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?
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 9:53 am
10 comments
10 Comments:
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Give me a few minutes, I've got to go through that again and consider what may have been redacted
I agree. And knowledge of one's own denominational tradition in particular would probably prove extremely helpful, at least, as a starting point. I am grateful for my tradition, pretty fixed to it, but like many Anglicans from all the way back, am an evangelical, a word first applied to Lutherans who had a very particular understanding of what was meant by the word "Gospel".
Gav,
Great comments and I am sure you are speaking as a neutral observer...
Seriously though, those are all 'dangers', but the more of us who say "I'm Anglican, not Roman, yet" the better. As far as the towels are concerned, the one I have is holding up, but thanks for the help.
California. Right.
1) Hans, I think this is a really interesting tact you take here; I am just concerned it isn’t strong enough. For instance, you say, “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.” Now, I would want to go further and say flat out that this is not only “not bad,” but is Christianity practiced. In my view, what you are describing is “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
So, I don’t want to throw away the language of personal relationship, I just want us to be clear about what that is and what that is not. It is, in my view, observing the Christian calendar, participating in the sacraments and liturgy, saying the creeds, fasting, feasting, etc. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is not, in my view, speaking in tongues, Bible study, quiet time, “mission trips,” etc. That is just made up crap. If we are going to be called Evangelical (some of us more reluctantly than others), then we need to be serious – not fluffy and “relevant” - about this personal relationship business.
2) I would go further also with the role of tradition. Again, you wrote, “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!” Now, I agree with what you wrote, but I would not make a break between “then” and “now.” In other words, right-thinking Christians today are only right-thinking and Christian in so far as they are the inheritors of the theological traditions of the Church and salvivic promises of Christ, respectively.
As I understand it, there are really only two issues that make Christianity possible for any of us today: authority and inheritance. That is not to deny the role of the Holy Spirit or anything like that, it is just to say that Christ uses His Bride as the means of revelation, discipline, and grace in the world. So, insofar as we have inherited certain writings, beliefs, doctrines, practices, and promises through channels of proper authority, we are Christians. Insofar as we have not, we are not Christians. That is precicely why and how we can make a distinction between orthodox and heterodox. That, in turn, demands from the orthodox a knowledge of that inheritance and the authority with which it was transmitted as well as an appreciation of and reverence for both.
Dear Adam,
I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. In reading what you wrote I was reminded of the venerable aspect of the Syrian Orthodox church; the church I grew up in, learnt much from and have a lot of respect for. This is a church that has stood the test of time; two thousand years of antagonism from within and from the outside, existing and in many ways active essentially in a hostile multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-racial multi-ethnic multi-artistic, multi-whatnot society! Someone once wisely said, ‘Those who don’t learn from history are forced to repeat its mistakes.’
Looking into history is pivotal but should we also be looking around to see what God is doing in many parts of the world today; especially the majority world and learn valuable lessons from their experience, practice and theology. Looking back into history is important; but I suspect looking around might provide us some clues too.
I am consistently fascinated by western academia that don’t consider non-western theologies. Where are they in our syllabus? We are happy to discuss Stott‘s, Luther‘s and Billy‘s; Wonderful people in their own rights. But what about Sadhu Sunder Singh’s, Gutierrez’s and Kwame Bediako’s? African, Minjung (Korea) or Dalit (India) theology which is ignored in the west. Have they nothing to say to our “progressive societies“?
Perhaps, the clues to our quests lies not very far from us. Let’s value and respect the incredible things our brothers and sisters did before us and perhaps around us!
Taste and see,
Saju
Saju, valuable comments, I guess with the incredible amount of material and experience out there it is practical matters that limit us to just the Western Church, but bringing other current models are important, although newer models tend to also have a more secular propagandist influence (say liberation theology). Still there are important emphases in these.
J. Morg - interesting comments, I agree with almost all of them. My only concern is that you would deny altogether the 'personal' relationship with Jesus aspect. I think we would differ in you saying evangelicals 'invented' it and I think evangelicals 'rediscovered' it. The reason for my position is because in the mystic tradition (Eastern Jesus prayer, Immitation of Christ, Desert Fathers, etc.) there has always been a rich emphasis on 'union with Christ' through prayer, Scripture and meditation. This is very much like a pure evangelicalism, which may be different than what we see around in certain 'lower' churches, but is hinted at nonetheless. So the 'personal' relationship has always been there, it is just now more widly available and at the same time widely distorted. That's my take.
Hans,
Love the post!
My sense is that much of the contemporary evangelical leaning toward low church modes of worship has much to do with an embedded pneumatological perversion.
When we begin to relegate the third person of the trinity to nothing more than religious talisman (not unlike the Corinthians) it is no surprise that high-liturgical services become cumbersome. When the Holy Ghost is useful solely as a catalyst for religious experience, He no longer retains a transcendent, hidden identity. He is thought to work in as much as he can be felt.
What we are left with are worship services that feature the charismatic prose of some "enlightened" orator who offers up hollow sentiments to characterless souls, both of whom are in search of the next cheap thrill. 45 minutes of pep talks and 12-steps are all that remain because we don't actually believe that the Spirit could ever move without ingenuity and novelty.
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well, I think we evangelicals should take it a step further and get read of augustine too.
am I an evangelical? I'd rather not be, I think. Wilberforce really drives me nuts.
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