High Church.

I went to a wedding that included mass yesterday.

There's times where I wish I went to "high church"

I love the rich traditions and that every thing in

the liturgy has been thought through to glorify God

and express correct doctrine, instead of being done

on the fly, or used because the song has good music to

it.

I don't plan on converting anytime soon.

I just have the ability to appreciate it.

Here's an excerpt from the Eucharist (Which means

"thanksgiving" and what the protestant church typically

calls communion)

Glory to God in the highest

and peace to his people on earth.

Lord God, heavenly King,

Almighty God and Father,

we worship you, we give you thanks,

we praise you for your glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father,

Lord God, Lamb of God,

you take away the sin of the world:

have mercy on us;

You are seated at the right hand of the Father:

receive our prayer.

For you alone are the Holy One,

you alone are the Lord,

you alone are the Most High,

Jesus Christ,

with the Holy Spirit,

in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Only God Can Save Us

"Only God can save us."

I love Church history, especially the theological development that the church has experienced in the last two thousand years. You see, I believe in revelation and that there are truths that exist that have either been forgotten or never discovered before, but have always existed. This is not just a theological idea but a world view. Though Democritus came up with the idea of the atom, and people like Bohr and Rutherford drew us a clearer picture of the atom, the atom has been around as long as there had been matter in the universe. Truth exists, and through various means and ways we learn more about it, through the application of scientific knowledge, through logical reasoning, through tradition and through indirect and direct revelation. What I'm getting at here is that truth exists and belongs to the creator of that truth, God, and is not subject to change or alteration, however what we know of that truth is being revised and changed as we learn more.

When we apply this concept to who God is we can see that throughout the text of the Bible that God is constantly revealing more about who He is and what He is like. There's a progression of sorts, with a specific purpose that constantly gets brought up again and again. God is looking for a relationship with us. When I read through the book of Genesis I constantly have to remind myself of one thing - the bible didn't exist yet! They had no revelation other than what God had told them. They knew God didn't like murder and wanted sincere offerings from the story of Cain and Abel. They knew He wanted righteousness in all of man kind and was willing to punish the unrighteous from the story of Noah. They knew that God was willing to talk to people directly and even put up with people who questioned His authority and goodness. But no Ten Commandments. No Jewish food laws. No rules about building parapets on the roof of your house. No promise of a Messiah (and really, in their minds, probably no realization of the need of a messiah) He wasn't, in their minds, even really God as we know Him; God, the one and only. He was their God, but still just a god among many.

Why is this important you might ask? Because there is a key distinction about change I am trying to point out, God does not change, but what we understand about Him does. In fact when we look at God revealing himself to humanity its lot like teaching math or a foreign language to somebody. I think, if you really wanted to. You could sit down with the whole corpus of knowledge of math books from elementary addition and number theory all the way up to calculus and you might have 4 or 5 large textbooks worth of information. And you could just sit down and read it. Straight through. Depending on your reading speed, it might take you a week or two, maybe as long as a month. So why do we spend 12-16 years studying math in school? Because the concepts and principles of mathematics must be learned, not just merely read about. The same is true about God, He waits for the people to get a concept before He moves on to the next one. In a sense He is teaching the human race what He is like, and how they should live in light of that revelation. It doesn't mean that what was revealed first is now irrelevant, rather it becomes the foundation on which the rest of the house is built. I have some beliefs about what those foundational things were and how they were revealed in Genesis but for now I just want to focus on one of those; God speaks.

I thank God all the time that He speaks. That He spoke in the past, that He's still speaking today. I do not think that Revelation 22:21 was the last thing God had to say to us. He has fleshed out the what was meant by the promise he made to Abraham, that Abraham's seed would be a blessing to the nations in the old testament. We see a new course of the fulfilment of that promise in the new testament. And through church history we see the application of that promise through the people of God. Which is why I think church history is important. It shows us how we got to where we are now and why we believe what we believe. The old testament and the Gospels are primarily a Jewish phenomenon. After Pentecost there started to be more and more gentile followers of what was called "The Way" called such because Jesus said he was the "Way to the Father and no man enters except by me." And there came a time when their process of conversion was called into question. Did they have to convert first to Judaism and all that entailed with the food laws and methods of dressing and so forth before they could become followers of the Messiah. So they got together all the big names in the Church at that time, Paul, Peter, James and others to come to some sort of decision. Their conclusion was that gentiles did not in fact have to become Jews to become Christians. And what did they base that decision on? Look at the end of Acts 15 - "It seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit."

