This relates...

Doctrine = Christ

Posted Saturday, October 27, 2007

Does Christianity begin with a rational, doctrinally defined picture of God? Matthew explores the sacramental nature of the Church and how it relates to our experience of God.

Tom:  Bare each other's pain? We're causing the pain B. You can't cause it and also bare it.

POW: We can be patient with each other, while embracing all that is available in the mean time. (What might seem to be one thing to one might be another to another. EO and RC will take some time, etc.)

Tom:  And when we have opportunity to speak or act in ways that challenge divisive ecclesiologies? Do we recognize the pain our own ecclesiologies have caused? Are we prepared to confess the possibility that traditions can be very mistaken? Are we brave enough to trust God to help us forge a new way of being the church locally that better reflects, incarnates, the oneness of ALL believers in Christ?

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Tom: The problem is that the core division is driven and maintained by infected ecclesiologies.

POW: ...like the Papacy, and with that the Protestant form of it...while we're at it.

Tom: And in ways like the EO?

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Tom: ...follow from embracing a new perception of what the Church is, of our oneness in Christ.

POW: I don't think this has to be called "new" as it is from the beginning. But you can say that "our oneness is newness."

Tom: I’ll just stick with what I said, a “new perception.” Obviously the oneness of Christ’s church isn’t a new thing. But a new apprehension of it would do us all—EO, RC, and Protestants—a great deal of good, perhaps some very unexpected good for the older kids on the block.

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Tom: …people doing on the surface what doesn't exist IN FACT.

POW: ONly if you are espousing a phanTom "universal church" as "invisible."

Tom: How about visible churches that really incarnate locally the universal oneness of Christ’s body, the universal oneness of his headship, and the universal offer of the gospel, who LOOK and live locally like something that actually transcends rather than multiplies the bitter sectarian divisions we say the gospel can save us from?

Nothing phantom about it. There is one church, one people of God. It’s only lived and experienced locally, yes, but surely a wider universal scope of contemplation (by local believers) ought to make a difference to what happens locally when Believer 1 and Believer 2 (two or three, remember?) from two entirely different locales or traditions encounter each other. There’s nothing phantomish about them contemplating the universal oneness of Christ’s Body (the oneness of the Body follows from its unity and identity in one and the same ‘head’ anyhow) and deciding that that reality really does trump their local divisions (not trumps the necessity of “being” local because that’s the only way to “be” at all, but rather in challenging the established local “ways” that prevent them from incarnating locally what is true universally, and so create a local expression that is truer to the oneness of Christ’s Body and Mission) and deciding, for example (very non-academically), that they’re going to share the Lord’s Table together—as One, because they (EO, RC, & Protestant) ARE one.

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POW: Take Episcopal for that as a test case. The priest or parishoner might be quite orthodox, but EITHER he is at odds with his own congregation and needs to work at unifying that, first, or he is not really all that orthodox. AGAIN, you should not merely address the surface. The church is a very physical and corporate thing.

Tom: I’m really not pretending this is easy or simple, B. Ecclesiology is extremely difficult and painful. I’ve been around the block. And there are lines to cross, traditions to challenge, and new local realities (new ways of being the Church locally) to forge ON ALL FRONTS (EO, RC, Prostestant, et. al.), ways that better incarnate the truth of the Body’s oneness in Christ.

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Tom: What we now sometimes have on the surface is the sectarian-driven divisions that amount to a denial of the facts.

POW: Sounds rather academic to me.

Tom: Then perhaps you’re not listening well enough. I don’t know, ‘cause it’s rather practical.

POW: …perhaps the invisible church model you seem to be using is at odds with a more biblical model.

Tom: Perhaps you have hardening of the categories and can only think of the “universal” in academic, unpractical ways. You hear “universal church” and react by thinking of all the mistaken notions that have and might be connected to the phrase. I don’t know. I can’t get inside your head. I can only say that the universal vision of the gospel, of ONE people incarnating in their local cultures and settings a minimum faith and celebration of that faith that ANY two or three should be able to share as a minium local incarnation of Christ in the world, is why I believe in the church at all. I place the Lord's Table WITHIN (as opposed to OUTSIDE OF) that minimum measure of celebration that ANY two believers in Christ should be able to share as an expression of their oneness in Christ and I believe anything less than that, like closed communion, is a lamentable failure to actualize locally the oneness of the Body.

