In Defense of Liturgy

Upon recently moving to Philadelphia I have had to find a new church to become an attendee of. As I was visited various churches, I decided to evaluate my preference based on three criteria; the quality of the preaching, the sense of community in the church, and the liturgy. This is because I have become convinced that liturgy plays a central role in the life of the Christian church, no less than the preaching and fellowship. Most Evangelicals are “non-liturgical.” Now, in reality, all forms of worship are liturgical. Our English word liturgy comes from the Greek word leitourgia, which means “a public work.” So the real question is not whether a service is liturgical but how much we consciously ordered our liturgy.

Human beings are highly symbolic creatures. We are constantly having our beliefs and mentalities confirmed or challenged by the swirling sea of symbols that engulfs us. Symbols are meant to convey certain ideas people, and thus it is easy to understand that practically everything we do is symbolic. If I drive an Audi, a BMW, or a Ferrari I am trying to convey the idea that I am well off financially. The car you drive is a symbol. So are the kinds of clothes you wear or the type of architecture that your office building is constructed in, not mention the art, music, and literature of the culture around you. If you think that you are uninfluenced by symbols, most you simply haven’t thought about how influenced you really are. Symbols are most effective when they are strung together to form a ritual. A ritual, for our purposes here, is a group of symbols (or symbolic ideas) that are meant to convey a narrative. By participating in a ritual of symbols and symbolic acts we gradually acquire, to a certain degree, the narrative this ritual communicates. Think of the average American “work ritual.” Think how influential this schedule is on our lives. In pre-industrial societies people did not think in terms of “weeks” and “week-ends.” Time, for them, revolved around the seasons because they were tied to the land. But today weeks and weekends seem “natural” to us. Our ritual of the work week shows how highly we value work, production, industry, success, achievement, etc. Five days of hard work follow by two of rest (and often indulgence) reflects the modern American mentality of working hard so that we can enjoy brief but powerful moments of pleasure. The endless, repetitiveness of this cyclic ritual reinforces, for some people, the hallow meaninglessness of it all.

Therefore, we have seen that human beings are ritualistic (and therefore liturgical) creatures. We are daily (and often unconsciously) imbibed with mentalities and values from the kinds of rituals we engage in. Above I alluded to the modern ritual of work, which reinforces the narrative of our culture, which is based on achievement, sudden bursts of hedonism, materialism, work-aholism, etc. It is obvious that many of these things are in conflict with the Christian faith. And since Christians, who are commanded by the apostle not to be idle but to work, must engage in this work ritual, it is necessary that Christians have an alternative liturgy that counter-acts the worldliness of the worldly “liturgies.” By engaging in the church’s liturgy we are disciplined; we learn to train our hearts towards the story of the gospel rather than the narrative of the world. Most traditional worship services begin with a call to worship. The glory of God is extolled and we are invited to adore Him in the reading of a Psalm and the singing of a hymn. However, with the glory of God in view, we are moved next to grasp our sinfulness. Therefore, it follows that we confess our sins to God and ask for His forgiveness. We are given the assurance of the gospel; that Christ has died for sins so that we might inherit righteousness and everlasting life. With this in mind, the service proceeds to the preaching of the Scriptures. Through the Bible God instructs us; He develops the maturity of our faith. After the sermon we are called to partake in the Lord’s Supper, where we grow in our unity in Christ through communion with his spirit and meditation on his passion. We find our faith strengthened. What we see here is nothing less than our participation in the gospel narrative; the glory of God, human sinfulness, the Atonement of Christ, our sanctification through the Word and the Spirit, and our communion with God through Christ. Thus traditional liturgy trains us in the gospel and directs our gaze towards God.

Churches who do not cultivate such self-consciously liturgical services will fail to discipline its members in the story of the gospel. Even worse, they may allow the values and mentalities of the world seep in. This in fact is what I believe occurs often in church worship services. “Non-liturgical” services very often incorporate the “liturgy” of the world. Church services become aimed at entertainment or emotional experiences rather than disciplining people in the gospel. The average Evangelical service in America often reinforces our culture’s individualism and self-absorption. The church’s music is meant to make me feel a spiritual high. The sermon is meant to make me feel good. Worship becomes about what God can do for us rather than what we should become for God. A very well-meaning lady I once talked to said that her church was non-liturgical so that people off the street would feel welcome. I understand the desire of many Christians to make their churches look welcoming, especially because of the negative press that Christians often get in today’s culture. However, we must see what being “seeker sensitive” really means is that the liturgy of the Church is adapted to fit the liturgy of the world.

