Tag Archives: heresy

Heresy vs free speech?

08 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Education

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Augustine-refuting-heretic

I can see one of the joys of working at a Catholic university is going to be dealing with allegations that some sorts of colleagues are heretics because they dissent from a non-infallible teaching (and let us not get started in what is and is not infallible); part of the joy comes in the (very typically Catholic) nuanced nature of what heresy means – as this article shows.

Both matter and form of heresy admit of degrees which find expression in the following technical formula of theology and canon law. Pertinacious adhesion to a doctrine contradictory to a point of faith clearly defined by the Church is heresy pure and simple, heresy in the first degree. But if the doctrine in question has not been expressly “defined” or is not clearly proposed as an article of faith in the ordinary, authorized teaching of the Church, an opinion opposed to it is styled sententia haeresi proxima, that is, an opinion approaching heresy. Next, a doctrinal proposition, without directly contradicting a received dogma, may yet involvelogical consequences at variance with revealed truth. Such a proposition is not heretical, it is apropositio theologice erronea, that is, erroneous in theology. Further, the opposition to anarticle of faith may not be strictly demonstrable, but only reach a certain degree of probability. In that case the doctrine is termed sententia de haeresi suspecta, haeresim sapiens; that is, an opinion suspected, or savouring, of heresy (see THEOLOGICAL CENSURES).

It is so much easier to tweet ‘heretic’ and to question whether someone is really a Catholic, than to wrestle with such complex terminology. This, of course, is why if the Church wishes to indict someone of heresy there is a process; mysteriously, and no doubt regrettably, this does not appear to involve individual Catholics on Twitter. Yes, and of course, it is annoying, irritating and, for those of that nature, exasperating, when a well-known Catholic pronounces in a way inconsistent with the teaching of the Church. It might even make that person a heretic. But the Twitter Congregation for the Defence of the Faith is not a recognised instrument of the Magisterium (though  no doubt some think it would be a jolly good thing if it were).

In a Twitter exchange the other evening, the view was expressed by some that academic freedom should not apply to academics at Catholic universities. This seems to me a strange doctrine, since some of those who hold it also think that Catholics in secular work-places have a right to have their faith respected and, if necessary, be exempted from work (such as abortion) which conflicts with their faith. It is quite hard to reconcile the two opinions, unless what is really being said is that when Catholics are in charge, opinions which run counter to the Church should not be allowed, but when they are not, they need special protection. It seems to me that would allow our enemies to say what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander, and that if our institutions ban dissent, so should their own; given the balance of power in our society, that would not be a deal we Catholics would be well-advised to conclude.

Most Catholic universities, and all of those in the UK, employ staff who are not Catholic, and take students who are not Catholic, so, on the argument that Catholics should not be forced to conform to secular practices against their religion, non-Catholics should not be forced to conform to Catholic teaching. But what about Catholic scholars?

In the West we live in societies where the freedom to say what we think has become increasingly trammelled. Very often Catholics (and others of a conservative disposition) are apt to shake their heads at political correctness and the narrowing of our public discourse; we should, I think, beware of going down a Catholic version of this path. To do so would, apart from anything else, raise the suspicion, not far below the surface in cultures with a an anti-Catholic history, that left to ourselves we’d be lighting the bonfires at Smithfield given half a chance. In a world where ‘safe space’ has become associated with millennials not wanting to be exposed to ideas which make them uncomfortable, I would not want to associate myself with with a Catholic version of that, where Catholic students are supposed to be such fragile creatures that they cannot be exposed to views from Catholics which dissent from Catholic teaching. There are enough, and more than enough, people wanting to close down discussion and free expression of thought, without Catholics joining them.

The Truth has nothing to fear from robust questioning. It is regrettable that we have lost the tradition of Natural Theology, it is even more regrettable that Catholic academics are constantly met with objections which reveal that the objectors are fundamentalist materialists. These things are regrettable not least because our society has produced and is producing young people who, the figures show, are increasingly suffering from depression and stress, and it is offering them no remedy for this save medication. It would be better if it allowed those young people access to the rich spiritual and cultural heritage of our Christian past, which would enable them to realise that the spiritual richness is still there. But too often they lack the language and the concepts with which to access it. I’m all for opening up free speech, not closing it down. If some Catholic academics wish to question Catholic teaching, let them. Young people are really quite bright, especially those at university, and they have ready access to the knowledge of what the Church really teaches.

