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CREDO - AN ECUMENICAL CANON pt 2

Four additional perspectives for understanding the Ecumenical creeds

Creeds & the Tradition (paradosis)

Few would claim that the bible is easily memorized, however, creeds have & still are memorized; thus, they have always been used by the faithful to pass on the faith. The New Testament scriptures can even be said to be built upon creedal statements. Consider the following:

1 Tim 2: 5-6, For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.

1 Tim 3: 16, He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

Phil 2:6-11, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

It is by way of these creedal statements that the faith was passed on from one place & person to another, it is this that St Paul refers to when he says to the people in Thessalonica:

2 Thes 2: 15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

* The term “tradition” received a bad reputation after the reformation, the NIV uses the term tradition only for negative, while using the term “teaching” for positive, yet both are the same Greek word “paradosis”.

Creeds & the Liturgy (Liturgia)

Throughout the history of the church, one primary means of passing on the faith has been by way of liturgy (prayers, songs, confessions, & creeds). By way of the liturgy, the content of the faith was not only passed on by also put into practice by the people on a day by day, & week by week basis. Therefore, in due time a Christian calendar was established to ensure that the whole tradition as given by the apostles would also be transmitted to the people. The calendar was built upon the fulfilled events of the Old Testament calendar by Jesus Christ. This meant that at Baptisms, just as in the earliest of days the apostle’s creed was said; at Eucharist the Nicene Creed was said, and on special occasions such as on Christmas Day, Epiphany, Ascension Day, Pentecost Sunday and Trinity Sunday, the Athanasian Creed was said. In summary, the means of creeds have had the role of passing on the whole apostolic tradition from the beginning, & therefore, one of the ways that the truth contained in them is as affirmed is by way of liturgical acceptance. At the end of the day, it is only when the whole church embraces their content and their methodology that a creed becomes traditional, ecumenical, & canonical.

Creeds & the Concilliar mind (Catholicons)

The highest and most important form to establish a creed is by way of concilliarity. While many church councils were called during the 1^st millennium, only seven were accepted by all, and thus considered ecumenical and without error. From the 2^nd of these councils came the most influential & important creed, the Nicene Creed (it is actually the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed). The council was called to by the emperor Constantine in order to sort out recent disagreements regarding the faith of the church. The emperor needed a united church if his empire was to remain united. Thus in from 318-325, 381 bishops with heir clergy and lay persons gathered to ensure that the traditions that had been given to would not be lost. With many battles between this time and the 2^nd council in 381, the apostolic faith was placed into simple words, and has remained ever since. The proof of its validity was that all embraced it and recognized it as the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.

Creeds & the Apostolic Teaching (Pedagoguia)

The apostolic theology found within these creeds addresses the most essential qualities of God the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; The Trinity, the incarnation, Christology, the scriptures, the sacraments, the salvation of mankind, & the final judgment. In summary, they address what one must believe in order to be saved. The ecumenical creeds therefore, contain, preserve, & propagate the substance & structure of apostolic teaching & theology.

CREDO- AN ECUMENICAL CANON

The Ecumenical Aspect of the Creeds (Catholicon)

The term Ecumenical is a term used for the 3 creeds: the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, & the Athanasian Creed, as well as for the 7 councils of the church. The quality within them that makes them ecumenical is that they have always everywhere been accepted by all Christians in the western church (they comply with the Vincentian Canon), and thus they have in some form been used in liturgy as well as to fend off heresy. The views & the methodology of every ecumenical product such as the bible, the councils, & the creeds, presents the church with the reality that no one person, or no one denomination, has the authority to make up or to individually define the Christian faith. While the whole truth may be found in scripture, the proper interpretation of its content can only be sure if it is the same as that truth that was passed on to the apostles & from the apostles to the church. The creeds assert that there exist not only Christian facts recorded by the apostles, but that they fit together in an apostolic formula. For any truth claim to be apostolic, it must then come out of the whole church, which is the meaning of the word Greek word catholicons or ecumenical.

The Canonical Aspect of the Ecumenical Creeds (regula fidei)

The role of canonicity:

The church has always needed a rule of faith (regula fidei). “Rule” refers not to a law, but rather measuring stick, this rule is a necessary means employed to measure the validity of all Christian truth claims.

