves deprived of their right over life and death … they covered their heads with ashes and their bodies with sackcloth” and made the same declaration as above. These facts are referenced in “Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell”.

They Jewish authorities were mistaken the young Messiah was still in preparation in Nazareth and upon His appearance they unknowingly acknowledged Him as Messiah by calling Him Jesus of Nazareth. Here we have another part for Joseph in the events; an angel appears again to Joseph, which resulted in the family residing in Nazareth “So that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘HE SHALL BE CALLED A NAZARENE’ Matt. 2:19 & 23”.

However there is somewhat of a mystery, in any study Bible when the OT is quoted cross references to the OT text are given in the margin and the words quoted may be printed in capitals. In the case of Matt. 2:23 there are no cross references given in any Bible I have checked.

The answer lies in the reference to prophets (plural) and the meaning of the name Nazareth i.e. sprig, shoot or branch. Each of these terms are Messianic titles for the Messiah e.g. “the shoot out of Jesse (King David’s father)” Isaiah 11:1, Jeremiah 23:5, Zechariah 3:8; 6:12-13.

Note in this last text “His name is ‘The Branch’” and how for Jesus His place of birth became His designated name ‘Jesus of Nazareth”. On a trip to Israel our secular Jewish guide, confirmed the meaning of ‘Nazareth’ as we looked around the town and found my discussion with him on this point interesting.

The apostles did not get it wrong because they referenced the prophets as they had been shown and as they were interpreted to them by the resurrected Jesus as He commissioned them to continue His mission John Luke 24:44-48.

There is no cause for re-interpretation from the Gen.3:15 promises to the ‘Great Commission’ the Messiah’s mission has been clear to those whose eyes He has opened.