Anglicanism as a way of being Christian

My Bishop often refers to us Anglicans as “disciples of Christ in the Anglican Way.”  Oftentimes I’ve understood that in a rather shallow manner – thinking that it was just a phrase to appease the popular mindset out there of rejecting “ism’s” in favor of the mythical “mere christian.”  But after reading through some good articles lately, I’ve realized that there’s a deeper reason for referring to Anglicanism as “the Anglican way.”

For, you see, many denominations are defined by theology.  Lutherans generally adhere to Martin Luther’s interpretation of scripture.  Presbyterians generally adhere to John Calvin’s theology, and even Roman Catholics to their catechism.  This is called confessionalism – defining the church according to a defined confession of faith.  Other denominations define themselves more charismatically, according to subjective experiences such as “being born again” or “baptized in the Holy Spirit.”  But Anglicanism is neither confessional nor charismatic at heart, but pragmatic.

What this means, basically, is that to be considered an Anglican you have to do what Anglicans do: be baptized, read the Scriptures, pray the Psalms, receive Eucharist regularly, engage in the discipline of common prayer, and so forth.  Yes, there are confessions of faith – Creeds, catechisms, and so forth – that we can study, and yes there are subjective experiences that we can experience along the way, and we certainly have room to enjoy them, but those aren’t what define us as Anglicans.  Anglicanism as a pragmatic tradition, being defined by what we do, thus has room to encompass both the confessional/intellectual/speculative side of the faith and the charismatic/mystical/affective side of the faith.

One respected writer, Martin Thornton, called this the speculative-affective synthesis.  The life of the mind and the life of the heart are held together by a particular set of spiritual disciplines.  This is the heart of what makes a Christian specifically an Anglican.  Theologically speaking, an Anglican could resemble a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic or even an Eastern Orthodox or Calvinist.  An Anglican could also be really charismatic, into the more Pentecostal side of spiritual ministry.  Those things aren’t unique to Anglicanism at all, which is often why other Christians have a difficult time figuring out what Anglicans are all about.

So what is this “speculative-affective synthesis?”  For the most part, it’s a contour of prayer, often described as the three-fold rule of worship.  Both Anglican theology and Anglican experience is encapsulated in that liturgy, or three-fold plan of worship.  And since 1549, that worship identity has been encapsulated in The Book of Common Prayer.  This is a big deal for Anglicans, much to the confusion of many onlookers from other Christian traditions.  Why are we so caught up with this book?

The answer is because by grounding ourselves pragmatically in worship, we are: 1) protected (somewhat) from the dangers of theological partisanship which has continually divided Protestants for centuries, and 2) grounded firmly in the Catholic tradition of theology and worship.  For although the Prayerbook was written by English reformers, its content was not simply a load of Protestant reformation propaganda to support the new regime, but it also drew heavily upon the liturgical tradition of the English church for the past millennium and a half!  This article does a good job of summarizing the chain of tradition and input that informs Anglican worship from the Apostles to the present day.

Lastly, I’d like to recommend this other article, as it puts forth the helpful suggestion that one of the best ways to figure out how to go forward in tumultuous times like ours is to look back at where we have already been.  If we take the time to reacquaint ourselves with our forefathers in the faith, we can once again clarify who we are, and thus work out how to move forward in our own day.

King Ahab – a portrait of sin

This is a brief summary of this morning’s teaching at Grace Anglican Church, Sunday June 16th (Proper 6, Year C).

The story of King Ahab, Jezebel, and Naboth’s vineyard is a great story to illustrate how sin happens, step by step.

The Temptation (verses 1-4)

The primary sin was not actually Ahab’s coveting Naboth’s vineyard, but his scorning of the Inheritance Law.  The King was upset because Israel was “supposed” to be free from Judah’s Law of Moses.  He resents the Law being imposed on him externally.

The Enactment (verses 5-14)

Jezebel functions in this story as the world, the flesh, and the devil: she feeds Ahab’s desire to break the Law.  Ahab functions in this story as the will, which ultimately must consent in order for the sin to take place.  Once given permission, Jezebel basically takes over.

The Enjoyment (verses 15-16)

Part of sinning is enjoying it.  Notice how, in this story, when the prize is won, the enjoyment is fleeting!

