I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
But that's dogma. The seven sacraments of the Catholic including Orthodox church are dogmatic. Which is fine (apart from the homophobia and paternalism and...), but not action in any moral sense (the opposite in fact...).
The doxis I found on Sunday was the traditional, catholic, ritual, textual proclamations of God as if they were so. When He, in Christ or by the Spirit or in the Father or all three is not as per the texts. The emphasis on forgiveness when that isn't needed, isn't the issue for most people most of the time. Forgiveness availed by, needed by, Jesus' blood.
It's fine as liturgy, but not as actual theology. And that was spoiled as I said previously. If we're not at peace we're looking in the wrong place.
Apologies for the double post, but I think I need to say why I don't think this is a tangent.
At the moment, evangelical cognitive dissonance seems to expel people immediately to the farthest margins of the church. I believe this to be a consequence of the bias in favour of an excessively propositional, cognitively based faith within Evangelicalism. Its sufferers are incapable of seeing the product of any other process as authentic faith. This is why I believe Evangelicalism to be so limited and such a danger to the rest of the church. It inoculates its sufferers against all other approaches.
The liturgy is the enacted theology. And according to the anamnesis view of HC we participate in the Last Supper together with Christ. Paul is thinking along these lines when he says that we are baptised into His death. There's a synergy in the liturgy which matches the idea of the word of God in scripture as being spiritually living and active and unexpectedly able to revelate Christ to us at any time.
ThunderBunk where do you see examples of theology deriving from action in the church? That sounds very interesting.
I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
I do not know what the sacraments represent, I know I encounter the divine in them, therefore I participate. I participated as a child because they were marks of a community I belong to, I continue to participate as an adult because through them I have found a deeper belonging. I know have been taught and have read widely in sacramentology and know that what I encounter in the practice goes beyond any of them.
Sorry, the representation only works really in a Zwinglian Memorialist position. When that becomes insufficient for your experience of participation then it is less important.
I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
Sorry, the representation only works really in a Zwinglian Memorialist position. When that becomes insufficient for your experience of participation then it is less important.
I would agree. To phrase it as "unless you know what you believe that action represents" presents, it seems to me, an assumption that the defining thing about the sacramental action is what it represents.
Calvin's comment on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist has always resonated with me: “It is a mystery of Christ’s secret union with the devout which is by nature incomprehensible. If anybody should ask me how this communion takes place, I am not ashamed to confess that that is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it” (Institutes, IV, 17, 32)
This is the reason that we have liturgy so that the words, symbols and rituals can act together to contain the uncontainable and express the inexpressible in the sacraments and the pastoral offices of baptisms and funerals.
I sometimes wonder whether the modern Protestant aversion to sign and symbol has more to do with Rationalism than the Reformation. 16th/17th century Protestantism had its own symbolic/ritual grammar which was different for the various strains of Lutheranism, the Reformed tradition, and Anglicanism (if you don't class them as Reformed.) Within the German Reformed tradition Mercersburg theology, and the ritual which came along with it, were a rebellion against the aridity of Princeton theology, and a return to the richer sacramental theology of say Calvin. This lead to the creation of a revised liturgy which was based on the Palatinate Liturgy, but borrowed from Anglicanism and elsewhere where it was thought that that would support the theology. Of course, the Hodge fan club struck back, and there was a protracted controversy, but when a compromise liturgy appeared in the 1870s, it was very much reflected the revitalized sacrament theology of the GRC/DRK. Most churches have similar episodes in their lives, so I to my mind it seems clear that belief and practice feed off one another, though which one may be dominant at any given moment is debateable, as in those churches which adamantly cling to the use the 1662, but most of the congregation seem to regard Jack Spong and Don Cupitt as a models of orthodoxy, and those which are the mirror image! (And yes, I am being a bit tongue in cheek.)
I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
Sorry, the representation only works really in a Zwinglian Memorialist position. When that becomes insufficient for your experience of participation then it is less important.
I would agree. To phrase it as "unless you know what you believe that action represents" presents, it seems to me, an assumption that the defining thing about the sacramental action is what it represents.
Calvin's comment on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist has always resonated with me: “It is a mystery of Christ’s secret union with the devout which is by nature incomprehensible. If anybody should ask me how this communion takes place, I am not ashamed to confess that that is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it” (Institutes, IV, 17, 32)
To know that it is a mystery is to know what it represents.