Our outreach to non-believers must be model on the outreach of Christ. True Christ took the form of a servant and humbled himself, even to death on the cross, for our sake, but he also rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father. Christ descended into our corrupt world so that he could ascend again, taking the saints with him. Likewise the Church needs to be missional to be sure, but in its condescension to non-believers the Church cannot forget that it must also ascend, taking those for whom it descended with it. The mission of the Church is to be the instrument with which God turns the gaze of men away from themselves and towards Himself. Unless we do this the Church ceases to be a vehicle for salvation and becomes merely a business selling entertainment, emotional experiences, or a temporal fix to an existential crisis. Unless the overriding concern of our liturgy is to discipline men in the adoration of the ineffable glory of God, we merely cater the desires of the world. When we do everything according to the desires to the non-Christian walking in off the street, we find ourselves controlled by the ethos of these same people. The worship of the Church ceases to be something established on a firm foundation, but rather something that sways back in forth with the changing winds of (usually popular) culture. This reinforces the idea that the Church, or even Christianity itself, is meant to whatever people feel that it should rather than what God would have it do. When the very worship of God is done to the desires of men, what else shouldn’t be?

Ultimately, the Church is meant to transform people, not people the Church. Our liturgy must reflect this fact. It must raise people up rather than bend down to do their bidding.

The Weakness of American Evangelicalism - Part II

Continuing discussion of why Evangelicalism is weak culturally in America today. In the last post I identified the conflict model, anti-intellectualism, and populism. Now we look at the last two character traits of Evangelicalism that contribute to this weakness and offer conclusions as to why this matters for Evangelicals.

Consumerism - This trait is to some extent the result of populism. With the over-arching emphasis being on numbers, churches have focused on policies that bring in the masses. Evangelical churches tend to emphasize the portion of the great commission in which Christ calls his Church to spread the gospel to all people, but ignores altogether Christ's command for us to make disciples. The result is that marketing takes precedence over spiritual formation. Church becomes a business and the gospel a product. This trend is not lost on non-believers. I heard one skeptic say recently that the Church is merely another business that is out to get people's money by peddling the greatest product possible; hope for life after death. The irony is that the shallow consumerism of Evangelicalism is one of the biggest turn-offs to potential converts. The mega-church pastor is an oft-ridiculed stereotype in modern American culture (for my critique of the stereotypical suburban mega-church pastors, see my blog post from last October: http://spicey-spiceitup.blogspot.com/2010/10/charlatans-and-gospel.html). Though I do not have solid data to back this up, I observe that most of the large "successful" churches drawn not from the mass 0f unbelievers, but from other churches. In any case, the result is that American Evangelicalism has become materialistic (of which the health and wealth gospel is an outstanding example) in order to draw in 'giving units.' It has primarily become about feeling good, managing your money, or merely being entertained. The end result is a Christianity that is utterly worldly. Paul in his epistle to the Colossians tells his audience to focus entirely the things above, where Christ is seated. Paul does not mean by this that Christians are to be other-worldly and Platonic. Instead, it means that we are to desire higher and eternal things such as beauty, love, peace, joy, hope, and the knowledge of God. These are manifested in God's creation and so we should enjoy them through the creation; I do not want to pose a spiritual/material dualism. But modern Evangelicalism has a knack for watering down these heavenly things into base substitutes. Love becomes sentimentality, peace and hope becomes feel-goodery, and joy becomes mere entertainment and amusement. The most immediate danger is that this is idolatry; unlike the heavenly blessings, which point to Christ, these things point only to the worldly. More to our purpose, they make Evangelicalism culturally weak, because it means that Evangelicalism focuses exclusively on the base rather than high. Is it any wonder that film, art, literature and music so dominated by secularism? Secularism dominates these areas when Christianity produces kitsch sentimentalism manifested in praise songs, Christian romance novels, and simplistic and shallow Christian movies. Ideas like existentialism and relativism are so influential today because they are manifested in art, literature, and film rather than in poor mimics of Hollywood blockbusters or chick flicks. Thomas Kinkade art and sentimental Christian novels are poor substitutes for the Sistine Chapel and Paradise Lost. The overall issue is that Evangelicalism becomes something that stoops down to the most base and vile elements of consumerism, instead of something that seeks to lift people up to the heavenly realms. Christianity teaches that humanity has a nature that was created good, which desires partake in higher things such as the beautiful, the good, and the true. But because of sin this original nature has been corrupted into a sinful nature in which people now desire the pleasurable, the self-serving, and the useful; yet the original nature has not been completely eradicated. It seems obvious which nature Christian outreach out to tickle.

