So we started a sort of home group last night where its just a couple of older people (remeber that I'm involved with student ministries so anyone over 24 seems older to me) and we are reading through this book called "Velvet Elvis". There's no prep and no pressure, just us getting to gether to read aloud and discuss.
In movement one (yes he calls them movements not chapters) its a whole discusion about theology. Not about a particular verse or series of beliefes but rather about the usefulness of theology as well as its limitations.
Traditional study of God has been called "systematic theology." Its a building of one idea on to another. The problem with that is that if one idea is called into question (for example, was Jesus born of a virgin? or is the Trinity a valid way for explaining God?) it shakes every thing that we've built apon it. So we take up arms an begin to defend our walls that we constructed against those who would like to pull certain bricks out and threaten to knock down our wall.
That is when we start to defend our theology. There are whole movements that stand as monoliths on a few such bricks. If we take one brick out and examine or question or doubt it, the whole structure might not survive.
Think of the structure of Calvinism or Aminists. Believe these five or so things and every thing will be alright?
In his book, Rob describes a Christianity that resembles a trapoline.
Thats right - a trampline.
Theology is like the springs on a trampoline. They are flexable and bend and can be taken out and examine. They are useful and have a purpose but they are not the whole point. God is the point and theology, teachings about God, serve to help us have a more right veiw of Him. Its not that we cant know God, its just that we cant know everything about God. CS Lewis says that the important thing is not trying to figure out the Trinity(which we can never do) but rather to be caught up into life with the Trinity.
And Im tired of defending the wall.
I just wanna jump. And I wont have to tell someone how much better my wall is, how its bigger and built with better bricks. I want there to be joy in the involvement that I have with Him. And I want that to be what people see, the joy in my life from jumping around like a crazy man so that when I ask the question, they cant help but be caught up in my excitement and answer yes. What question?
So, do you wanna jump too?
Catch ya'll on the flip side.
Adam Thomas
September 28, 2005
September 23, 2005
My Class (and the word for today is...)
Hey.
Had my first real offical class with Father Josiah yesterday. Although its a class on Islam we pretty much talk about whatever comes up. For the class I read the entierty of the Qu'ran and its interesting what Muhammid's veiws about Christianity were. He felt that his book was a completion or addendum to the Old and New Testiments of the Christian Bible. He did however have a really hard time with the Christian idea of the trinity. It is pretty interesting to note that M's contact with the Christian faith was limited to heritics (the Nestorians) who had been kicked out of the Roman church of that time(~600ad).
This lead to a discusion on the nature of christ and the trinty (Nestorus and his followers believed that Chirst had two personalities, one divine and one human and that these two natures acted indipendently of each other creating this idea that Jesus was a Schizophrenic. It is a misunderstanding of the fact that Jesus was God and Jesus was Human. (I know it can be hard to wrap your brain around, if you want an explination of the question of Jesus' human and divine natures then send me a message and I'll post some stuff. There were seven giant meetings of the church where they prayed, seached scriptues, and hammered out the answer to the question Jesus asked of Peter "who do you say that I am?") But the question of these giant church meetings called the "Ecumenical Counsels" brought us to the split of the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church and the discusion of a single Greek word...
Fileoque... of the Son
Now the concept of the Trinity is pretty interesting, but like CS Lewis says, most people shut down at any mention of numbers and personalities. (For a great book to read I recomend Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. The last section of the book called Beyond Personality deals quite heavily with the trinity.) For a couple thousand years the Jews belived that there was one God. It was the first thing that was leaned as a child. It was recited in the Sha'ma out of the book of Deuteronomy. "Hear oh Isreal, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one..." (Deut 6:4) How does the Idea of the trinity fit into that? Father, Son, Holy Spirit, but yet all one God?
I'm not the best writer in the world and Im kinda shooting from the hip but there are two parts to God, just as there is to every one of us. There is the inside and the outside. The inside part of God consists of all that God IS. If you had to fill in the blank what would you say. "God is _____." Holy? Love? Righteous? Big? Active? these are all adjectives that describe who God is. These atributes apply to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Theologians (guys who sit around and think hard about God) call this the ontological Trinity, those things which apply to God as a whole. Take one of the attributes and it applies equally to the Father or the Son or the Spirit.
On the other hand you have all the things that God does. Take for example the story of the baptism of Jesus. The Son comes out of the water, the Holy Spirit decends like a dove, and the Father's voice is heard from above. All of the actions are seperated, the Spirit does one thing, the Father another, and the Son still something else. Everyone has their role to play. And its not just at the baptism of Jesus its all thoughout the scriptures any time that God DOES something it can usually be atributed specifically to either the Son or the Spirit or the Father but not all of them together. This plays out even in our own daily lives. When we pray we are praying TO God the Father, THROUGH God the Son, by the URGING of the Spirit inside of us. This is called the Ecconomic Trinity.
Now don't hear me wrong there is but one Trinity, one God, one Father, one Son, one Spirit. These two concepts are just a way of catagorizing diffrent truths about God. Every truth about God fits pretty nicly into one of these two areas, either the Ontilogical aspect or the Economic aspect of God.
