The Essence of Christianity

The culture of our society is rapidly transforming. Some say that the modern era is ending; we are going past or beyond modernity into post-modernity. God only knows where we are going, the point is that we are definitely going somewhere. Christianity, like all elements of our culture, is not immune from this transformation and the opinions concerning how Christianity should react to these social and cultural transformations are legion. I do not want to write about how Christianity should or should not change is the coming era, partly because I do not pretend to have the answer to that question. What I do want to argue is that whatever changes may take place, they must not be allowed to affect orthodoxy – what I will here call the essence of Christianity. The last great transition that Christianity faced was the one to modernity and it is my opinion that Christianity performed very badly in the midst of cultural change. One group of Christians rejected orthodoxy as “outdated” and in fact, in my opinion, eventually ceased to be Christians altogether. Another group sought to ferociously defend what they saw as the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith. However, the fundamentals often were not the same thing as orthodoxy, not even the same thing as biblical teaching. There was much that was added to orthodoxy to form the fundamentals. Thus on the one hand one part of the Church diminished orthodoxy while another vastly inflated it. Part of the problem was that neither side really had a clear idea of what the essence of Christianity was. The following is a reflection on what the essential parts of the Christian faith are. I do so with the hope that Christians will have a firm understanding of orthodoxy as the future progresses.

These are the things that Christians maintain that they know by faith. While there may be proofs for the orthodox doctrines below, the primary way that the Christian knows these things are by faith. Together they comprise the Gospel and we understand them by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit who persuades us of their truth. All true Christians will affirm these things through faith; the Trinity, Creation, Fall, Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection.

Trinity

Christianity must begin with God and man’s knowledge of Him. God, who He is and His relation with man, pervades the entirety of orthodox doctrine. The end of Christianity is reunion with God and participation in His peace. God is a perfect being, meaning that He is all goodness, love, beauty, glory, power, and knowledge. He has all these things of Himself and requires nothing outside of Himself. It also means that God is self-existent; He alone depends on no other of His existence but exists necessarily. Therefore God is eternal; He does not exist in time as we do but is beyond time and all things are present to Him. He is infinite. God is also Triune. This means that God, while He is one being, is three persons. There is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is unbegotten. The Son is begotten (exists as an extension of) by the Father as the Father’s Wisdom, but has always existed like the Father because the Father, who is eternal, has eternally begotten Him. The Holy Spirit proceeds – flows forth – from the Father (and the Son?). The Spirit is the Presence of God, but, like the Wisdom, its own person. All three exist in perfect unity as one Being. It is because of this perfect unity that God is love; each member of Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – perfectly loves the other two. The Trinity, therefore, is a sort of dive dance (perichoresis) and this is why God is love; because something of a community exists in God. God is all gracious, loving, and merciful, though He owes no other being anything. Finally, though we have described many of the characteristics of God, God is ultimately, as a result of His infinitude, a deep mystery that we cannot fully fathom. This does not mean that we cannot known something about God, only that we cannot know Him exhaustively.

Creation

God, according to Christian orthodoxy, is the Creator and Lord the all that exists. He is the fount of all being; all that exists depends on Him for existence. God alone is eternal. All things visible (physical) and invisible (spiritual) have their beginning in God. God created the universe out of nothing. He also sustains all things with his Providence. All the functions of the universe, what are often called natural laws, are mere extensions of God’s will. Everything, from the formation of a star to the growth of a tree, is an act of God because it is God who ordains the nature of all things He has created. This means that God is sovereign over His creation and there is nothing that is beyond His potential control. For this reason Christians call God the Lord. God also willed that there should be creatures made in His image. One kind of these creatures is man. Man is said to be made in God’s image because, like God, man has reason, free will, morality, and creativity and also because man has the ability to know God. God created man in His image so that He might have a relationship with man where man, out of the graciousness and love of God, may enjoy the blessings of God, as long as man maintains that relationship with God. These blessings are the enjoyment of God (His beauty, love, goodness, etc.), enjoyment of the created order (including human relationships), and dominion over the created order. The last means that God has given man the gift (and duty) of creating culture.

