Most versions of ecumenism are heterodox. No matter how correct their criticisms of corruption within the church, the Protestants opened up Pandora's box by breaking away from the authority of the apostolic succession of Rome. One man's heretic is the next man's reformer and the splintering of the church in the West into countless denominations of varying levels of non-communion is the direct consequence of this fact.
The traditionalists, as always, are convinced that the resolution to the paradox of the status quo is to return to a long lost Golden Age, whether that be pre-Reformation Catholicism, pre-Constantinian Christianity or something else. However, short of Jesus personally descending from heaven in an orb of light and universally re-instituting some long lost Christian praxis, there are many insurmountable problems in the idea of returning to a past Golden Age. Time and history themselves are God's creation and it is an obvious mistake to dismiss the forward march of history as some kind of cosmic oversight on God's part, as though he fell asleep and lost track of things as the church veered off into destruction. Returning to the verse where Jesus promises to give the keys to the disciples, note that he first promises that "the gates of Hell will not prevail against [the church]", that is, the kingdom.
We cannot know what God has in mind for the future of the church on Earth. We know that the return of Christ is imminent, right around the corner. It is a mistake to become baffled by the amount of time that has passed since the Ascension. We are specifically commanded to "keep watch" and this is not an idle command. However, we must assess the works of God as they are, that is, we must use wisdom when asking what reasons God had in choosing to bring about the status quo.
The world is in a terrible mess and the church is no better off. This is beyond dispute. The sunny optimism of postmillenial eschatology suggests that the technological and economic progress of the last few centuries is leading us toward a future Golden Age when the saints will usher in the kingdom of God on Earth. This idea sounds attractive and plausible, in theory. Unfortunately, it directly contradicts the words of Jesus: "Then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again." (Matthew 24) Note that the Great Tribulation, as it is commonly known, is prophesied to be worse than anything that has ever happened from the creation of the world and never to be equaled again. This includes even the Flood of Noah. Elsewhere, Jesus prophesied that the earth and the heavens will pass away. The Bible is consistent in prophesying that the heavens and the earth will be completely destroyed by fire. If there will be a future Golden Age on earth, there stands between us and that age a terrible cataclysm and, afterwards, the total destruction of the world as we know it.
The central problem of the church -- today and throughout its entire history -- is its lack of true unity. The enemy, Jesus explained, is undivided (Matthew 12:24-28). The forces of wickedness march in lock-step. Their ranks are unbroken. Joel 2:1ff gives a picture of an invading army of locusts -- and the terror this brings -- as a picture of the looming judgment of God. This judgment is mediated not through a host of gentle saints but, rather, through an army of locusts that march in line, never swerving. These locusts are a picture of the spiritual forces of wickedness. Their immunity to fatigue and their unity is a picture of the assault of the "gates of Hell" and the undivided kingdom of Beelzebub that Jesus spoke about.
The church is not able to stand against the gates of Hell under its own power. It will always depend upon the power of God, of course, but it is not even able to form a unitary will, desire and purpose to stand against the gates of Hell by calling with one voice on the power of God for deliverance. Jesus explained to the disciples that this would be the defining mark of the church in its witness to the world.
My prayer is not for [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23)If there is one thing the church thoroughly understands, it is the call of the Gospel. The church yearns for those in the world to come to salvation through Jesus. But she stops short of following through to completion because she keeps looking to her own understanding rather than relying on the mind of Christ. Like Peter, she turns her eyes from Jesus and looks at the waves. "Who will stop the normalization of homosexuality in society? Who will save the children from being aborted in increasing numbers?" And so on. The answer given by Scripture is the same answer that Jesus gave to Pilate: the Kingdom is not from this world. If it were from this world, then Jesus would have us fight for the things of this world: the civic order, the political affairs, the cultural context. None of these things matter to the church. None of the things that pertain to this world matter to the church because they are all slated to be destroyed.
