Tag Archives: Theology

St Cyril and the theology of the Incarnation

01 Friday Jul 2016

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St Cyril of alex

As we can see from this brief survey of St. Cyril’s theology, the Incarnation was at the heart of all his thinking. The Incarnate Word unites our nature with that of God as a salvific act; the power of the one heals and transforms the marred nature of the other. It was essential to this scheme that the Word suffered, albeit ‘impassibly’. There is only one personal reality in the Incarnate Lord, and that subject is the divine Word who has made a human nature His own; the Word has not simply adopted a body, He has taken on a whole human life; He is ‘the Word enfleshed.’ [McGuckin, p. 186.] The whole point of the Incarnation is that through it, our fallen nature is redeemed and restored and we become, once again, what God meant us to be, recreated in His divine image. Christ’s flesh is, indeed, ‘life-giving’. If His flesh were not divine flesh it could not heal us, but if it were not also flesh, we could not receive its healing at the Eucharistic Feast. What Christ deifies in his own flesh, he deifies through Grace in mankind.

This was the position St. Cyril enunciated against the heresies from Constantinople and Antioch, and he had found it years before in his commentary on St. John 1:11-13, where he realised that the Incarnation had three aims: to condemn sin in the flesh; to overcome death by his death; and to make us children of God by which we receive a regeneration in the Spirit. [ Farag, p. 111.] As Professor Keating so aptly remarks: ‘There is something of grandeur, and even beauty, in Cyril’s conception of our share in the life of the triune God.’ Keating, Divine Life, p. 205.]

It has long been held in parts of the Protestant tradition that patristic exegesis is, in fact, eisegesis – that is a misreading of the Bible. Despite the fact that the Fathers helped establish what was, and was not, the canon of Holy Scripture, we are asked to believe that their inspiration failed them when they came to examine the same texts. This is not the Orthodox understanding, for it separates text, meaning and action. St. Cyril was not just a theologian; he was a bishop and pastor, a great teacher who held responsibility before God for his flock. He wrote not for the academic journal, but for the salvation of souls. Everything he confessed he derived from Scripture and from the Alexandrian Holy Tradition of which it is such an important part, and in setting his own mark upon that tradition he is, indeed, ‘the Seal of the Fathers.’

St. Cyril wrote not for himself, nor for posterity, but as a pastor. He was the servant of that shepherd who had died for His sheep; he was willing to do the same. Every word he wrote was for the salvation of souls. We should remember that this is the true purpose of theology.

Born again?

09 Thursday Jan 2014

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As we explore some of the ramifications of Strauns’ posts, now with considerable help from Rob, it is of great importance to stress what he writes here:

Genuine experience of God is the origin of all theological understanding (spiritual experience = revelation = scripture historically understood = theology). On the experience level we have to sort the genuine from the false

Now that begs several questions, one of which comes out of the prolonged correspondence between Bosco and myself. I find Bosco frustrating because he tells us he is born again from a personal encounter with Jesus, but apart from assuring him he is ‘saved’ and that the Roman Catholic Church and organised ‘religion’ are bad things, I am not sure what else this means to him. As someone concerned with practical evangelisation, I wouldn’t find stressing I am saved, that the RCC is ‘a cult’ and ‘you should ask Jesus to show himself to you’ at all useful when i talk to folk on a Saturday morning. Bosco thinks this is questioning his experience; it isn’t. How can one? If he says it happened it is real to him; but this sort of personal experience, however ‘genuine’ to the person to whom it has happened, gives the listener/reader nothing to work with.

Rob is right to stress that contextual theology can help, but is not the same (not that Struans claimed it was) as an experience of the Risen Lord. But what, precisely is that ‘experience’ and how does it map onto the experience of others: there’s a very real sense in which a unique experience is useless in evangelisation because it is not something to which others can relate; the question for the evangelist is how to convey what is experienced to those who have not experienced it. I think there is also, in that, the difficult question of what it means to encounter the Risen Lord?

Here, without criticising him, Bosco is again a useful example. He is not the first American I have had tell me that he is ‘born again’ or that ‘religion’ is pointless and that what I need is a ‘personal relationship’ with God. All of these can be the opposite of useful in evangelisation. By definition, when I am out on Saturday morning, I am speaking to those with no experience of Jesus.  Now it may be Bosco’s experience that if someone tells a person to ask Jesus into their lives He comes, but I have, alas, not found that Jesus operates on a ‘I call, you come’ basis in the way Bosco has.

