I just got back from attending St. Athanasias Orthodox Church today and while I was there I had a few thoughts that I thought I'd write about. Yes, I haven't been as committed to posting as I should be, I do have some thoughts that I've been meaning to post, but they'll have to wait for now. On to the issue at hand.
After the first hour or so of the liturgy the Priest (who is married, by the way) gave the sermon from the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. As he spoke about this he talked about joy in giving and blessing, specifically stating that he is not proclaiming to us some health and prosperity/name it claim it gospel. A little while later the priest mentioned something about a saint and my friend Nathaniel leaned over to me and told me about a saint of the Orthodox Church that lived in Siberia, who would go walk through the towns and as he saw beggars in need he would give his shoes and coat to the beggars and walk back to his home without shoes and a coat (remember Siberia is mostly cold, very cold).
With that as the foundation let me share my thoughts. I have lamented the lack of recognition of Church history and lack of saints in the Protestant Church for some while now. I'm not necessarily arguing that we need to pray to saints, but our neglect of those who have gone before us in the Protestant tradition is absolutly dreadful, if not in fact sinful (and I do believe one could make a case for that). We as protestants like to recognize a select few (like an occasional missionary or Billy Graham) but primarily they are individuals who lived in relatively recently (or are still alive) and will soon be forgotten. Most of protestantism today barely knows who Wesley, Asbury, Calvin etc are, let alone Ignatius, Irenaus, Athanasias, etc are. We tend to exalt those in the Protestant tradition who do great things, rather than those who live lives of sainthood.
As I was thinking about all this I began to wonder what would have happened if the Protestant Church had maintained the use of saints? Could the prosperity gospel exist? It seems to me that I have to allow that it could exist; but that it would be considerably hard for it to exist in as wide spread state as it does. Why is this you may ask. Well it seems to me that only those who live saintly lives are canonized as saints. I don't know of any saints who are lifted up because of the life of affluence they lived. Saints are canonized because they model Christ's teachings, they give completely of themselves, they are an example to all believers. With a strong tradition of recognizing this life of sacrifice in men and women throughout church history, I would say that it would be hard for a teaching that proclaims something completely contrary to this (and Christ's teachings) to take root and become widespread.
The problem with the protestant church is that people who live these lives of sacrifice often fall through the cracks. We don't remember them becuase we view them as insignificant in our individualized self/purpose driven world. We don't look at ourselves as living in a tradition that starts at creation, proceeds through the Old Testament, to the New, through the church of the ages and finally to us. This is who we are and it is good to remember those who came before us (cf: Hebrews 11).
We also have a skewed view of the incarnation. We have allowed dualism to tarnish our worldview. We view the incarnation as a past event. As John Madden would say: "Boom!" it happened. We tend to view life as something that means little except for a time where we made decisions that affect where we go in the end. We don't view all of life as a being an incarnation of Christ to the world. I get so frustrated every time I see the stupid (and dare I say heretical) bumper sticker: "I'm not a physical being having a spiritual experience, I"m a spiritual being having a physical experience." It is this garbage theology that has allowed the Protestant Church to neglect the poor, to abuse the helpless and live in some bastardized state between orthodoxy and gnosticism. We think that we only need to worship God with our minds and our hearts, how much more should we engage all that God gave us, our mind, heart, and body (including all the sense)!
All that to say that we should be lifting up examples of men and women who have gone before us in the faith and have lived lives that are true incarnations of Christ. They teach us that it's not enough to think right, but to act and live right as well. Live and act, not in my own personal/individualistic sphere, but with in a community, within the whole world.
Why should we not celebrate the saints of the Church? Why should we not have aids to remember them and allow our hearts to be drawn closer to the Trinity through the example of their lives? Should we not allow their example to point us toward Christ and to the life that he commanded and lived himself?
To get back to the point, it seems to me that this strong emphasis would have helped the Protestant Church to see the health and wealth/prosperity gospel for what it truly is, namely a heresy that is not in line with what the church has believed and taught throughout the ages. That's what we are, we are bearers of the faith that has been handed to us. How dare we think that this is something new we are a part of! How dare we believe that we're starting something original! As A. W. Tozer says: "if the reader should discover here anythign really new he is conscience bound to reject it, for whatever in religion is new is by the same token false." (Pursuit of God, xiii). Or as C. S. Lewis (held as a 'saint' by some protestants) states: "if any parts of the book are 'original', in the sense of being novel...they are so against my will...I have tried to assume nothing that is not professed by all baptised and communicating Christians" (The Problem of Pain, xii)
I guess my ranting has started again and my point is now lost in the plethora of words. To summarize, it seems to me that if we, as protestants, hadn't rejected all church history prior to the reformation, and had continued to hold up examples of those who lived incarnationally in line with the words of Jesus, we would be having less of a problem now with false doctrines such as the prosperity gospel and the like. We desperately need to recapture our roots (not of protestantism, but of Christianity) and learn from our Orthodox and Catholic brothers and sisters. We dont' have to assimilate everthing they do (although it would be great to see the church whole again) but we do have to accept them as sharing our baptism in the name of the Trinity, and thus they are by nature Christians - our brothers and sisters.
