Theology’s Pesky Prepositions — Or, Is Orthodoxy Important? (pt. 1)
Nov 28th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | 5 Comments |
[Disclaimer: If something in the following post sounds wrong, please let me know in the comments. This was a very difficult post to write, and I don't want to either mislead people, or to be mistaken myself. So, correct me if I'm wrong, and ask me to clarify the things that aren't clear.]
Do you ever think maybe there’s a difference between believing in God and believing things about God?
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I. The Ancient Controversies
I’ve been thinking about that recently after learning about all the theological controversies in the first few hundred years of Church History.
I’m kind of grateful for those controversies, because it was, in a way, “through” them that the Church Fathers discovered orthodoxy. (And I do think “discovered” is the right word there. You don’t “develop” or “invent” truth; you discover it.)
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Nevertheless, I don’t think one can help feeling that many of the combatants took the controversies “too seriously” somehow.
It’s not that the truth isn’t of utmost importance. And it’s not that the heretics weren’t wrong.
It’s just that I don’t think some (many?) of the questions around which the debates raged –
e.g., does Jesus have one or two natures, is it legitimate to call Mary the “Mother of God,” does the Holy Spirit proceed from both the Father and the Son (or only from the Father), does Jesus have two wills or just one?
– ever occurred to the Apostles. And I don’t think anyone should be held to a higher standard than the Apostles.
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II. The Apostles Came First
In other words, the theological battles that were waged after the Apostles at the early Church Councils, while very important, are somehow and to some extent “secondary.”
Christianity as lived and written about by the Apostles came before the Councils. The Councils were trying to work out how we should understand the Christianity that the Apostles lived and wrote about.
Therefore, while I think everyone should hold the orthodox positions enunciated by the Councils — and while I think that God will eventually have to enlighten everyone who either doesn’t agree with the orthodox positions or who holds heretical positions — I also think that people should remember that not being able to take a position on one or more of the various controversies is different from taking the heretical position on any one of those controversies.
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The Apostles, after all, had never even heard of some of those controversies, and therefore took no explicit position on them. And yet the Apostles weren’t heretics.
The Apostles lived the Christian life without having, for example, a fully-worked-out theory of the Trinity, or of the Incarnation, or of Soteriology.
And yet they relied on God, they trusted Jesus to restore their relationship with God, and they counted on the Holy Spirit to help the relationship function fully and properly.
The Apostles, we might say, believed in Jesus and in God and in the Holy Spirit, even if they were unclear in some instances — in comparison with the later Councils — about exactly what they believed about Jesus and about God and about the Holy Spirit.
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III. Why Orthodoxy Is Important
Nevertheless, against those who would claim that orthodoxy is not important, we must remember that the Apostles couldn’t believe in Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, unless they first believed things about Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit.
They had to believe that God was someone worth having a relationship with (whatever that might mean), that God would be willing to accept whatever it was that Jesus does to restore their relationship to God, and that the Holy Spirit could somehow help out in the relationship.
If they didn’t at least believe those things about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, they could never believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
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Nevertheless, they didn’t have to have the doctrine of the Trinity fully worked out, the doctrine of the Incarnation finally decided, or the doctrine of Soteriology systematically settled.
They were Christians, they were saved, and they were living the lives that God wanted them to live in relation both to God and to their fellow human beings.
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That should have, it would seem to me, kept at least some of the later theological debates from getting quite as heated as they got. If you are debating a question the Apostles never asked, you are, in some sense, asking a “secondary” question.
Nevertheless, those “secondary” questions were unavoidable, and giving the wrong answer to them could end up ruining your responses to the fundamental issues.
After all, if you decide one of the secondary question in such a way that you have to conclude that Jesus couldn’t restore your relationship with God, then you won’t be able to rely on Jesus to restore your relationship with God.
Or, if you decide on the secondary questions in such a way that you have to conclude that God isn’t worth “having a relationship with,” then you won’t want anything to do with God at all.
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Or, if your decision about some secondary question forces you to conclude that God couldn’t have “accepted” whatever it is that Jesus does to restore your relationship with God, then you won’t accept the restored relationship you believe that Jesus claims to provide.
Likewise, if your decision about how to answer some secondary question leads you to conclude that you don’t need your relationship with God restored by Jesus, then you won’t ever believe in Jesus as the Person who restores your relationship with God.
And that means your relationship will never get restored. And that’s a big deal.
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IV. The Relation of Orthodoxy to Orthopraxy (?)
Therefore, while I think that belief in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is the point, I think you can only believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (properly) if you believe the right things about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
Belief about is the beginning, while belief in is the goal. Belief about is the arche, while belief in is the telos.
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In other words, I do think that orthodoxy — belief about — is fundamental. Nevertheless, orthodoxy is only the arche of Christianity.
The telos of Christianity — its purpose, point, goal, raison d’etre — is belief in (the kind of belief that expresses itself in mental, emotional, and physical action). That is, the telos of Christianity is something more like orthopraxy. (Perhaps?)