In my experience, the experience of Jesus is a process. There is, sometimes, a great revelation, but sometimes this proves an insecure foundation for a stable and life-long faith; but more commonly, there is a moment of Grace which grows in the living, but which is like a tender shoot and needs nurturing – not least from the community of faithful Christians who will not make such a person feel in some way second-rate because they have not had a voice from a burning bush or Jesus make a personal appearance; indeed, I have found here I am often dealing with feelings which need to be explained in the context of what Christ has told to others. Whatever may be the case with a Pope and the limited areas in which he can speak infallibly, I have no such charism, and find anyone who claims any such thing, dangerous.

Here, the process of nurturing helps me as much as it helps the inquirer. Truths that I may have taken for granted suddenly take on new dimensions when a new Christian asks me questions, and my own faith is kept freshly irrigated by the Grace that comes with sharing it. That, before I say anything more, is the context of the Great commission – we are told to go share the Gospel. To do that requires, at least across the fifty years I have been doing it, more than telling a fellow to ask Jesus in – even if it also involves that too.

Theology & The Context of Revelation

09 Thursday Jan 2014

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It has been said: that God reveals Himself in two books Scripture and Nature they are both ‘true’ but our understanding of either one or both of these books (Theology & Science) may be faulty and result in a conflict between them. Going further God seeks to reveal Himself to all cultures and all faiths contain some truth but given the fallen state of mankind we need to consider the vast variety of spiritual and religious experience carefully and assess it by the touchstone of the revelation of Jesus Christ, and records of His eye witnesses.

Comparing the OT and NT understanding of God it is obvious that the scriptures were produced in given cultural contexts and that the revelation was developmental – culminating in the incarnation.

Scripture claims to contain a revelation of God; there is that ‘incomplete revelation’ and therefore ‘imperfect revelation’ of the OT which comes to us in a certain cultural context, and here we must particularly be aware of the need of contextual understanding. I do not mean to say that contextualization is un-required in the NT but rather to illustrate that the vast advancement in knowledge of God through and in Christ demonstrates the need of it. Christ said there were many things He needed to teach but they were not ready and that later the Holy Spirit would lead them (the apostles) into ALL truth. This seems like Jesus used ‘theological contextualization’.

However it’s possible for our ‘theological contextualization’ to run amok as it functions on the ‘reason’ leg of our three legged ‘theological stool’ – scripture, tradition and reason. We may contextualize our theology but it is vital that we do not compromise the revelation given. We must not make use of ‘Contextual Theology’ to force scripture to fit comfortably with our own context. The processes of exegesis and hermeneutics must be applied to sort out what ‘truly has been revealed of God in the context of the original revelation. We may then interpret it into our own context or the one we work into, without loss of ‘revealed truth’. Truth is not ‘relative’ we must not bend it to our own or any other context or fashion.

God actually chose Abraham and Israel, their history and experience as the particular vehicle of His self revelation. We therefore give particular attention to this culture and context in theology and in positioning ourselves to interpret the revelation for our own time and culture. The history and experience provides us with a guideline to interpret our own spiritual experience.

Genuine experience of God is the origin of all theological understanding (spiritual experience = revelation = scripture historically understood = theology). On the experience level we have to sort the genuine from the false, in this respect those pre the incarnation and post ascension are in the same boat in that all their experience is subjective. This is why the writings of the apostolic age are unique in their authority as they record the objective’ experience of those who ‘knew the incarnate God’ intimately and those writings of others that were available to be confirmed by them. This eyewitnesses testimony is ‘a more sure word of prophecy’ 1 Pt. 1:19

The task of ‘Contextual Theology’ and transmission of this revelation can be broken down into three stages’:

a)      Distinguish between which elements of scripture are unalterable revelation of God and the ways he requires us to respond and which simply represent the cultural setting. With the OT identify which parts represent an incomplete/imperfect revelation. We will not all agree on the finer details or on what the non essentials are.

b)      Distinguish between which parts of the new host culture are compatible with the gospel and which parts are incompatible.

c)      Distinguish between which parts of our own practice is cultural baggage not to be impose on the new host culture.

If we have thought through our faith and are thoroughly conversant with the NT we will already have distinguished in our own minds between revelation and cultural baggage.

Scripture and tradition requires contextual analysis but ‘revelation’ is the unalterable truth of God.

True knowledge of God is ‘experiential knowledge’ i.e. ‘that we might know Him’, here the ‘Anthropological Model’ assists. We do not come to such knowledge of God by reason or philosophy but may employ these tools to assess the validity of our knowledge in order to confirm, amend or reject it.

