Still at it...

My God, this doctrine thing gets heady. Many churches today dance around the topic, or pay it lip service, and proclaim it's all about Jesus. But which Jesus? I cannot get away from this nagging question. And the less it's talked about the more troubled I become because where there are questions, there in infiltration from the outside to fill those voids.

I grasp the basic substance of the faith - the Logos, the Word was the 'subject' of the human we refer to as Jesus. That humanity - everything except an independent 'I' - was assumed by the Word. The will is part of our human nature but the subject (the person?) using the will was not like us. We have what Maximum the Confessor called the 'gnomic' will, i.e. the ability to choose contrary to God's will.

Because the Word was the subject with the human will this was not an option. That Word had to 'fight' through our humanity with a pure will and wrestle that human nature into obedience, realigning its original design into submission. Something like that...

The difficulty at this stage is the 'who' of the humanity of Jesus. We are used to a 'who' in the sense of an individual, isolated being free to make his/her own decisions, the captain of our own ship. But it is sin, the Fall, that has separated us and makes us into such independent beings.

Jesus, on the other hand, is a unique person in that there is no separation. His person, his hypostatsis, has no such separation. It is a union of the divine and the human and it is that union that is the person. Our 'person' is the separated individual that is cut off from our original design.

So His flesh is everything that makes us human except for sin, except for that separation. His will, his questioning, his doubts even (I'm sure there is some council where this was debated that I haven't stumbled across yet) are all those things that make us human. All of it had to be brought into submission. Doubt does not mean lack of faith; it means questions which means our nature is pulling on us. The perfect subject will bring such doubts into alignment and purifying them, redeeming them.

Sunday

Sunday. Church. Love my church, really do. Made up of some awesome people. New pastor overseeing the whole enterprise and he's brought a fresh wind into the place.

So why do I feel like a fish out of water?  There is 'something' troubling me and I'm not quite sure what it is. Obviously, it's me. Is it the doctrine thing? Is that it? There is 'Jesus' preached from the pulpit and the 'Spirit' moves in the place but what does that actually mean?

Am I, as my father in law used to say, backed up and need to go to the bathroom? In other words, am I consuming only?

Or is it that I am still jaded that my beloved politicized Jesus this past election and I now know that it is made up of 'those' people who cannot separate faith, politics and country?

So, this Orthodox thing...

Talking with my wife yesterday and it slowly dawned on me what it is that I (think I) have found within Orthodoxy. From books anyhow...

As a non-denominational, Bible believing, spirit filled Christian, what next? Recruit others to come to church? Save others? Bring in more souls to the Kingdom? Is that the next step?

I ask because I don't know. Could very well be my own fault.

However, when I look around at the non-denominational world (or plethora of denominations throughout the world) I realize that it is very much dependent on the 'human' factor. We flock to various churches and leaders and pastors and are looking for a church that is 'alive' with the Spirit. What this usually means is high energy, like a rock concert. God forbid if during 'worship' you don't shout and throw your arms up in the air as it would appear that you aren't grateful, you aren't worshiping, you really don't love God.

Where does it end? To me, all of this is longing for something, toward something, looking for completion. Heaven isn't it. The Rapture isn't it. Or maybe it is but there is a huge gap between getting 'saved' and the End Times. How are we to live? 

Now it could very well be me but this fussing over doctrine or avoidance of the same for the sake of 'unity' or even proclaiming 'true doctrine' sounds very much like the early origins of the Church.

The first Great Awakening in the US occurred circa 1730 - 288 years ago. And we are still fighting over 'true doctrine'. Just like the early Church which, by and large, found closure in 325 at the Council of Nicaea (with refinements due to the subtleties of language and continued fighting over 'true doctrine' lasting up until the 7th century.

The parallels are striking. The infighting is leading us somewhere and, to me, it is leading us where the church already ended up. The same battles, the same fight over language, the same battle over strong personalities runs parallel to the early church. All roads lead to theology and all roads lead to the same doctrines - though perhaps better documented now - that were resolved and fought through for centuries.

All we need now is a Constantine to pave the way for Christians to reclaim political power and we will have, in many ways, relived the first four centuries of the early Church.

So Orthodoxy...

The end game of Orthodoxy is deification, the never ending quest for divine participation, unification, with our Maker.