"No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother"

- St. Cyprian Evangelical Catholics?

Provocative, eh? Let me quote John Calvin for you just in case you think this is a "Roman" thing:

“But as it is now our purpose to discourse of the visible Church, let us learn, from her single title of Mother, how useful, nay, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels,(Matth. 22: 30.) For our weakness does not permit us to leave the school until we have spent our whole lives as scholars. Moreover, beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for, as Isaiah and Joel testify, (Isa. 37: 32; Joel 2: 32.) By these words the paternal favour of God and the special evidence of spiritual life are confined to his peculiar people, and hence the abandonment of the Church is always fatal.”

In fact Calvin has a ridiculously high theology of the Church in his Institutes, going so far as titling the fourth book "Means of Grace: Holy Catholic Church." So here's the deal - if you want to be an orthodox and traditional Christian, you have to have a high view of the Church as the "body of Christ." That's it. No way around it.

Continuing on then with my Evangelical Catholicism I think the issue of the Church is one of the most important notions that needs to change if we evangelicals want to serve Jesus. I was recently doing a study on Church discipline and was shocked to find out how low a view of the Church there was amongst my fellow ordinands. Let it not be true! I think we have been fed lies about what the Church is for the last two hundred years in evangelical circles and it is about time we found out what the Church is really about. First a discussion of the 'popular' conception of Church I find someplaces among evangelical Christendom and why I find there faulty, then a more positive view of the Church from an evangelical perspective. Important: I am not putting forth a uniquely Roman Catholic position here, I am defending the historic view of the Church as Mother which finds itself even in John Calvin, who was as Biblical as a theologian gets.

Evangelical conceptions of Church

I hesitate to even capitalize Church when using it in evangelical terms because most of us were taught to view Church in the same way as we view the sacraments: something we kind of do but we know nothing really happens. Are you serious? When asked what the Church is most evangelicals will probably have no idea what the question means. More appropriate is "who is the Church", not what. That's because they don't think it actually exists. I think this is a product of the incredible Enlightenment focus on the individual and loss of the sacramental union and presence of God on earth. So the Church is really just the name for a group of people who cognitively assent to certain ideas and who may (or may not) show up together to sing songs and listen to someone talk for an hour. The question of why you do this from an individualist evangelical perspective still needs to be asked, but I imagine it is the same as the aforementioned sacraments: "It's always been this way." But if you don't think there is a metaphysical presence and participation that is more than just a bunch of individuals, why bother? Some groups in America I think are realizing this and have decided to ditch the whole Sunday service thing ('service' way to make it meaningless) in favour of 'actually' doing something. Why sing hymns and listen to the Word when we could be doing something useful like feeding the poor or building houses? That question has to be asked by evangelicals who have lost the sense of a high theology of Church.

More to the point, I think this makes practical matters in the Church community impossible to deal with. The Church is seen not as an elect people of God trying to redeem the world through its own community that is centred on the presence of Jesus Christ, it is a bunch of likeminded people who are glad to have people show up and leave whenever they like. "Whatever gets them saved" is the cry of the day, but what does salvation mean if it is not an ingrafting into the body of Christ? And isn't that body defined totally by some cognitive facts laid out by Rick Warren in the evangelical framework? The idea of Church discipline (one of the traditional marks of the Church along with the Word and Sacraments) is nonsense because there is no such thing as 'the Church'. There is just an everchanging and never confident collection of people who assent to roughly the same things but don't know what to do about them. I'm I being unfair? I really don't think so.

Positive Aspects of the Church

So the question is then "What is the Church?" Well that is a insanely difficult question and a perfect definition is probably impossible to give in a fallen world, but something we could get our teeth on would be the same thing Calvin and St. Cyprian have been saying throughout Christian history: the Church is themystical union of Christ, the space where humanity participates with God through the mediation of the Holy Spirit, the community of God's faithful which is ever increasing and has the final goal of conquering the entire earth in the name of Jesus - through martyrdom and evangelism with the Holy Spirit. Working this out a bit, the Church is:

1. An actual reality which is more than just individual believers who assent to things; it is the presence of Christ on earth. When God set about restoring order after Gen 11 he didn't just go to individuals, he found Abram and started a nation, one which had a particular identity and physical embodiment. It is a lie of modernity that when Jesus came he gave up on Israel and decided to seek individual souls. He actually finally opened Israel to the rest of the world – the Church becoming the wider expansion of the nation of Israel. There is an organic unity here which says that the whole is more than just the sum of the individual parts. I think this is true of marriage as well - when two are united together it is more than two people - they are made one flesh, but it is a different flesh, with the creational participation in the goodness of God.