We must understand that reason and contextualization of theology as a function of reason, will not itself bring us or anyone else to a knowledge of God. The first three chapters of 1 Corinthians warn of the limitations of any accumulated cultural/contextual wisdom:

 “God made foolish the wisdom of the world”

Paul categorically states that the world through its philosophy did not come to know God and that it was in God’s wisdom that they should not do so by that means.” 1 Cor. 1:19-22.

Nevertheless “we can speak philosophy among the perfect; but not a philosophy of this age, nor of the useless leaders of this time. We speak instead, a divine philosophy in the hidden mystery which God ordained before the ages for our rectification, which none of the leaders of this age recognized; for if they had recognize, they would not have crucified the master of that rectification” 1 Cor. 2:6-8 F. Fenton

Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God; He is the wisdom of God to us. Contextualization must never detract from the person, work, character, mission or authority of The Christ already revealed. The essential question and our appropriate response remains – “Who do you say that I am” and “follow me”. If we get these two right we are Christian if we don’t we are not.

I consider the purpose of ‘Contextual Theology’ is best restricted to considering how we may uncover the revealed of Christ so that it becomes implement in a meaningful manner in the target culture, rather for determining what the revelation actually is. The application of exegesis to the text and its cultural setting will clarify the actual revelation.

We could think of the six models as transparent overlays through which we view the task of uncovering revelation. In this way we benefit from the strengths and hopefully avoid the weaknesses.

Greeks search for (contextual) philosophy we preach Christ crucified as God’s self revelation.

Contexts and experience

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

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If we simply say that in knowing Jesus we don’t need God-talk – that is theology – then we effectively say we’re not talking about Jesus, who is God. Indeed, to say Jesus is God requires us to know what that means and is, itself, theo-logy. Just because some of the odder ideas of modern Christianity come from theology, should not blind us to the good things which have come, and continue to come, from it. For every John Shelby Spong, there is an NT Wright, and those who have a go at Rowan Williams ought to read some if his theology.

In answer to a good question from Jess, Struans wrote:

Theology isn’t something just coming from others and which we are mere consumers. We are all theologians ourselves. If we don’t have our own theology (which could well be completely co-terminus with the theologies of the magisterium of Rome, believing all of the documents when the come out without debate) then it’s difficult to know whether we are Christians or not. Christianity is something that is embodied, not observed.

That is one of the problems with responding to the series in an intelligent (or mildly so) manner.

I am not sure what is meant by us all having ‘our own theology’ in the context of the historic creeds and the history of Christianity.  Bosco, I think, does have his ‘own’ theology, and one of the problems with communicating with him is that is so personal that it maps onto the common history of the Faith. We are not, to be sure. mere ‘consumers’ but neither, if we confess Christianity, are we originators.

Christianity may be embodied in us – or so we might claim – but as it has a meaning, if our claim embodies nothing of the commonly accepted meaning, then, in what sense that is real can that personal claim be sustained?

Now one could advance the claim that in my personal context – by which I include societal context – my revelation is that Jesus is a great moral teacher and a heck of a good guy, and that makes me a Christian. I am not sure, and would like to hear from Struans before he goes, how he’s respond to such claims. It seems to me that he’s have to accept it.  The traditional response would be not to. Why?

Why, would involve not a disquisition on my personal experience, but on historic experience. That is where, although not an RC, I can make no real sense of Strauns’ claim that ‘There are (presumably) as many theologies by communicate RCs are there are people’; to me the word he needed there was ‘opinions’. If by theologies we mean opinions about God, then Strauns is clearly correct. But as he senses, there is a problem here:

yet in a sense there is also a theology of the church as it speaks, and the pope speaks for his church. This is a difference with synodical churches, which by and large, don’t have people who can ‘speak for’ their churches. So in that sense there is a theology of the RCC which is articulated by the pope. However, it’s not ‘the theology’ of the RCC, it is one of many as the RCC has theologies of all of its communicants (including individual cardinals and popes), and also have an officially voiced theology too.

Struans here seems to me simply wrong. There is a theology of the RCC and it is articulated by the Magisterium. You can claim to be an RCC, but if you don’t agree with its dogmas, then whatever you claim, you aren’t.  Just because, as a Christian, there are things I believe in common with the RCC does not make me an RC, neither does it make my opinion an RC theology.

This is where the problem for me lies – Struans is talking about opinions and calling them theologies. Or am I missing something?

Theology in the context of ego?

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

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This is by way of an initial response to Strauns’ interesting series, and I’d echo his comments in his final post about not shouting loudly as though the other person isn’t too bright. On the whole, this place is excellent at not shouting at each other, and has created an environment where we can discuss what divides us without forgetting what unites us.