You can’t get there without starting by believing the right things about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit — and if you get there without believing the right things about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, your orthopraxy will be something half-hearted (as it were) — but getting there is the reason you started in the first place.
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So, you might say orthodoxy is fundamental, and orthopraxy is ultimate. They’re the two ends of Christianity, and without one or the other, Christianity would be like a magnet that’s lost one of its poles. (Which is impossible, right?)
Therefore, we should come to the one from the other. The each should “inform” how we see the other.
What I want to ask next is: In light of the centrality of belief in, what must one’s orthodoxy be? What is “mere Christianity“?
I’ll talk about that next time.
[Disclaimer: If something in the above post sounds wrong, please let me know in the comments. This was a very difficult post to write, and I don't want to either mislead people, or to be mistaken myself. So, correct me if I'm wrong, and ask me to clarify the things that aren't clear.]
Great points! I believe that you’re on to something important here.
A couple reactions. You say, “That should have, it would seem to me, kept at least some of the later theological debates from getting quite as heated as they got. If you are debating a question the Apostles never asked, you are, in some sense, asking a “secondary” question.
Nevertheless, those “secondary” questions were unavoidable, and giving the wrong answer to them could end up ruining your responses to the fundamental issues.”
I’m assuming the first “that” above was meant to be a “they” (Not trying to be picky– I’m the king of typos– just wanting to be sure I take your meaning.)
My thought is this:
What if the experiences the apostles had of the living God demonstrated the inadequacies of both these questions and any attempt at mortal answering of them?
I think it’s plausible that this might have come about in 2 ways:
A) Perhaps they were aware of these tensions, these questions which would be asked later, but any answer they formulated seemed quite irrelevant to what they were living.
B) Perhaps the manner in which they came to their relationship with God just never lead to the asking of these questions in the first place.
Because we don’t come to our relationship with God in the same way that the apostles did, I think it’s possible that these questions might be important to us, even if they were irrelevant to them, in the same way that my eldest son has pretty firm memories about his grand mother who passed away a few years ago. He’s like an apostle. He had first hand experiences. My youngest, on the other hand, has very few first hand memories. In coming to understand who my grandmother was, he asks more questions about her.
(There are obvious ways this metaphor falls down– My grand mother is not present in our lives today in the same sense that Jesus is)
I think one of the things that answering your question is going to require is a pretty thorough account of whether the Holy Spirit was more actively at work in seeing to it that scripture got recorded than He is in shaping an accurate understanding of our faith thousands of years of later.
[...] This post, over at Micah Tillman’s excellent blog got me thinking about this issue. Micah was thinking about the idea that Christians today are expected to hold many more beliefs than the apostles did. People who came after the apostles were the ones who put words to, and worked out the ramifications of, many things believed by the people who knew Jesus first hand. He made that distinction with reference to God: there is a difference between knowing about God and knowing God. [...]
I’ve said this all along. Thanks for the post. In fact, on Thanksgiving evening after a full tummy, my youngest son John & I were discussing some of the ins and outs of one aspect of this point.
It’s the aspect that you do not have to resolve the debate about whether faith in Jesus is prevenient in order to have faith in Jesus.
Thanks Jeff! (And thanks for the kind link!)
And thanks for checking on the “that”/”they” issue. I did, in fact, mean “that.” I meant to be referring to the fact that the Apostles got along just fine without explicitly articulating much of what the later councils demanded that Christians articulate.
Great point about the greatness of the reality showing the inadequacy of any attempt to formulate that reality. St. Thomas Aquinas is said to have had a mystical experience at the end of his life that convinced him that everything he had ever written was but “straw”.
And I think your example of your sons and their grandmother is very apt.
I know the Eastern Orthodox at least put a great deal of weight on the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. They think the Church is primary, and Scripture secondary, because the Church is the living and active Body of Christ indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Dr. Chase–
I often find myself trying to articulate things I’ve heard other people say, and only recently been truly struck by.
And the faith/previnient grace example is perfect. Well said. :-D
Micah — Love the post. I’ve subscribed to your RSS. My dad pointed me to your blog. (I remember you, but I realize you might not remember me.)
One thing your post made me think of: Paul might not have held to some form of orthodoxy (that might have even seemed a form of ‘law’ to him). But he certainly took a hard line on the gospel, confronting the Galatians about it, for instance (Gal 1:6-9). When he opposed Peter (Gal 2:11-21) he didn’t quote a snippet of a creed, nor did he cite the Mosaic law. He simply said, “When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel…” (v14).
The “gospel” is a little ethereal, but it certainly centers on God’s divine grace. And it’s certainly not wages for our good works, least any man should boast. (This is where our previnient grace discussion came in.)
I haven’t thought it all through, but it’s interesting to think about Paul’s example — holding things up to the light of the gospel. How am I doing that in my life?