2. The Church is sacramental. We need as evangelicals to get back to the Church as sacrament (mysterious presence of Christ) and as the mystical body of Christ. Paul says this all the time - why don't we believe him! The Church is united not (just) by the cognitive assent to Creedal beliefs, but also in the union that comes about through baptism and the Lord's Supper. These are high mysteries where the Holy Spirit brings us into communion with the Lord Jesus and thus makes us one as he and the Father are one. I am tempted to say that if a 'Christian group' does not have the sacraments then they do not have Christ - this is the view of all Christian history up until the radical reformation, which somehow became the evangelical position! We are done with modernity's emasculating desire to render everything as cognitive truth, we can speak once again about participation and revelation, lets get back the physical and spiritual dimension to the Church, as opposed to the mental which we have been force fed for so long (you can try and argue that there was a spiritual dimension but it really came down to the Spirit giving you truth, not actually indwelling in you like Jesus says in John 14).

3. The Church is evangelical. That needs to be said. The Church is formed around the canon of Scripture and the Holy Spirit's witness in and through it. He makes us known to the Father through the Church but the Church is exactly what we find in the NT and the continuation of the nation Israel in the OT. You don't need to get rid of the Bible to be 'high Church.' In fact, you need it more than ever. The Church is supposed to transform the entire world, it is a community that is to draw the world into it by the Holy Spirit so that all may be one through the participation with Christ in worship of the Father. As I have said before, the personal relationship with Jesus is wonderful, but there is more to being a Christian than me and my Bible. I can never figure out why evangelicals are so scared of the high Church position. Have you read the Church Fathers? Do you know how highly they view Scripture? We got our committment to Scripture from them, not the other way around.

The Church is what Jesus initiated through his ministry and his death and resurrection. I am worried that we are turning our backs on him by denying his kingdom on earth in the form of the Church. The historic teaching has always been that there is no salvation outside of the Church - and they weren't talking about a social club that met on Wednesday evenings; they were talking about the physical and spiritual presence of Jesus Christ with his people in the prayers, the Word, and the breaking of bread. It definitely didn’t have Matt Redman.

Evangelical Catholicism

"We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church" - The Nicene Creed

I was talking with another ordinand on Sunday who happens to be of the "lower" church persuasion and the subject of baptism came up. (Note: this post is not about baptism, so don't worry about infant vs. believer (what?) or regeneration or anything). I was pushing the more traditional view of baptism as a 'serious' sign of your Christian faith whereas he was pushing the 'discipleship' view of following Jesus. Fine. I think being a Christian means being a follower of Jesus and I think this entails having a personal prayer life with Jesus and all that good evangelical stuff. Wonderful. I hope I can keep growing closer to him in prayer and worship and through Scripture reading with the Holy Spirit. Here's the one problem though with taking that 'evangelical' view to town: it means that there are only about 40,000 Christians in the history of the world. Let me explain.

The problem is that 'personal relationship with Jesus' is a rather new term, coming from the Great Revival around the late 18th and early 19th century, and it has only been in the last 70 years (maybe) that this whole idea has taken real form. It is really a product of the individualism which hit the Western world around the Enlightenment and just kept getting more individual until we get sweet postmodern fragmentation even in ourselves. I am not even who I am now! The question is what about all the people who lived before the 20th century? I think this is the standard history of the Church according to 'evangelicals' (note: this is a characature, just humo(u)r me):

1. Before Christ: Old Testament people doing things they don't understand (putting blood on door-posts, taking Saturdays off, sacrificing animals) so that God can chastize them for not recognizing that Jesus was coming ("Oh! When Abraham met that weird king of Salem I was supposed to know he was like the God-man as high priest. How did I not get that!"). This shenanigans goes on for a while, and then...