My initial thought is that one reason that discussions turn away from mutual illumination into recrimination is a form of fear: a fear, sometimes voiced, that the other person does not really believe in the Christian God in the way we do; and a fear, usually unvoiced, that what they say challenges our own presuppositions and beliefs in a way which makes us uncomfortable. There’s a third, contextual response, which comes from our membership of a particular Christian community, and which can make the argument degenerate still further; if we feel that our ‘tribe’ is under attack, as loyal members of it we join in the defence.

So, it would be easy to respond to Strauns’ posts as Bosco has by mocking the idea of theology. This seems based on the fact that as he’s had a particular revelation, so what’s the point? That suggests to me he hasn’t actually read either what Jess wrote on Saturday, or what Struans has been writing since then. I could react to that by saying he’s being myopic and a bit selfish, and the modern way would be to say that if that’s what he wants to be, who am I to judge?  If, as he appears to believe, the only way of access to God is via a private revelation, then he’d no doubt be right, but as the history of the Johannine community suggests, even before death of St John, that way of running a church had collapsed. There were folk, as we can see from the Johannine epistles, who said that their revelation was not the same as John’s, and insisted they were right; this seems to have broken up that church, as it does to so many charismatic churches.

The context here is one of intense personal belief. It is a version of the fifth of Strauns’ models – but without the concern for community or others. It is centred solely on the self and effectively says, as Bosco often does, ask God to show himself to you and he will. Well, here’s a confession, I first did that at age 10, and I did it for thirty years, before realising that He already was, but not in the way I wanted. If Bosco is speaking only to those who have had his experience, he is talking to himself; this is not what the Apostles did, neither is it the way they evangelised. So, I wonder here whether the real context is not one of an intensely individualistic culture centred on solipsism in which all that matters is an experience which one cannot communicate to others and which in actuality leaves oneself as the only saved person in the village?  In short, it is not talking about God, it is talking about oneself. That is not so much a model of how to do theology, as how not to do it.

I shall return, in the next post, to looking at some of what Struans says, but recent exchanges with Bosco remind me of the dangers of going just from one’s own personal experience. If others can’t relate to it, and if it simply allows you to criticise everyone else, it is egoloy – talk about the ego, and not talk about God.

Theology in context: a few comments

05 Sunday Jan 2014

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First thing is to thank Struans for his posts, and Jess for framing them so well with CS Lewis. There is indeed the temptation to say we don’t need theology, just experience of God, when, in fact, we need both. Lewis was right, a personal experience is just that. In fact I would go further than Lewis and question a personal revelation which was unique. It is unclear to me how one characterises an individual who claims to know Jesus and yet whose personal experience fails to map on to what billions of others who have known him say; the comparison seems to me to be with those strange men who think they are the Pope even though no orthodox Catholic, or indeed orthodox anything else, recognises them as such. In the past such men found a place in an asylum, now, if they strike it lucky, they get their own reality TV show. But they are, essentially, self-referential; their experience, whatever it is, is about themselves; this seems to me not the direction taken by Our Lord or historical Christianity. In the context of an atomised society in which individuals are obsessed with themselves, it is perhaps the perfect example what Struans is talking about in his series on theology in context:

Contextual theology then is talk about God arising from a particular social context, relating to the problems and concerns of that particular situation.

Theology, he tells us:

has to take account of all three elements [Scripture and Tradition (the text); the historical situation of the text and the people (context) and the community of faith (the people of God]. A theology which only repeats Scripture and Tradition in an ossified way, does not articulate what the text has to say in the present context. It becomes irrelevant for the people of God who live in a particular context. There must always be dialogue between text and context related to the people of God as the subject of faith.

So we have ‘European theology’ and ‘black theology’ etc. While I agree that all theology has a context, I have two main difficulties with this formulation.

The first is it is far too general. What, when it is at home is “European theology”? As one familiar with Russian and Greek Orthodoxy, as well as Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, I can attach no real meaning to the term ‘European’. Struans has narrowed this down a bit by saying it is “western European”, but I am still not sure that there is a common “western European” way of talking about God. The Thomist inheritance of European Catholicism seems to me sufficiently different from Lutheran or Anglican theologies for me to question whether there is any gain in understanding from lumping them together under the same label?

From my own experience, I would say that theologising comes from the context of our spiritual lives, and that a Benedictine, a Coptic and an Athonite monk have more in common with each other, and indeed with a Buddhist monk (as Thomas Merton recognised) than they have with a Protestant Pastor in ‘Europe’. Here, it seems to me, the context which matters is prayer life and certain insights which come from the silence and the contemplation; nationality and geographical location are the least important things. Theology – talking about God – is done in many contexts, but I am unsure that geography is a useful organising principle.