Disunity - The fragmentation of American Evangelicalism is one of the biggest reasons why Christianity is so impotent. The Catholic Church puts Protestants to shame for this very reason. Catholics, despite being outnumbered by Protestants 2:1, run the most effective Christian education system (the sole elite Christian research university, Notre Dame, is Catholic), have a far more effective missions program, and give more to charities that Protestants. The reason is that Catholics are united, which means that they can pool their resources effective coordinate their use. Evangelicals are haplessly disunited and, apart from politics, disorganized. Indeed, Evangelicals spend almost as much time wrangling with each other as they do with non-Christian sub-cultures. My own tradition, the Reformed, is fragmented into dozens of small denominations which all strongly resist any unification because of minute differences. Disunity is preserved by a lack of Christian charity and a sense of pride often thinly veiled as "doctrinal purity." Like broader American culture, Evangelicals cannot cooperate towards a common good while agreeing to disagree in love. My guess is that God will chide us all far more strongly for failing to love another and effectively carrying out the Church's mission than He will for us communing with those who baptize infants, disbelieve in predestination, think that communion is merely a memorial meal, or practice a Presbyterian polity rather than an episcopal one. Of course nondenominational churches deserve a fair share of the blame as well. It is difficult to maintain any kind of cooperation between churches when anyone can break away and go its own way. As a result, any attempt to actually forge any kind of pan-Evangelical organization that actually has power to coordinate the resources and activities of Evangelical churches will always remain elusive. As a result, Evangelicals will be hapless in the effort do things such as create a good system of Christian schools, fund a top-tier orthodox Protestant research university, effectively pool resources for charities, or effectively organize missions both at home and abroad. The advantage of cooperation over going solo was not lost on the Preacher in Ecclesiastes: "Two are better tan one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if the fall, one will life up his fellow. . .And though a man may prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him - a threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:9, 10a, 12).

The question naturally arises, of course, why should any of this matter? Why should Christians care about being culturally influential? Some Evangelicals no doubt think that it is best to remain 'pure' from the taint that might result from an attempt to redeem secular culture. Why not let the Spirit do its work? True, the Holy Spirit is the one who truly guides the Church towards the consummation and brings unbelievers to faith. But the Holy Spirit operates through the Church to achieve these ends. The building up the Church does not occur magically, but by the Spirit through the normal spiritual, psychological, and sociological phenomenon that constitute the original creation. Conversion and Church growth do not confound a limited psychological or sociological explanation. To put it simply, it is through the cultural influence of the Church that the Holy Spirit operates. If the Holy Spirit did otherwise, we might as well argue that Christians ought not try to spread the gospel (after all, we shouldn't risk tainting ourselves by interacting with nonbelievers) but instead leave it up to the Spirit to spontaneously convert people. The operation of the Holy Spirit does not make evangelism or a strong Church any less necessary. However, another objection might be levelled, this one from the other side of the aisle, so to speak. Isn't all this talk about cultural power simply a return to the mistakes of Christendom? First, let me say that when I speak of cultural power, I do not mean the cultural establishment of Christianity. I don't suggest that Christians try to imperiously coerce nonbelievers through commanding positions on the cultural heights. I mean something much more organic. I mean that Christians ought to have a strong presence in culturally powerful institutions so that the Christian vision is heard and taken seriously. Christianity is rejected today by secular society, not because it has been understood and refuted, but because it can be ridiculed with ease. Secondly, the goal of cultural strength should not be the Christianization of the artistic, educational, or political institutions. Instead the goal should be the building up of the Church. Christians are called not to conquer the City of the World but to build the City of God. Included in the City of God are those who are the Church's representatives in the artistic, educational, and governmental institutions. If there is to be a Christianization of society, it must only be done by the conversion of society into the Church, not by dominating cultural institutions so that society has a Christian facade. Ultimately our goal should be a cultural strong Church that is able to spread the gosepl of Christ, disciple its members, and effectively cultivate the the good, the beautiful, and the true.