Fall

Man, however, has not maintained the proper relationship with God. Humanity has desired to be independent of God and secure blessings independent of God. Rightful communion with God requires adherence to his moral law, since He is all goodness and we must adhere to this goodness in order to be truly right with God. Principally this moral law consists of love of God and love of one’s neighbor. But man came to not desire to imitate God’s goodness but to be his own standard of goodness. In short, human beings love themselves more than they love God. Therefore man has fallen away from God and from his original state of innocent, dominion, and right standing with God. God denies man the blessings that can only come from a right relationship with God, since all things come from God. In this fall man’s will is horribly bent so that he no longer even desires or values a right relationship with God or the doing of good works. Because he is bent, man deserves the punishment of God; God totally forsaking man (i. e. Hell). However, God has showed mercy to humanity and has not cast us away totally but shows common grace to all with the hope that mankind might repent and return to Him.

Incarnation

To afford humanity an opportunity to return to Him, God became man in order to be a Mediator between God and man. This was accomplished by the Father sending the Son to fulfill the role of Mediator, so that one of the divine persons could mediate on the behalf of man with the rest of the divine being. The Son of God became Incarnate – meaning that God became completely man while remaining completely God. This is indeed a deep mystery and the Christians does not try to fully explain it but understands it through faith as something that is beyond human understanding (such as some elements of quantum physics). The Incarnate God was born of a virgin named Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit and was given the name Jesus. Jesus was called Christ – “anointed one” – because He was anointed by the Holy Spirit at his baptism as the Savior of humanity. As the anointed Mediator and Savior, Jesus lived a perfect life as God, though as man he suffered all the problems and ills that afflict humanity. During his time on earth he preached the good news about the Kingdom of Heaven and the salvation offered by God and thereby acted not only as a mediator of justice but of the knowledge of God as well.

Atonement

After his ministry was complete he was handed over by the Jewish people to suffer under Pontius Pilot. Under Pilot he was crucified so that the Son of God might undergo death as a sacrifice as a God. On the cross he was also forsaken utterly by God. By incurring the punishment of death and complete forsakenness that was owed to us, Christ satisfied the judgment of God that demanded punishment of the sins of man so that our debt to God might be paid and our relationship with God might be repaired. Christ also through his Incarnation achieved the means by which the grace he won for us on the cross might be transferred to us so that we might not only have our debts forgiven but that we might have our bent natures repaired so that we might again forsake the love of ourselves and love God and our neighbor as we ought to. This grace is offered to all who will accept the gift of faith and preserve in the faith.

Resurrection

Jesus Christ did not remain dead, however, but after remaining in the grave for three days he physically rose from the dead. He arose, however, not with the old body that was crucified but with a new transformed body. This body is the resurrection body which he won not only for himself, but for all mankind. In this body there is no pain or suffering and there is a restoration of dominion. It is with this new body, or rather the old body transformed, that all mankind will be resurrected with at the end of time. At this time all who were once dead will be restored to life and there will be a great judgment where Christ will judge all according to what they have done. Those who are judged to evil, those who have persisted in their rebellion from God, God will forsake utterly. Those who, by grace won by Christ on the cross, are judged to be good will witness the new heavens and the new earth whereby all of creation is redeemed. There will be a new community of glorified saints and all the saints will dwell intimately with God.

This concludes Christian orthodoxy. Yet it does not include the entirety of Christian doctrine. The rest of Christian doctrine is not immediately known by faith, but rather must be exposited from the revelations God has given us and formed into a coherent theology. But since these doctrines are not the deliverances of faith but of the careful study, conducted by frailties of human reason, of what God has revealed to us, they remain subject to change as God’s Church is continually sanctified. However, all of these doctrines rest on the foundation of Christian orthodoxy, which acts as a guide in all of our theological studies. To borrow a metaphor from C. S. Lewis, it is a hallway that all Christians pass through. There are many doors leading to many different rooms of doctrine, but all are connected to the main passage.