Unfortunately, We're Not all Christians

Just read this, from the Salt Lake Tribune: 

We’re all Christians
First published Oct 22 2011 01:01AM
Updated Oct 22, 2011 01:01AM

Some Evangelical Christians are noising it about that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism is a new and frightening cult, far removed from traditional Christianity.

In fact, Mormons represent a tradition that was present in the beginning of the Christian faith. Mormons believe in a separation of the personalities of God the Father and the Son, while most Catholics and Protestants believe they are one and the same.

This idea of physical distinction between the two deities goes back to the early Christian church’s Arian wing, which was a quite large minority segment of Christianity. At times, Arians were the established or preferred denomination of Roman and Byzantine emperors and their realms.

When politically motivated church people wag tongues and shake fingers today at Mormons, making them seem like second-class citizens, they display a degree of ignorance of this history. They also act like religious bullies, lording it over a minority just because they can. This invites the question, are they truly Christian?

Kim Shinkoskey
Woods Cross

This is my response:

Wow. Arius was twice deemed a heretic, first by the First Council of Nicea in 325, and then again by the First Council of Constantinople in 381. How very postmodern of this writer to think that just because Arianism was a "marginalized" view that it should be approved. By this reasoning, the LDS should abandon their views and embrace the RLDS/CofC understanding of the Trinity as three persons in one substance, their refusal to baptize the dead, and their conviction that men do not become gods. The CofC is, after all, a minority compared to the LDS! 

That said, I think it is quite possible that we will see our Mormon friends at the great feast...it's just that I don't think they are justified in saying that they represent traditional, orthodox Christianity.

For more information about the differences between the LDS and RLDS/Cof C, look here

St. Justin Martyr

 Today is the feast day of St. Justin Martyr (ca. 100-ca. 166),  the patron saint of philosophers. James Keifer gives a brief biography here, while the Orthodox Church of America gives a fuller discussion here.

The son of a Greek couple in Samaria, Justin went on to become the first gentile Christian apologist. As a young man searching for truth, he encountered representatives of various schools of philosophy: Stoics, Cynics, a greedy Peripatetic, Pythagoreans  who insisted he first study music, astronomy and gometry, and finally Platonists.  But one day, he met an old man on the seashore who told him about Christ: the Logos, the Way, the Truth, the Life.
Justin came to faith, was baptized at age 30 and thereafter became a sort of intellectual missionary to pagans.  Justin wrote agianst Marcion, and rejected gnosticism and sophistry. He composed two Apologies, one to Emperor Antonius Pius and one to the Roman senate. He debated Rabbi Trypho in Ephesus. His Assyrian pupil,  Tatian, went on to compose the first harmony of the gospels.

Justin's genius was to see the gospel as the "true philosophy." In the question of the relation of faith and reason, Justin stands firmly in the middle. Pagan thought is unable to save us; but Christians do not have to reject all pagan thought. Reason is necessary, but not sufficient. All truth is God's truth.  Faith in Jesus Christ takes us on to the complete Truth we long for, but does not contradict the truth that is given to us through  natural revelation. 

St. Justin is honored by both Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians. The latter remember him in song:

Troparion (Tone 4)

O Justin, teacher of divine knowledge,
You shone with the radiance of true philosophy.
You were wisely armed against the enemy.
Confessing the truth you contended alongside the martyrs,
With them, ever entreat Christ our God to save our souls!

Kontakion (Tone 2)

The whole Church of God is adorned with the wisdom of your divine words, O Justin;
The world is enlightened by the radiance of your life.
By the shedding of your blood, you have received a crown.
As you stand before Christ with the angels, pray unceasingly for us all!

Which Church Father are you?