2. Jesus comes! This means a few years when he is an adult were everyone was speaking in tongues and having intimate Bible studies and literally following around Jesus...doing something.
3. After Jesus: The apostles did alright since they had the Holy Spirit and formed Church plants and Churches in kitchens and all sorts of individual Churches were there were tons of speaking in tongues and healings and everything. Great!

4. After Apostles: Around the year 100 Christianity stopped being about Jesus and turned into the Anti-Christ religion, all about works and worshipping Mary and tons of non-personal relationships. I mean, where did the Bibles go? Did the bishops take them? Why weren't people having private devotions in the mornings with Scripture readings? This goes on for about 1800 years...

5. Billy Graham! Yay! Personal relationship time and giving your life to Christ and reading scripture in the morning and accountability and everything (maybe even tongues?).

Obviously you know that history is ridiculous, but I seriously think a lot of people believe something like it, although they might mention Martin Luther or someone and say they were an evangelical...who celebrated Mass. And believed in the sacraments and real presence of Jesus. So if you really push for the 'evangelical line' you end up with 1800 years of non-Christians. Now can you explain to me how in the world you can recite the Nicene Creed believing that? What is the catholic Church, and what is the communion of saints? John Stott when he gets there? So here are a few of my thoughts:

1. I do not want to throw away all that 'evangelical' stuff, I think it is really important. God has blessed us today with Bibles in every home (I have about 10 versions, I imagine you do too - what a privilege!) and the Church is allowed to meet without persecution of any real kind in the West. So we need to hold on to those things. But...

2. We evangelicals need to take seriously the old tradition, the one that birthed our faith. That's right. We wouldn't be evangelicals unless Thomas Aquinas had written the Summa Theologia or Augustine had preached original sin. The tradition which came before us was good and right and there is so much to be valued in it. We also need to have a better historical perspective. You can not demand that to be a Christian in those times you needed to have a 'personal' relationship with Jesus, let alone speak in tongues! They didn't think like that. Get out of your modern context for a few minutes! Being a Christian for 1800 years meant going to Church, hearing the Word, recieving the sacraments and confessing with the Creed. That isn't that bad. I think there would be less division in the Church if we got back to something similar to that.

3. So I am pushing for a more 'catholic' perspective, one that is wider than merely 'personal Jesus'. The integrity of the faith demands it. If we don't accept the orthodoxy tradition of the Church (the creeds, the liturgy, the theology) then we are throwing off almost all of Christianity. We have stripped off all the meat and there is just bone left. If you want to be part of a dry and bone like church that's fine, but don't call it Christianity. It is offensive to all the martyrs who died so you can sing praise songs. Think about that some time.

So I think the Christian Church needs both. I think in this time (21st century) and this place (West) we can 'raise the bar' with Christianity. More is to be expected from those who have been given more, and the Western Church has so much more than the early and medieval Church. We can talk about a 'personal' relationship with Jesus, prayer groups, guitars (?). But don't dare sell the rest of Christian history short. There is incredible wisdom in the old tradition. We are told to honour our father and our mother. Remember that one of the oldest expressions of the Church is as mother, how dare we dishonour her after all she has given us.

The Holy Spirit has worked in the Church throughout Christian history with stubborn, broken, and sinful people. We are just the same. Let's do much with the bounty he has given us, but let's value and respect the incredible things our brothers and sisters did before us with so much less. Or did that make it so much more?

To Become What One Is - Dynamite!

I think Friedrich Nietzsche is the most life-affirming, positive philosopher in history. Seriously. He is attacked for being a nihilist and takes on the title "immoralist" but when understood in context Nietzsche provides a view of life that is so positive it almost puts Christianity to shame, or at least some versions of Christianity. What's his deal? Just a few thoughts on "immoralism" and "amor fati".

When you hear "immoralist" the first thing that comes into mind is probably Ivan Karamazov's idea of "everything is permissable", right? I think this is how the majority of people think of Nietzsche, someone who said "God is dead" so we can do anything we like. But this is exactly the opposite of what Nietzsche believes. He is an "immoralist" only in the sense of his hatred of external imposed virtues, particularly the "Christian" virtues he saw around him. Nietzsche through his works is trying to free man from external oppression not so might can make right, but so that real virtues can flourish. He is heavily influenced by the Greek virtues and Stoic philosophy, which I will come to later. Importantly though is that life is not something that needs external rules to get along for a while, but something that demands virtues because of the power of life itself. Let me explain.