The Virgin Mary and the Christmas message

24 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Christmas, Faith

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462px-la_vierge_enceinte

Writing a column for a national newspaper can be a trial, not least when one has a reputation as a controversialist to keep up, so it should have occasioned but little in the way of surprise that Giles Fraser, the liberals’ favourite vicar, should have written a column in which he explained how the story of the virgin birth ran against the grain of Christianity. I have written enough for the press to accept the excuse that no one is responsible for the title a sub-editor gives to his or her piece – it is the sub’s job to stir up trouble if there is any in the offing, so it is necessary to get beyond that strap line to see what he is getting at.

After mentioning the early stories that Jesus, far from being born of a virgin, was the product of a possible rape, he goes on to speculate that the story of the virgin birth may have been a reaction to such rumours. It may be that typology and the Old Testament are no longer taught at seminary, or it may be that the young Fraser was out protesting against ‘that sort of thing’ when they were, but for his benefit and that of anyone reading, let us remind ourselves that the virgin birth was one of the signs foretold of the coming Messiah. Our very own Jock MacSporran (a man with a good religious education I judge) wrote the other day:

Elijah told Ahaz to ask for a sign, to assure him that God would help him in battle. Ahaz refused, because he was a nasty piece of work and he knew it; he didn’t believe that God could possibly show him any good sign. God gave him a sign anyway, the promise of the virgin birth. In his case, the sign was a sign of judgement.

This is an integral part of the Christmas story – but curiously, it seems to be missing from the discussion.

Isaiah 7:14 is taken up by Matthew 1:23, and in the Septuagint Isaiah always uses the word for virgin. That, for the benefit of Giles Fraser, is where the reference comes from, it is one of the many Messianic signs which the Gospels use to identify who Jesus really is. It has nothing to do with anyone thinking ‘sex is dirty’.

It may come as a shock to Fraser, but quite a lot of other people have pointed out that the Incarnation is central to Christianity, and that the kenosis of the Word is, literally, awesome; still it is good that he was attending class that day, but he really should acknowledge he is being derivative here, which certainly takes away from the controversy, but is more useful to the casual reader. But I can’t quite let it end there. He asks ‘what if he was?’ in terms of Jesus being illegitimate. It is hard to believe that the great Anglican tradition of scholarship has sunk this low, and one must just put it down to the anfractuosities of journalism and allow Anglicans to have the disclaimer that ‘real theologians are also available’.

The ‘what if’ would be that the Mary was not with child by the Holy Spirit. I will leave Fraser to figure out what message this would have for the idea that Jesus was the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. It may be that he does not believe in that either, and that he really thinks the world could be saved by the illegitimate offspring of two humans, but if so, whilst one would not be surprised, one would be dismayed. Maybe that stuff about ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ all went above his head, but for the rest of us it is central to the Christmas message. In the spirit of the festival, let us hope Giles Fraser gets a ‘theology for dummies’ book for Christmas.

Buying and selling

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Faith, Persecution

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Christian fighting with Apollyon

Here’s a thing to ponder. A brand with a message so powerful it has sold for two thousand years. But then along come some folk who think the message needs tweaking – they feel it doesn’t resonate with the market. So, they rebrand it with new packaging, they drop the bits of the message they felt didn’t resonate, and they replace it with something they feel most folk want to hear. That, they say, will refresh the brand and bring more folk in. Time passes, and yes, they acknowledge, some folk who liked the old brand aren’t buying this, but it’s aimed at the youngsters and new people – and that takes time. Time passes, not a lot of new folks come in, the older folk die off. At what point does someone realise the whole thing is not working? If you are Coca Cola, sharpish; if you’re the Anglican Church, never. If you see this happening to one of your rival companies do you think: a) jolly good, serve ’em right; b) let’s move into that market lads; or c) that’s the way to go? Rambling Pope Frank and his merry men seem to think c) is the right answer. What’s afoot? Are they all potty?

No, they simply fail to get to first base. We’re sinners. We all fall short. This will produce an unease which can’t be cured by telling folk to ‘be themselves’ – that’s the root of the problem; it can be assuaged for a while with materialism, but that is to morality what Chinese food is to a full stomach. Folk need what they will reject – to repent and follow Christ. There, and there alone do we find satisfaction. That core message has been resisted by all sinners, before they saw the light. If churches blur that, try to make it pleasant or otherwise think they know better than St Paul, they fail – and they fail those who need the message.