And I don't mean that what's lamentable is that the Church is divided per se but that each division is right to close off Communion to those within its sectarian borders. No. I lament the latter, that our divisions have managed to pollute the act of Communion by closing it off along sectarian lines.

If I thought the only way the Church could be the Church is to entrench themselves in local divisions that deny each other the Lord’s Table because they don’t “belong” to a particular theological-traditional-dogmatic "way" of localizing the Faith, well, I don’t think I’d ever attend church again. I attend and worship and struggle with the Church because I believe it can get it right, REALLY right, and when that happens I can’t imagine any honest by-stander not running down the isle proclaiming, “Surely God is among you!”

Visible local churches, B, but ALL “one” in Christ, all incarnating locally what’s true universally. THAT oneness, my friend, is often denied on the local level. Nothing academic about it. I think closed communions essentially deny what communion was intended to incarnate.

Gotta run,

Tom

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 11/2/2007 10:11:29 AM (GMT-5)

Do We Want to Know God?

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/do-we-want-to-know-god/

For TOM, who will like this:

St. Symeon the New Theologian Speaks

Posted Friday, November 02, 2007

Are we more concerned with obeying liturgical rules than with having a heart filled with justice, mercy and faithfulness to God? St. Symeon the New Theologian speaks!

More for D.

http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/freeman/

 

Here's his response. (Quoted by Nassif in the broadcast)

Here are those whom I call heretics: Those who say that there is no one in our time--in our midst--who would observe the commandments of the Gospels and become like the Holy Fathers and those who pretend that it is impossible. These people have not fallen into some particular heresy...but into all the heresies at once...since this one is worse than all in its impiety. Whoever speaks this way destroys all the divine Scriptures. These antichrists affirm "This is impossible! Impossible!" Do not say then that one can possess Christ without knowing it. This is a thing never impossible, my friends, but, on the contrary, altogether possible for those who so wish.

St. Symeon, the New Theologian. The Discourses, Book 29, 27


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In one of his (Symeon) final messages, he concluded that anyone, be it layman, monk, priest, bishop, or patriarch, anyone in the church, who lacks this conscious awareness of God in their heart is unfit for Christian service. They are simply false Christians. False monks. False priests. And false bishops, even if they have been baptized and ordained.

Dr. Bradley Nassif

(He later says that the only thing can get us here is serious REPENTANCE that leads to a continuous conscious experience of God in the world. Good stuff. )

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Unless a man gives himself entirely to the Cross, in a spirit of humility and self-abasement; unless he casts down to be trampled underfoot by all and despised, accepting injustice, contempt and mockery; unless he undergoes all these things with joy for the sake of the Lord, not claiming any kind of human reward whatsoever--glory or honor or pleasures of food and drink and clothing--he cannot become a true Christian.

St Mark the Monk

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Holy Spirit, keep us in perpetual conviction.

Remove our doubt, faithlessness, and unbelief.

We love you.

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Post Edited (PLANIS) : 11/6/2007 11:04:44 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Epiklesis) : 11/6/2007 11:56:34 AM (GMT-6)

But for you D, that includes being cognizant of God's presence or being conscious of God's presence at all times--a habitual consciousness--that the more conscious you are, the more blessed you are.  That the degree of blessedness corresponds to the measure of one's consciousness a consciousness which is a regular thinking about God i.e a reflective act of cognition.  But not only does this seem hard to obtain, it doesn't even seem like the highest ideal as a reflective act of cognition of God will vanish along with one's thoughts. 

Go as far as disposition and orientation toward God and I'm cool with that.  Go beyond that and the unique me, the unique **I** seems to disappear. 

Post Edited (BBBCanada) : 11/6/2007 12:23:29 PM (GMT-6)

Tom:  I guess the important thing is, Am I moving in the right direction? Learning to see Christ in me in all that I do, DOING WHAT I DO THROUGH ME, as if Christ is walking (speaking, eating, whatever) IN ME as I do those things. I make the distinction (more a distinction than D would make probably), but increasingly I'm unable to conceive of either apart from the other.

And

I suck at it a lot too, and fail. But when I fail at it I think of myself as having briefly stepped OUTSIDE the norm, and one day there will be no stepping outside again, ever.

Brandon:  Right.  And this INTUITIVELY reflects that each and every moment (at LEAST this side of heaven, even if you believe we will attain such union in the age to come) that you don't have THAT sort of union with God.