The Weakness of American Evangelicalism - Part I

I contend that American evangelicalism is culturally weak. This means that in our increasingly pluralistic culture, Evangelicalism lacks cultural influence. I argue that this is due to six specific traits of American Evangelicalism. If the cultural weakness of Evangelicalism is to be overcome, Evangelicals need to reflect on how the American Church can be transformed into a stronger institution. Despite many improvements, the Evangelical Church at large requires sweeping reform. Nothing less than another reformation will do.


The fact of the matter is that American Evangelicalism was practically culturally irrelevant in the second half of the twentieth century. True, Evangelicals did gain sweeping political influence through the Religious Right. However, politics is only one part of culture, and ultimately not a very influential one. The modern state is increasingly run by bureaucrats rather than elected officials. One only needs ponder the lack of results, despite thirty years of political mobilization on the part of the Religious Right. Evangelicals might achieve victory for a time through politics, but ultimately the state is driven by far more influential aspects of culture. The Religious Right has ultimately done more harm for Christianity than good because it has spread resentment amongst non-Christians (and even some Christians). It has awakened fears that Christians desire a return to the Protestant Establishment in the United States. The reality is that law (politics) does not create cultural change, but rather is the product of cultural change. Law is the expression of the will of the cultural elite. The most powerful cultural centers in modern America are academia, elite media outlets, law schools/public policy schools, the arts, book publishers, literature, museums, etc. It is strength or representation in these areas that determine the strength of a particular cultural movement. And it is in precisely these areas that Evangelicals are the most impotent. This means that the influence of American Christians on contemporary culture is likewise impotent. The reasons for this are complex and I don't fully understand them myself. However, to a great extent they are a result of six traits of Evangelicalism.

Conflict Model - Evangelicals, by and large, don't view the non-Christian culture as a lot of poor souls that need to be won, but as enemy combatants that need to be conquered and subdued. It is telling that Christ commanded his apostles to make disciple (i.e. teach and instruct) the nations, not scream at them or dominate them politically. The conflict model emphasizes antithesis over relevance. It forgets that non-Christian culture contains much good and needs to be discipled , not obliterated and replaced by a "pure" Christian culture. In short, it forgets the common ground between Christians and non-Christians by virtue of the fact that both are still made in the image of God. The inability to connect with the good in non-Christian culture ultimately means that Evangelicals lack all relevance. The early Church fathers were especially good at finding the common ground between Christians and non-Christians, and the early Church was culturally stronger because of it.