I thought that Jengie Jon is right about non-Western religions, where doing the religion is more important than believing.
Nah, that's pretty universal in religions, Western or otherwise. The majority of Western Catholics, for instance, are not particularly interested in what's in the catechism. Just about any large, old religion will have a few people heavily invested in the doctrines and a majority who connect more through rituals and customs. The endless reams of doctrinal tomes of the various Hindu and Buddhist schools, and the very exacting debates that produced them, make it clear that doctrine is key for at least some people.
I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
Unless the action is something God does, which sacraments are.
I sometimes wonder whether the modern Protestant aversion to sign and symbol has more to do with Rationalism than the Reformation.
Coming at the tail-end of the renaissance, the Reformation had quite a bit of hyper-Platonism in its DNA. Erasmus wrote in the Enchiridion that Christ's ascension was necessary so that we would stop being distracted by his body (and by the flesh in general) and hold to pure doctrine. His doctrine of the sacraments was quite dualistic as well. Luther wasn't really on board with this kind of thinking but other reformers took it and ran. Zwingli's sermon "On Providence" strikes me as basically an exercise in pagan philosophy.
I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
Unless the action is something God does, which sacraments are.
I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
Unless the action is something God does, which sacraments are.
God does. We join in and believe.
We join in and experience God's action. By this our faith is strengthened.
No proposition was harmed or strengthened in this reinforcement of faith.
I don't really understand why, if sacraments are somehow important and effective outwith of the belief in them of believers, why someone doesn't bless all bathwater, all food and drink everywhere as sacraments.
Orthodox bless pretty much anything- food, cars, computer servers, livestock, space shuttles, and, perhaps most controversially, guns. In some mysterious way Christ, by his incarnation, and also some specific acts like his baptism in the Jordan, is held to have sanctified the cosmos.
I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
Unless the action is something God does, which sacraments are.
God does. We join in and believe.
We join in and experience God's action. By this our faith is strengthened.
Agreed.
I find myself getting stopped at the idea that the sacraments “represent” something. That seems like suggesting that what’s important about time spent with my wife is what that “represents.”
It also seems to me that “believe” is being used in two ways—intellectual assent to ideas on one hand and trust in someone on the other hand.
Orthodox bless pretty much anything- food, cars, computer servers, livestock, space shuttles, and, perhaps most controversially, guns. In some mysterious way Christ, by his incarnation, and also some specific acts like his baptism in the Jordan, is held to have sanctified the cosmos.
And there are the lines of Percy Dearmer’s hymn, Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether: “All our meals and all our living make as sacraments of thee.”
I thought that Jengie Jon is right about non-Western religions, where doing the religion is more important than believing.
Nah, that's pretty universal in religions, Western or otherwise. The majority of Western Catholics, for instance, are not particularly interested in what's in the catechism. Just about any large, old religion will have a few people heavily invested in the doctrines and a majority who connect more through rituals and customs. The endless reams of doctrinal tomes of the various Hindu and Buddhist schools, and the very exacting debates that produced them, make it clear that doctrine is key for at least some people.
No doctrinal tomes are the equivalent to the theology books. Nobody has ever said, "Unless you accept every word of Barth's Dogmatics you are not a Christian". Every Christian, however Barthian they are, knows at some point they will struggle with something in a volume that size.
The same with the "no creed". Most individual Quakers and Unitarians have a good idea of what they believe, that is, has a personal creed. It is the institutions not the people who are non-creedal.
The question is not does this layout a theology, but are people defining belonging by that theology.
I thought that Jengie Jon is right about non-Western religions, where doing the religion is more important than believing.
Nah, that's pretty universal in religions, Western or otherwise. The majority of Western Catholics, for instance, are not particularly interested in what's in the catechism. Just about any large, old religion will have a few people heavily invested in the doctrines and a majority who connect more through rituals and customs. The endless reams of doctrinal tomes of the various Hindu and Buddhist schools, and the very exacting debates that produced them, make it clear that doctrine is key for at least some people.
No doctrinal tomes are the equivalent to the theology books. Nobody has ever said, "Unless you accept every word of Barth's Dogmatics you are not a Christian". Every Christian, however Barthian they are, knows at some point they will struggle with something in a volume that size.
The same with the "no creed". Most individual Quakers and Unitarians have a good idea of what they believe, that is, has a personal creed. It is the institutions not the people who are non-creedal.
The question is not does this layout a theology, but are people defining belonging by that theology.
