SO WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, THEN (AND NOW)?

a nasty dogma (cf Psalm 59)

A recent discussion with a friend about religion, church, and dogma set me thinking about such things, and trying to work them out. I post the result here in case it may be helpful to some. (NB: A None is not a canonical Hour, but someone who to the pollster’s question about one’s religion answers “None”. A Vaguist is, well, vague.)

 

A. What was the Eu-angelion, the content of Yeshua’s teaching?

 

1.     The Law is fulfilled.

2.     Yeshua bar Yosef from Nazareth is the Meshiach.

3.     Yeshua Meshiach is the (new) Law, and the new Temple.

4.     Our role is to be as children: in the innocence of trust, and the trust of innocence.

5.     Yeshua is present with us, in the Eucharist and in prayer.

6.     Our childlike life is to be governed (as He said to Nicodemus) by the two Great Commandments.

7.     The first we obey in prayer (and sometimes in fasting).

8.     The second is exemplified in the Samaritan: we obey it in giving (as he did).

 

 

B. How does one discuss faith with a 21C None? Very difficult. If the occasion arises, perhaps say “Let me tell you my faith, and then you tell me your reactions to those points.” And tell it more or less in the above form. 

 

The points the None will almost certainly make are 1) Auschwitz and 2) earthquakes or the equivalent.  Possible answers:

1) God is Love, and as such his omnipotence is limited (only) by the nature of Love itself, that cannot suspend freedom.

2) God does not micromanage nature. He has left Nature to us, to our care and our intelligence.

 

C. Now, how does one answer a 21C Vaguist? The Vaguist will say “I believe in a Higher Being [perhaps even God]; I am a very spiritual person; but my contact with the Higher Being happens in surroundings of natural beauty. Do NOT ask me to go to, still less to join, a church – they are full of DOGMAS [which, it is understood, are things that bark, bite and – as the Psalmist says -- grin and run about the city].” Again, very difficult.

 

I might start by saying that I too find surroundings of natural beauty congenial to contact with God: after all, He provided them, so addressing Him when in them seems natural, if only to give thanks. 

 

But then one does have to tackle the topic of the church. I might point out that while Creeds are in the singular, all the ancient Christian prayers, beginning with the one taught us by Yeshua, are couched in the first person plural. The early Christians lived their faith most strongly in a community. “Where two or three are gathered together, I will be in the midst of them.”

 

Yes, but what about those horrid DOGMAS? 

1.     Try to imagine what the first centuries of the Christian community were like. Not only were they persecuted, hunted down and killed, but they were trying to work out just what it all meant. What did the Resurrection mean? What is the God we worship like? Father? What kind of a father? And if Yeshua was the Son of God, what does that mean? And if he said, I will send you the Holy Spirit, who is that? They were totally absorbed in a terrible problem of definition: terrible, because their – eternal – lives depended on it. 

2.     So every time they managed to reach some sort of agreement on one bit of the enormous subject, they would file it with a sigh of relief, saying, OK, this one we can now see as settled, let’s go on to the next one. And so the settled one was filed as “something we are sure enough of to teach it”, the Greek word for which is dogma.

 

Of course the real trouble, for a Vaguist, is not with dogmas as such but with the idea of the Church as a spiritual authority. Which means, supposedly, that it can tell – order – you what to believe. No effing way!

 

This is of course nonsense. Only you know what you believe and whom you trust, unless you tell someone. And the Church – the community of the faithful – cannot tell you what to believe. However, it has (after many centuries and a very great deal of debate) set down the core of its faith, in the Creed – from credo, I believe. The Apostles’ Creed is the simplest: it says

 

I believe in God, the Father almighty, 
    maker of heaven and earth; 
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; 
    who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, 
    born of the Virgin Mary, 
    suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
    was crucified, dead, and buried. 
    He descended into hell. 
    The third day he rose again from the dead.
    He ascended into heaven, 
    and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty. 
    From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. 
I believe in the Holy Ghost, 
    the holy catholic Church, 
    the communion of saints, 
    the forgiveness of sins, 
    the resurrection of the body, 
    and the life everlasting. Amen.

 

This, of course, may need some explanation to those who are new to the material, which is why the various churches created catechisms. But simply speaking these are the essentials:

 

1) God exists. God is the Maker of everything and the Father of everyone. He is all-powerful. Jesus of Nazareth is His (only) Son. Together with the Holy Spirit (the old word was Ghost from Germanic Geist, spirit) they form the Trinity: three Persons, one God. (That one is notoriously difficult to get one’s mind around. But never mind.)