Now with all this being said, lets take a look at a line from the Nicene Creed which is a short statement of what the majority of Christian hold to be true.
"We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
and the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,"
That is what it looks like today. But until the 900's it looked like this.
"We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
and the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father,"
Notice the difrence its missing this phrase "and the son." This creed was put together by the brightest minds of the time in one of the church counsel meetings, but was changed by one of the Roman popes. The other 4 major churches at the time didnt like this at all and when the other churches went to meet with the pope all they got was a sit down and shut up from his people. The eastern church became what we call the Eastern Orthodoz church and the Roman chuch became the Holy Roman Catholic church and this split became know as the great schism.
(All this background for me to tell you a story...Yikes)
So Father Josiah, being an Eastern Orthodox Preist, follows the origional way of the Creed. When sitting in his office yesterday I had a sort of light bulb tuned on in my head. If it is true, where does the Fileoque doctrine fit in? That's the question for today. More to come...
Adam
Had my first real offical class with Father Josiah yesterday. Although its a class on Islam we pretty much talk about whatever comes up. For the class I read the entierty of the Qu'ran and its interesting what Muhammid's veiws about Christianity were. He felt that his book was a completion or addendum to the Old and New Testiments of the Christian Bible. He did however have a really hard time with the Christian idea of the trinity. It is pretty interesting to note that M's contact with the Christian faith was limited to heritics (the Nestorians) who had been kicked out of the Roman church of that time(~600ad).
This lead to a discusion on the nature of christ and the trinty (Nestorus and his followers believed that Chirst had two personalities, one divine and one human and that these two natures acted indipendently of each other creating this idea that Jesus was a Schizophrenic. It is a misunderstanding of the fact that Jesus was God and Jesus was Human. (I know it can be hard to wrap your brain around, if you want an explination of the question of Jesus' human and divine natures then send me a message and I'll post some stuff. There were seven giant meetings of the church where they prayed, seached scriptues, and hammered out the answer to the question Jesus asked of Peter "who do you say that I am?") But the question of these giant church meetings called the "Ecumenical Counsels" brought us to the split of the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church and the discusion of a single Greek word...
Fileoque... of the Son
Now the concept of the Trinity is pretty interesting, but like CS Lewis says, most people shut down at any mention of numbers and personalities. (For a great book to read I recomend Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. The last section of the book called Beyond Personality deals quite heavily with the trinity.) For a couple thousand years the Jews belived that there was one God. It was the first thing that was leaned as a child. It was recited in the Sha'ma out of the book of Deuteronomy. "Hear oh Isreal, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one..." (Deut 6:4) How does the Idea of the trinity fit into that? Father, Son, Holy Spirit, but yet all one God?
I'm not the best writer in the world and Im kinda shooting from the hip but there are two parts to God, just as there is to every one of us. There is the inside and the outside. The inside part of God consists of all that God IS. If you had to fill in the blank what would you say. "God is _____." Holy? Love? Righteous? Big? Active? these are all adjectives that describe who God is. These atributes apply to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Theologians (guys who sit around and think hard about God) call this the ontological Trinity, those things which apply to God as a whole. Take one of the attributes and it applies equally to the Father or the Son or the Spirit.
On the other hand you have all the things that God does. Take for example the story of the baptism of Jesus. The Son comes out of the water, the Holy Spirit decends like a dove, and the Father's voice is heard from above. All of the actions are seperated, the Spirit does one thing, the Father another, and the Son still something else. Everyone has their role to play. And its not just at the baptism of Jesus its all thoughout the scriptures any time that God DOES something it can usually be atributed specifically to either the Son or the Spirit or the Father but not all of them together. This plays out even in our own daily lives. When we pray we are praying TO God the Father, THROUGH God the Son, by the URGING of the Spirit inside of us. This is called the Ecconomic Trinity.
Now don't hear me wrong there is but one Trinity, one God, one Father, one Son, one Spirit. These two concepts are just a way of catagorizing diffrent truths about God. Every truth about God fits pretty nicly into one of these two areas, either the Ontilogical aspect or the Economic aspect of God.
Now with all this being said, lets take a look at a line from the Nicene Creed which is a short statement of what the majority of Christian hold to be true.
"We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
and the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,"
That is what it looks like today. But until the 900's it looked like this.
"We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
and the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father,"
Notice the difrence its missing this phrase "and the son." This creed was put together by the brightest minds of the time in one of the church counsel meetings, but was changed by one of the Roman popes. The other 4 major churches at the time didnt like this at all and when the other churches went to meet with the pope all they got was a sit down and shut up from his people. The eastern church became what we call the Eastern Orthodoz church and the Roman chuch became the Holy Roman Catholic church and this split became know as the great schism.
(All this background for me to tell you a story...Yikes)
So Father Josiah, being an Eastern Orthodox Preist, follows the origional way of the Creed. When sitting in his office yesterday I had a sort of light bulb tuned on in my head. If it is true, where does the Fileoque doctrine fit in? That's the question for today. More to come...