Anti-Intellectualism - Most Evangelicals are suspicious (to say the least) of intellectual life. They view the modern university (not without warrant) as anti-Christian. I think that the university is only implicitly anti-Christian - i.e. it educates in a decidedly secular fashion, since most in academia aren't Christians - not explicitly so. However, the continued dearth of religious perspective in academia is the fault of Evangelicals to a great degree. Rather than formulate a comprehensive plan for real educational and intellectual cultivation, Evangelicals have simply retreated from academic life. Academia, at best, is something to be survived. What educational programs Evangelicals do produce are deeply reactionary and typically unscholarly. They don't teach Evangelicals how to think but what to think, and what Evangelicals are told to think (e.g. creation "science") often borders on intellectual dishonesty. Exposure to non-Christian views are avoided, and where there is interaction, Evangelicals are not taught how to critically examine the ideas, but to wave them away as liberal or secular hogwash. They are taught to reject wholesale "secular learning" rather than redeem what is good in it. All of this belies a deep lack of confidence on the part of Evangelicals in the intellectual credentials of Christianity. Additionally, despite the recent prominence of many orthodox Christians in intellectual life (George Marsden, Alvin Platinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Francis Collins, Mark Noll), Evangelicals are typically unsupportive of Christian intellectuals. In part this is because Evangelicals are suspicious of such Christian academics. They are often viewed as "tainted" by their academic pursuits, especially when they hold views (such as those pertaining to evolution) that most Evangelicals refuse to even entertain. While Evangelicals dump millions of dollars into politics, church programs, and popular Christian organizations, institutions that foster Christian learning are left underfunded or ignored all together. The sole research center funded at my undergraduate institution was a political one; the Center for Vision and Values. When reasons were given for giving generously to my Alma Mater, the rich experience of cultivating robust Christian learning was typically not one of them. Even the speaker at my baccalaureate couldn't help mixing Christianity with politics and civil religion. In short, Christian learning is often viewed as a means to an ends (e.g. training the leaders of tomorrow), not an end in itself. This means that Evangelicals are uninterested in the scholarly content of Christian learning, only its utility in the culture war. This devastating for Christian culture. Christians are right to affirm that academia is a critical component of the spread of secular culture, but the lament of Evangelicals to this effect is matched only by their impotence in doing anything to counteract it with a model of true Christian learning.

Populism - Evangelical neglect of culturally important institutions is typically justified by an erroneous understanding of culture. Evangelicals typically think that mass evangelism is the way to win cultural influence. What is ironic is that the rise of the mass evangelism movement runs parallel to the collapse of a Christian impact on culture. This is because cultural influence is not gained by numbers. Christianity, even if reduced to the 40% or so of those who we might say are true practicing Christians (as opposed to nominal - "in name only" - Christians), is still the largest single world view in the country. Yet its share in the culture economy is vastly below this. This is because it not quantity that matters but quality. Think, for instance, of the influence that people of Jewish ethnicity have due to the fact that they are typically well-educated and well-cultured (about 1.7% of the nation is Jewish, but one-third of the supreme court is Jewish). Jews, faced with extreme prejudice through their history in the Western world, had to form a strong culture or else be subsumed by the larger culture. Evangelicalism is typified by a misguided attempt to dominate popular culture. The problem is that pop culture is merely a vulgarized and commercialized interpretation of high culture. If we look at summer blockbusters, pop music, or television sit coms, we see commercial imitations of high culture trends such as existentialism, pragmatism, hedonism, and relativism. Evangelicals are puzzled why, despite the mass production of Christian movies, books, and praise music, Christianity lacks the ability to influence the lives of the average American. Evangelical churches routinely fail to even influence the lives of many of their congregants. The reason is that the Church cannot exist merely as a pop culture institution, because such institutions are inherently weak without high culture support. The average American falls for the ills of American pop culture, such as movies, songs, and TV shows that glorify sexual promiscuity and individualism because they have been prompted to do so through public schools, the media, secular colleges, film, and books published by secular-minded publishing companies. These areas of high culture continually preach human autonomy and moral relativism regarding traditional mores. Without such high culture support, the attempt to be "relevant" in pop culture makes Christianity look kitsch, sentimental, and weird to non-Christians and even many Christians. Often Evangelicalism makes Christianity look shallow and superficial due to its overemphasis on the popular. When this perception is exported through mass evangelism (think of those tracks you always find at the mall), the result can be that more harm has been done than good.

Joy, Cynicism, and the Selfish Heart

It would seem to be common sense that a selfish person should want nothing more than happiness and joy for himself. After all, joy appears to be something that all people want. From classical Greece to the present, men have sought the summum bonum, the greatest good or the good life. Naturally, we should think that someone who desires their own good above all others would be terribly greedy for this state. However, lately I have explored the idea that selfishness and joy are utter opposites. You cannot have one without the other. I do not want to confuse what I call "joy" with what is commonly referred to as "happiness." I have known very many selfish people who are completely happy. I have also seen people who are utterly sad and yet possess joy. Happiness comes when we have have our worldly desires and needs met. Joy, however, is something far deeper and existential.