2) Jesus was conceived by the Spirit, he was born of (as the child of) Mary, who was virgin at the time. He was a real man, a real human being (not a disguised god): he suffered at a specific time and place in history: in Jerusalem, under the government of Marcus Pontius Pilatus (d. ca. 38AD). He was a real man, and so he died a real death: he was buried, and he went down (according to Jewish belief) to the “hell”, Sheol, the place of the dead. 

But on the third day after his burial, he was resurrected. After a brief return to earth and to his disciples, he went to heaven, where he recovered his place as God’s Son “at the right hand” of the Father. 

At the end of time, he will return, and there will be a final judgement of those then alive and the dead. 

3) The Holy Spirit exists – he is the third Person of the Trinity. He is the one who is always with us to defend us. 

·      The universal (“cath-holica”) ecclesia, church, community of believers, exists for all who believe. It has been entrusted with a communal (not individual) and historic (grown over the ages) knowledge of God, which gives it a certain authority, a certain claim to respect and attention.

·      All those who trust in God are part of one organism, and share their strengths: the living and the dead. (The “communion of saints”.) This means that we can benefit not only from each other’s spiritual experience and wisdom but also from that of those who have gone before and who are now close to God: I, now, can learn from St Theresa of Avila (1515-82), from St John of the Cross (1542-91), and from the late Michael Lonsdale (1931-2020).

·      Sins – offences against love, against God’s love – are grave but can and will be forgiven if that is sincerely asked for. 

·      We shall all die, but that death is not definitive. We too shall be resurrected, and with some sort of “body”, though we do not know where or with what kind of “body”.

·      And finally, if we truly want it, we will live in God’s presence (“Heaven”) where there is no such thing as time (“the life everlasting”).

 

This is not what the Church tells you to believe, but a complex of astounding truths it invites you to discover, to ponder, the pray about (on your mountain top, for instance), and eventually to take on board, with the extraordinary joy of knowing that you are loved: “Ransomed, Healed, Restored, Forgiven”. Every single day.

 

VERY, VERY DIFFICULT

 

I have written before about intercessory prayer. I have also upon occasion mentioned that in no church have I ever heard prayers for acknowledged enemies. These two issues are now coming to a head with the CoViD-19 hospitalisation of U.S. president Donald Trump, and the reactions to it reported in the news media. 

 

            For most people in the U.S.A. and in the Western world, Trump is an acknowledged enemy: someone who lies, cheats, bullies, and has done more than any previous holder of the presidency to degrade that office and to undermine the institutions of American democracy. Moreover, the position of his country in the world increases exponentially the effects of the damage he has inflicted on it. 

 

            So now that he is in hospital with an as yet unknown degree of the virus, the understandable reactions vary from a sense of almost Biblical tragedy – condign punishment specific to one of his many sins – via outright Schadenfreude to heartfelt and furiously-expressed wishes that he may not recover. Any good wishes or even prayers for his recovery seem to be limited strictly to his thick-and-thin supporters.

 

            So what should the reaction be for those of us who hate what he has done to the country, to politics generally, and to the world, but who are also reasonably devout if uncertain Christians (or, indeed, Jews)? He is our acknowledged enemy: can we bring ourselves to pray for him? This is a considerable test of our faith.  

 

            Reading the book by his niece, the psychiatrist Mary Trump, may help us to a greater understanding. The father of Donald and his brother was, by all accounts, a monster who taught his sons that the world was divided into killers and losers. Donald has clearly tried to be a killer, but as he isn’t a real killer (such as, for example, Erdogan in Turkey) he does his damage by flailing. His brother became an alcoholic and died at 42; Donald obviously has compensated for weakness and lack of self-confidence with sociopathic narcissism. There is in this a profound sadness: it shows us a damaged child lashing out at the world. 

 

            Naturally, such a child should not be let near an important function. That he was, through the ill-will of many professional politicians, the violence of their voters, and a seriously dysfunctional electoral system, is a tragedy. But beneath all that, we can perhaps still hear the cries of the damaged child. And we can, and should, perhaps remember that nothing is impossible to God except to deny Love.

 

            We should, then, perhaps pray earnestly for the damaged child Donald Trump, and beg the Lord to use this illness to bring about a change in his way of seeing the world and of living in it. Roger Cohen, the journalist, wrote that his experience with fairly serious CoViD-19 had made a deep impression on him. A loving Father might possibly use the same means to transform a damaged and dysfunctional President.