Nietzsche is combative against Christianity because he thinks it is hindering people from becoming "who they are" in that it is denying reality and existence in the flesh. He eschews the idea that things are all screwed up here and we just need to follow some external rules alien to our nature until God ends the game and takes us to some spirit place. Nietzsche sees an inherent "goodness" in life as it is, he doesn't think people need to look outside of life to get their moral bearings and ideals. So he is an immoralist in the sense that he doesn't subscribe to some eternal moral system, but this doesn't mean he doesn't have a moral system. He was actually an incredible moral and upright man and encourages the virtues as the most important aspect of life. Nietzsche is the ultimate "Yes-man" in that he wants to affirm people in their lives without appealing to some outside standard.

Whom do you call bad? - He who always wants to put people to shame.

What is most human to you? - To spare someone shame.

What is the seal of having become free? - No longer to be ashamed before oneself.

Most importantly to my mind is that it is Nietzsche who wants to say Yes to another person, not some abstract standard. It is he who wants to be affirming, not the "norm" or "rule." For in "standard morality" it is the rule which is affirming, and we are affirmed in so much as we live up to it. Take feeding the poor for example. If Jones spends a day working at a soup kitchen and is commended by Fred for it, Fred's commendation is really secondary in that Jones is primarily commended for "doing good" or lining up with standard morality, which Fred agrees with. Fred is really saying "You did a good thing because..." but Nietzsche thinks this is impersonal and un-affirming. Nietzsche wants to affirm from himself, not forced by some external morality. No because. This view of personal affirmation is quite powerful to me, although I have some questions to be addressed later.

The second theme in Nietzsche is his life motto: "To become what one is" How is this done? Through the amor fati - the love of fate.

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be other than it is, not in the future, not in the past, not in all eternity. Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity, still less to dissemble it - all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity - but to love it!

I don't think you can get more positive about life than this view. To love everything that befalls us, not just accept it or be resigned to it, but to love it! To see it all as an important part of shaping who we are and loving who that is and everything that entails - you can't get much more positive than that! No more sad faces, for everything is to be seen as "good", everything is of value. Everything is loved, incredibly powerful language. Nietzsche goes beyond Stoicism here in not only accepting, but loving! How wonderful would life be if everything that we encountered could be loved in this world.

So paradoxically Nietzsche's two most important goals in life are to affirm and love it. This is where I find his view so positive, as marked difference from his mentor Schopenhauer, probably one of the most depressing philosophers of all time. I would really like to take his incredibly positive view of humanity and life on board, but I have a few questions:

1. Nietzsche's view of man is incredibly high. So high that although he doesn't believe in God he would say we are as close as it gets in the Ubermensch. If only we were freed from external compulsion true virtue would shine forth and man would become godlike. But this view of man iis radically different and almost incompatible with the Scriptural/Calvinist (I tend to think the slash is pretty small, you may disagree...) view of man as fallen creature in a corrupt and fallen world. We aren't that good and that is why God revealed himself to us through the Law and then through Christ. Left to our own devices I am not sure we could live up to this Nietzschian ideal, so this seems unreconcilable with Christian teaching. There might be a slight case with common grace and sensus divinitatis but that is really stretching it in order to live up to the Ubermensch.

2. I am not convinced that without some "external morality" you can affirm or justify anything like this. The idea of external morality is not too appealing and I would want to use language of Holy Spirit and indwelling to make it more incarnational, but there is certainly a "coming down" from heaven in the revelation to some extent. So I am not sure that Nietzsche can ground his Greek virtues in life itself. But the Greeks didn't really believe in transcendent gods, so it might be possible. I guess this brings up the question of the Fall again and how deep that is.

So as positive as Nietzsche is towards life and humanity, I am not sure we can follow him, no matter how much we may want to. Too bad really, I guess if Christianity weren't true Nietzsche would be the way to go.

Side note: If anyone says "Isn't amor fati just Calvinism?" I have only one thing to say: "It's time to start slapping people."