The 1^st rule of faith is the scripture:

The bible the first & foremost measure (canon) for what the church has called apostolic tradition (paradosis). The Bible’s content is deemed by the whole church (ecumenical- catholicons- of the whole) to be the measure by which all other truth claims regarding God are measured. Hence, the role of scripture is to serve as a constitution of sorts to serve the church in its discernment of truth. In short, a claim must be biblical in order to be Christian. While this is true, it is also true that the bible is a large and comes book, one in which one can easily over emphasize some truths and total ignore others. Hence, we need a smaller, more concise rule of faith to deal with Christianity as well as the bible itself.

The 2^nd rule of faith is the 3 ecumenical creeds:

These short statements serve as not only summary of the scriptures, and thus as a grid by which the proper use of the 1^st rule of faith can be determined. In these creeds the church Fathers have spoken with one voice, & delivered that which was given to them (the paradosis) in such a way that Christianity cannot be misunderstood. Therefore, not only has the church identified and gathered together all of the books of the bible & preserved them for the world, but it has also given the world an interpretive grid & summary of the bible’s content (there are other rules of faith also, rules that if left out of one belief system leaves the Christian impoverished).

THEOSIS

QUOTE:

Although the idea of Theosis is not a new concept to Christianity, it is for the most part unfamiliar to the Western mind. When Christ said, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," this is a call to a life of Theosis.

Theosis is personal communion with God "face to face." To the Western mind, this idea may seem incomprehensible, even sacrilegious, but it derives unquestionably from Christ's teachings. Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the messianic dream of the Jewish race; His mission to connect us with the Kingdom of God a Kingdom not of this world. When Jesus said, "You are gods," "be perfect, just as your Father in Heaven is perfect," or "the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father," this is to be taken literally. (The True Purpose of Human Life, Archimandrite George, 2006)

COMMENTARY

The above quote asserts that a person experiences salvation when they are moved from the state of corruption (“sin” & “death”) to the state of participation in the everlasting Life of the Trinity. That movement is called “théōsis,” and it is nothing less than the process of salvation itself. The outcome is that a person becomes co-mingled with a part of God that we call His energy. This is the unanimous voice of the holy scripture:

44 For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. 45 For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” Leviticus 11:44-45

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1 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: Psalm 82:1

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22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.; Romans 6:22

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16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17

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2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 2 Peter 1:2-4

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Feeling Abandoned

QUOTE

Jesus’ apparent abandonment by God was essential to His learning of obedience. We find in Jesus’ death, just as in the testing Job and Joseph, that it is only when God apparently abandons us that He actually saves us. This abandonment made Job a pillar of courage, and made of Joseph a pillar of self-restraint. (The Philokalia, 2: 112, Maximos the Confessor, CA 650)

COMMENTARY

The contemporary western church has in too many instances reduced of the doctrine of “salvation” to the concept of going to heaven when we die. This is tragic indeed; in fact, it is much more Platonic than Christian. This Platonic thinking that has so deeply affected the west; that we have been taught to think that salvation has little to do with the present, & all to do with our eternal spiritual existence.

Maximos the Confessor tells us that salvation is what God accomplishes in us here and now, as well as, what He accomplish for us in for eternity. In Job’s case, what God did in the here and now was to make himself apparently absent from him, in order to produce a pillar of courage in Job. In Joseph’s case, what God did in the here and now was to make himself apparently absent from him so to produce a pillar of self-restraint in him. It is in the producing of the likeness of God that saved them from present evil and eternal death. The very transformation that is salvation, according to Maximos begins here and now.

Of course, this salvation cannot happen apart from faith in Christ, or apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in us. However, the point is that salvation according to the philokalia is much larger than in our way of thinking today. In the mind of the confessor, salvation begins by the learning of obedience.

There are also other benefits to this grander understanding of salvation. For example, since salvation works its way in us by obedience, we can then see why it is that life seems so painful to us in the here and now, in spite of our faith. It is for us, and for our salvation (that is our learning of obedience) that God sometimes stands quietly by us, giving the appearance of abandonment. If God seems absent, it may be that he is forming you into a pillar; it may be that he is saving you here and now.

