Posts Tagged Theology
Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts on March 23, 2013
The beginning of the first century AD saw the rapid rise of the Roman Imperial Cult. This religious cult was based upon the proclaimed divinity of Augustus Caesar (c.62 BC – 14 AD / Reigned 31 BC – 14 AD) and subsequent Roman Emperors. This Imperial Cult was a unifying political and religious factor across the whole Roman Empire in the first century. The emergence of the Imperial Cult preceded, but also developed with, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The earliest written Christian records we have are the Letters of St. Paul from the mid-first century. A good summary of the theme of his gospel message is contained in the Letter to the Romans Chapter 1, Verses 3 &4: “…concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead…”.
In the opinion of British theologian N.T. Wright, “Despite the way Protestantism has used the phrase (making it denote, as it never does in Paul, the doctrine of justification by faith), for Paul “the gospel” is the announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth is Israel’s Messiah and the world’s Lord.”
Wright goes on to explain that Paul’s euangelion, his gospel (Good News) message, was every bit as much a confrontational and subversive political proclamation as it was a religious one: “Paul was announcing that Jesus was the true King of Israel and hence the true Lord of the world, at exactly the time in history, and over exactly the geographical spread, where the Roman emperor was being proclaimed, in what styled itself a “gospel”, in very similar terms.”
Later, Wright applies Paul’s gospel message to his [Paul’s] vision for the ekklesia, the church. His basis for this comes from Chapter 3 of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Wright tells us: “We may begin with 3.20. “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, the Messiah”. These are Caesar-titles. The whole verse says: Jesus is Lord, and Caesar isn’t. Caesar’s empire, of which Philippi is a colonial outpost, is the parody; Jesus’ empire, of which the Philippian church is a colonial outpost, is the reality.”
Wright goes on to discuss the implications of Paul’s vision of this empire of Jesus: “if Paul’s answer to Caesar’s empire is the empire of Jesus, what does that say about this new empire, living under the rule of its new lord? It implies a high and strong ecclesiology, in which the scattered and often muddled cells of women, men and children loyal to Jesus as Lord form colonial outposts of the empire that is to be: subversive little groups when seen from Caesar’s point of view, but when seen Jewishly an advance foretaste of the time when the earth shall be filled with the glory of the God of Abraham and the nations will join Israel in singing God’s praises.”
Paul’s vision for this ekklesia, as subversive colonial outposts of the coming empire of Jesus, could not be realized after a series of events in the fourth century. In AD 313 Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan, a proclamation of religious tolerance that officially ended the persecution of Christians. The Christian Church greatly increased in power and influence in the fourth century under Imperial patronage. The Church quickly became fully integrated into the political and cultural fabric of the Roman Empire, culminating with The Edict of Thessalonica, also known as Cunctos populos, issued on 27 Feb 380, by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. This edict ordered all subjects of the Roman Empire to profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria. The edict officially made Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
And the Church has been “sleeping with the enemy”, the world’s domination systems and institutions, for the entire 1,700 years since. This is Christendom. This is not the vision of the ekklesia of the Apostle Paul.
The “Fall” as Disease
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts on March 22, 2013
The Orthodox see the “Fall” of man and resulting sin as fundamentally a disease of the will. With the arrival of death at the Fall, our will and drive to maintain and satisfy our physical bodies overwhelmed our natural human will to attain to the likeness of our Creator, in whose image we were created. Our natural will has, from that time, been so distorted and diseased by our deception and preoccupation with carnal needs and passions, that we have nearly lost sight of our true nature. Using this disease model, the incarnation, ministry, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can be thought of as a “therapeutic” mission of God to mankind. When I say “therapeutic”, I mean it in the Greek sense of the word θεραπεύω, therapeuo. The New Testament mentions healing by Jesus and his disciples 73 times. In 40 cases, the Greek word is therapeuo. It means “to serve as a therapon, and attendant;” then, “to care for the sick, to treat, cure, heal”. I think that this is an accurate, loving description of God’s intervention in the created world to provide personal care, curative treatment, healing, and salvation to his fallen and diseased creation through the incarnation, ministry, and voluntary, redemptive sacrifice of his Son, Jesus Christ.
Note how this view of the Fall, from God’s relationship to man, avoids the problems and pitfalls of Western Latin (Augustinian) theology which include, but are not limited to: Original Sin (Total Depravity), God’s Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement (Particular Redemption) , Irresistible grace (Effectual Calling), Predestination, Free Will, the Problem of Evil, Purgatory, and Heaven and Hell.