The great theologian St. Augustine spoke of the blessed life, an ideal existence characterized by "rest" - by which Augustine meant something like the Jewish concept of shalom. It is a state of utter peace, tranquility, and love. The concept of the Trinity - diversity in unity -was especially important to Augustine and other early church writers. Here was the idea that love is something inherent in God, as God is community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, characterized by perichoresis - or the divine dance of love. Rest, then, is a state of eternal peace whereby the strivings of a weary mankind are ended by an unending communion of love. I will use Augustine's concept of the "blessed life" for what I mean by joy; I believe that Augustine had singular insight into the inner life. Indeed, I have found that if you want really profound insight into the human soul, you must read someone who wrote at least 200 years ago. If there is one thing that characterizes modern man it is his utter inability to think deeply about anything. This is because we are in a constant state of distraction; we are everywhere preoccupied. Our culture encourages or even coerces us into unending business. The cultivate the inner life requires meditation and a will to plumb the murky depths of your own soul. Augustine found by looking deep into his soul he found two things; a irresistible longing for joy and an insatiable selfishness.

My first month at seminary has encouraged me to likewise plumb the depths of my soul. Since my life has been put under the scrutiny of the unbearable light of God's perfection in my first month here, I have come to grasp my own selfishness and cynicism. I have also come to realize that what I call joy has been the thing that I have been seeking my whole life, ever since I was a child. Perhaps in those peaceful days of childhood, when we scarcely notice time or the cares of this world and we are ever surrounded by our parents' love, we come the closest to comprehending true joy. But even here it is only a shadow of the real blessed life. Indeed, a return to an infantile state, full of stubbornness and ignorance, would be a step back away from true joy. Joy is not a golden age to be reclaimed, but a far off country we are on a pilgrimage towards. And childhood, like the beginning of a great journey, is full of its own exuberance, optimism, and lack of cares, but only because it is naive and does not fully comprehend that great trek that lies before it. It is not closer to real joy, it merely comprehends it easier because it has not yet been subjected to the hardships and doubts of our expedition, which cause us to lose sight of our destination. I have progressed steadily onward in this journey, ever looking for a place to end my pilgrimage. In every stop along the pathway of life I have looked for that ultimate rest, but have only ever found temporary lodgings. And yet, ever growing within me is sense that true rest, blessedness, and joy lies "further up and further in."

And here comes the second characteristic of my life. For if children are joyous, they are also wilful and at times selfish. If from childhood I progressed in my journey towards joy, I also progressed in my own selfishness. We are so often fooled by our cultivation of good manners that we really think we are becoming humbler; in reality we are simply becoming better at hiding our self-centeredness. And here I return to my original point; selfishness and joy are utter foes. Selfishness inevitably breeds cynicism, whereas only humility and love can cultivate true joy. Joy is not something that we take into ourselves, but rather it is something that surrender to or cast ourselves upon. We are absorbed into it, not it into us. It comes only when we surrender ourselves utterly God and our neighbor, when we mimic the perichoresis or divine dance of God. Yet selfishness is opposed to any surrendering of itself. Instead, it produces cynicism, the ultimate conclusion of human pride. Cynicism places the whole world under judgment for not meeting our standards and expectations. It is hostile to and critical of all things to avoid the chance of ever being taken in by one of them. To praise something else, to profess loyalty to something else, to love something else is abhorrent to it, for this entails surrendering a bit of itself to something that is not itself. The cynic fears to elevate something foreign to himself, for if he did this, his claims to autonomous detachment and judgment would be suspended.

Therefore, selfishness despises joy. It can only embrace joy by submitting to joy, and it clings to its cynical refusal to surrender even one bit of oneself to a foreign power. Of late I have come to realize this characteristic in me. It was startling presented to me when I came across to foreign students, who appear to have fortunately thus far avoided contracting the lamentable American characteristic of being utterly unsatisfied in the midst of plenty. When I politely asked how they were, they responded that they were truly excellent - and what is more they sincerely meant it. I realized that I lacked their joy. Whereas they approached life avoid of selfishness and cynicism, I was full of it. And here is the great battle that lies within us. It comprises the ultimate plotline of Augustine's Confessions. We long for joy, we pray "Thou has created us for Thyself, and our hearts are not at rest until they rest in thee." And yet we refuse to disabuse ourselves of our selfish greed, because we do not want to rest in anything but ourselves. We desire the blessed life and yet we look for it everywhere except where we can truly find it. We turn to the material things of this world to satiate, even for a moment, our innate longings. Yet in the end we are like the alcoholic who intoxicates himself as a means to escape. In the end, what is required is to be imitators of Christ. We must lose our lives if we are to find them. We must press onward in our journey for the land that heartily welcomes us to become subjects in the kingdom of eternal joy.