The Penalty (verses 17-26)

The penalty here is death for both Ahab and Jezebel.  Continuing the earlier analogy, this points to the reality that sin leads to the complete death of the human person, body and soul.

The Redemption (verses 27-29)

King Ahab (still representing the will) repents!  This ultimately leads to his salvation, though he still undergoes the death penalty as promised.  Notice Jezebel (the flesh) fails to repent, and thus gets no such reprieve.

By way of a summary lesson, a key word is repeated twice towards the end of this story: “sold.”  In verses 20 and 25, Ahab is described by God as having “sold himself.”  When we sin, we’re selling ourselves to other masters.  That’s why the prostitute is such a common image in the Bible for a sinful people or nation.  And sometimes, in our conservative knee-jerk reactions, we jump on that image of sexual sin and make it sound like it’s the end of the road, the ultimate sinner.

Yet God uses that very image to describe his own beloved people – Israel – and follows it up with a desire to redeem them.  The prostitute is transformed into a faithful wife – the pure spotless bride of Christ!  We would do well to remember that no amount of sin is beyond redemption.  It’s the same with King Ahab in this story; he had been one of Israel’s least godly kings, and here he heartily repents and God has mercy on him.  It doesn’t erase his past, nor does it erase all the consequences of his past, but his identity in God’s eyes is redeemed into something new and good.

Creation Questions part 2

It was over a year ago that a friend of mine asked me about my thoughts on creation, prompting this blog post.  It has come to my attention that I had intended to write a follow-up to it, but never did, and now recent conversation has made such an article more pressing to present.  So here goes: why I do not accept the dueling extremes of six-day creationism and wholesale evolution, and how I would strive to present the creation narratives of Genesis instead.

The problem with “24-hour six day creationism”

We begin with literary form and genre.  The book of Genesis is the first of the five books of Moses, known collectively as the Torah, or Law.  So the primary purpose of those books is to put forth the Old Covenant Law, which is the foundation for ancient Israelite civil and religious practice, paves the way for the poetry and wisdom literature, sets the stage for the historical books, and the fodder for the prophets of Israel and Judah.  Within the Torah, the book of Genesis functions as the introduction.  ‘Genesis’ means ‘generation’ or ‘origin’ or ‘creation.’  It’s like a giant prequel, giving the background information for God’s people leading up to the giving of the Law.

This purpose of the book of Genesis is evidenced within the book itself by means of a series of “origin stories.”  (When I say story, I am not implying they’re untrue.)  Just as the Law is often summarized by the Ten Commandments, so too is the book of Genesis broken up into ten origin stories.  When rendered in English, these ten divisions are not always clear, but in the Greek and Hebrew texts it’s more straightforward to notice.  Ten times the book of Genesis reads “This is the genesis of ___.”  In English we often read “genealogy” for genesis, but sometimes it’s different.  Here’s a list of the ten origin stories (or Genesis statements) that comprise the book of Genesis:

1. The Genesis of creation (starting at 2:4)
2. The Genesis of Adam (starting at 5:1)
3. The Genesis of Noah (starting at 6:1)
4. The Genesis of Shem & Ham & Japheth (starting at 10:1)
5. The Genesis of Shem (starting at 11:10)
6. The Genesis of Terah (starting at 11:27)
7. The Genesis of Ishmael (starting at 25:12)
8. The Genesis of Isaac (starting at 25:19)
9. The Genesis of Esau (starting at 36:1)
10. The Genesis of Jacob (starting at 37:1)

For the most part these are simply the genealogies of the patriarchs, so translating ‘genesis’ as ‘genealogy’ or ‘generation’ makes sense.  Except for the very first one – the genesis of creation.  That’s not a genealogy, but it is an ‘origin story’ alongside the other nine.  This is the account of creation that we can (and should) read with the same historical integrity with which we read the other nine following.  And the creation account here is quite simple:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.  And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

No time-frame is given, just the simple “God did it.”

So what about all that stuff in Genesis 1:1-2:3?  That’s an introduction.  In writing it, Moses did not present the seven-day sequence as the ‘historical’ creation account, but as a set of images that inform us as to the nature of the universe (that it is God’s, that it is good, etc.) in preparation to reading its early history (in the rest of the book) and most importantly the Law (in the rest of the Torah).  So what’s the best understanding of how to deal with that first chapter?  Many options have been offered throughout the course of Jewish and Christian history; among the most reasonable and historically-agreeable views is the Framework Hypothesis which I already described previously.

