Who Needs Theology?

Theology: Roadmap for Relationship


(Photo Credit: S.M.R.)



Some might ask, “If Christianity is a relationship with God, what is the point of spending so much time with theology and doctrine? Why not just get on with it?” C.S. Lewis describes theology as a map.[i] If one is to “get on with it (living life),” then a map describes precisely how one can “get on with it.” The map is not the “getting on with it,” and does not replace the “getting on,” but is merely some directions and frames of reference to do so. To go without a map is to get lost. And I dare say, many modern Christians— having at first located the starting point of confessing Christ and being baptized— have since become lost. Lost to a deeper knowledge of God; lost to why they were created in the first place; lost in how to truly relate to an infinite God; lost to how God designed marriage. Some are a bit confused as to the meaning of their God designed gender. The map of theology helps with all of this. Keep in mind that the relationship we are talking about is the relationship between an immutable, eternal, infinite, holy God and finite created Man. For this relationship to work there must be some major protocols in place. For Man, it would behoove him to “follow the directions” for this relationship and not just “wing it.”   

Take for example the doctrine of the Fall of Man: it simply declares that there is something very wrong with the human race in his current state. For that reason, formation has always been a major task for the Church: when a believer has become acceptable to God legally— through the shed blood of Christ— they must further become acceptable to God in their manner of life. Theology and this book are about formation, taking that journey from where you are into what God wants you to be. All of this is accomplished under the premise of first having a right relationship with God as is spelled out in soteriology, a division of theology.  

Think of a young boy who has been out playing in the mud. Coming into the house, he is vaguely, but truly, recognized as the young man who lives there. Being fully accepted as a family member, this is where he truly belongs, but he is in no condition to come to the dinner table. He must be scrubbed, scoured, and redressed to be acceptable at the table. Proper relationship with all other home members requires this: do not come to the feast covered in mud. The Christian view of life on earth is that the believer is being cleaned up and prepared for that eternal dinner where the Lord sits with His people. This life is a time to lay up treasure in heaven by doing good deeds through God’s Grace. Theology assists with this. It is not just information, but it is how to make oneself respectable in God’s eyes, to please Him and be therefore presentable to all.

For the unregenerate, he has no relationship with the Owner of the house and cannot enter unless he is made acceptable through the shed blood of Christ so He can be adopted into God’s family. This only gives him the right and the ability through God’s Spirit to cry “Abba Father.” (Romans 8:15). But for the believer, life is a preparation for eternity, and a road map to this end is helpful indeed.

To have relationship with God is to understand what He has revealed about Himself, what He has revealed about Man, and how all the universe— with its angels and demons— is a part of the big picture. God wants us to know what is going on with His grand schema for everything. This is where theology comes in. It guides us and explains a lot of things. It shows that we have a great future— now and in eternity—  to which we look forward. God does not want us to be ignorant passengers on a train to who-knows-where, but His idea is passengers glued to the windows, absorbing every view on the way. Theology does that. It speaks of where we have been, where we are going, and how we are to get there.

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[i] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1943), p. 136.

First Things First-

Authority From Which We Speak

(An excerpt from The Ikon of God)

The first and most basic element any reader would want to examine when reading  non-fiction is authority: how does the reader know that what the writer is saying is true? What does the author base his information on? Essentially, how do you know that you can trust us and what we say? Primarily, our authority starts and ends with the Bible. The first and foremost presupposition is that the Bible is understood to be the inspired, infallible Word of God that does not err. Even if the student does not have all of the theological nuances of what that means, he or she must understand that we are using the Bible as the authority for the way we should think about, implement, and live out a core understanding of Man and his relationship to God. Simply stated, it is through the Bible that we are able to peer beyond the veil of human limitation into God’s wondrous plans. Answers to all of the major questions of life are found in the Bible.

While mainly referring to Scripture as our guide for our study, we also will be referring to theological commentators from a broad spectrum of the Church. Interpretations will be quoted from some relatively new Christian authors and some very ancient writers, theologians, and Church Fathers. The wealth and volume of revelation contained in Christendom is immense and it spans many generations and comes from Christians of all walks of life.  