My second difficulty with this is historical.

 All theology is the product of a context. We can only speak about a theology that makes sense at a certain place and in a certain time.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. We can still make sense of the theology of Leo the Great, Luther and Calvin, not to mention St Paul. If we do so solely (and I emphasise that word) by adapting them to our own place and time, we miss a huge amount. Indeed the efforts of scholars like Tom Wright, Richard Bauckham, Rowan Williams and Joseph Ratzinger (and many others) across the last three decades has been largely devoted to correcting the presentism of much theological writing, arguing that we understand, say, the theology of Cyril of Alexandria better if we try to understand it in its own context. That does not mean, and never has meant, that Cyril’s Christology makes sense only in the context of his time and place, as it has become part of the on-going theology of a Church which is global and timeless.

One of the difficulties of academic theology can be that it becomes so tied up with its own trends and recent history, that some of its adherents forget that they are part of a long tradition which has been discussing the same phenomenon – the revelation that Christ is Lord and it is through Him we are saved – for two millennia across cultures as diverse as possible. No Catholic theologian can be unaware of insights from the past and from different cultures. We may express our understanding of this rich tradition in language of our time and place, but a theology which is only of a certain time and place is an impoverished thing.

We are pigmies standing on the shoulders of giants, and Augustine (a North African Latin speaker of the fourth century) Cyril of Alexandria (an Egyptian Greek-speaker of the fifth century), Leo the Great (a Roman Latin speaker of the fifth century), Gregory Nazianzen (a Greek speaker from Cappadocia) all contributed to the understanding of Christology which Chalcedon in 451 represents. Their concepts and ideas fed, and feed, into an ongoing theological stream of great richness; this we all dip into. In that act, it changes, or ought to, our own, present-centred concerns, opening our eyes to the richness of what we inherit. Whether we are capable of passing that on to future generations is a moot point.

Doing theology

04 Saturday Jan 2014

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‘Theology’ is, literally, ‘God-talk’, and although it is sometimes treated as though it was just an academic discipline to be done by those called ‘theologians’, we are all theologians when we talk, as we do here, about God.

It is easy to forget that St Paul was not writing academic theology when he wrote his epistles; he was writing as a missionary and church founder, trying to deal with the practical problems encountered by his congregations. The same is true about so many of the Church Fathers. The achievement of St Cyril of Alexandria becomes even more remarkable when we recall that all the theology he wrote came from his pastoral concerns as Patriarch of Alexandria; the same is true of St Leo the Great. These men did not write from some distanced academic position, but because they walked and talked with God constantly.

When CS Lewis wrote his Mere Christianity he was advised to steer clear of theology:

Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I am going to tell you in this last book. They all say `the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion’. I have rejected their advice. I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means ‘the science of God,’ and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated like children?

He quoted a contemporary version of our own dear Bosco:

In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, `I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal !’

But Lewis would have none of this, even though he understood its origin:

Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God-experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion-all about feeling God in nature, and so on-is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. 

Theology, Lewis argued, was of real practical value:

 In the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones – bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties to-day are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected. To believe in the popular religion of modern England is retrogression – like believing the earth is flat.

How right that is, and how little of the ‘new’, as Geoffrey commented, there is in ‘New Age’ teaching; much of it is a mix of old Gnostic ideas.  As Lewis put it:

If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference.

But as soon as you look at any real Christian writings, you find that they are talking about something quite different from this popular religion. They say that Christ is the Son of God (whatever that means). They say that those who give Him their confidence can also become Sons of God (whatever that means). They say that His death saved us from our sins (whatever that means).

There is no good complaining that these statements are difficult. Christianity claims to be telling us about another world, about something behind the world we can touch and hear and see. You may think the claim false; but if it were true, what it tells us would be bound to be difficult-at least as difficult as modern Physics, and for the same reason.

Now the point in Christianity which gives us the greatest shock is the statement that by attaching ourselves to Christ, we can `become Sons of God’. One asks `Aren’t we Sons of God already? Surely the fatherhood of God is one of the main Christian ideas?’ Well, in a certain sense, no doubt we are sons of God already. I mean, God has brought us into existence and loves us and looks after us, and in that way is like a father. But when the Bible talks of our `becoming’ Sons of God, obviously it must mean something different. And that brings us up against the very centre of Theology.

It is in this sense that we are beginning a short series of posts by Struans, which follow up on the three posts we have just had on the Trinity. There will be five of them, and I hope that you will enjoy them – and feel inspired to comment.