The problem with “deistic evolution”

Thus far, it sounds like I’ve been paving the way to accepting evolution wholesale.  But in fact, I cannot in good conscience fully accept that theory either.  It, too, raises a number of issues that do not jive with a reasonable reading of Scripture.  Unlike the six-day creationists, though, I do not appeal to the seven-day sequence of Genesis 1, but to the brief creation story of Genesis 2.

In particular, verse 7 says: “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.“  This makes it very difficult to see Adam as the product of evolution.

[All the rest of creation is fair game as far as evolution is concerned, though there are some unresolved issues within the scientific community, but that's just a matter of time for people to work it out and refine it.  That's what theories are, afterall - a reasonable and tested conclusion that is understood well enough to talk about, but not well enough to fully explain yet.]

If humanity evolved from the primates’ line, at what point could we say that God formed the first man, “Adam,” and filled him with his spirit?  Taking the human from the dust and infusing it with the Holy Spirit and the image of God is a set of images that makes a naturally-occurring process like evolution rather difficult to apply.

But that’s as much as I can say.  I’m not a scientist, I’m not up with the latest studies in genetics, nor even the elementaries of genetics.  Perhaps those in the know can better argue the connection between God-ordained natural process and the divine intervention of imputing the imago Dei to the human race.  In the meantime, I remain skeptical of the “deistic evolution” explanation as is.

By way of a concluding positive statement…

To make a long answer short, I believe that the way the Torah and the book of Genesis present themselves makes it inappropriate for the seven days of Genesis 1 to be understood as historically descriptive in any way.  That privilege belongs to the accounts beginning at Genesis 2:4, which gives us hardly any information about the how‘s of creation.  Genesis 1:1-2:3, then, give us the why‘s and what for‘s of creation: God is the creator, God is the King of creation, creation reflects its creator, and is therefore “very good.”

And I think that last bit is crucial for understanding the rest of the book, the Law, and indeed the entire Bible and Gospel of Christ.  If creation was not “very good” in God’s eyes, then none of this redemption from sin stuff would be worth it.  But because creation is a reflection of God which belongs to him and is fundamentally good, it is worth God’s every effort to redeem and restore it through his eternal Word and Son, Jesus our Lord.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen!

Eucharistic Prayer Checklist

On a whim I asked myself, “what are the explicit statements in the liturgy concerning what Holy Communion is?”  The list proved quite long as I read through the prayers, so I thought I’d share it with no commentary.  By the way, these are listed in order of their mentioning in the course of the liturgy and prayers, so there’s been no attempt by me to organize or rank them here.

In the 1979 Exhortation to Holy Communion, the Eucharist is described as…

• A sign and pledge of God’s love for us
• A continual remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ’s death
• For a spiritual sharing in Christ’s risen life
• A mystery in which we are made one with Christ and Christ with us
• A mystery in which we are made one body in him and members of one another
• Something Jesus commanded for us to do
• An act of thanksgiving for God’s creation, providence, love, and redemption
• Nourishment and spiritual food
• Beneficial for us if we receive with penitent hearts and living faith
• Dangerous for us if we receive improperly, not recognizing the Lord’s Body
• A sacrifice of praise, which is our bounden duty and service

In the course of our liturgy (1979 BCP, Rite I), we affirm that the Holy Eucharist is…

