Praise, worship and advent.

Advent is a time of praise and worship!  But Praise seems to be much less a hallmark of contemporary spirituality than was the case in past centuries and years, and we would do well to keep this in mind as we turn our attention from our time of postmodernism, etc. Which surely affects the Church today more than we are perhaps aware. For the Christian, the spiritual life has always been the fruit of a personal relationship between God and the individual within a community of believers. In an earlier age, people seem to have taken for granted that, in such a relationship, the point of reference was God. One’s conscious awareness was directed less to the individual’s inner experience than to the objective reality of God, and to God’s intervention in human history. Self-awareness and great gifts for introspection and even psychological analysis there certainly were (Augustine’s Confessions, etc.) ; but even where this talent for self-reflection was most developed, the prime point of reference remained, for all that, God. It was all but inevitable that such a keen theocentricism should find expression in a spirituality of Praise.

A basic stance of praise is, of course, to be found in the whole Judeo-Christian development. But this is true in a special case for the believing Christian: for no other reality teaches that God has entered so absolutely and so definitively into the depth of human existence and experience – the Word was made flesh – and in no other place has the individual and the community been raised to such heights as sharers in the very life of God – partakers (covenant) of the divine nature. The response of the believer can hardly be other than a response of praise and thanksgiving.

Indeed we are turned to Christ yet once again, the Advent Himself.. and the great incarnation of the very face of God – “For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6)

Most surely here is the Praise of God, the Father the regal and lover of and in the Son, the Son Himself the very express image of God, loving the Father and redeeming those the Father has given the Son, and to the lover and sanctity of God, the Holy Spirit Himself the sacredness and inviolability of God; this Triune Being One and yet Three, and Three and One. We Praise and cry Holy, Holy, Holy Lord!

Chesterton, part 2

One of the things I like personally about G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton, is his what I will call, ‘intellectual orthodoxy’.  Here begins a sort of renewed force in the English and British world of both Anglicanism, and also Roman Catholicism. And with this we have lay people, and Christian authors quite involved again, from T.S. Eliot, to J.R.R. Tolkien, to C.S. Lewis. And here we should not forget the brilliant Charles Williams, who was for Lewis the most devout Christian Lewis said he had known personally. But, we can almost trace this renewal back to Chesterton, and his significance to orthodoxy, and even a sort of lay Christian apologetics. The great Roman Catholic writer Eteienne Gilson, called Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” the best apologetic of the 20th century. High praise indeed!  

Speaking for the truth of Christian orthodoxy, Chesterton wrote: “In answer to the historical query of why it was accepted, and is accepted, I answer  for millions of others in my reply: because it fits the lock; because it is like life. It is one among many stories; only it happens to be a true story. It is one among many philosophies; only it happens to the truth.”

Finally truth for Chesterton, is always tied to the living and breathing incarnational Church of Christ. Here for G.K. is always the “Catholic” faith!  Without the Church Catholic we lack the history of the redemptive Christ, and the ever living message that we call in theology as the “kerygma”, and the Pauline kerygma is a proclamation of the apostolic facts of the death and resurrection of Christ in an eschatological setting which gives significance to the facts. They mark the spiritual transition from “this present evil Age” (Gal. 1:4) to that “Age to Come”. Which is always pressing its way now for those who will believe and submit to the Lordship of Christ. Here is “the new creation” even now, and the “old things passed away”, (2 Cor. 5:17) for those who are “In Christ”. Here is the “intellect” of Orthodoxy!

G.K. Chesterton…Orthodoxy on the loose!

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

The radical realism of Chesterton is profound!  In the “old theology [rather] than the new,” Chesterton wrote, “we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation  – Christendom, (Christianity)”.  When G.K. wrote his book “Orthodoxy” he was an Anglican (1908). He later went to Rome, or Roman Catholicism in 1922. At the time, Chesterton thought that Rome and Catholicism, upheld the best of the orthodox Christian synergy of spirit, matter, and truth.  And for him Catholicism affirmed his great principle of grace, glory and gratitude. Which he also saw in Rome’s Thomism, the “primary and fundamental” “belief”…”the praise of Life, the praise of Being (ontology), the praise of God as Creator of the World.”

Today, we can learn much from G.K. Chesterton, his doctrine and life of the Incarnational reality, in both Church and Sacrament, but beyond to the truth of God’s creation of life, joy and beauty. Even in a sinful and broken world, which Christ has come to redeem, in fulness!

“The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.” (Inro. to the Book of Job. 1907)

Baptismal Formula..