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7 comments:
In the class I'm teaching, we covered modernity and some of the various changes the modern paradigm has foisted upon the world we live in. One of those is the transition from oral transmission to the written word.
While this seems fairly simple and almost a "so what?" moment, I think that there's a fundamental difference in the way we function there. If culture and history are transmitted via stories, then they're imprecise, sure, but there's also a participatory element. We tell the story our own way with our own nuances. We are invested in the story, and it becomes, in many respects, our kerygmatic history. The obvious example is a good Jewish passover, where everything is a first-person pronoun (when we were slaves in Egypt, despite however much time has elapsed.
However, when we write down history, it becomes external to us. History is contained in books. It moves to libraries, the domain of researchers and professors. So how does this at all relate to your post? There's this organic unity, if you want to call it that, that helps to define the church. Like you said, great cloud of witnesses and all that, we are partakers in the work that goes back from John, to Irenaeus, through the various strands of tradition, including the saints whose lives only exist as anonymous Siberian givers. But our current view of history doesn't easily allow us to take part nearly as much, it seems. Moreover, since history is now down in the books rather than our shared spiritual heritage, it devalues the past (look at our methods of Bib-i-cal interpretation, it's full of reader-response dreck, which is totally ahistorical) and emphasizes the now.
So how do we get the prosperity gospel and the Rick Warren production and glitz company? Again, it's a totally screwed theory of history. Maybe we need to rethink some of our liturgical methods to fit in some hagiography (or at least appreciation for the litany who preceded us), or perhaps make it acceptable to have a sermon that's not always ostensibly exegetical, but rather share some of the wisdom of the past?
That's my take on the thing. It's funny how in some more contemporary-focused churches, Christmas music is full of the traditional faves, but the other 11 months, nothing written before 1975 can be sung. I noticed that today in my church.
Good reflections in your post and in Greg's response.
I really like the deal with getting back in touch with our historical narrative. It has to happen, and indeed it is in some strands - but it needs to not happen for its own sake, which I fear is happening in many emergent strands.
At any rate, for us to get back to basics and steer away from our Christian materialism, we have to first recognize why the Reformers put an end to recognition of saints in the Church. Then, as a basic part of being in any sort of narrative, we should look at our place in that history, and I think we must identify how or why they're decisions are still relevant. If we feel that in decanonizing the saints they acted too radically (though it was good for the time) and have negatively affected us nowadays more than if they had left the saints alone, I think it is ok to go back to the way things were, and engaging carefully in some sort of Catholic-Protestantism. If we find that their decanonization was the best possible move for the present and future Church, I think we have to continue in that narrative stream. Am I making any sense?
Personally, I think, at this point, it might still be too dangerous to reincorporate recognition of the Saints in the church. They have been incredible models for us of preaching a Gospel entirely not of ourselves. Yet, I wonder if, until the modern era trickles out or we revert to neo- or hyper-modernism, we simply wouldn't make these icons and saints into golden calves. Perhaps recognition/veneration of the saints will have to remain a personal thing for quite some time.
Chuck, can we do recognition without veneration? That is, can we recognize their essential humanity while still suggesting them as heroes of the faith for a more contemporary time?
For example: Mother Teresa is an inspiration to many, as she gave her life to serving the poor in India. If your calling is to live among the people of India, especially the millions of urban poor, than let's look to her as an example not just of piety, but as a reminder (since it's very easy to forget) of the grace of God and its efficacy.
So we can respect our history, bolded again to emphasize that our place is within an historical communion, and we are not isolated, but we can avoid the veneration and hagiography that caused so much troubles before the reformers. Perhaps we can chart a middle path between what's almost a Zwinglian extreme in Western Protestantism and what history we've lost.
Man, it would be nice if we could get the hang of the whole "middle road" thing. Unfortunately, Zwingli is well alive in the ultra-conservative sects of Protestantism (*cough*Southern Baptists*cough*). I almost think it's a Biblically-strong suggestion to recognize the faiths of those coming before, if the least you want to do is proof-text Hebrews.
The thing that I wonder about is how/when this sort of thing might be reintroduced to the Protestant train of thought. Is it going to be a large denominational body (and we know they can do extreme things, like vote to ordain homosexuals), or a smaller reactionary Protestant group that slowly snowballs into a large contending group? I fear for further splits in the Church either way, though.