Our study can be described as your grandmother’s stew. Many things go into that stew, both vegetables and meat. The flavors of potatoes, carrots, beef, and many seasonings, all intermingle when cooked over time.. Here, you will find the Protestant with the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian and the Charismatic, the new with the old. We will not be camping out in a particular denominational perspective but will be taking from a broad treasure and throwing it into one pot, simmering it until the common flavor exudes from every morsel. Like when the potatoes take on the flavor of the meat and carrots, we see a unity across the division as when we realize how various thoughts settle together from various branches of Christendom.

This melting pot of sources will, as we said, include some of the Church Fathers (by consulting the Church Fathers on matters of biblical interpretation, we are using the  lens of tradition). Many people today would ask why we consult the Church Fathers on Bible interpretation. How could they be relevant in obtaining a deeper understanding of the Scripture? There are two reasons: one, they were closer to the time of Christ and the first apostles. This makes their commentaries more reliable because we are always reforming and referring back to what God had established at the beginning. And two, they express a common thought for the entire, complete, and unified Church. It is hard for us today to think of the Body of Christ in any state other than its current condition with all of its denominations and non-denominations. The modern Church is highly fractured, but this has not always been. The Church developing out of its roots in Jerusalem was one in thought and mission. For 1,000 years (think about that) the Church was, very much a united body. The first major division did not occur until AD 1054 when the Catholic (western) and Orthodox (eastern) churches split. And even then, for another 500 years, the Church was only split in two. With the emergence of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, a fracturing process began to shape Protestant churches, first with the establishment of multiple denominations and— in recent times— a further splintering with the establishment into the “non-denominational/independent church,” each having a customized form of outside oversight or none at all. Modern writings no longer represent the stance of a unified whole, as the writings of the Church Fathers did. We certainly do not consider what the Church Fathers wrote to be of equal authority as the Scripture, but looking back at the Church and its writings in its pre-divided state brings a more accurate interpretation of the biblical authors for the very reason that the Church was completely unified and these men were closer to the Apostles (some, such as Clement of Rome, had even conversed directly with and learned personally from them).

Saint Vincent of Lérins (5^th century Christian writer) articulates why we need the lens of tradition when interpreting Scripture:

If someone wants to be protected from tricks and remain healthy in the faith, he must confine his faith first to the authority of the Holy Scriptures, and secondly to the Tradition of the Church. But someone may ask, is not the canon of Scripture sufficient for everything, and why should we add thereto the authority of Tradition? This is because not everyone understands the Scriptures in the same way, but one explains them this way and another that way, so that it is possible to get there from as many thoughts as there are heads. Therefore it is necessary to be guided by the understanding of the Church ... What is tradition? It is that which has been understood by everyone, everywhere and at all times ... that which you have received, and not that which you have thought up ... So then, our job is not to lead religion where we wish it to go, but to follow it where it leads, and not to give that which is our own to our heirs, but to guard that which has been given to us.[i]  

Basically, we are not saying much that new in this volume. We disclose things already discovered and they can be found in other writers throughout church history. We only hope for a pulling together into one location from across a broad history in order to obtain a better understanding of things already known and understood.

As with the astronauts of Apollo 8, discussed in the “Introduction,” Man needs outside perspective. It is not within Man to discover his origins or the origins of the universe on his own. He needs outside help. He needs God’s help. God provides that help through the Church (as well as the Holy Spirit); without the historical perspective of the Church, most readers succumb to their own private interpretation (2 Peter 2:20), formulating errors.

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[i] Deacon George Maksimov, “Three-Hundred Sayings of the Ascetics of the Orthodox Church,” Orthodox Missionary Society

of Venerable Serapion Kozheozersky, 01-18-2013, http://orthodox.cn/patristics/300sayings_en.htm.

A Sign of the Times

Sustainability
 
(an excerpt from the book The Orphan Church)
by Bryan Raile

And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?  (Matthew 16:3, emphasis added)

Jesus denounced those of His generation because they could not discern the “signs of the times.” What did He mean by “signs of the times?” A sign is a form of communication; it says something about the brief moment in which we live. It reveals the truth or the reality of the events we are experiencing. Jesus endorsed the idea of reading signs that have specific meaning to a particular people or generation. The signs are speaking. Do you see them?