Take the quiz for yourself here . Here's my result:

You’re St. Justin Martyr! You have a positive and hopeful attitude toward the world. You think that nature, history, and even the pagan philosophers were often guided by God in preparation for the Advent of the Christ. You find “seeds of the Word” in unexpected places. You’re patient and willing to explain the faith to unbelievers. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

Quotes: Augustine on the Gospel

via Randall Friesen

"If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

- Augustine of Hippo, doctor of the early church

Creedal Christianity

Is there any place for "creedal Christianity in the post-Christendom, late modern world of the West?" This is a question our adult Sunday school will be entertaining in another week, as we study what happened "after Acts." It is also the question Jaroslav Pelikan entertained in the eighth decade of his life. Krista Tippett writes, "Pelikan, who died on May 13, 2006, was a scholar who devoted his life to exploring the vitality of ancient theology and creeds. He insisted that even modern pluralists need strong statements of belief."

This is a controversial position. Much of postmodern theology, with its re-discovery of "intellectus," an immediate, non-discursive way of knowing, is apt to dismiss creedal Christianity as "stiff" if not "dead." Indeed, the biggest criticisms might be summarized this way:

1) Creeds are power plays, which marginalize minority opinion.

2) Creeds, as unchanging, are no longer suitable to match the diversity and change of life in the 21st century.

2) Creeds, as propositional, violate the mystery of God and Christian experience.

Brad has an important link here, to help deal with those criticisms.

"Jaroslav Pelikan understood what a difficult thing unchanging creeds can be for modern people. He knew as well as anyone that historically creeds were employed in part to consolidate power — both of church authority and of Christian empire. But he insisted on capturing a sense of the profound and positive reasons Christianity, alone among the major traditions, seemed to require creeds. The global spread of Christianity and of the translation of the Bible into now more than 2000 languages, as Pelikan described it, "is the history of how one sought in a new setting not to speak the same thing but to say the same thing."

"And creeds, he believed, also meet a deep human need — one that is not diminished but intensified by pluralism. Pluralism, he reiterates during this conversation, is not the same as relativism; the singing of a creed, in fact, is a way of indicating a universality of the faith across space and time. Pelikan's own generous sense of space and time, I think, helped him internalize the original impulse of creeds and communicate their meaning to the rest of us. Every time he recited or sang the creeds, he tangibly experienced the fact that these same words were sung in the Philippines that same morning and recited by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century and Thomas Aquinas in the 13th and intoned by his own grandfather in the 20th century. I have been struck by the number and diversity of people who have told me over the years that this program touched them in a special way. Among them have been more than a few Unitarians, whose faith tradition was formed in part in reaction against the very idea of creeds.

"Attempts to make creeds modern and contemporary often seem to sacrifice something in depth and grace. Jaroslav Pelikan compared this, interestingly, to the language of love. We can try to be creative and unconventional but there aren't terribly many ways to say "I love you." Again and again most of us fall back on well-worn words and find that they more than suffice.

"Having noted that, in one of the most poignant moments of this program, Jaroslav Pelikan recites one of the newest creeds he discovered — a creed written by the Maasai people of Africa. In 1960, they took the bare-bones summaries the great creeds represent, and enlivened them with the vocabulary of their lives. Pelikan reads this Maasai creed, which includes mention of hyenas and safari, with reverent passion and an almost child-like delight.

"And isn't religion at heart about mystery, I had to ask Jaroslav Pelikan, that can never be captured in words? Can creeds ever be sufficient as a statement of faith? He left me with a wonderful statement of St. Augustine, who apparently struggled with this same question in his own theologizing as well. We resolve to speak of these things nevertheless, Augustine concluded — inspiring Jaroslav Pelikan centuries later — not in order to say something, but in order not to remain altogether silent.

I am not Augustinian enough to fully agree that we are not saying anything while not remaining silent. Neither am I Reformed enough to affirm that all we ever can (and must ) do is speak. For Christians, religion is not at heart about mystery. Neither is it at heart about complete comprehnsion. It is about knowing and loving the God Who is Three in One, who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ, and invites us into His infinite, endless life of love, truth and beauty.

But I think Pelikan is on to something here. Creeds are not sufficient, but they are necessary. Belief matters. "For as (a person) thinks within himself, so he is." (Proverbs 23:7)

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