• A comfort to us regarding God’s forgiveness of our sins
• A perpetual memory commanded by Christ of his death and sacrifice until his return
• A celebration of the memorial of Christ
• An offering we make to God the Father
• A means by which “innumerable benefits” are procured unto us
• Bread and wine blessed and sanctified by God’s Word and Holy Spirit
• A means by which we become partakers of Christ’s blessed Body and Blood
• A sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving
• A request for the remission of sins and all other benefits of Christ’s passion
• An offering of ourselves as “a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice” unto God
• A filling of God’s grace and heavenly blessing
• A making of us into one body with Christ, that he may dwell in us and we in him
• Something we are unworthy to offer because of our sin
• Our bounden duty and service
• Done through Jesus Christ our Lord
• Offered on the Lord’s Table
• Approachable only through God’s mercy, not our own righteousness
• The flesh and blood of Jesus Christ
• Christ’s body which makes our bodies clean
• Christ’s precious blood which washes our souls
• A gift of God for the people of God
• To be taken in remembrance that Christ died for us
• To be fed upon in our hearts by faith, with thanksgiving
• The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world
• The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for us
• The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for us
• For preserving our body and soul unto everlasting life
• The bread of heaven and the cup of salvation
• A holy mystery
• The spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ
• An assurance of God’s favor and goodness toward us
• An assurance that we are true members incorporated into the mystical body of Christ
• An assurance that we are heirs of Christ’s everlasting kingdom

YHWH vs Baal

Starting today and all the way until Advent, the Old Testament readings are going to lead us through a summary course of Israelite history.  Last summer we followed the stories of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon.  Today we pick up a century or two later: nine of the tribes of Israel have rebelled to form its own kingdom, referred to as Israel, the Northern Kingdom (sometimes also Samaria or Ephraim).  So the promised land is divided: Israel and Judah.  In rebelling politically, Israel also rebelled religiously; they set up their own altars and temples and idols, deciding to worship God their own way – a way that ultimately points them not to God, but to gods of their own making.

As you read through the books of the Kings, you’ll find they start off focusing on the Kings of Israel and Judah, just as you’d expect.  But halfway through 1 Kings you start finding more and more excursions away from the kings themselves to describe stories of various itinerant prophets.  Elijah is perhaps the most prominent of these prophets, and many of his stories are well-known to this day.  This morning’s reading from 1 King 18 is one such well-known and well-loved story.  Elijah has been preaching against the apostasy of King Ahab of Israel, and God has put the country under punishment through a multi-year drought.  But now it’s time for the drought to end, and God wants to make sure these lost sheep of Israel know who it is that’s finally sending them rain.

 The Story of YHWH vs. Baal

Elijah the Prophet challenges the King’s priests of Baal to a God Contest.  They’ll each set up their altars for a sacrifice to their respective deities, and the god who answers is the real one, worthy of worship.  So the priests of Baal do what normal Pagan priests did back then: they prepared an altar, made lots of noise, worked themselves into a frenzy of ecstatic ranting and raving, and even shed their own blood to get the attention of their god.  And behind all this, they picked the right god to call upon – Baal was a bit like the Ancient Middle Eastern version of Thor.  He rode on thunderclouds, sent lightening onto the earth, and thus was considered also to herald rain.  Thus he was commonly paired up with Asherah, the goddess of fertility; you see them together throughout much of the history of Israel.

But of course, Baal doesn’t answer the crowd of priests, and Elijah eggs them on.  He humanizes (undeifies?) their god by suggesting Baal is deep in thought or going to the bathroom or on a journey elsewhere.

Finally it’s Elijah’s turn.  He builds a rough altar with twelve uncut stones symbolizing the unified twelve tribes, just as Joshua had been instructed long before.  He soaks the bull and the wood with a lot of water, stacking the deck against himself and proving that he isn’t going to cheat by setting the fire himself.  And then he quietly says one little prayer, and God instantly responds with “fire from heaven” which may well have been something beyond a mere lightning strike.  The bull and the wood, and even the water and the stones, are utterly consumed.  The God of Israel wins!

And with this acknowledgement of God comes an immediate acknowledgement of his Law: the false priests are taken away and executed, the worship of God is restored, and God sends rain shortly thereafter.

The same story today

The basic conflict that we see working out between Elijah and the priests of Baal is one that we see taking place all the time in our own day; only the names have changed.  One may be tempted initially to see this as a model for the spiritual battle between “us” and “the world.”  But remembering that Israel was supposed to be the people of God, it would be more pertinent to apply the struggle we see in 1 Kings 18 to the issues we find within the Church.  So let’s look more closely at what Elijah said and did, as well as what God did.

Verse 21: “limping” or “hesitating between two opinions” =  fence-sitting, trying to believe two conflicting things.  How often do we confess the Lordship of Christ and then live like we don’t even know him?  How often do we make important decisions without including our sovereign king in the decision-making process?  Or, more on-topic to the story, how often do we ascribe value and worth to people, things, or ideals that aren’t God?