The Baptismal Formula does not express a Trinity of work, or a Trinity of redemptive effort of man, but an essential Trinity, a Trinity in the inner constitution of Deity. It is not God revealed as Father of mankind or humanity, as Redeemer of  humanity, or as Sanctifier of humanity, but God as HE is in Himself, prior to, apart from, all self-manifestation.  Moreover, “the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14)…this reveals His (Christ’s) relation to the Father as One with Him in Essential Deity; and more the equally Divine Personality of the Holy Spirit. We can see this relationship throughout the Epistles ( Titus 3:5-6 / Eph. 2:18 / 1 Cor. 6: 10-11).  And even in the Synoptic report of the ministry, we see both the abstract and dogmatic terms, “the Father” and “the Son”combined: as in one sentence, “No one knows the Son save the Father; neither does any know the Father save the Son.” (Matt. 11:27)  And then of course the Johannine report, He (Christ) not only named them distinctly but blended them in a single phrase…St. John 14: 26 and 15:26.  Finally, the doctrine of the Trinity must rest ultimately on the Person of Christ and His relation to the Father. Here is the redemption, thru the Son, and of the sanctification thru or in and by the Spirit, but the Father is the regal “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”, etc. (1 Peter 1:2).

The Baptismal Formula shows us both the essential Trinity of God, and God’s full redemptive plan and love…”baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” (Matt. 28:19)

The Church…

“The Church…looks in its message at this immeasurable and unfathomable fact, that God has given himself for us. And that is why in each really Christian utterance there is something of an absoluteness such as cannot belong to any non-Christian language. The church is not ‘of the opinion,’ it does not have ‘views,’ convictions, enthusiasms. It believes and confesses, that is, it speaks and acts on the basis of the message based on God himself in Christ. And that is why all Christian teaching, comfort and exhortation is a fundamental and conclusive comfort and exhortation in the power of that which constitutes its content, the mighty act of God, which consists in the fact that he wills to be for us in his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.”  – Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, pages 86-87.

Barth is simply a modern so-called Church Father, not infallible but always a Christian voice and conscience in the incarnational Church. – Fr. R.

The Infallible Word Of God

We must beware of placing men and even certain Creeds alongside the Word of God. The Anglican apologist John Jewel (1522 – 1571) once wrote: “What say we of the fathers, Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Cyprian? … They were learned men, and learned fathers; the instruments of the mercy of God, and vessels full of grace. We must despise them not, we read them, reverence them, and give thanks unto God for them. Yet… we may not make them the foundation and warrant of our conscience: we may not put our trust in “them”. Our trust is in the name of the Lord.”  Yes only the Infallible Word Of God is our eternal trust!  This alone is the lasting truth of the Reformation. It alone will always reform and renew the Church and the true People of God!

The Just Shall Live By Faith!

Romans 1:17, “The just shall live by faith.”   The “just” are not some special group of super saints. It is the people of God whose hearts are turned by and toward God. The people who know that their own rightousness does not count for much and who therefore have accepted by faith that God alone is their righteousness!  This is Justification. Our Father Abraham had this faith! It is the covenant of grace.

Christian Obedience

“If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” (Isa. 48:18, NIV)

Obedience to God, can only come from two sources, the love and fear of God!  And this life of the Christian is that in the kingdom, for the kingdom has come and is pressing its way into the world. But how?  It is the Church: a “continuing incarnation” – offering our hearts and minds to the will of God, weaving together both the inner and outer life of the Spirit/spirit. Union with Christ by faith, is nothing else, but a life “soaked” by a sense of the Triune God’s reality and the claim upon the redeemed soul. It is more, much more, than the mind and intellect moving about for God!  It is also the soul and spirit alive and under the development of obedience of discipline and the theocentric and christocentic reality of all this mystery at work in us, it is grace & glory!  Biblically, it is God In Christ, (2 Cor. 5:19). For this alone we exist, and nothing else!  And only here we become “effective” servants and “lives” of Christ – Himself!  All else is nothing, as St. Paul said, “dung” – “loss for the sake of Christ.” (Phil. 3:7-8)

Only when the Church lives out it’s life and union with Christ – Crucified, Risen, Ascended – will it have power to move, challenge, and even change the culture around her!  Only here, will we find God’s real “decree”!

Shekinah Glory

The older definition of the Shekinah glory in Jewish theology was; The Divine Manifestation, through which God’s presence is felt by man. Someone had taken to task my constant term of the Judeo-Christian, but as the NT itself speaks that Christ is Himself that “glory” . . . “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from (of ) the Father, full of grace and truth.” (St. John 1:14)   The Greek means He literally “pitched his tent” (skenoo), and is an allusion to God’s dwelling with or among the people of Israel in the tabernacle (Ex. 25:8-9; 33:7).  Here indeed is the “Shekinah Glory” of God in the very person (man) and face of Jesus Christ!  Now, we approach and see that “glory” by faith, “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6, ESV)

Blogging…

Christian bloggers need to remember that we are not God’s lawyers, arguing well for him, but God’s witnesses, simply telling what his grace has done for us.  It is here really too that the “essential” or “immanent” Trinity is so important!  We really understand little of the “economy” of God without this great truth.  As the very nature of God’s unity is both transcendent and immanent.