To my mind, a bunch of over-educated and spiritually underpowered folk have sold their heritage for a mess of pottage. The problem is that no one is buying what they are selling in place of the Gospel once received. You could once have relied on the Catholic Church to stand firm and to know the road – but this lot in charge seem to think the road to Munich is the right road. Anyone who uses words the way the Vatican uses them is hiding their true intentions under a cloud of verbiage.

So do we despair? No we don’t. The Holy Spirit knows who follows Christ faithfully, and we’ll do just that. I don’t need any priest of intermediary to tell me what God wants of me – the Bible tells me and the Holy Spirit tells me – and when I deviate, my conscience sounds a loud alarm. There’s many a good Christian in every Church. Young Bosco’s always sounding off about the sheep knowing each other, but he’s not as wrong as some folk here think – orthodox Christian recognise other orthodox Christians, and in these dark and parlous days when hirelings run the sheepfolds, we can stick together and rely on the Good Shepherd. Jesus asked the disciples in the boat ‘why are you afraid?’ Implying their faith was weak. Well, our’s is not – we live in the faith of the Resurrected Christ, and though the hosts of Satan were arrayed in force before us, in the sign of the Cross we know we shall conquer!

A Primer for Confession in a Post Laudato Si Church

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Blogging, Satire

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Green Penitent: Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been 24 hours since my last Confession. I have sinned in the following ways: I drank a bottle of water from a plastic bottle (actually 3 times), swatted (and killed) 8 houseflies, killed a mosquito and a cockroach, rode to the Church in a satanic, fossil burning vehicle twice. I also turned my air conditioner on polluting the environment. I have shown callous disregard for the poor as I could not finish my lunch this afternoon and threw out the excess uneaten food though I could have put it in a doggie bag and taken it to a poor family. The sin is compounded since I ate a commercially produced fish sandwich which depleted the oceans of the fish that the poor fishermen in poor countries cannot now catch to alleviate their hunger. I also, weeded my garden and disrupted the biodiversity of the land and by so doing pricked my finger on a thorn (most likely nature striking me back for my thoughtless actions). Again, without thinking, I put antibiotics on the cut thus killing the micro-organisms and bacteria that were present angering mother earth. I wore a pair of Adidas shoes today which were constructed using the cheap labor and the resources from a poor country which depleted their economy and may have caused countless deaths among the poor populations residing there. I flushed the commode twice today so far and took a 15 minute shower wasting valuable water that could have been sent to areas that do not have as much water as we do. I must also tell you father that I am a little confused as to whether ecological sins are mortal or venial sins. For instance, we all know that wearing anything of fur or leather required the sacrifice of one of mother earth’s animals and likewise should I be wearing natural cotton or polyesters since cotton is produced largely by poor countries by low paid workers and polyesters are made by utilizing petroleum and we all know the pollution that this is putting into our environment. I’m uncertain whether these are venial or mortal Father. If mortal, should I go naked?

Father: Well I think that only you know whether your sins are mortal or venial. As you know you had to know what you were doing and that the sin was serious and went ahead and committed this sin anyway. As to your questions concerning what you should wear, I would advise that you do as we in the clergy now do and wear nothing at all. Is that all of your sins my son?

Penitent: That is all that I can think of today Father.

Father: Please say an act of contrition.

Penitent: O mother earth, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee as well as brother sun and sister moon and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments of wiping out all of mankind by heat and by rising sea levels because we were negligent and exploitive of you, mother earth, but most of all because they offend thee, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, and the bounty of your holy nature to sin no more, to lower my carbon footprint and to avoid the near occasions of sin and to live in a cave naked without eating, drinking, cooling or heating my habitat.

Father: I absolve you in the name of brother sun, sister moon and mother earth.

Penitent: Thank you father.

Father: For your penance say 1 decade of the rosary using the new Mother Earth Mysteries. Go and sin no more.

Penitent: May mother earth’s mercy endure forever.