In case you might think that we are getting carried away, let's look at what the New Testament has to say:
Do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.How long should a woman's skirt be? Should her hair be put up or let down? Or perhaps her head should be covered just to be safe. These are the very kinds of questions that Paul is repudiating in Colossians 2. Whatever rules pertain to social decency are a sufficient guide for the believer. Honest, common sense needs no supplement with legalistic guidelines. This is why Paul was able to say in 1 Corinthians 9:
Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Colossians 2:16-23)
To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.The position of the church with respect to the eschaton is an exact parallel with the position of the people of Israel with respect to the Messiah. We look forward to Messiah's return exactly as they looked forward to the coming of the Redeemer. The Old Testament, then, should be read by us with intense scrutiny to find out the causes of the failures of the people of Israel to remain steadfast while awaiting the promised Redeemer. There are many causes but one theme stands well above all others and forms the central theme of the marital argument between unfaithful Israel and her faithful husband: idolatry.
As far as I know, no Christian church literally worships idols, despite the iconoclastic hyper-ventilation of the Protestants over Roman and Eastern iconography. However, the church is filled to the brim with idolatry of the heart, that is, idolatry involving the soul. Idolatry is more than just turning one's attention away from God, even though this is always involved in idolatry. Idolatry is a question of one's ultimate loyalty, one's root devotion and root motivation.
Why did the Israelites turn away? We can glibly answer, "because they were sinners", and this is true, but it misses the point. What were the specific reasons and motivations that drove them to turn away from devotion to God? A hint is given in the story of the eradication of the Mosaic judges from Israel in 1 Samuel 8. God says to Samuel, "They have rejected me as their king." They wanted a human king because their hearts were idolatrous. Throughout the Old Testament, God compares the people of Israel to an adulterous wife. She seeks other lovers because, in her heart, she has already despised her husband, she no longer values him in himself. This is why she is now vulnerable to the charms of others and she becomes dazzled by the pomp and bravado of her husband's competitors.
An example of contemporary spiritual idolatry in the church that is exactly parallel to the idolatry of the Israelites is Christian conservativism in the US. The Republicanization of Christianity is an exact analogue of the people of Israel turning away to serve other gods. Instead of relying on the power of God to deliver the church from the sweeping tide of secularization and the revival of ancient Greco-Roman social mores, the church has turned to human deliverers. To that extent, she has rejected Christ and has indulged in idolatrous devotion to the State and has become dazzled with its pomp and bravado, as though the State has within itself the power to change anything at all, and as though changing anything in this world matters to God who is going to bring everything in this world to final destruction in a great fire.
So, what is the alternative? The church, like the ancient Israelites, has become filled with hypocrites and idolators, a necrotic corpse seeking to preserve the status quo and/or revive some imagined Golden Age of the past. Yet Scripture conclusively informs us that the gates of Hell have not prevailed against the church because they cannot prevail against it. God himself preserves her, just as he preserved his chosen people in the age before Christ.
In this series, I am going to argue that there is a notional solution to the problem. This solution is useless in the sense that the Kingdom of Heaven is not a matter of words, but of action or power, (1 Corinthians 4:20). This is nothing but talk. But I hope that it finds some use in illuminating the narrow path that is the path to eternal life by casting the history of the church in the context of its origins and outcomes.
As I mentioned at the outset of this series, I will be treating Scripture and the church tradition as the basis of authority. Authority is not synonymous with truth, even though these never come into conflict within the kingdom of God. The difference between authority and truth is important to emphasize since I think this is a major cause of confusion within the church today and throughout its history. Truth has to do with that which cannot be any other way. Jesus said, "I am ... the Truth. No one comes to the Father but through me." That he is the Truth is the basis of his exclusivity. If he were merely speaking from authority, then there might be some other way that things could be. Just as 2 and 2 absolutely sum to 4, so there is no other way that things can be. Jesus is absolutely the only way to the Father, that is, the only way to Heaven.
