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March 13, 2023
Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of its God.
Baptism in the infant church was what theologians now call eschatological. It marked entrance into a spiritual kingdom already proclaimed, though still to be revealed in its fullness.
One can be accepted as righteous only through God’s undeserved mercy. That is grace.
They were deeply troubled by the decline in Christian morality they felt sure would come in the gentile churches. If you teach justification by faith alone, they argued, people will imagine that once they have accepted Christ by faith, it does not really matter how they live. On the contrary, said Paul, if they really have accepted Christ by faith, they have accepted the way of Christ and the mind of Christ. Those who really love God can do as they choose, for if they really love God they will choose to do the will of God.
Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in the early second century, was apparently the first to use the word. He spoke of this concept when he said, “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.” By the end of the second century the term catholic was widely used of the church in the sense that the catholic church was both universal, in contrast to local congregations, and orthodox, in contrast to heretical groups.
God had invaded time, and Christians were captivated by the creative power of that grand news. They knew that human beings had been redeemed, and they could not keep to themselves the tidings of salvation. That unshakable assurance, in the face of every obstacle including martyrdom itself, helps explain the growth of the church.
When we err in our thinking, we call it heresy or bad theology. Heresy is not necessarily bad religion, but like all wrong thinking, it may lead to bad religion.
The basic belief of the Gnostics was dualism. They believed that the world is ultimately divided between two cosmic forces, good and evil. In line with much Greek philosophy, they identified evil with matter. Because of this, they regarded any Creator God as wicked. Creation by a deity, they felt, was not so much impossible as it was indecent. Their own supreme being was far removed from any such tendency to “evil.”
Gnosticism holds an important lesson for all Christians who try to disentangle the gospel from its involvement with “barbaric and outmoded” Jewish notions about God and history. It speaks to all who try to raise Christianity from the level of faith to a higher realm of intelligence and so increase its attractiveness to proud, important people.
Christians affirm that this material world is good and worthy to be used and enjoyed. “There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God,” is the way C. S. Lewis, the widely read Cambridge professor, put it in his Mere Christianity.
In orthodox Christianity, redemption came not by some secret knowledge of spiritual realms but by God’s action in history. The Son of God entered time, was born of a virgin, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, was buried, was raised, and ascended. That is not gnosis; that is Event.
Humanity needs salvation not because we are imprisoned in a body but because we each willfully choose our own way rather than God’s way. Our evil is not just in the body; it is also in our minds and our affections. We love the wrong things.
Origen’s overriding concern was to allow the whole Bible to speak for itself, whatever a single text may seem to say, for when the Bible speaks, it speaks for God, who inspired it.
A remnant of the faith has always survived, even in the direst of circumstances, lying dormant, waiting for a new birth. And indeed, if the growth of the church in places like China or Uganda (to name only two examples) is any indication, it appears that in the twenty-first century, Christianity is awakening once again in the countries of the sunrise.