The Gospel, Live on the Cosmic Stage

QUOTE:

The Nicene confession that all things were made through Christ teaches us that the cosmos are the stage upon which the Triune God enacts a great drama of communion by sharing the divine life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with persons who are not God.

At the heart of the divine act of creation is the divine desire to make room for created persons in the communion of the uncreated Persons of the Blessed Trinity through adoptive participation in Christ.

Through the eyes of divine faith, then, the likeness to divine nature that is enjoyed by spiritual creatures with intellect and will, turns out to be a likeness to the divine Trinity enjoyed by created persons, who, in grace, know the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as well as one another in them. (Nicene Christianity, J Augustine Di Noia, 2002)

COMMENTARY:

Father Di Noia present us with three very basic foundations necessary for a proper Christian understanding of reality. The first principle is that the main goal of God the Trinity in the act of creation was to receive from that creation, an inter-relatedness to His creatures. In short, God wants to share himself with those whom He has created, and thus He has constructed all things to facilitate that end. This should help us conclude then that the whole cosmos exist with the stage for communion with God in mind.

The second principle shows us that the designed means of entry into this interrelationship for which the cosmos are designed is an adoption by one who is already in the Trinity, the Son, and our Lord Jesus Christ. The point being that while we all walk around on the stage we cal the cosmos, we never enter into the ongoing play as full participants until we become united to Christ by adoption. In other words, there are the stage hands and the actors.

The third and final principle is that the way to see that doorway that leads to adoption is using the eyes of faith. The eyes of faith are the opera glasses by which the play becomes visible. Without rightly adjusted glasses, the whole play will appear as a blur.

Thus, the stage where the play called “the inter-communion of the blessed Trinity” is occurring is the cosmos, the means by which mankind enters into participation in that play come to us by an adoption that we receive from Christ, and this reality only becomes visible through a new kind of understanding, which we know as the eyes of faith.

If the church’s gospel presentation always began this way, our reputation in the contemporary west might be completely different than it is today.

Are Most Christians Un- Christian?

QUOTE:

Kinnaman, president of the Barna Institute, was inspired to write the book “Un-Christian” when Lyons, of the Fermi Project, commissioned him to do extensive research on what young Americans think about Christianity. Lyons had a gut-level sense that something was desperately wrong, and three years of research paints exactly that picture. Mosaics and Busters (the generations that include late teens to early 30-somethings) believe Christians are judgmental, antihomosexual, hypocritical, too political and sheltered. Rather than simply try to do a PR face-lift, Kinnaman looks at ways in which churches' activities actually may have been unchristian and encourages a return to a more biblical Christianity, a faith that not only focuses on holiness but also loves, accepts and works to understand the world around it. (From Publishers Weekly,
2008)

See the videos below for more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m3Q2lDMRm0&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mKfg2mrMP4&feature=related

COMMENTARY:

One need not even read the book to have the claims posted by the reviewer jump out and assault our self-consciousness. The fact is that as each day goes by, we who profess Christ to be our Lord & our savior are increasingly marginalized & thrown into the pile of irrelevancy. The question that must be asked is “why”? The above statements, especially the videos drive home the message that we western Christians have done it to ourselves. When the majority of our population (80 % +) perceives us to be:

1. judgmental,

2. anti-homosexual,

3. hypocritical,

4. too political

5. & sheltered

We need to listen to them, as well as re-listen to ourselves. The danger we face for the moment may be contempt, but the danger that is to follow is total irrelevancy. Last week I had the privilege of listening to Mr Kinnaman deliver a lecture on this topic, & I must admit that it struck a deep chord within me, mostly because it exposed the consequences of the legal gospel embraced by the west since the schism. It seems that the younger generation of evangelicals is all too aware that something is wrong with western Christendom, & is trying to heal it by an Incarnational approach to Christian living; this is great. However, it will prove difficult to accomplish with the extreme level of sectarianism that exists in western Christendom. The fact is that what this new generation needs is a recovery of the true in Trinity and His love for mankind, as well as, a recovery of the incarnation and its implications for mankind. This will require the very body of theology understood & practiced by the undivided church, for that alone is Christianity in its fullness. Perhaps we have finally arrived at that time when Christendom can begin to be healed so that it may begin to heal the world around it. Kyrie eleison!