Testing the Spirit

27 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by in Bible, Early Church, Faith, St John

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st-john

St John’s first letter tells us:

 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

This was the fruit of John’s own bitter experience with those he called ‘liars’, and who promoted a gospel other than the one they had ‘heard from the beginning’. John became aware, here, and painfully, of the limits of the view that inspiration by the Holy Spirit could unite a community; how do we know? Because his own community was destroyed by those making the claim to be inspired by the Spirit, but who taught something other than what John had heard from Jesus and taught his followers. These men claimed to have the anointing from the Holy Spirit, and yet what they taught was not what John had been taught. They clearly thought, and acted on the thought, that their revelation was superior to that even of the ‘beloved disciple’; they had met the Spirit and he had told them what was what; the problem was, for John, was that what they were teaching was not what Jesus had taught him. So, from this early on in the life of the Church we have had what here we call the ‘Bosco problem’ – someone claiming to be born again and ‘saved’ who tells us he has had a personal revelation and that others will be damned if they do not heed him. John gives us the answer – ‘test the spirit’. Is it in accord with what the rest of the community believed, was John’s test, and for us, nearly two thousand years on, it is whether what the Boscos of this world say chimes with what Christians have been taught.

Now this is more difficult than it was in John’s day, because of the variety of churches calling themselves Christian, but we return, as I do here so often, to the consensus reached on the important Christological matters at Nicaea. Christology matters because it goes to the heart of who Christ is; if we claim to follow him, we have to know who he is. So, for us, as for John, at the heart of the matter is that he is God and Man – fully both. Those, who, like Bosco, cite only those verses which emphasise he is a man, miss the point and do not know him; yes, Jesus is a man, but he is the Godman.

At stake here is what was at stake for John, it is indeed the same issue exactly; heresy is never new. So, John tells us, because his opponents denied it that: “Jesus is the Christ” (2:22; 5:1); that “Jesus is
the Son of God” (4:15; 5:5); that  “Jesus Christ has (is) come in the flesh” (4:1-3; 2 Jn 7) that he is: “the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ” (1:7; 2:1; 4:2, 9, 10, 14; 5:6; cf also 3:16). These three credal formulas reflect the basic Christological tenets of the opponents of John, as they do of those who follow the teachings of the Father of Lies to this day. These are the credal tenets of orthodoxy, and we do well to test any Spirit by them; if that spirit does not confess these things, then he should be turned aside.

So, for our friend and brother Bosco, this is how he should test the spirit:

  • Does your Spirit say Jesus is the Christ?
  • Does it say that He is God and Man?
  • Does it say salvation is by water and the Spirit?

There are many spirits in this world, and Peter warns the devil prowls around seeking whom he can destroy, and he does so by getting them to take snippets of scripture and encouraging men in their stubborn pride to teach what has not been taught from the beginning. Even the words of Scripture can be twisted to our damnation.

Addendum

The idea, just elaborated by Bosco, that one ‘tests the spirit’ by listening to it is, shall we say, a little strange. If the Father of Lies is speaking to you, he is not going to want you to listen to any spirit but his own one.

Change and development

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by in Bible, Early Church, Faith

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Arians

It is, as Newman commented long ago, plain enough that there are differences between the Church as we see it when it is legalised in the Roman Empire in the fourth century, and what is described in the Acts of the Apostles. This occasions no surprise to any historically-aware person; across that range of time and cultures it would have been astonishing if things had not changes. Some changes were relatively painless but undocumented – no one insisted that every successor to the Apostles should be a Jew, although there was a consensus that elders/bishops should be male; others were painful and documented – Gentiles did not, as it turned out, have to be circumcised or obey kosher laws. The transfer of the sabbath from the Jewish Saturday to Sunday was an especially painful change, as there were many who insisted that it must remain where the Apostles had it; but the Church decided otherwise. However, for many years, there were those who refused to accept this and who alleged it showed that the Church had turned away from the right path; no doubt the ‘men from James’ felt the same.  In short, there has always been change and always been those who objected to it.

Nor was this change confined to what one might call the ‘accidents’ of the faith. In many posts here on the Trinity (just enter the term in the search panel and you will find more than I can list here) we have seen that the attempt to understand what St John meant by writing that the ‘Word’ was ‘in the beginning with God’ and ‘was God’ took pious and intelligent Christians in different directions. The Arians thought that because Jesus was the Son, and the Son came after the Father, that Jesus was the first-born of all creation. When Arius formulated that view, supported by many Scriptural quotations, it was not heretical because the Church had not actually come to a fixed view; in fact it was Arius’ teaching of a view which clearly made Jesus ‘a creature’ which forced other Christians to think very clearly about the issue.