Tom: It only means I don’t have it now. It doesn’t assume I can ONLY have it in heaven. Who knows what measure of conscious awareness of God we can reach in this life? I can’t think of a reason why it should be impossible in this life to get to the point where awareness of God is part of all my awareness.

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Brandon: If you are increasingly unable to concieve the distinction between you and Christ, that seems to mean that there is still some significant amount of union increasing activity that needs to take place which is to say that there is some that you have not obtained.

Tom: When I say I’m unable to conceive of myself apart from Christ, I don’t mean that I’m unable to distinguish between the two. There’s an ‘I’ (that’s me) and there’s a ‘Christ’. They’re not numerically one and I don’t think they ever will be. That’s not what I’m talking about. I just mean that when I do me in my head, when I think about my identity and existence, I can’t envision those meaningfully without also thinking about Christ. He is present when I consider who and what I am. When I stand up in my mind and begin to tell myself who and what Tom really is, invariably Christ stands up beside me. He’s doing the defining, the affirming, the gifting and releasing. It’s all from him. I can’t DO me apart from Christ. I don’t mean that I can’t tell a difference between me and Christ. I mean that I can no longer give meaning to the one (me) apart from the other (Christ). Radically dependant, but dependence presupposes a real difference. Different and distinguisable…but inseparable. D, I think, wants the ‘difference’ or the ‘distinction’ between the two to evaporate as well. I don’t know. But that’s the FEELING I get when he starts speaking Hindi!

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Brandon: But for you D, that includes being cognizant of God's presence or being conscious of God's presence at all times--a habitual consciousness--that the more conscious you are, the more blessed you are. That the degree of blessedness corresponds to the measure of one's consciousness a consciousness which is a regular thinking about God i.e a reflective act of cognition.

Tom: Sounds good to me. Through Isaiah God says, “Keep your mind stayed on me and I will…” right? Think on these things. Whatever you do, do…, and on and on.

Brandon: But not only does this seem hard to obtain, it doesn't even seem like the highest ideal as a reflective act of cognition of God will vanish along with one's thoughts.

Tom: Not sure what you mean by “vanish along with one’s thoughts.” Why should awareness of God vanish along with one’s thoughts? Are you thinking about sleepy time when we aren’t conscious? ;o) Let’s count that out. But during conscious hours, I don’t see why awareness of God can’t be the one thing that continues to characterize our thought-life throughout the day even if other thoughts come and go. Has nobody here experienced a single such day? Am I the only one? Come on ya’ll. I can’t be the only one. I’m a creep too. You guys are more sanctified than I am. But honestly, I have entire days with no perceivable break in my awareness of God’s presence, calling, engagement of the world around me (through me!). I mean, several days running. I can’t say how many. I don’t count. To count misses the point!

Maybe it’s just a Pentecostal thing. ;o)

And that’s not to say that this state as I might experience it now, is the final state. It’s not. I might be as engaged in awareness of God as my capacities can manage. But why should my capacities remain as they are? Shouldn’t glorification turn a feeble mind (even one fixed in uninterrupted awareness of God) into something unimaginably more blissful? I sure hope so.

Any of this making sense?

It’s like I wake up and IMMEDIATELY think, “Welcome Father, Son, and Spirit! Thanks for another day. It’s your day. And I’m yours. Live through me.” Then I go to my first task…going to the bathroom, and I take God right into that (yep), “This is your body God. You made it (could of made it a bit different, but thanks anyways!), and it’s yours.” So the point becomes how to let this presence that’s in me come out appropriately in THIS situation, and the next situation, and so forth. God’s always in my head (in my awareness). So “I” become the place where “God” lives in the world in the space that my body takes up. If you never disengage that consciously, and I don’t see why we should have to, or expect to have to, well that’s all I’m talking about.

Brandon: Go as far as disposition and orientation toward God and I'm cool with that. Go beyond that and the unique me, the unique **I** seems to disappear.

Tom: Right, but we're not discussing the unique “I” are we? I didn’t think we were. In my mind, the unique “I” that I am abides forever. God wants it to abide. God created it to abide. That’s the beef between D and me. The posts are all there. Don’t have the energy to go back and read ‘em! I just remember I won the argument. Something about jazz music I think.

But as far as uninterrupted awareness of God goes, do you think this is unattainable in this life?

Tom

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 11/6/2007 2:54:08 PM (GMT-6)