Christian Traditions: Western Latin and Eastern Orthodox
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts on March 2, 2013
I speak alot about the two different Christian Traditions: The Western Latin tradition and the Eastern Orthodox tradition. I thought I might devote a post to explaining what these are, so that I don’t confuse anybody into thinking that the former is some New Age philosophy or the latter is some Eastern Oriental religion (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism). The Western Latin tradition and Eastern Orthodox tradition come from the same root: Pentecost ca. AD 33. The early Christian Church was united and had five traditional centers or co-equal Patriarchies; Jerusalem, Alexandria (Egypt), Antioch (Syria), Constantinople (Byzantium), and Rome (Rome laid claim as “first among equals”). So, there was really one Christian Church for more than 1,000 years, half of its history.
The Church split into two parts in the Great Schism of 1054; the Western Latin Church controlled by Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church loosely led by Constantinople (with Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria). Because the Western Church used Latin as its liturgical language and the Eastern Church used Greek, the two traditions are sometimes still referred to as the Latin and Greek churches, respectively.
A little on the Great Schism: The Western Latin Church started to develop its own theology under the influence of St. Augustine of Hippo (in North Africa) at the beginning of the 5th century, just as the Western Roman Empire fell to the Visigoths (AD 410) and, later, to the Franks and Lombards. Remember, the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople, did not fall for another 1,000 years (1453). The Western Latin Church and its Roman Papacy were significantly influenced by the occupying Germanic tribes who enthusiastically embraced Augustinian theology. That drove a wedge in the Church, as the Eastern Orthodox never took Augustine’s theology very seriously. Turn the clock forward through 500 years of political and theological acrimony and disagreement and you have the Great Schism of 1054.
So, when I use the term Western Latin Christianity or tradition, I mean the Roman Catholic Church and later spin-off (1500’s) Protestantism (geographically roughly Western/Northern Europe and North America).
When I use the term Eastern Orthodox Christianity or tradition, I mean the Eastern Christian church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church (geographically roughly Eastern Europe/Russia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East). These are the churches of St. Paul.
It’s important to keep in mind that for more than half its history, the Christian Church was one and undivided. We in the Western Latin tradtion tend to forget or overlook this fact.
The Church: Structure and Authority vs. Freedom and Personal Experience
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church on February 6, 2013
People often speak of the tension between what some call the Priestly vs. Prophetic strains of religion. This is where the priestly class controls the “temple worship”; Scripture, material, structures, creeds, laws, liturgy, and ritual. This is opposed to the prophetic strain which, in the words of Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, “was working for social justice, making a difference, solving problems, fixing the world, and bringing about the Kingdom of God.” I understand this concept of Priestly vs. Prophetic on a broad intellectual level, but how does this apply to the Christian Church? And more specifically, to the Christian Church at the beginning of the 21st century?
I think Fr. John Meyendorff, Orthodox theologian, captures the essence of the problem in the Christian Church both historically and currently. In discussing the Orthodox theology of the Holy Spirit, he observes:
“Thus, the theology of the Holy Spirit implies a crucial polarity, which concerns the nature of the Christian faith itself. Pentecost saw the birth of the Church – a community, which will acquire structures, and will pre-suppose continuity and authority – and was an outpouring of spiritual gifts, liberating man from servitude, giving him freedom and personal experience of God. Byzantine Christianity will remain aware of an unavoidable tension between these two aspects of faith: faith as doctrinal continuity and authority, and faith as the personal experience of saints. It will generally understand that an exaggersted emphasis on one aspect or the other destroys the very meaning of the Christian Gospel.”
“The life of the Church, because it is created by the Spirit, cannot be reduced to either the “institution” or the “event”, to either authority or freedom. It is a “new” community created by the Spirit in Christ, where true freedom is recovered in the spiritual communion of the Body of Christ.”
So, I object to the use of the Priestly vs. Prophetic model for understanding the Christian Church on the grounds that it tends to obscure the real issue. The real issue is “Structure and Authority vs. Freedom and Personal Experience”.