Adam
September 9, 2005
My new friend
Ive got a new friend. His name is Father Josiah. He's a Priest in the Greek Orthodox Church. Okay maybe he's not a friend yet, but rather an eager aquantance on my part.
It started with a requirement to graduate. I had to take an upper division, non-U.S., interdiscipinary course. I was given the History of Latin america. I mean, I dont even speak Latin (if you didnt laugh that's okay, neither did my Counseler, nor the Registar, nor the lady at the book store...) Ive got nothing aginst Latin America, I just am not all that interested. So I was in the bookstore getting my books and right next to my books I see books for a History of Islam class. HELLO.
So I went back to my counseler and got my class changed after a breif discusion on whether or not a History of Islam class would be a non-US history class. Seems obvious to me but I guess its not.
I get to class. And there's no body there. I was ready to leave until this guy walks in. Big beard, long hair, black robe with a silver cross. My teacher. Father Josiah.We sat and talked about the diffrence between Easter and Western churches, what worship is and C.S. Lewis while we waited for the others who enrolled to show up. No one ever did. We spent the rest of the night talking about our ministries and what the class was going to look like. We scrapped the two books that were originally picked for the class and went with some more dificult and indepth books (like reading the entire 177 chapters of the Qu'ran for the next class). Im going to his church rather than to CBU for our meetings.
When walking out he said that I probably wouldnt want to leave his office. I asked if it was because it was full of books. He said yes. Then I said that it probably smelled like old books too. He said no it smells like pipe. So you smoke? I asked. Sheepishly he said Only in private as if was a little unsure of how I would react being at a baptist school. Can I bring mine? I asked. This class is going to be better than I thought he said. My sentaments exactly.
-Adam Thomas
It started with a requirement to graduate. I had to take an upper division, non-U.S., interdiscipinary course. I was given the History of Latin america. I mean, I dont even speak Latin (if you didnt laugh that's okay, neither did my Counseler, nor the Registar, nor the lady at the book store...) Ive got nothing aginst Latin America, I just am not all that interested. So I was in the bookstore getting my books and right next to my books I see books for a History of Islam class. HELLO.
So I went back to my counseler and got my class changed after a breif discusion on whether or not a History of Islam class would be a non-US history class. Seems obvious to me but I guess its not.
I get to class. And there's no body there. I was ready to leave until this guy walks in. Big beard, long hair, black robe with a silver cross. My teacher. Father Josiah.We sat and talked about the diffrence between Easter and Western churches, what worship is and C.S. Lewis while we waited for the others who enrolled to show up. No one ever did. We spent the rest of the night talking about our ministries and what the class was going to look like. We scrapped the two books that were originally picked for the class and went with some more dificult and indepth books (like reading the entire 177 chapters of the Qu'ran for the next class). Im going to his church rather than to CBU for our meetings.
When walking out he said that I probably wouldnt want to leave his office. I asked if it was because it was full of books. He said yes. Then I said that it probably smelled like old books too. He said no it smells like pipe. So you smoke? I asked. Sheepishly he said Only in private as if was a little unsure of how I would react being at a baptist school. Can I bring mine? I asked. This class is going to be better than I thought he said. My sentaments exactly.
-Adam Thomas
Here
A friend asked me what "Here" was about.
I guess it means that after running for so long it starts to feel almost normal. So when the heavens open up and you get just this little glimps into reality it allows for monumental growth.
Ive spent all my life searching, moving from one thing to the next. It why ive had so many jobs in a wide diversity of fields and Ive changed my major 4 times and am always looking to move away to Sacramento, Chicago, Alabama, Kenya, or China. Its why most of my friends dont last longer than a year or two. The grass is always greener, you know?
And I was at church on Sunday night. "The Well Student Community" it was an intense kind of night with worship and scripture readings and communion and prayer interspersed through out the night. After we were done with worship and every body was praying, I took the bread and the cup, thanked God, and took communion. After the service we had planned to have an allnighter because of the Labor Day weekend. The all nighter had started and I was outside sitting on a plastic chair waiting with some of the kidos that were not staying, kind of staring into the building when Chelsea came over to me to ask if I was okay, because of the long day. And with tears in my eyes i said,"yeah, im tired. But there is nowhere quite else that I'd rather be." And it was true. Its only in the past few years that I even recongnized this as a problem, people were always congradulating me as move from one thing to the next and never helped me identify this deeper underlying problem in my life. And then Willy came along and was the first to point it out, and call it out for what it was, sin. But its not something that I myself can force. I cant force myself to be satisfied and complete and when I tried, I ownly found myself more empty to the point where
empty
felt
normal.
And through some work of God on my life I am exactly where He wants me to be right now. For some reason He has me here and there is no where else I'd rather be.
Its not some emotion I tried to conjuer up inside myself
Its not some intelectual understanding of the sovernty of God
Its not some opinon that people have talked me into.
Its just how it is.
-Adam Thomas
September 6, 2005
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)