Hmm. Maybe it will neither be a denominational body nor a sectarian group, but perhaps it could be an unofficial movement? That is, rather than it being forced from above, it arises more as a re-emphasis perhaps on the lay level. Instead of perhaps the new pastor trying to include the recognition for history, (and knowing what I do about social change, they work best and last longest if unofficial power, rather than official power, are the catalysts- the respected elder's suggestion might carry more influence than the new pastor's, despite the pastor carrying power.)
So rather than include this appreciation for those who have gone before, the heroes of the walk, as a mandate, I'd suggest it would catch on best if it's fundamentally grassroots. Now, there's the wonderful little caveat with anything grassroots; it's long, not easy, and won't bear fruit for a while. Of course, it's not glitzy, won't have a project acronym, and won't have bureaucratic legions alienating people. So if we're willing to take the hard road and wait for our payoff, I think it could possibly be done.
Also, the worry about church splits is well-founded, and unless you're a dirty Church Growther, something you're working to avoid at most any cost. I suppose my soc background comes into play here. When talking about conflict in large groups, there's a theory by Ralf Dahrendorf that suggests that the less two groups have in common, the more intense conflict between them will be. So, as an example, if your society has Irish Catholics who speak one language, are in one economic group, and share the same relative power base, and British Protestants who speak a different language, are mostly a very different economic group, and collectively wield more influence than the Irish Catholics, conflict between those groups is probably more serious. However, if the Irish and the English speak the same language, live in the same neighborhoods, are scattered between rich and poor economically, and are pretty similar powerwise, and the only real differences between the groups is Catholic-Protestant, then any conflict is much less likely to be severe, because the Irish Catholics and the English Protestants share so many common identities.
Ok, theory to pragmatism. If we're talking about a change in the way we do our church, whether it be liturgy, theology, or an appreciation of hymnology, it's a sensitive topic, yes. To best avoid the threat of split, it's got to be done in love (let's say, less abrasive, with a goal towards peace, among other things, not the goal being "I'm right, and I'll get my will codified".), and it has to avoid becoming an "us and them" thing. How do we do that? Again, I think a sensitivity is in order. The homosexuality debates always tend to turn into an "orthodoxy vs. liberalism" controversy, because the people in both camps tend to oppose one another on so very many issues. Since we agree that it's important to recognize our heritage and all those through whom the Holy Spirit has given us modern-day examples, (we talk about people like that in our own local congregations, shouldn't be a massive step to increase the duration) let's again try to chart that middle path, away from the Catholic veneration that would split us, and away from the ahistorical, rigid biblicism from the other side.
Perhaps, though, if we're buying the transition from modernity to post-modernity in its infinite incarnations, this will answer itself. Remember that dichotomization and endless categorization is a characteristic of the modern, rational mindset. If we're in an age where we're not dividing the world into "Baptist" and "Evil", then perhaps charting that middle path gets easier.
True. I think, perhaps, one of the most amazing and also scariest things (in terms of theological accountability) is the predicted rise of de-institutionalization. The fewer categories of faith we have, the better, in some regards. You wonder if the "one church" thing in Revelation might not be talking about the Constantinian Empire. But I digress...let guys like Eckley who have written a commentary on Revelation deal with that one. Sorry to head down that road.
Anyway...it's a tricky thing when you think about de-denominationalism and all its offspring. Denominations can certainly be a good thing in lending accountability between a governing body and local congregations, as well as identifying specific theological attributes. However, we definitely know the pitfalls of denominations - especially when a denomination is irrevocably linked to some other non-religious strain of thought (I'm thinking of the almost synonymity between Southern Baptist and George Bush-conservatism).
The real trick is going to be in detecting when the Church is heading away from what we've called "postmodernism", which is gaining more credibility of just being a transition rather than an actual new period of thought, to perhaps hypermodernism, pre-modernism (or neopremodernism, or whatever - a revertion back to the ideas before modernity), or even better, a truly vast-encompassing Neo-Classicism (or hyperclassisicm, not sure what you'd call it). That could be REALLY interesting to live through.
Thinking of hypermodernity, I think the possible favourable outcome could be stronger, but more ecumenical denominations rather than simply their dissolution. With this, you might see hagiography pique again. With Neo-Classicism, I think there's an even stronger chance of recognizing/venerating the early Church guys, but (hopefully) with a bit more care. The stickiest part of the history of ideas might have been when Classicism bridged into Romanticism. If that were to happen again, I think the Church would hit the same rut it's hitting now.
I guess that's enough thought of the future for now. I guess I'd be content with just dealing with this postmodernity thing first.
Wow, I can't believe one of my thoughts sparked this much conversation, maybe Seminary is making me more awesome!
I swear that I'm not just a spectator to this converstation. I hope to post my thoughts on your thoughts soon. Just not yet, because i'm busy with school and procrastinating.
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