Verse 27: Elijah mocks Baal.  There’s a saying among preachers: good preaching is supposed to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.  Elijah demonstrates this in a very pastoral way: he cuts to the heart of the matter by putting down the idol that these people have put in place of God.  He doesn’t mock the priests directly, only Baal.  Sure, these insults may hurt the priests, insofar as they’re invested in Baal.  But this is a helpful lesson for us: when we find ourselves in a place where we must correct and rebuke people who call themselves Christian, we must be careful never to mock and denigrate them, but their idols.

Verse 31:  The “sons of Jacob” before “Israel.”  In the book of Genesis God renamed Jacob to be Israel.  The narrator here, as many prophets do from time to time, refers to Israel as Jacob, going back from their God-given name to their original earthly name.  This is a rhetorical device demonstrating the fact that, just as they’ve abandoned God, God has in turn abandoned them.  A modern equivalent of this would be denying someone their title.  If you meet a clergyperson who says that there are “many ways to God” and Jesus is just our way, you might refrain from calling them ‘Pastor’ or ‘Father’ or ‘Bishop’ or whatever.

Verses 33-35: Elijah soaks the altar in water.  When it comes time to “prove” what’s orthodox against malpractice, heresy, and the like, we must be very careful to do so in such a way that demonstrates the power of God, and not our own wit and cunning.  Elijah gathered the priests around him and soaked the offering in water so they could all see that he was not going to cheat.  When it came down to it, he didn’t need to defend God; God could (and would!) do it himself.  This is a great example of what St. Paul told the Corinthians: “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27).  So don’t try to shoulder the burden of proof alone; stand firm on the rock of Christ – his word will never pass away (Luke 21:33) and his Church shall triumph even against the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18).

Verses 36-37: Elijah prays to God.  In the course of confronting rebellion against God in our own lives and the lives of others, this is a valuable model of prayer.  Identify who God is (36), make your request in line with his character (36), and align the reason for your request with God’s will, including repentance (37).  This is the same format as the collect, as well as having great similarities with the Lord’s Prayer.

Verse 40: “Seize the prophets of Baal.”  In the Old Covenant, false priests were to be executed; that was God’s Law.  In the New Covenant, false apostles are to be excommunicated, disregarded, excluded from the fellowship until such a time as they repent.  God does not carry out such final judgments through his chosen people in this age.  There will be a final judgment, and God will give up those who reject him to their own punishments, but that is not in the Church’s hands to enact.  We must, however, take care to judge the orthodoxy of those in our midst and guard the faith.  When many people left the Episcopal Church in recent years, this is what most of them were doing – rejecting the spiritual authority of false priests and seeking out the true Church, where “the Gospel is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered,” as the Reformers put it.

Happy Feast of the Visitation!

Today is the feast of the Visitation of Mary, celebrating this story from Luke 1:39-49:

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.  And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!  And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.  And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

And Mary said,  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.  For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.  And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.  He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; e has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.  He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”  And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.

As a follow-up to this holiday, I will be posting a four-part series of posts about Mary, seeking address various angles of doctrine and belief concerning her from an Anglican perspective – meaning: first grounded in scripture, then holding a respectful view of the historic teaching and tradition of the Church, seeking reasonable conclusions thereby.  The topics I plan to address are:

1. Mary’s theological identity – the biblical typologies that link her to Israel and to the Church
2. Mary’s relational identity – how her motherhood of Christ points to larger motherhood and queenship concepts
3. Mary’s human identity – the idea of her perpetual virginity and the question of her family
4. Mary’s soteriological identity – the implications of Mary as the Second Eve and the idea of her sinlessness

Don’t expect too groundbreaking a series; there are long-entrenched ideas and doctrines on one side of Christian tradition, and fiercely-held biases against them on the other side.  I’m just trying to wade through swampy ground of debate in the hopes of finding some dry patches to stand on.

8 Challenges of our Day

Every now and then, it’s good to read an article (or identify for yourself) the sorts of things that Christians struggle with in the current age.  This article had some good mythbusting going on, so I wanted to share it here: http://robinphillips.blogspot.com/2010/06/gnostic-myths-you-may-have-imbibed.html

Myth # 1: Christianity isn’t a Religion, it’s a Relationship

I’ve added my voice to this controversy before.  So I’ll just be blunt: if you’re still using that misleading catchphrase, just stop.  There is no reason.