This is brought out well in one of my favourite books by Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century. Now, had Arius not been free to enunciate his views, no doubt a good deal of pain would have been averted, but the result of his boldness was to make Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers think carefully about why Arius was wrong. Their long argument with Arianism and its variants were the whetstone on which the doctrine of the Trinity was sharpened. Those who still refuse to accept the Trinity rarely show any acquaintanceship with the Cappadocian Fathers or with Athanasius, and, indeed, some do not know that they are Arians and that their arguments were exploded long ago. To lack a sense of history is to risk repeating what was once not heresy, but is now and will be for ever more.

However, for there to be heresy, there has to be an authority which declare orthodoxy, and for Catholics, this is what Jesus provided for when he gave the powers of binding and loosing to St Peter and his successors. For Orthodox Christians, this power lies with the successors of the Apostles and the Councils, a position which the Catholic Church regards as not going quite far enough as it does not recognise the special place of Rome. But without some authority, who is to say what changes, what developments are orthodox and which are not?

Choice and Church

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Anglicanism, Early Church, Faith

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Icon of Jesus

The response to my questions about the Catholic claims has been interesting, and I am only sorry Struans is on his holidays and therefore unable to contribute. It seems to me, as I said in response to a comment from Fr Aidan Kimmel, that I’d like to know more about how the Orthodox organise themselves. I’ve a suspicion, but no more than that, that the old stereotype about the Orthodox being organised around ethnic lines is no longer as true as it was when I was a lad. When I was at University there was one (now very famous) Don who was Orthodox, but I don’t recall that there was much of an Orthodox presence, and though I recall going to an event in London, it was very ‘ethnic’ – full of White Russians I recall, all of whom regarded Communism as the work of the Devil and hoped that Barry Goldwater was going to win the American election (that dates it, and me).  I went along to a lecture by an Anglican priests who was a member of a society named, if I recall aright, after St Sergius, which was putting forward the idea that the Anglican Church was effectively the English version of Orthodoxy, and as I remember it, the actual orthodox folk there were far from convinced, but it left me with the indelible impression that although there was no way of accessing it then, Orthodoxy was not only a viable alternative, in terms of Apostolicity, to Roman Catholicism, but closer to the way the early Church had operated; indeed, in so far as it seemed to consist of a church around its bishop, it was actually close to what the Baptists did in so far as they were in communion with each other, but did not attempt to say that one bishop (or in our case elder) had authority over another.  I’d be interested to hear more from any Orthodox readers Jessica may have.

I say this because what shines through the responses is that whatever an official line might be, under the banner of ‘unity’, even in the Roman Catholic Church (and I put it that way not to offend Roman Catholics, but so as not to offend those who also lay claim to the ‘catholic’ label) there is more choice than one might imagine. I can see that the traditionalists might lament the old Latin Mass, but I do wonder whether they have ever read the revised Missals from the 1950s, which really were not terribly good; the idea that the decline began with Vatican II is good polemic but bad history. So, whilst one might (and I would) say that it is not sensible to campaign for women priests, I can see why the ACTA brigade might do so and argue that once upon a time all the reforms of Vatican II were opposed in the name of an unchaging tradition which has changed, so why not this? I can see, as I say, the arguments for why not this one, but equally, why ACTA might pursue it. To themselves they look like courageous and farsighted folk, to the traditionalists they look like a right shower of fifth-columnists in need of a wall and a firing squad; yet both groups are within the Catholic Church – although the way in which some of them write about each other might make a chap wonder.

Human nature, fallen as it is, is what it is, and even when being regenerated through Grace, I am afraid it does not seem to incline folk calling themselves Christians to all face in the same direction. In some shape, size and form, choice is something all churches have to deal with – the question, I suppose, is how?

The Word made Flesh

23 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Bible, Christmas, Early Church, Faith, St John

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nativity

Quite often you hear people saying that Christianity has much in common with other ancient belief systems with living and dying gods. But what I don’t see in those other systems is what some people don’t see in Christianity – which is something unique; the claim that God became man and dwelt among us. In his Gospel, St John tells us:

 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Greek says eskhnwsen , for which some translators use the word ‘tabernacled’ – the Logos which was with God in the beginning has taken on the tabernacle of flesh. There is, here, a clear echo of Exodus 25-27; 40:34-38 and the tabernacle built by the Israelites where the glory of the Lord dwelt with them in the wilderness. St John sees the presence of God in the tabernacle as a type of the presence of God among us in Christ.

