Misappropriating the Incarnation?

I'm not really in the mood to blog right now, so this post (as have so many others) may be lacking in coherence and a well formulated argument, but I will post it nevertheless because it helps me to process things verbally (or in this case through typing).

We recently had Kingdom Conference on campus which is basically the Seminary's attempt at a four day mission conference nestled in the "church season" they like to call KingdomTide. (We'll avoid my soapbox diatribe against KingdomTide for now).

The topic of this conference was rethinking short-term missions and how we can do them well. I think this is a very important topic because so often short-term mission trips turn into vacations with just enough 'ministry' to ease the guilt of taking a vacation. We also want to avoid what my friend Eric Iverson from Youthworks calls "pimping poor people," or in some cases 'pimping the nationals' we go to work with. We want to make sure we do some good and we want to make sure that we are not only sticking a band-aid on the infection, but that we're treating the cause as well. We want to make lasting changes and almost work ourselves and our missionary friends out of a job. I'm not sure if I explained that well, but either way it's more of an aside and not the topic I wanted to discuss. (Don't you just love my flow of consciousness writing style?)

Given the topic we had a speaker in chapel that lectured on improving short-term missions. Our speaker was Dr. Miriam Adeney, a professor at Seattle Pacific, who was a fairly good speaker. I liked most of her points but during one of her lectures she said something that I remember thinking was a very poor analogy at best. In her effort to emphasize making long-term connections through short-term missions she said "What if Jesus had dropped in on earth for only two weeks?" This seemed to me to be an odd analogy and I remember taking some issue with it when she said it. I didn't really get too worked up over her comment until I saw it listed as the "Heard Around Campus" quote of the week from last week. I guess it seems that someone (and since they put it in there, I'm assuming multiple someones) thought that it was a very profound statement.

While it is a good point in that Jesus didn't just "drop in" and we should cherish that because the incarnation is absolutely essential to our salvation and for knowing the mind and the heart of God. It seems to me that she is just citing an extreme case to make a small point about missions. Maybe this is just a type of logical fallacy (and as I type this I think it is, but I can't remember it) or maybe this could be a form of Godwin's Law. To be sure, I have been guilty of such errors (regrettably too often in conversation) but this analogy just seems wrong to me and I'm having trouble articulating it. Maybe I'm not making sense but it just seems to me that placing relationship building in short-term missions (or in any sense) on the same level with the Holy Incarnation is just too extreme of an analogy. It bothers me even more that students (or at least one student) thinks this to be worthy of the quote of the week. Doesn't it bother anyone else that we just use the incarnation as a means to justify almost anything. The incarnation is one of the most glorious things and we treat it as though it were just an example that we should draw from when we want to make our argument fool-proof.

I'm not saying that I disagree with Dr. Adeney's points, I'm just disagree with her argument style/example. Maybe I wouldn't be so quick to point this out if I didn't think that we deified community here at Asbury. Maybe you're thinking that that last statement may indeed be the exact same fallacy that I'm arguing against, but I don't think it is, because I've heard some discussions (many of which come out of the chapel office) that make it seem (and I really think it is the case) that the seminary is more concerned with making sure our students value community than it is that they value and rightly think on the incarnation, the Trinity, or a plethora of other essential doctrines of the Church.

Maybe I'm making a bid deal out of nothing, but maybe these comments by Dr. Adeney and their glorification by the student(s) is just the tip of a bigger problem that is well entrenched in Western Christendom.


- Ben

Cynical?

Given my (and a few of my housemate's) cynical attitude toward the seminary one of them posed the question.

"Is it cynicism if we're right?"

So that's the question I offer up to you. If our percieved cynical attitude is right are we really cynics or just the only ones that can see reality?

I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments. Have at it.

Christ Our God?!?

Over the past few weeks there has been one phrase from church that has been constantly on my mind - the phrase "Christ our God." This phrase is repeated numerous times during the Divine Liturgy and is very clear in it's meaning - namely that Christ is our God and we worship him.