My wonderful wife pointed out some interesting facts: she can read the signs of the times. During the 1990’s, the church we attended was leading a global prayer effort. Some of you may have heard of it. It was called “Prayer Through the Window.” It referred to a concerted effort to pray for the nations in Africa and Asia that are in the 10/40 window (the nations between the 10^th and 40^th parallels). The movement reached all over the world, stimulating millions of believers to pray for these nations who— for the most part— exist under the bondage of Islam. The movement discontinued in the year 2000. During the 1990’s, the buzz word coming out of the culture was “global.” It was everywhere; everything was going “global.” Major businesses went “global,” economics went global, currency went global, the internet went global, and on and on. The message echoing through American culture during that decade was “globalization.” It seemed ironic that the culture or the society at large, inadvertently, projected something of what God was saying to Christianity, particularly our group who had set out on a mission to pray for the darkest nations on earth to hear and receive the Gospel. 

This begs the question:  what are the signs of these times right now? Can we read them, or will we be as ignorant as the people of Jesus day? 

Scanning the horizon, we can actually see two signs of the times that may be speaking through society to God’s people. One sign slaps you in the face every time you read the newspaper or view the news online, and another is relatively new and has only been flashing its message for a few short years. The first message is focused on gender. Everywhere you go the discussion of the day—the issues being tried in courts, the decisions being made regarding public schools and universities— are regarding gender. When the culture at large is dealing with an issue, it is a sure sign that God is pressing His Church to search the Scripture, get it right (to become of the right perspective), and not be blown away by the blizzard of public opinions. All through history, the Church brought forth its best and most brilliant theology during a crisis of ideas, and now is no different. Will we rise to the occasion and have proper discernment? 

So, what is the second sign of our times? The buzz word now echoing throughout the culture is “sustainability.” 

If you were to frequent a particular eatery that served a buffet style on a regular basis, you would notice if something was removed from the spread of delectable foods, would you not? Believe it or not some things have already vanished from the smorgasbord of churches because they were not sustainable, and one particular group  resided here in America when the colonies were organizing; however, it vanished before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Who might that be? That would be none other than the Puritans. They were not sustainable. (We’ll speak more about them in a later section.) 

I believe God— speaking through societal fads— is posing sustainability as a question, and this particular fad is always working its way through our society as a question rather than a statement. Farming practices are being questioned as to their sustainability. It shows up grocery labels, “From sustainable farming practices,” etc. Labor management and business methods are being scrutinized for their “sustainability.” This is a sign of our times. Perhaps God is asking the same thing of the smorgasbord of churches that grace our cities and towns. Is the smorgasbord sustainable? In order to answer that question, we must first find out what “sustainable” looks like. In the church world, what is sustainable and what is not? That is the question. The obvious answer to that is that which is sustainable is that which has always been here: the thing that is as it has always been will be what is here when the dust clears. This means that something that is sustainable has its roots in the past. If the thing that is sustainable is something ancient and very old, then we must look to the past to find it.

So, what is the purpose of this book? What is it that we wish to say? We wish to bring you the news; the “bad news and the good news.” What is the bad news? The bad news is that some forms of modern Christianity that appear on the smorgasbord of every community are not sustainable because they have been cut loose  or orphaned from the classical Christian root. They are orphaned in their faith because they have no connection with pre-Reformational Christianity. The good news is that many in orphaned expressions of Christianity are rediscovering their spiritual family history and attending to the old ways in order to walk in the well-trod ancient paths.

Humility: Gateway to all of God's Graces

Humility: Gateway to all God’s Graces

(An excerpt from the book The Humility Factor)

In God’s kingdom, your ascension is limited by your ability to be humbled. Every person has a “humility threshold.” It is defined as what point your pride will not allow you to be humbled, to serve, to kneel, and to worship the only true God. How far can you go in not defending your reputation? How long can you labor in obscurity? How hard can you work when others get the credit? How much time and money can you give without grimacing? Here is a good one: how long can you maintain a relationship with a friend who all of a sudden becomes immensely successful? Can you congratulate him for his new found influence or prosperity?  Or are you pressed with jealousy and envy?

Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth Grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. (1 Peter 5:5-7, emphasis added)

This passage is of critical importance because it spells out the basis upon which God dispenses His Grace. He gives Grace to the humble. 
 

Humility is the gateway to all God’s Graces. Grace is indispensable for living the Christian life. Any stronghold of sin in our lives is related to some pride issue. In other words: to live in humility is to live in victory because it brings in God’s wonderful Grace to overcome temptation and adversity.

Conversely, God’s resistance to pride allows for sin to maintain a foothold in our being. It allows for situations to overwhelm us. God’s resistance to our pride makes us vulnerable to Satan’s wiles.