It is not surprising that some early Christians wanted to read this in a docetic way – that is that they thought God had entered into the body of a man; it also allowed them to say (as Muslims do) that God left the body of the man. These were ways of explaining what had happened which went along with the stories told by other belief systems, where gods imitating men were common. But this is not what St John tells us – he tells us something far more incredible – that God took on human flesh, dwelt among us and that men beheld ‘His glory’. This aligns with what St Paul tells us in Hebrews 4:15:

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

In taking on our flesh, in becoming one of us, Jesus becomes the perfect mediator between us and the Father. It was because Jesus was one of us, tempted yet remaining sinless, feeling our pain and yet remaining sinless, that He is able to intercede for us with the Father.

Some seem to think that the Christological conclusions reached in the fifth century have nothing to do with this earliest manifestation of the mystery of the incarnation when, in fact, they are the end stages of a long series of discussions. But there is nothing in what St Cyril says in his ‘Scolia on the Incarnation’ here which is not in line with what John says:

When therefore Holy Writ says that in Christ dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, we do not therefore say that the Word by Himself dwelt in another, the man Christ, nor plucking asunder one from another things united do we conceive of two sons, but this rather, that holy Writ calls by the name Christ sometimes separately the human nature of the Word of God which He having as His own, used as a Temple.

As Fr Aidan Kimmel says in a series of most stimulating and highly-informative pieces on topics which have been much to the fore here lately:

 I do not want to commit myself to the theory, which was popular in my day, that low christologies dominated in the early days of the Church and only evolved decades later into the high christologies we hold dear. The works of Larry Hurtado, Richard Bauckham, and others have powerfully challenged this thesis. But however the historians may finally land on this, we need to recognize that the move to the Nicene confession of the divinity of Christ required a dramatic reconstruction of divinity as understood by both Judaism and paganism. Neither provided the philosophical categories to accommodate what Christians believed and felt they needed to say about the One God and his Son Jesus Christ. Old categories needed to be broken and remade; new categories needed to be invented (see John Behr, The Way to Nicaea). Three centuries of theological trial and error passed. In the meantime Christians just kept worshipping the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, acclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and baptizing converts in the triadic Name.

The whole of Fr Aidan’s pieces are worth reading and studying, for they help show how the insights provided by John, Paul and the Evangelists provided generations of Christians with a challenge in terms of how to put the jigsaw together. God made flesh? How can that be?  Well, that was the challenge John sets for us. As St Cyril put it:

Therefore He has become partaker of blood and flesh. He has become man, being by nature Life, and begotten of the Life that is by nature, of God the Father.

He is the Father’s Only-begotten Word, Who became man in order that, uniting Himself with the flesh that by the law of its own nature was perishing, He might bring it back unto His own Life and make it through Himself partaker of God the Father.

For He is Mediator between God and men, according as it is written, knit unto God the Father naturally as God and of Him, and again unto men as man; and withal having in Himself the Father and being Himself in the Father.

For He is the impress and effulgence of His Person, and not distinct from the Essence, whereof He is impress and wherefrom He proceeds as effulgence.

Churches, Scripture and Tradition (2)

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Bible, Early Church, Faith

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Arius

Arius

Struans explains:

The Creeds and Doctrines of the Church have their foundation in Scripture, it obviously contains their truths, but their formulation and definition comes out of the tradition of the Christian community.

Now this is, literally, where the problems started. Take old Arius for example. When I was a lad, he was the great ‘baddie’ he’d been painted from the time of the triumph of orthodoxy onward, but more recently, not least in the thoughtful work of Rowan Williams on Arius. Now it would be very easy (which is why it was done in some circles) to huff and puff about barmy Anglicans rehabilitating heresy, but if you stay with the book, it does something which needs to be done, it puts Arius within the tradition of which he was part – orthodoxy.

Arius was a conservative sort of fellow. He knew his Bible well, and Jesus was the only-begotten Son. Well, there you go then, though old Arius, if He was ‘begotten’ there must have been a time when He didn’t exist. Arius was trying to stick to a rational, Biblically based explanation of the problem of ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost’, one embedded, as he saw it, in the tradition he had received.