For some reason over the past few weeks this phrase has stuck out to me more than usual and thus I have been forced to wrestle with it's profundity and simplicity. I have been forced to realize what it means to truly say that Christ is our God. To say that in a seemingly nonsensical sense that we worship a man, but not just a man, we worship a person who is both fully God and fully man.

God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.

- Athanasian Creed

This truth is something I will die for and yet it is something that although I try, I cannot fully understand and so I am forced to stand in the paradox of confident humility.

While this is indeed is a good meditation, it was not where I had planned to go with this post, so let me get back on track.

As I have thought and have been forced to meditate on this phrase I have been equally dismayed by it's absence from Protestant services. I think I first noticed this because when I first started to think on this phrase I felt slightly uncomfortable and began to analyze why. I then realized that I don't usually hear the phrase Christ our God in worship. As I thought I realized that while I may have conversations about Christ's divinity and would defend it in a theological debate any day, I never have really experienced protestant worship that verbalized Christ as God and the object of worship in a doxological sense.

Now, I realize that I am opening up myself for a great critique here as I'm sure one could find a few counterexamples and will believe that to suffice for a refutation of my assertion, but I disagree. Think about our worship services, for you Asburians think about our Chapel services (which, though they should be the exception are likely to fail even more than our churches) when was the last time that the service was thoroughly Trinitarian? When was the last time that a service was Christo-centric in the sense that it drew your worship toward Christ and caused you to bless, worship and affirm Christ as both God and man? Are our services Trinitarian - rarely. Are they Christo-centric - mostly, but this Christo-centrism seems to be a thin veil in front of bland and vague affirmations about God, rather than a specificity that is uniquely Christian and prayerfully meditative of Christ as the object of our worship - the fully divine, fully human , God-man.

Now, I am not fully opposed to songs of worship that are very concerned with the intimacy to be had between the Christian and Christ (love songs with Jesus, if you will), but these are not a proper starting place. We must start with the foundational faith and then allow room for mystical expression and intimate experiences.

We must do a better job at teaching our people the faith and for most this will not effectively happen in the classroom or the pulpit, but my making these truths essential parts or our worship both in song and prayer. If we continue on the path of only emphasizing the essential truths of the faith in classrooms and teaching them only to pastors then the faith will cease to be passed down to the coming generations.

The early fathers closely linked godliness with correct theology and action. We wonder why our people don't live righteously- could it not be that it is because they are not grounded in the Truth?

Unitarian Universalists

I went to a Unitarian Universalist Church the other day and it was an interesting experience. No, I am not converting, I had to go to another religious movement/cult for a class and they were the easiest to figure out when they met. I would write a total review, but I'm kinda lazy so I won't. I did however run into my friend Ed at the church (surprising because he goes to St. Athanasius as well) and Ed wrote a good review of the church on his blog.

I think Ed does a great job describing the UU church. His thoughts almost exactly echo mine especially when he mentions the service being boring. Oh my goodness, it was the most boring thing I've ever been to - even more boring than a Dr. Gould greek class.

The only thing I would add onto his post is that I agree that it looked much like the protestant/emergent services. In fact I would argue that it is a lot like so much of protestantism. A great deal of the service reminded me of seeker churches and even a bunch like the chapel services here at the Seminary. This, however, is not a good thing. I'm not making this point to say: "yay, look how close they are to the truth." rather it is surprising how far so much of weak protestantism (including so many of our chapel services here at the seminary) have strayed from boldly proclaiming the truth with any amount of urgency. This service really reminded me a lot of Quest Community Church which I have recently blogged about. That may be a cheap shot, but I really think(from what little I've seen) that Quest is a far cry from proclaiming the gospel and is so afraid at alienating people that they might as well be Unitarian Universalists.

I suppose that's it for now since my cults class is almost over. I had an idea for a post in class today but it may take some time to develop as I feel I should attend some services at Quest before I try to use our class paradigm to qualify them as a cult. But it should be a fun try.

- Ben