This is where the idea for the church councils came from. Get together the best minds and the best leaders from the church and hammer out various issues as they arose. All of this to say, that while I don't believe that their conclusions at each of these councils (there were seven that are generally accepted.) The thrust of these councils was usually theology, soteriology, and heresy though they discussed all sorts of things and were pretty rich with intrigue (my favorite story involves the gift of ostriches to the king, but we'll save it for another time)

What I want to get to in this particular case is the first of these meetings. They were looking to answer a question that Jesus asked of his disciples; "Who do you say that I am?" They started with the idea that only God can save us. In fact Jesus' own name comes from the name Joshuah which means YHWH saves. Now that presents us to with a small problem. Why? Because Jesus claims repeatedly to be the only way to salvation and eternal life.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one form another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats...Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Mathew 25:31,36)

The phrase "son of man" is one of the titles used of Jesus and the kings of Israel. Here he claims that it will be him, Jesus, who sits on the throne and will separate the wicked from the good and send the wicked to eternal punishment and the righteous to eternal life. But only God can save us.

"Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." (John 3:14-17)

Everyone who believes in the SON will have life. Not the Father, not YHWH, but the son. And the world was saved through the son. But only God can save us

"... whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." {John 4:14}

Jesus will give the spring of eternal life?

"For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does no honor the Father, who sent him."
"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life." {John 5:21-24}

The Son can give out life to whom he pleases? He doesn't have to consult with the father?

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:40)

Again "every one who believes in the Son"? This is blasphemy right? How could it not be? There are more verses just like these where Jesus claims to the "the gate", "the way", "one with the Father", "the light of the world" or my favorite...

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,“and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” And its not like the people around Jesus didn't know what he was talking about. He said "Hey! I can forgive your sins, give you abundant life here on earth, and eternal life in the life to come! As long as you believe in me!" Well the scribes and the Pharisees under stood it alright. They grumbled the first time they heard it, argued with him about it and finally plotted his death. When the 1st Church Council got underway they read these verses and others from the old and new testament and they wanted to know, was Jesus God or was he just very nearly God, higher and better than us, but not quite God? There aretwo Greek words they were arguing about. Was Jesus "Homoousios", of the same substance, or "Homoiousios", of a similar substance (this is where we get the phrase "Don't change one iota", iota being the Greek letter "i"). They argued back and forth over the titles that Jesus and others called him, over his deeds in life, his death and Resurrection. But finally they found a starting point. Only God can save us. And yet Jesus claimed to save us. If he claimed to save us but was "Homoiousios", of a similar nature to God, then he was really "heteroousios" of a different nature than God. And if he's of a different nature, than he couldn't save us in the way that he claimed. And if that was untrue, what else did he say that was untrue? If he couldn't save us, what kind of man would that make him? At least tyrants and murderers only take the body. Here would be a man who takes the soul and the spirit. A cult leader or a sociopath at best, at worst a demon in some human form. If he was not of the same nature of God, then we should scrap the New Testament and take up the old ways of following the law, the sacrifices, and the rituals of seeking YHWH. But then how do you explain the working of God in the lives of his followers? Amazing miracles, exponential growth, daily salivations. "He saved us" they said. "The evidence is there." Jesus was "Homoousios", the same nature as God, "made" from the same stuff, cut from the same cloth, in fact one with God. John 1 reflects that. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." The Greek of the last phrase "the word was God" has both "Logos" and "Theos" as genitive nouns- God and the Word are the same. Who is the word? Look down a few verses. He was with God in the beginning, all things were made through him, in him was life and light, and he became flesh and dwelt among us (actually the Greek word is verb form of tabernacle, so more than just living among us he Tabernacled among us) Their conclusion, that Jesus was God. Did this cause some other issues? Yes! and they knew it. In fact they much of the next 4 counsels figuring out the answer to the original question "Who do you say that I am" They were settled on the God-ness of Jesus but that left them with other un-answered questions: what is the relationship between the Father and the Son? What about the "one God" belief of the Jews? Wait wasn't Jesus human too? How does that work? Um yeah and the Holy Spirit? Who or what is that? But they had a starting point. Jesus was God. Otherwise we end up in the condition that Paul wrote about in 1 Cor 15, believing in a "savior" who could not even save himself If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor 15:19) But there was to much evidence then to ignore, pointing to the diety of Christ, that they knew that Jesus was who he claimed to be and did the things he claimed to be. And the corpus of that knowledge has only increased, changed lives, awakenings, people who were lost and now are found. Halleluia! I will close with the creed, accepted by the church worldwide, that they wrote together to keep thier minds strait and thier worship of God focused on the truth of who he is and is named for the city in which the first counsel took place. The Nicene Creed I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Jesus is God, right?

