Pheno Mennon

I was a little disappointed today as my wife and I exited a certain Mennonite Church. When we moved to Dallas I was suspicious of any church with the word "peace" in its name. Two years ago when I was out in Eugene, Oregon for a summer linguistics school, I visited one of the M. churches there. It was an experience I'll never forget. I'm not sure if it was the "peace candles", the guest choir who wasn't even Christian and who sang about eagles and trees and harmony with nature, the fact the Jesus wasn't mentioned once in the whole service, or the pastor, Mrs. Somebody. And I didn't go back, but ended up either bumming rides with people or skipping church altogether for the rest of the summer.

In our circles you hear a lot these days about what has been happening in the Mennonite intellectual arenas: Goshen, Hesston, EMU, etc. It seems that this whole peace and justice gospel has pretty much taken center stage. Now I know Jesus came to give us peace, and I believe that we are to live in peace with all people, insofar as it is up to us. But what I don't buy is that we can bring about world peace by anything we do, or that there will be world peace until Christ returns. And I believe that the secular governments of this world have been ordained by God to bring justice to bear on the wrongdoer, whether at home in the US or abroad. My main problem is with making the Gospel the Gospel of Peace instead of Jesus Christ. We have to be careful not to enthrone peace. To be honest, I'm sick of hearing about peace. Peace, peace, peace. Does that sound unchristian? Or should I say, does that sound unpeaceful? My bad. And I too believe that I have the Spirit of God.

Back to the church. So besides wondering what is happening to my denomination on a national level, I am deeply concerned about it at what has been my local level. I grew up in the Mennonite Church. Here at seminary I am discovering just how anabaptist I really am. I love my people, and I'm glad for our heritage. That's why I'm concerned. The church we went to today had no sermon. Instead people took turns sharing trite poems and banal anecdotes with practically no spiritual value, all interspersed with various songs. Some of the songs were about nature, but some were ones we grew singing, so they did bring back good memories. We actually went to the church with a positive attitude, expecting good things. But by the time Sunday School was over, we both knew we wouldn't be back. SS basically consisted of reading a couple of Psalms, employing a horrendous hermeneutic, and then making the application that we should all take better care of creation. Then we all went outside to kiss a tree and recyle a tin can.

So why am I bashing this church? I know it's not very nice. Part of it is just frustration at not knowing where God wants us to get involved (Dallas has a lot of churches). Part of it is sadness at seeing the lack of vitality and vision in some M. churches. The anabaptist heritage is amazing! We were born in a spirit of radical discipleship, missions, and community, with a commitment to biblical truth and unquestioning obedience to God's leading. It seems in some places that passion has been superseded by boredom and apathy. What a tragedy! I know I'm young and idealistic, but I certainly wouldn't apologize for it. Ideals and ideas are powerful motivators for affecting the world for good. I pray God will give me a chance to affect my church for good. What we need is a revival of that spirit that spawned the anabaptist movement to begin with: radical discipleship.

Peace out.

The Divine Darkness

The problem of the knowledge of God. Do you ever wonder if you really know God? Or if you even can know Him? I know, these questions are so unoriginal it's not even funny. But the thing is, they are real and pressing. Folks in the Eastern Churces like in Russia and Greece and Syria believe that one of God's main attributes is His unknowability! So what they say is that we can only know God by denying everything we think He is and embracing a supreme ignorance of Him. In other words, whatever we can know cannot be God, so by denying everything that we can know, we basically arrive at the crux of unknowability, which is God.

Now that's all fine and dandy, until you, like I, remember that you knew God before you knew of His unknowability. I agree with the Eastern theologues that we cannot know God entirely, at least in this life, but I am convinced that we can know Him certainly! He has not revealed Himself to us fully, but He has revealed Himself truly...in nature and in the Bible.

So if we can only arrive at God through an ascending chain of negations, denying all we think we know about God, what role does that leave to our minds? It's clear to me that our minds, our rational faculties, are limited in our pursuit of God. But where does the mind fit into a Christian spirituality? Vladimir Lossky reminds us that "there will always remain 'irrational residue' which escapes analysis and whcih cannot be expressed in concepts; it is the unknowable depth of things, that which constitutes their true, indefinable essence."

Take the holy doctrine of the Trinity, for example. All the greatest minds since the time of Christ have striven to understand the mystery inherent in a triune deity. I don't care who you are and what you say, a tri-unity doesn't make sense! When people claim to comprehend it, what they're really saying is that they've come to terms with its incomprehensibility. If you've ever studied doctrinal history, you'll notice that practically every heresy is attempts to rationalize the mysteries of our faith. Modalism. Adoptionism. Monarchianism. Why? Because three in one doesn't make sense. So in the end a council determines the "orthodox" view of things, namely that the Trinity is a "community of divine attributes, shared equally between three persons". At the core of the Trinity remains this "irrational residue", which we cannot fully grasp with our finite minds. But as Lossky claims: "Christianity is not a philosophical school for speculating about abstract concepts, but is essentially a communion with the living God."

Why does all this matter? No one wants to hear more words? Aren't we sick of theologizing? It matters because I want to know God. To know Him is to love Him. To love Him and be loved by Him is life itself. In my life, systematic theology has done nothing to lift my soul in joy to God. I say that honestly, yet knowing that some will criticize. I'll even go further and claim that reducing the Divine to rational propositions seems to distance my spirit from communion with God. But this is opening another cupboard, one I will leave till later. The problem of the knowledge of God.