Myth # 2: Salvation Means Going to Heaven When You Die

It isn’t altogether clear to me how many people are referring to “the new heavens and the new earth” when they say heaven, or if they really only mean the spiritual home of the Father.  I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt on this; we really do believe in the resurrection of the body and we really do believe in the merging of spiritual heaven and physical earth at the end of the age.  But if people are indeed forgetting the physical side of eternal life, then yes, this needs to be said.  Glancing back, I do seem to have made sure to emphasize the resurrection of the body whenever I write about eschatology (endtimes stuff), so I guess I am fighting the good fight here.

Myth # 3: The Material World isn’t Important

As the original article points out, this is closely tied to #2, and so doesn’t need much elaboration.  However, it’s also closely tied to the belief that the earth will be physically destroyed at the end of this age, which is another theological garble to deal with at another time.

Myth # 4: Institutional Religion is Bad

This is, in part, an American problem.  We’re the land of the free, which includes our religious liberties, listed alongside a bunch of private liberties, thus training us to think of religious liberty as a private thing, and thus training us to think of religion as private.  This also links back to myth #1, where we over-emphasize a private relationship with Jesus against the relationship with one another and the whole Church.  Unsurprisingly, then, traditions that have a strong Covenantal or Sacramental theology have bought into this myth less than those that don’t.

Myth # 5: It isn’t Going to Last Forever

For the most part, this is a repeat of #3, except focusing on the endtimes part.  To be fair, there is a lot of destruction-of-the-world language in Revelation and references to destruction-by-fire in 1 Peter, so readers who are not accustomed to literary imagery would understandably see an Apocalypse wherein the earth is destroyed, rather than renewed.  Re-learning how to read the Bible, especially the apocalyptic literature, is no small task, but it’s got to start sometime.

Myth # 6: Jesus’ Kingdom is not of this World

This is indeed a tricky one.  The author of the article I cited didn’t really offer an explanation for this, so I will.  In John 18:36, Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”  The word “of” here in Greek is, both times, “ἐκ” which means “of” in the sense of “from.”  Jesus is not saying that his Kingdom is otherworldly in nature; he’s saying that his Kingdom is from another world.  He did become a King and he is reigning over his kingdom even now, and this world is subject to his rule.  He is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and the earth is part of his domain.

Myth # 7: Knowledge saves

This is gnosticism at its clearest: salvation is from knowledge.  Sure, many Christians today say we are “saved by faith,” but what many of them actually mean is that we are “saved by what we believe about God.”  Faith is equated with intellectual knowledge and acceptance of doctrine.  This is categorically false.  Faith is an act of the will, an expression of trust, revealed in a lifestyle, as well as assenting to doctrine.  It’s one thing to say we’re saved by “faith alone,” but another thing to prove it with our “works.”  More on that here.

Myth # 8: God Doesn’t Work Through Means

Most Christians will, at first, try to assert that God can work through anything.  But when specific examples are offered up, that’s when this myth starts to shine through.  Many Christians today believe that if I say that we receive the Holy Spirit in Holy Baptism, I’m putting God into a box and constraining him.  If I were to say that we really and truly receive Christ in Holy Eucharist, I’m somehow limiting or controlling or manipulating the activity of God.  Once again, this is untrue, and based upon faulty reasoning.  Sacraments, as “means of grace,” are not boxes of limitations that we impose upon God, but just the opposite: gifts from God to express and mediate the work of Christ in our lives!  When people object, saying that God “doesn’t need” to use physical objects or actions to communicate himself to us, they’re actually making an unbiblical judgment: God’s action is only (or primarily) spiritual and therefore physical reality is inferior or irrelevant.  That is not biblical Christianity, that’s Neo-Platonism (spirit=good, matter=bad)!

So, once again, thanks to Robin Phillips for a fun article.  These are, indeed, challenges that many Christians struggle with today, and I hope that together we all can overcome the false teachings that feed them before further damage is done to the holy Church of God.

EDIT: Yay, this is my 300th post!