about me
I have been happily married for twenty-three years, and am the father of four wonderful children. We all live in Minnesota. I was ordained an Episcopal Priest in 1999. My studies have been not only at Anglican, but also Eastern Orthodox and Southern Baptist seminaries.
By nature I am conservative, by which I mean that I have a deep respect for tradition and the wisdom that can be gained from those who came before us. With that respect for tradition comes a corresponding caution regarding change – a caution that arises from an observation that, historically, radical change, though sometimes good and necessary, has often brought about problems worse than what previously existed.
I profess the Christian Faith. That mysterious relationship that exists, by the gracious act of God, between God and humanity. God became man in the person of Jesus Christ not to institute a new philosophy or even a code of conduct, but primarily to restore us to new life in the fellowship of the Holy Trinity. Because of the limitations to the human mind there must always be an element of mystery in how we approach speaking of God. It must be acknowledged that the realities that are manifested in the life of the Church can not be fully be defined by the language, formulas, or definitions of the Faith. The Faith does not belong to us; we belong to it, we subscribe to it, we submit ourselves to it, because it is from God. We are not free to change it or to alter it; it is we who must changed or transformed.
I am convicted that the tendency among even well intentioned Christian people in the West to stray from the Apostolic Faith is a result, in part, of the little regard for, and general lack of familiarity with, the Early Church Fathers and their interpretation of Holy Scripture. What often passes as teaching in many churches today is little more than naïve Biblicism, self-help psychology, and reactionary politics. The teaching in these kinds of churches has become so insipid because it has been displaced from the more vigorous river of the Church’s Tradition, and no longer draws on the clear, deep, theological wellsprings of the Fathers. The Church Fathers are witnesses to the living Tradition of the Church from the Apostolic times, and because of that their commentaries on Scripture can be looked to and relied upon as a trustworthy guide to the interpretation of Scripture.
My political views are informed, among other things, by the belief that each human being exists as a result of the creative act of God. Each has never been before and will never be repeated. Each one who is, or will be conceived is unique and irreplaceable. Each was created in the image and likeness of God. This means that there is a dignity which is due to each human person. There are many human needs which find no place in the “free market.” The image and likeness of God that is marked on each human person makes it unthinkable that we should, through selfishness, idleness or apathy, allow fundamental human needs to remain unmet, or to allow those burdened by such needs to perish.
We are our brother’s keeper.
Hi, nice to meet you !
Thanks for reading my ramblings
Choose the future you prefer. The status quo, where existing religious traditions, mired in their own contradictions, corruption, hypocrisy and hocus-pocus, offer little but pretensions and divisiveness, and where existing political process can only feebly respond to the growing chaos of more war, terrorism, economic turmoil, environmental degradation, injustice, spin and whitewash, natural disaster, plague and pandemic; or learn to comprehend that human nature, prisoner to its evolutionary root, exists within fixed limits of understanding, and by taking new personal and moral responsibility, in a single change of mind, heart and conduct, by faith, transcend those limits and blow the status quo strait to oblivion.
Alright. Thank you for sharing that, I guess.
You know, it seems to me Dover Beach is the best Christian blog, and among the very best spiritual blogs of any sort, that I have yet come across. Your themes and your take on them are more than refreshing, they are inspiring. Thank you so much for what you are doing. I wish you the audience you deserve. And please forgive me for gushing. It’s hard not to.
Thank you. I think that you may be giving me more credit than my little blog deserves, but your generosity is appreciated.
I thoroughly concur about the onset of naive Biblicism. I also think it’s true that “because of the limitations to the human mind there must always be an element of mystery in how we approach speaking of God”. I would go further: an element of mystery is essentially the same as total mystery, like adding an integer to infinity. No matter how much we know (religious or secular), we are always in the (intellectual) dark.
This being the case, how can one subscribe to any dogma, Christian or otherwise? Isn’t Jesus’ ideology a transcendence of ideology?
The Church Fathers may be “relied upon as a trustworthy guide to the interpretation of Scripture” and that interpretation is religion can’t ever provide a literal answer. The truth lies within.
In my understanding good theology is apophatic, but not nihilistic. Knowledge is possible.
We cannot define God in conceptual language, but we can experience Him. It is basic to the Judeo-Christian understanding of the world that we are made in the image of God. Although our concepts are limited by our existence inside a particular space and time, there is open to us the possibility of supratemporal experience.
When I say that the Church Fathers may be relied upon as a trustworthy guide to the interpretation of Scripture, I am saying that I, and many millions of others over the course of the past two millennia, have found in them a trustworthy guide to sharing in that experience.