So, what is the state of the contemporary American Christian Church? I think that it can pretty well be summed up with a 2009 Barna Group poll of self-proclaimed American Christians. This poll disclosed that most American Christians do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a living force. Overall, 38% strongly agreed and 20% agreed somewhat that the Holy Spirit is “a symbol of God’s power or presence but is not a living entity.” The mere fact that nearly 60% of avowed American Christians do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a living force speaks volumes about the state of the contemporary institutional Christian Church, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike. Clearly, the “Structure and Authority” people “own” the contemporary American Christian Church, as they have convinced 60% of Christians that the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist as a living force. This precludes the possibility of exercising the personal freedom to experience a close personal relationship with the Holy Spirit! You can’t experience a relationship with a dead person. This is tantamount to the Church teaching its members that “God is dead”! Long live the Church…
Greek Experience vs. Latin Concept in Theology
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, New Nuggets, Patristic Pearls, Theology on February 4, 2013
I support the notion that Christianity is about experiencing an intimate personal relationship with God. Proper theology is about how we experience that relationship from God to us. Classically, Greek Eastern (Orthodox) theology has been largely based on the experience of God’ relationship to man. The theology of the Latin West (Roman Catholic and Protestant), at least since the days of St. Augustine, has been largely based on philosophical speculation of man’s relationship to God.
For example, let’s contrast these two different approaches as they apply to Trinitarian doctrine. According to Orthodox theologian Fr. John Meyendorff, in the Eastern Greek tradition, “the incarnate Logos and the Holy Spirit are met and experienced first as divine agents of salvation, and only then are they discovered to be essentially one God.” In contrast, 19th century Jesuit theologian Fr. Theodore de Regnon stated, “Latin philosophy considers the nature in itself first and proceeds to the agent; Greek philosophy considers the agent first and passes through it to find the nature. The Latins think of personality as a mode of nature; the Greeks think of nature as the content of the person”.
The Latin approach is based on philosophical concept from man’s view of God. The Greek approach is based on how we experience God’s Biblical relationship to man.
Proper Christian Theology is always Top-down and Relational
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Theology on December 30, 2012
Everything in proper Christianity is experiential; it is based on relationship. Take some examples: The immanent presence of spermatikos logos, the Son, within us, giving our minds the reason and order to recognize the existence of God and his moral will; the Incarnation of the Logos, God becoming flesh and dwelling among us in the person of Jesus was so that we would have a concrete living person that we could relate to and love as the human exemplar of God; the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was so that each of us could have a direct personal relationship with God in the Church Age, after Jesus’ resurrection.
Proper theology is always, always top-down; about God’s relationship to man. That is so our theology is always based on how man, the creation, experiences relationship with his loving Creator, God. When theology is done backwards, bottom-up, based on man’s ideas of God, you end up with a God that is an extrapolation of man, an anthropomorphized super-human God; and that is the error of Western Latin theology.
Union with God, theosis, is the goal of all proper theology and religion. In Eastern Orthodox theology, deification (theosis) is both a transformative process as well as the goal of that process; the attainment of likeness to or union with a loving God. Likeness and union are terms that inherently imply close personal realtionship. Any dogma or doctrine that does not reflect this experience of man’s love relationship with God is most likely in error and bad theology; an afterthought of man.
Spirit-Filled Clergy and Laity Need to Get Their “Acts” (doxis and praxis) Together
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts on September 26, 2012
‘Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.’
‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.’
I take these statements from Jesus in Matthew 12:25 and 23:15 and apply them to the Body of Christ in terms of its fundamental doctrines and practices. When doctrines or opinions (Gk. doxis), what you profess, and practices (Gk. praxis), what you do, do not align and complement one another, you end up with a house divided against itself and/or the hypocrisy of not doing what you say.
That’s not so much a problem with Denominational Mainline Christianity because, by and large, their Western Latin doxis of a remote, transcendent, magisterial God administering Roman justice on a fallen, sinful mankind pretty much complements and supports their praxis of guilt, bondage, control, and sin consciousness of their congregations. It is not a pretty picture of Christianity, but at least their views of right doctrines (orthodoxis) and right practices (orthopraxis) are aligned and complementary.
The problem is in the Spirit-filled, Pentecostal/Charismatic movement. Their praxis is based on operating in the Ministry Gifts (Eph. 4) of an immanent, loving, involved God (the Son, the Logos, the Christ, Jesus) and individual Gifts (1 Cor 12, Rom. 12) and Fruit (Gal. 5) of an indwelling, supporting, comforting, and guiding Holy Spirit. This praxis is wonderful, empowering, freeing, loving and Bible-based, to be sure.
Unfortunately, the contemporary Spirit-filled, Pentecostal/Charismatic movement does not have a theology, doctrine, or doxis, that supports, complements, or aligns with their empowered praxis. They pretty much brought along, whole cloth, the orthodoxis of whatever Western Latin tradition they came from; be that Evangelical, Reformed, Anglican, or Roman Catholic. At best, this causes the problem of a “house divided” in Matt. 12, above. At worst, it results in the “hypocrisy” described in Matt. 23.