Jesus is God, right?

I say this slightly in jest because for most Christians, its something we say we believe pretty readily but after an conversation I had at church with a guy, I went away wondering about the effectiveness of the message.

Here's how the conversation went down. I met this guy at church (actually one of the pastors brought him to me cause he had "deep philosophical" type questions and his normal go to guy wasn't there) He was taking a course on Islam taught by a Muslim and was wondering about the "First Miracle" of Jesus. Now most people have heard some allegorical teaching on the miracles of Jesus out of the book of John at some point in their lives, and when they do this they often say that Jesus changing water into wine is his "First Miracle". Now while I'm not sure that description is correct, the professor of this particular class was claiming Jesus' first miracle was that he spoke to the wise men that came to see him at his birth. (This is what the Qur'an claims Qur'an 3:46)

Now his original question had to do with how old Jesus was when the wise men came and weather or not his speaking to them would be a miracle (It wouldn't be a miracle if Jesus was say 4 or 5 but it would be if he was 1 or 2) But I was more concerned with the actual content of Jesus' supposed words from the Qur'an (though in my quick search I could not find as a quotation from Jesus; it was only stated about Jesus). His supposed statement to the wise men was "I am the messenger whom Allah has sent."

Now when I was talking to him, I took objection to that phrase. Jesus of the bible never claims to be a "messenger", John does as do the angels when they appear (which is actually the word used to describe angel - angelos in Greek just means messenger) But Jesus claims to be the Son of God, and to be of the same nature of God, and in some way actually God Himself (John 14:7-10, John 10:30, John 14:11, John, 10:37-38, John 17:11- I know these are all from John, John just has the clearest statements about the deity of Christ without needing a whole lot of explanation)

Now had Jesus appeared to the Romans or Buddhists or African Animists, there would have been much less opposition to his claim of being God. They had a plethora of gods, and one more wasn't going to make that much of an uproar. But the Jews had been uniquely prepared by divine revelation to believe only in ONE God. "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE!" So for Jesus to show up and claim he was God... well lets just say there were those who did not receive him as such. So this was an issue that the early Church had to deal with, answering the question that Jesus posed even to his own disciples; "Who do you say that I am?" And they didn't work it all out at once but over many years, through meeting together as a whole much like the apostles did in Acts 15, through prayer, through scripture and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

So when all the church leaders got together to discuss the answer to the question "Who do you say that I am" they came up with a simple logical argument. "Jesus saved us. Only God can save. Therefore Jesus must have been God." Later councils also confirmed the humanity of Jesus, but without him actually being God, our "salvation" is a moot point and we should all revert back to the Jewish practices of sin management on a national scale.

But this man visibly flinched every time I said Jesus was God. After noticing it the first time I said it, I slipped in a comment about his deity a couple of times to seek if it was a fluke or not, but he had a visible bodily reaction every time. Now here was a guy who seemed moderately educated in the faith and enthusiastic about defending that faith in this class on Islam that he was taking and yet, it finally came out in conversation that he didn't think Jesus was actually God, but that he was just an example for us, and the "Son of God" was more of a title given to him for his righteousness.

Where did we fail this guy? It was obvious he was caught up in some sort of works based theology after talking to him, I think because if Jesus was just an example, then Christianity then becomes about trying (and failing) to live up to that standard, and there's no room for grace. There's no freedom for him, just a different sort of bondage.

Do we focus on the wrong sorts of things in our teaching and our discipleship, telling people to be like Christ and live a Christian life without giving them the understanding of who God is and how that is accomplished though Him in the various roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

There's three questions I always try to fall back on in writing, teaching or studying the word

-Who is God and what is He like?

-What is the Church and what is her purpose? and

-How do we fit into and have relationship with God and His Church?

And I think these are in order of importance (at least for me) that without right knowledge of who he is, the church and our relationship to God and the Church will always be skewed. Classical orthodox christian teaching, especially that which comes from the annals of church history have always seemed important to me and I'm seeing more and more the need to impart that love of the discovery of who God is more and more. People need solid food to grow into mature Christians who know who God is and reflexively know the truth from a lie.

(1025, Dang way over, sorry)