Indeed, God is a supratemporal experience, and as such is, by definition, also outside of language and reason, period. This being the case, the best theology – and scripture –can hope for is to play a poetic role in our understanding, using words and argument to allude to what is ultimately real. Thus interpretation is always interpretation, some better than others. My point is: one should never rely on such interpretation as doing so tends to make it intellectually real and once it’s “actually” real it is no longer supratemporal and therefore no longer a truly divine experience. This is also the case with scriptural revelation. A miracle loses its effect the moment we presume it to be literally true. Hence the enduring ability of monotheistic religions to compromise their own cause.
Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. You must not have read much of this blog though. If you had, you would know that I am not a literalist.
You are obviously a learned, sincere man. However, saying you’re not a literalist hardly addresses my points. Moreover, you are a literalist to the extent that you believe aspects of Jesus’ life are literally true. Naive Biblicism is not a selective proposition: you can’t choose which bits of scripture you believe to be “real”. You offer these instructive quotes about the ineffability of God, but haven’t thought through their implications. Anyone who professes to be Christian contradicts such insights. To say anything is literally true is an act of faithlessness.
You wrote to me saying, “You offer these instructive quotes about the ineffability of God, but haven’t thought through their implications. Anyone who professes to be Christian contradicts such insights.” – Forgive me for pointing out that you are the one who has not thought through what you are saying. Nearly all of the quotations that I have offered concerning the incomprehensibility of God are from the Church Fathers, – every one of them a Christian. By posting quotes such as those you mention, I have been trying to draw attention to an older and better understanding of the Christian faith that is unfamiliar to a great many whose only experience is with American style fundamentalist/evangelical/literalist religion.
There are different types of knowing. There is a theoretical or technical knowledge that is concerned with objective data. This kind of knowledge confers a certain power and control: power and control over matter, and even power and control over people. It can be taught and learned in all its particulars by any one possessing the intellectual acuity. it is the same kind of knowledge found in surgical techniques, business strategies, military tactics, or legal procedures, – Paul referred to this as the kind of knowledge that “puffs up.” This is the type of religious knowledge that fundamentalists think they have. Knowledge of this kind enables us to externally manipulate things or people, to change them, to exert an influence on them from the outside.
The other type of knowledge is personal and intuitive, it arises from within, is subjective and is more difficult to transmit. It can really be gained only through experience, and one can be guided to that experience through the witness that others bear of their own experience. It sometimes is easier to portray through poetry, stories, or parables. At its purest it is transcendent, in that it passes through even the hidden levels of the imagination and affective life to the heart of the person known. This is the kind of knowledge the Christian faith is most concerned with. To know another, to know God is to experience him precisely as person. Such knowledge of the Lord is a saving knowledge. It is possible only through love. And it can be spread only through love, not through argument. If you insist that the first kind of knowledge is the only kind to be had, then there is little that I will be able to say to you that will help you understand. This second kind of knowledge is not a flag to be waved, nor a club to use against those who do not understand. As Saint Ambrose said, “It doesn’t suit God to save his people by arguments”
God is Incomprehensible in His essence, but there is a sense in which He can be known and that knowledge of Him is an absolute necessity for our salvation. In his Catechetical Lectures St. Cyril of Jerusalem says that, “We explain not what God is, but candidly confess that we have not exact knowledge concerning Him. For in what concerns God, to confess our ignorance is the best knowledge”
I agree with the Church Fathers, and you, when it comes to ineffability and puffed up knowledge about material existence. I am focussed on the implications of such a view.
If St. Cyril is correct, and I believe he is, is it not a contradiction to define yourself as a Christian, insofar as it infers you believe something to be literally meaningful? The act of labelling yourself “something”, even if it is true, actively compromises your message of incomprehensiblity.
As you suggest, there is no point arguing about what matters, as it is beyond conception and expression. Athanasius of Alexandria said that “God revealed himself through a body that we might receive an idea of the invisible Father.” While this may well be true, believing it is, and choosing to defend the invisible, is ultimately a vain attempt to contain God’s love in the story of Jesus. It is limiting in a way that Jesus never was.
But, as I understand it, that is the whole point. God, being God, knows that understanding God is far beyond the powers of us mortals. That is where Jesus comes in. He helps us understand, not everything about God – for to do that we would need to be God ourselves, but to understand that which is necessary for us as humans to have a relationship with God and to live life as God intends for us to do, loving and helping our fellow humans in joy and peace. Do we really need to know more about God, or do we need to know God?
This humble buddhist offers gassho for your insightfully wonderful, greco-hebrew verbosity in so eloquently expressing the intellectual capacity of christianity. I will read on. Thanks again.
Thank you for your kind comment.
What is your name, please? I have not been able to find it on the site.
Enjoying your blog…keep up the good work!