Authority, on the other hand, pertains to that which could be some other way, but which has been decreed to be as it is. In the famous words of the King of Siam in Anna and the King: "So let it be written, so let it be done." The Scriptures, the testimony of the church fathers, the saints and the martyrs, as well as the received traditions and writings of the church in their many manifestations are the mechanism by which Jesus -- the head of the church -- has set down his decree. This is the authority which he claimed in Matthew 28:18 -- "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." This is what John meant when he said of Jesus, "In the beginning was the Word." The Word is who the Word is and no man can alter him (Luke 16:17, Hebrews 13:8, etc.)
It is easy to overlook the most important aspect of divine authority in the life of the believer -- the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the living testimony of God to the believer and he speaks as authoritatively today as he did to the prophets and the authors of Scripture. This has nothing to do with private interpretations of Scripture since the mind of God cannot contradict itself. Today, we can say with confidence that the Protestant Reformation accomplished at least one important change within the church: the growing recognition of the centrality of the Holy Spirit within the life of the individual believer.
God speaks to us authoritatively through the external witness of the Scriptures and the visible church, as well through the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. But it is a mistake to think that God only speaks authoritatively. That God is the Creator shows that God is a divine artist and that our artistic ability is a reflection of God's artistry, stemming from the image of God within us. I assert that a preoccupation with God's authoritative speech can arise from idolatry within the heart, specifically, the worship of power. God's power deserves our worship but only God's power does. The idolator is preoccupied with power itself and idolatry within the church, therefore, often manifests in a preoccupation with authority. There can be no doubt that the ranks of Christian leaders in the many sects of Christian belief are filled to the brim with power-worshipers who don't otherwise give a damn about God.
If David is to be believed when he says in Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands", then perhaps we should wonder what exactly God is saying to us through these communiques. The lesson of Psalm 19 can be boiled down to a simple fact: God speaks through all things. After all, he is the creator of everything.
When the church becomes embroiled in heart idolatry and seeks to influence the world, she loses sight of the reality of God's boundless power. "Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket [to Him]; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust." (Isaiah 40:15) In turn, she begins to regard the happenings of this world as though they must be lobbied for or against. And this, in turn, deafens and blinds her to God's voice which is the still, small whisper that pervades everything whatsoever. The happenings of this world are not something to be fought for or against. Rather, they are the movement of God's decree through history in this fallen age, nothing more and nothing less. If the gates of Hell cannot prevail against the church, then the "invasion of foreign culture" cannot prevail against her. If the gates of Hell cannot prevail against the church, then the resurgence of paganism in modern society cannot prevail against her. If the gates of Hell cannot prevail against the church, then modern science cannot prevail against her, heresy cannot prevail against her, the beliefs of other religions cannot prevail against her, and so on and so forth. There is nothing in this world that she has to fear and she is in exactly the same position as Peter walking upon the waves. She must keep her gaze fixed upon Jesus and she must ignore and despise the tempest.
The thesis of this series is that Christianity is inherently syncretic. Jesus came to bring salvation to the Jews (first) and also to the Gentiles (the whole world). That is the root of syncretism that the church has always feared to embrace out of fear of the tempest. If we concede that the wisdom of God can be found among the writings of Buddha, for example, then we are watering down the exclusivity of the Gospel and conceding that there is a tiny slot in the sheep-pen through which others can find another way (John 10:1).
But to conclude this is to take our eyes off the Savior and focus on the storm. Was not Jesus in complete control of the tempest, even as Peter began to slip under the waves? In another case when Jesus is sleeping in the midst of a storm, he gets up and rebukes it. Afterwards, the disciples were amazed and asked one another, "What sort of man is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!" (Matthew 8:27) Is the encroaching spread of Islam more powerful than the one who commands the wind and the waves? Is the rise of secular atheism more powerful than the one who commands the wind and the waves? Is the marked increase of wickedness in this world -- the very thing that Jesus prophesied would come -- more powerful than the one who commands the wind and the waves? The church cannot be unified in voice and heart until she takes her eyes off the storm and looks to the Savior only. She cannot fulfill her mission to bring the message of the Gospel to the world and to cause everyone to see that Jesus has been sent by God, until she is one. That is, when we are one in brotherhood with each other, and one with God in Christ, then the world will know that the heavenly Father sent Jesus to earth to be the Messiah.
