Category: Theology

I think that I wrote somewhere else that during this time of healing and life changes that come with retirement, my brain has been awash in “stuff.”
Thoughts and ideas flit about like Lake Erie midges gathering above the trees in June.
Millions of them creating an undulating cloud and an eerie whine as they search for a mate in the few hours of life granted to them.

Such, it seems, are the clouds of thoughts in my head.
And, just as difficult to grasp.

There are, however, moments when something breaks away from the cloud and comes closer for a better look.
One of these has been a thought that I have considered and wrestled with for the better share of the last year.
That is the question:
“Who are You really…God?”

I think that is the correct way to frame my inquiry.
I’m not interested in knowing about God. As in, what is God like or what are the attributes of God. Those questions are for the systematic theologians. And, if you know me at all, I have no interest in systems. They always fall short of whatever aim the theologian intends. And, they always only provide that theologian’s opinion. For me, that’s so much useless information.

Really, I think that any question that doesn’t deal with the “Who” issue is always going to fall short of the mark.

And, I believe wholeheartedly that the religious forms that have developed since about the 3rd or 4th century have completely missed this.
As far back as Origen the tendency of theologians has been to try to explain what happened in the 1st century through the lens of Hellenistic philosophy. After all, that was the natural habitat for all of Greek culture. The consequence of this was, and is, a Christianity that is steeped in the world of Neo-Platonism. (I have mentioned this in previous posts.)

This influence, I believe, has skewed the story of Jesus and the early church in a very unhelpful and unhealthy direction.
From Augustine through the Patristic Period, Greek philosophy shaped and molded what we now see as a deeply flawed and needy Church.
Luther and Calvin received this notion from the Fathers and, building on a flawed foundation, compounded many of the errors and misconceptions inherited from that earlier time.

This led me to my last post pointing out a need for a new Reformation.

So, why do I think like this?
Can’t I just accept that people who were smarter than me and who wrestled with all of this for centuries have created a building that must stand, no matter what?

In a word…
No.

I question things. I ask and ask and ask.
Sometimes I come up with plausible answers.
Most of the time, I just end up with more questions.

In this case, though, I need to look back a few years.
Even before I started seminary I wondered about some things.
One of those things was the unquestioning acceptance of how a human is put together. In the Western Church a person is said to be made up of a body and a spirit. Sometimes a third component, a soul, is thrown into the mix.
In this concept, at least in the Evangelical world that I once inhabited, the body was viewed as flesh. It followed it’s appetites and those appetites always led to a bad place. In a not so uncommon view, the body/flesh was, is, and always will be fraught with evil.
On the other hand, the spirit is something that is dormant in most people. It’s only when God breathes life into it does it spring back to life and works to draw the person into a closer relationship with God. So, the spirit is a good thing.
What most people don’t see in this is that it is completely Platonic. It pits the lesser, the body, against the ultimate, the spirit. It is also sot through and through with what is known as Gnosticism. Again, the physical is evil and the spiritual is good.

Both of these ideas are, quite simply, mistaken.
They have no basis in Scripture nor the heritage from which the Church has its roots.

I have believe since those early days when I began to ask these questions that everything that we can know about God, Jesus, the Spirit, or the Biblical text comes to us from the story of Israel and Israel’s God.
So, why didn’t the Church search for its identity there?
As a quick example to think about…
The illustration I shared above about the way a person is made up of various and disparate parts would have been completely unrecognizable to someone in 1st century Judaism. In the Scriptures, this person would say, a person is a single, living soul. Period. There is no dividing into parts.
For these early theologians in the Greek world, the thoughts of anyone from the backwaters of Palestine would have been incomprehensible and ignored.
(Of course, the defense could be raised that they were simply doing theology and trying to make sense of God in their own context. An admirable pursuit. But, that will always render a qualified and relative answer that must be taken with a large chunk of salt.)

This was the beginning of my search for the Who is God question. Because, if we don’t even know anything about Who is a Human, how can we know anything about God? If we can’t get the questions right, we will never come close to finding answers.

This has been the focus of much of my prayer, contemplation, and study for the last year.
Of course, the question that I ask can not be adequately answered by anyone. We can, however, make certain deductions and come to some conclusions that may help to carry the conversation forward.

And, that might just shed some light on where God may be directing God’s people as we muddle our way forward.
I hope so, anyway.