Operating in the Gifts and Fruit of the Holy Spirit was the orthopraxis of the early primitive Christian church. We know that from Acts and Paul’s un-disputed letters. There was also an orthodoxis in the primitive Church that aligned with, complemented, and supported this empowered orthopraxis. It has been suppressed by the Western Latin (i.e., Roman Catholic and Protestant) Church for the last 1,600 years.
Can you imagine what might happen if we got the orthodoxis and orthopraxis of the primitive Christian Church of Signs and Miracles together again for the first time in 1,600 years?!
That is what “First Thoughts” is all about. Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians, clergy and laity alike, need to read this booklet so that the remnant church can get its collective “Acts” together and become the Powerhouse Body of Christ it should, and can be. Satan wants to keep it from happening, keeping us “double-minded”.
Augustine’s Mistake: Backward Theology
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Theology on September 4, 2012
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“Jewish thinkers concur with Pelagius’s position that no human being is tainted by the sins of Adam—but only by his own sinful deeds.” Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel |
Either God is all-goodness, but not all-mighty, or He is all-mighty, but not all-goodness.
Starting with Man and working backward in relation to God is exactly what happened in Western theology in the 3rd to 5th centuries. In his defensive apologetic zeal to discredit the optimistic British monk Pelagius for claiming that man maintained moral free will after the Fall and for rejection of the doctrine of Original Sin, St. Augustine walked right down the misguided path described in the preceding post. And the Western church, which includes Roman Catholics and Evangelical and Reformed Protestants, has been flailing around with this unsolvable problem, in italics above, for over 1,500 years and are no closer to an answer today than they were when they first made the mistake. Rather than re-think their theology, the Western church hardened its position into dogma and so it continues to struggle with the problem to this day. To discuss these Afterthoughts of man with some related additions including sin, heaven and hell, purgatory, faith and sacraments, would be to survey the history of Augustinianism through its various historical phases.
Excerpt from the book “First Thoughts“.
The Need for a Top-down Theology
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Theology on September 3, 2012
The meaning of theology is to know God as He is, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17:3
| “Theology, rightly considered, is the knowledge of God in His relation to us, the cardinal point of which lies in the truth which the old Greek poet had glanced at. “For we are also his offspring” – this is the true keynote; and theology, setting out from this kinship between us and God, we at once soar, as on wings of a spiritual intuition, across the abyss between creature and Creator.”
John Heard
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Theology is the study of God in relation to man. This is a First Thought. Theology is not, conversely, the doctrine of man in relation to God. That is an Afterthought born of human arrogance and pride at truly biblical levels. The adage, “There is a God, and we’re not Him”, comes to mind. All proper theology starts with God and works from that starting point to His relation to man. The order is all important. Getting it backwards has caused huge problems in Christianity that we suffer with to this day. Take the following historical illustration as an example:
If we make the mistake of making man the starting point, we immediately have to deal with him in a condition of spiritual blindness and consequent self-alienation from God. How do we explain this condition? The answer is to come up with a rationale, an Afterthought, like Original Sin. Because we have approached it from the wrong direction, this first Afterthought raises yet further questions. So, we are forced into developing a series of additional related Afterthoughts to rationalize our flawed first assumptions; the Fall, the Atonement, Grace, Predestination, the problem of evil, etc. This line of reasoning of man in relation to God inevitably leads us to a problem that has no logical solution: Either God is all-goodness, but not all-mighty, or He is all-mighty, but not all-goodness.
Excerpt from the book “First Thoughts“.
The Difference Between “First Thoughts” and “Afterthoughts”: A New Testament Example
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, Theology on September 1, 2012
To illustrate the difference between First Thoughts and Afterthoughts further, let’s take an example from Romans 5. Speaking of the sin of Adam at the Fall and the corresponding Grace of God through the redemption by Jesus, Paul states in verse 15:
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.
And just to make sure that there was no misunderstanding that the redemption of man is just as extensive as the fall of man, the Apostle repeats himself twice more in verses 18 and 19:
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Now, contrast this to what later theologians did to Paul’s First thoughts. St. Augustine and, later, Protestant Reformer John Calvin drew a conclusion from these verses that is very different from Paul’s clear teaching. Somehow, they inferred that man’s redemption was not co-extensive with the condemnation. To Augustine and Calvin, there is universal damnation in Adam, and only selective salvation in Christ!
Of the thoughts of the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine, and John Calvin, discussed above, which do you think might be First Thoughts and which are Afterthoughts?
This is not a quiz! It’s just an example to get you thinking about, and sensitive to, the concept of First Thoughts and Afterthoughts. The differences between them had a huge impact on the development of Christian theology.
Excerpts from the book “First Thoughts“
First Thoughts 