It’s a funny thing, but in the last few years it has become clearer than ever to me that the doctrinal issues really don’t matter at all. It doesn’t even really matter what we believe about the nature of Christ. What matters is that we believe He is the Savior of the world, and that He is the Truth, the Way and the Life. How can a man be the Truth? I don’t know, but He is. Before you decide to stone me, try to hear what it is I am saying, and not jump to conclusions.That Truth is a Man, and not a doctrine, fits in so well with God’s very nature.
Notice, in the Old Testament there is no doctrine at all except, ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but Me.’ Nothing else. How simple! And look what happened. The rabbis turned that into a vast theological system.
And into that system comes a man who is Who He is, who does not argue, who does not teach doctrine. Do you ever hear Jesus teaching doctrine? or religion? No, He just speaks the Truth, and that Truth is Himself, that He is sent by the Father to do His will, and to speak what the Father tells Him to speak. Nothing else.
And look what the fathers have done to that. We have had councils and even wars over questions that not Christ, not the apostles, were ever concerned about. We have disputes over the oneness of God, and about the Trinity not being written up in the bible. Of course it’s not written up! It doesn’t have to be!
That the Divine Nature is a triad is not a doctrine to be believed—
what good does it do if we believe it, what evil if we don’t?—
but a reality to be lived, to be lived, really and truly, the pattern of all being: three are one, not two, not one, but three.
It’s just how things are.
what good does it do if we believe it, what evil if we don’t?—
but a reality to be lived, to be lived, really and truly, the pattern of all being: three are one, not two, not one, but three.
It’s just how things are.
Jesus came to demonstrate that and to invite us to join in that threesome by sending us the Holy Spirit who incorporates us into the Body of God, making us ‘one of the Family.’ It is so awesome!
How petty we are to nitpick each other and tear each other’s flesh over trifles!
How petty we are to nitpick each other and tear each other’s flesh over trifles!
I have no problem with Orthodoxy and with its Christological dogma, because I really believe it is an expression in human thinking of the livable reality that I have just been describing, otherwise I would not be an Orthodox Christian.
And even though the Orthodox Church is responsible for a lot of the turmoil in the early Church, defining what’s what and who’s who, and even though it has canons and rules and jurisdictions and squabbles enough to tear the heads off many chickens, the Orthodox life is really quite simple, just as simple as the life of any Christian of any denomination or lack of one.
As simple as the life of any lover and disciple of Jesus.
I know, because I have met them there, as everywhere,
and I hope I am one of them.
I know, because I have met them there, as everywhere,
and I hope I am one of them.
I have declared many times, not to contradict, but simply to state a fact about myself: I am not an ecumenist. Ecumenism is for those who think the Church is divided and so they take pains to reunite it. But if we know it as one, we just live in that knowledge.
That is, if we dare.
You may stone me now.
In a certain sense, if we contrast thinking to living, then doctrine can become a substitute for really living the Gospel. I think that I have done this, without realizing it, because I have a mind that needs to be fed. I always had a quest for truth (which seems contained in doctrine as well as before or beyond doctrine; so my mind naturally turned to doctrine, and my soul later learned to turn to the person of Jesus as the embodiment of truth). While I am not an intellectual, my mind seems to need some kind of intellectual stimulation: the beauty of words and something to ponder. Unfortunately, doctrine has divided and multiplied many times over and the result is confusion, and Jesus is talked about but not really followed. Even worse, we mistake the talk for the walk.
ReplyDeleteI became a believer before I had a sound understanding of the Trinity (or the Holy Triad, as I think the Orthodox church would say). We are saved by trusting Jesus who saves. Yet if, after teaching, we reject sound doctrine about Jesus, we are in peril of hell. The pseudo-Christian cults seem to always have a false view of the nature of Jesus.
ReplyDeleteAunt Melanie's comment is also good.
Yes, the pseudo-Christian cults usually have a distorted view of Jesus, otherwise they wouldn't be 'separated brethren,' such as the religion espoused by one of our presidential candidates, whom Joel Osteen, a supposed evangelical Christian, promotes, saying 'we believe in the same Jesus.' Yes, brother Osteen, wishful thinking has affected your judgment.
ReplyDeleteI do not know exactly how wrong beliefs about Jesus and even the Divine Nature of the Holy Trinity affects our eternal condition, our salvation. I cannot know this. What I can know, or at least believe, is that God's love and mercy, as revealed in Christ, seems to make up for any deficiencies or errors in our faith, as long as we really do trust in Jesus for our salvation.
'In peril of hell' is always the state of our souls when we persist in our own ways, trust in ourselves and our own thinking instead of on God in Christ. The irony in all this is that whole groups of people, even whole nations, can be enslaved for generations, for centuries, by false religious systems, yet as individuals, their faithfulness and trust in the One whom they know, even as little as they may know of Him in truth, place them 'in hope of heaven.'
It is in this sense that I have written, we are not condemned for what we believe, but saved by Whom we believe.
'I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?' (John 11:25-26).
I suggest that it is better to be correct than incorrect. To that end, the answers to the questions that you say do not matter are actually answered in scripture. Therefore, there is no reason to be incorrect in these areas of doctrine. Being incorrect in some of these areas is not damning in itself, except that being wrong a little bit can lead to being wrong a lot. For instance, a compass that is off by only 1/2 degree matters little in a journey of a mile, but it can mean life or death in a journey of 1000 miles.
ReplyDeleteSmall errors add up to big ones, sometimes to the point that the faith we think we possess is no faith at all, but simply another set of laws that do not bring righteousness at all.
Yes, of course, you are right: it is better to be correct than incorrect, and yes, the correct answers are to be found in scripture, but that is exactly where sectarians and makers of religions go to bolster their mistaken ideologies. Yes, if we are of the ancient faith, for us the orthodoxy of the historic Christian Church will keep us from wandering into lands from which there may be no return. I am not suggesting that doctrine doesn't matter, in spite of my use of rather strong language and what appear to be categorical imperatives. No, I am not speaking out of both corners of my mouth either. It's just that doctrinal belief or misbelief can in fact affect our relationship to God and our ultimate destiny with Him or without Him, and yet, His mercy can cover all offenses and in fact does, even taking to Himself those whose ideas about Him are either non-existent or very mistaken.
ReplyDeleteOur God is greater than anything we can say about Him, even greater than anything the Bible says about Him. How can He not be? He is the author of all, and having written the only story that there is, He can direct its course, and ours, beyond anything we can do. Yes, we can be damned and separated from Him for ever, but only from our side. From His side, we are never out of His sight.
This is a very strange story He has written, our God, and we see neither the beginning or the end as we now are, mere characters on a page. But when the Book is finally open, we will find out whose names were written there from before the foundation of the world, and we will have cause to wonder at His great mercy, both to the saved, and to the damned.