So, what exactly do I mean by the assertion that Christianity is syncretic? Wikipedia defines syncretism as,
... the combining of different beliefs, while blending practices of various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths. Syncretism also occurs commonly in expressions of arts and culture as well as politics.
The Protestant reformers strongly objected to the syncretic practices of the Roman church. Pagan holidays were sanitized and incorporated into the Christian calendar. Pagan mythological heroes and even gods were also sanitized and sometimes identified with saints or angels or inducted in as saints in their own right. Today, these past events are beyond correction short of Jesus descending from heaven in person and explaining where things went wrong and how we are to correct them. Rather, our mistake is in assuming that the tempest caught the head of the church off guard, that he erred in allowing these pagan influences to be syncretically absorbed into the canon of Christian tradition and orthodoxy. Should we not, rather, see the final outcome of the divine decree for what it is? He has said, "So let it be written, so let it be done."
The notional solution should be obvious by now. The nations of the world, their cultures and their mythologies are exactly those nations, cultures and mythologies which God has decreed to be. To wring our hands at the terrifying thought of the church overrun by Muslims, atheists and homosexuals is to be guilty of unbelief and to flatly deny the words of Jesus. The gates of Hell, we implicitly assert, can prevail against the church that Jesus built. Faith tells us that the church is indestructible. There is nothing that this world can throw against her which can destroy her. As followers of Christ, we can never take the carnality of the world into our hearts, because this is mutually exclusive with the Spirit, the ethereal light of salvation. But neither does the carnality of the world have any power to pollute us and we do well to repudiate its power.
Once again, it might be objected that we are getting carried away, but let's see what the New Testament has to say:
Since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry...this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit. (1 Peter 4:1-6)
While sanctification is gradual, it must reach culmination. And it is the power of God alone that brings about the culmination of sanctification. The result is that the power of sin over us is broken entirely. This is the point and purpose of salvation. This is why Jesus admonished us, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)
To drive the point home, allow me to extend Paul's discussion of the church as the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:12ff. Let us say that you have been bitten by a spider and the bite has become infected. Some of your body's cells are directly exposed to the spider's venom. They perform their role to protect the body by working to prevent the further spread of the venom. When everything works as it is designed to do, the body itself is preserved. We can think of this fallen world as a kind of infectious disease that has gotten in and corrupted our true, divine nature as creatures made in the image of God. This corruption will certainly be expelled at the end of the age. In the meantime, we must not shirk from doing the will of God here on earth even where it entails exposure to the filth and venom of this age. We must resist the fleshly urge to try to carve out a comfortably civilized corner of the world so that we can, like the lazy steward, bury the master's treasures to be repaid on his return, without interest.
The syncretic umbrella of Christianity should not be understood as some kind of synthesis of world religions or forced ecumenism whereby heretics, hypocrites and idolaters can avoid expulsion from the body. Rather, it is to be understood as an act of faith, leaving the shepherding to the Good Shepherd while keeping our eyes on him and off the tempest around us. As concerns any matter of spiritual authority that lies within the realm of external witness, it is Scripture and the received, orthodox traditions which inform the conscience, being themselves the outworking of the divine decree in history. For the rest, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is a sufficient authority.
In closing, I want to give a brief sketch of the direction that I want to take this series. Specifically, I am going to utilize a syncretic approach to appropriate from other cultures and other religious traditions outside of Christianity in order to inform our view of God's work in the world, in specific detail. In particular, I am going to present a generalized approach to theology that builds upon the logical approach of medieval, scholastic theology. I call this approach Abstract Theology. It is not intended to supplant but, rather, supplement the traditional approach to theology. Where traditional theology speaks authoritatively, Abstract Theology speaks deferentially. It prods us to use our God-given creativity to imagine, artistically, what God is like, what it means to have a relationship with Him, what it means to dwell with God in heaven, and so on.
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