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.

The Language of God

How does God speak to us? The answer, it seems to me, lies in the more general question of how do rational beings speak to each other? The answer, of course, is language. Minds cannot communicate directly with each other, but rather communicate through words, speech, or symbols in order to get other minds to perceive what it is trying to convey. God communicates to us in similar fashion. In Psalm 19 we see the two principal ways that God communicates with us. The first is through the created order. The Psalmist says that "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night reveals knowledge" (Psalm 19:1-2). The selfish and sensual human mind rarely considers that Divinity is clearly proclaimed through the nature that depends on Him for its very being.

This knowledge is not properly understood through the sciences, in the same way that the meaning of human language is not understood through scientific analysis of the paper or ink that a book is written in or the paint and canvass of an artist. Instead, these things are only given meaning by the understanding of minds. Were there no minds, words would not be words. Therefore, the proper understanding of the Divinity presented of nature is through the contemplation of the mind. General revelation is not a science, but rather a discipline of the inner life. When we see the majesty and vastness of the heavens it communicates to us the glory and the infinitude of the Being we perceive to be behind it. The harmony and relatedness of nature tells us of the Trinity, where Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have related to one another in harmony for all eternity. The raging of the sea, the explosion of a star, or the clap of thunder speak to us of God's power. The rationality of the universe found in mathematics and the physical laws communicate to us Divine Reason, the Wisdom of God, Himself.

Yet because our hearts have become cold as stone and no longer desire to know God, we turn away from the contemplation of His immeasurable glory, or when we do look upon it our hearts darken our thoughts so much that what we see is a gross corruption of true Divinity. Most men are caught up totally in sensuality and the vain desires of this age. Therefore, to correct our hearts so that we might return to a true knowledge of God, the Almighty sent His Word to us, first through the Holy Spirit to the prophets and then ultimately in human form to the apostles. The Psalmist says of this Word, "The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the soul is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes" (Psalm 19:7-8). And this Word is Divine speech; in the beginning, by His Word, God created all things, and now by His Word God redeems all things. For we know that the Spirit of Christ spoke through the prophets concerning the coming of the Word of God (I Peter 1:10-12) and also that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). Concerning the Word become flesh the apostles, after receiving authority and the Holy Spirit, proclaimed His message and committed it to writing in the Gospels and their Epistles. Therefore, the Word became flesh and also the Word became words. The Word of God is revealed to us in the writings of Scripture through the Holy Spirit, who is active both in the inspiration of the written word and in the conception of the Word made flesh. Just as the Divine Word took on the trappings of the flesh, so the written Word took on the trappings of human language.

Thus it through Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and the Scriptures he has give us through his Spirit that we receive a new language from God that might, by grace, reveal the mystery of our salvation and correct our corrupted understanding of God's original language in creation. Through the Word of Scripture we meet, in both testaments, the crucified and resurrected Word through faith. As St. Athanasius wrote, "Our Lord took a body like ours and lived as a man in order that those who refused to recognize Him in His superintendence and captaincy of the whole universe might come to recognize from the works He did here below in the body, that what dwelled in this body was the Word of God." Thus the Word of God condescended to meet us in the flesh and in human language so that we might know God truly.

A Grown-up Society

Both of these articles capture perfectly what I had written in a recent blog, that is, until it was aaccidently ereased and I lost it. My point was that Western society needs to grow up. It needs to face reality instead of indulging in illusion. We need to realize the value of hard work and community instead of being individualistic and thinking we are all owed something.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/08/18/hard_work_and_the_real_meaning_of_wealth_111009.html

http://chronicle.com/article/Do-Them-No-Favors-Tell-Them/128583/