Building Boxes
Most of you know me - most quite well. I love things packed neatly in boxes. I despise clutter. Things should fit neatly in their own little boxes. Most of all my theological musings. I try to fit everything into a nice box. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel safe. Here are a few of the boxes I have built, that reflect several different ongoing conversations in which I find myself.
1) Baptism is essential. It was commanded by Christ that making disciples involves baptism. It is commanded also in scripture that we must repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins. So, if you ask me if baptism is necessary, I would unequivocally say yes. One can no more be a Christian while neglecting baptism, than she can while neglecting one of the 10 Commandments.
2) Worship is defined by the Proclaimation of the Word and Celebration of the Sacrament - Word and Table. Christian worship by nature and by definition must include both aspects.
3) Marriage is absolute and is forever. Even in the cases where divorce appears to be a scriptural possibility, remarriage never is as long as you both shall live.
4) Seminary should be a requirement for ordination. And ordination should happen before one becomes a senior pastor. I would not go to a doctor who has not been to med school, and I would not seek out a lawyer who has not been to law school. No one should be ordained who has not been to seminary and no one who is not ordained should be a senior pastor.
Now, these are just some of the boxes I have made in my mind by my theology. Before anyone gets upset at me, here is my struggle. The boxes work great in my mind. The world, however, cannot be boxed and neither can God! So how do I make sense of all this. What do I do with people who are devout believers, but who are not baptized? Are they Christian? What about the many Nazarene churches who do not have a weekly eucharist? Do they not truly worship? And in both cases what about the Christian faith traditions that do not believe in any sacraments? What about my friends who are remarried? Or my many friends who are good pastors but have never been to college let alone seminary?
The problem with boxes is that they have an inside and an outside, and they always leave more on the outside than they contain on the inside. But I love boxes. And I love the ones not in my boxes. But I can't have it both ways.
Christianity cannot be reduced to personal belief - the kind that says "whatever you believe is ok for you." But neither can we go around taping ourselves in, and everyone else out. Maybe that's why my friend Joe quit reading theology. He says the world needs more poets and less theologians. Theologians, he says, build boxes. Poets, he says tears them up.
To box or not to box. That is the question.
posted by EF + at 3:49 PM
6 Comments:
I'm on the District Studies Board for our District. And we often see people who are called to ministry who could never make it through seminary. Some just make it through the district program. I myself did not go, even though I wish I had.
Peace,
Pastor Steven
Eric,
Perhaps compartmentalization and categorization are not always helpful and tend to be more exclusionary. But I think the really good theologians are poets. Because theology and our study of God ultimately is not a science. It is a dance. Maybe I'm not thinking along the same lines as your analogy, but in going along with the dance idea, it seems to me that there are certain steps that need to be followed in order for the dance to be the dance that it is. Our Christian creeds, Scripture, etc. gives us the dance steps by which we can understand who we are dancing with . . . another way, the best poets are the ones who find creativity and insight within a given structure - the couplet, quartet, the sonnet, or sestina. These are not exclusionary, but they are important and appropriate forms through which we say something about the world around us. Theologians have foundational structures and assumptions that say something about the kind of God we serve and who interacts with us. Maybe this doesn't answer your question at all, but I don't think you should feel bad about your convictions because they don't come simply from personal experience. Maybe just read some more good poetry!
Eric,
Perhaps a word (literally)from Wesley would be helpful. That word is "ordinary."
Rob Staples draws attention to this on page 186 of "Outward Sign . . ." - Wesley says of baptism that it is "the ordinary instrument of our justification." "In the ordinary way, there is no other means of entering into the Church or into heaven." It is the "ordinary means [God] hath appointed." Baptism is "generally, in an ordinary way, necessary to salvation."
Staples comments, "In other words, ordinarily baptism is necessary to salvation, but not absolutely so. There may be extraordinary or unusual means whereby the same benefits may be received. But the midstake made by many of Wesley's followers has been to generalize Wesley's allowance for the extraordinary cases, making them the norm."
Thus, I would agree that baptism is ordinarily necessary for salvation; the eucharist ordinarily is to be received each Lord's Day; (and, perhaps not to the same extenct, but still) seminary ordinarily ought to be the norm for ordination.
That may be considered "boxes," but they (at least the first two, and other things that are closely related)seem to be boxes based upon Scripture and the teachings of the historic Church.
At the same time, because we speak of them in "ordinary" terms and terms of "the norm," the boxes do not box God in. Rather, God is free to act as God choses.
I recall Wesley saying something to the affect that God may indeed choose to opporate outside the expressed means (of grace) given to us, but what makes us think that God will so act. - In other words, we are called to those means of grace given. God may work outside of them, and we can be thankful for that. But surely we ought not be so presumptous to assume that God will work on our terms.
Wesley could not say that those "non-sacramental" Christians would be damned. But neither could he give up the conviction that baptism and the eucharist are "ordinarily" essential for the Christian life.
Don't know if that helps, but it is where I often have to find myself.
Pax,
Todd+
I find help in the ordinary vs exceptional, and yet I am disturbed by the fact that our tradition has reversed the two. We have made the exception into the ordinary and the ordinary into the exception.
So how does one live up to the ordinary and call their people to the ordinary when all of the people's life and identity is consumed and formed primarily by the exceptions?
Those instances I listed are just some of (ie examples) of many of the types of things I struggle with.
Eric,
My guess is that you and I have had many of the same struggles. I would be happy to talk with you more, but I'm not comfortable saying much more in this open format.
Your Brother in Christ,
Todd+
eefrey@gmail.com
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