But we cannot reduce things as Arius tried to, because there was another part of that same tradition whose reading of St John’s Gospel made such reductionism unacceptable. If the Word was in the beginning with God and was God, how did that square with what Arius was saying?  The two ideas had existed in tension for a long while, not just in Alexandria, but also in Antioch, the two intellectual power houses of the early Church; by contrast Rome had little to say on such matters. Latin is a marvellous language for power and bureaucracy, but lacks the subtle nuances of Greek, and the debate about the Trinity was nothing if not subtle and full of nuance. Indeed this was what irritated Arius, it seems, he wanted things kept simple. His reading of the Bible was shared by many. So if we are to understand tradition aright here, we have to understand this messiness, and appreciate the plurality of the arguments – whilst not, I would hope, losing sight of orthodoxy. But if we simply assume Arius was som old fool of a heretic, we shan’t understand either him or why Arianism had such support for so long. Indeed there are those who would argue that Islam picked up Arian and Nestorian elements, which wouldn’t be at all surprising given its views on these things.

So, Struans is right when he notes that the Trinity is

Not an ancient technical formula, but an understanding of God, which springs from the Gospel message. It is the product of the reflection and insight of the Church over many centuries. 

But we must, if we are to understand it, understand also that its opponents felt that they, too, were orthodox. Indeed, if one looks at Arius and Nestorius I think they are united by something interesting – they were both theological conservatives who sa Athanasius and Cyril of Alexander as dangerous innovators. After all, where, in the Bible, was the word ‘Trinity’ used, or for that matter the word ‘hypostasis’?  As conservatives, Arius and Nestorius wished to keep strictly within the very words of Scripture, and as there are always many conservatives, so did many others.

So it won’t do to see one lot as hopeless heretics and the other lot as orthodox. Orthodoxy was fought over and has to be fought over, and the fights come between people who claim the same tradition but have different readings of it.  Perhaps the greatest proof of the Holy Spirit leading the Church is that it was the non-conservative, non-literalist readings which triumphed?

Christians and Muslims

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Bible, Faith

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Copts under seigeThe recent posts on Muslims and Jews and who is and isn’t in ‘the Church’, raises the question of how we evangelise others. My friend Servus Fidelis makes an excellent point here:

Where does evangelization start with those who know nothing of Christ? It must start with two ideals that we neglected in the past: love and dignity of the person being converted. We cannot just pour out our faith into empty vessels for those vessels have lids or are filled with something other than what we wish to give them. And we do not admix these faiths and call that ecumenism. It is an emptying out that must occur by God’s Grace that will make these souls able to hold the Grace that Christ wants to give them.

He takes that further, noting:

It is better to begin with non-Christians not from the understanding we have but from the understanding the non-Christian has. If we can agree that there is 1 God then we have a starting place. If we can agree that value of a human person has infinite value, we have another. Should we start with the Gospel or should we start with the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy?

Now, I’ll defer to Rob here, but I think the two go together; if we are truly inspired by the Spirit we will bring them the Gospel though our work with them; but I’d begin there. They need to know that what brings us to them, to want to know and to love them, is that we are known and loved by Jesus, who died that we should all be forgiven.

Servus is undoubtedly correct when he comments”

To merely tell a Jew or a Muslim or a Pagan that they are heathens and faithless (as true as it might be) will not help save a single one of their souls. 

That has to be true. But how do we deal with the fact that from the Christian point of view they are in error?  Not, in my view, by saying that we all believe in ‘the God of Abraham’. That seems dangerous.  It could lead to a Muslim or a Jew becoming very offended if, for example, one refused to pray with them.

I don’t have much experience of Jews, and feel, instinctively, closer to them as we Christians have a common background; they threw the Christians out of the synagogues during St John’s lifetime, and since then we’ve gone our separate ways. Then, of course, there is also the long and sorry history of Christian anti-Semitism to bear in mind, and a man would be a fool if he didn’t bear that in mind when discussing this topic. But, at best, they have part of truth, but not The Truth, who is Jesus.

Muslims are a different matter. They come later in time. Mohammed was clearly aware of the Christian message but chose to believe what he was told by his ‘angel’. Well, it is a hard saying, but there are only two possibilities here: either Mohammed was right, and what he was told was the full truth; or he was listening to a demon: if the first, one must convert; if the latter, one must stay away.  I have no idea what John Paul II thought he was doing kissing the Koran, although I suspect it was an ‘ecumenical gesture’, but he was wrong; plain wrong. Symbols matter, as anyone involved in religious dialogue must know; we Christians should think seriously what message such gestures send out.

Muslims do not think they worship our God, and I, for one, am not disposed to disagree; the consequence surely is that they need to be evangelised?