Not sure what you're responding to here. I was responding to the suggestion that doctrine is less important in non-Western religions. For at least some of them that is definitely not true.
The argument is whether you have to state that you agree with a doctrinal statement of faith to belong to a faith group. That is a western phenomenon. Let me give you a clear example. You cannot belong to a Christian Union at University unless you sign up to the doctrinal basis. You can attend events without being a member but to formally belong you need to sign up to that. That behaviour is a Western phenomenon.
Having doctrine isn't the same as having a statement of faith. You can even teach doctrine. I mean we have whole secular theology faculties where they teach doctrine.
15. What then briefly is the substance of this knowledge?
It is contained in the Confession of Faith used by all Christians. It is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, because it is a summary of the true faith which has always been held in Christ’s Church, and was derived from the pure doctrine of the Apostles.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
I believe the Eucharist represents Christ feeding us with his body. I believe the Eucharist IS Christ feeding us with his body. But what exactly does that mean? Sure as snuff looks and chews and tastes and no doubt digests like bread. It's a mystery. If I have to unpack that mystery and plumb it until it's no longer mysterious for there to be a point in my taking part—well, that's counterintuitive at best and Protestant chauvinism at worst.
Having doctrine isn't the same as having a statement of faith.
What's the difference then? Nobody on this thread has managed to say in any coherent way how to differentiate between a "doctrine" (whatever exactly that means) and the various points in a statement of faith.
I can cope if its just praxis. But it's presented as doxis. At last Sunday's liberal evangelical service.
This is where sacraments differ and why I am fundamentally not a Protestant. Sacraments put actions at the centre of faith and keep doctrine in its correct secondary position.
Little point doing unless you know what you believe that action represents.
Unless the action is something God does, which sacraments are.
God does. We join in and believe.
No proposition was harmed or strengthened in this reinforcement of faith.
No - not this time but it was in your previous dig at Protestantism
I sometimes wonder whether the modern Protestant aversion to sign and symbol has more to do with Rationalism than the Reformation.
Coming at the tail-end of the renaissance, the Reformation had quite a bit of hyper-Platonism in its DNA. Erasmus wrote in the Enchiridion that Christ's ascension was necessary so that we would stop being distracted by his body (and by the flesh in general) and hold to pure doctrine. His doctrine of the sacraments was quite dualistic as well. Luther wasn't really on board with this kind of thinking but other reformers took it and ran. Zwingli's sermon "On Providence" strikes me as basically an exercise in pagan philosophy.
I don't do well with Zwingli - he irritates me, and it is mainly his humanism that does it. Erasmus ticks me off as well. In the main I am mildly Reformed in theology, but there are some caveats to that, the main one being that I am very conscious of the mystery element, though there is also a side to me to which the mediaevalism of Luther appeals. For example, I know/believe that we receive Christ in the Eucharist, and I believe the elements to be vehicle of that reception, but I would be disinclined to say that the elements "become" the body and blood of Christ even though they "convey" the spiritual benefits of the same. I think that is because at the end of the day whether there is a "change" in the elements is not important to me
The first time I attended an Orthodox service I clocked that whatever else was going on, it was effectively a multidimensional dramaturgy intended to 'enact' and convey a Nicene-Chalcedonian approach to the Christian faith.
Whether the adherents are there through custom or conviction, that's what it seeks to present: 'We have seen the True Faith ...'
Whether it's a full-on charismatic tongues-fest, a non-conformist hymn-prayer sandwich or a Quaker silence what all of them are doing are presenting a particular ethos and belief system in a 3-D Sensurround form.
The only option we have is the degree to which we reduce it down to a set of propositions. I don't think any tradition does that, although some may do it more than others.
OKayyyyy. So there are those who have an historical grammatical hermeneutic... or are there sorts of conservative who don't even have that? Anyway, among those who do have, are there texts that could be fundamentally morally or ontically propositional, but are not?
Comments
But that's dogma. The seven sacraments of the Catholic including Orthodox church are dogmatic. Which is fine (apart from the homophobia and paternalism and...), but not action in any moral sense (the opposite in fact...).
The doxis I found on Sunday was the traditional, catholic, ritual, textual proclamations of God as if they were so. When He, in Christ or by the Spirit or in the Father or all three is not as per the texts. The emphasis on forgiveness when that isn't needed, isn't the issue for most people most of the time. Forgiveness availed by, needed by, Jesus' blood.
It's fine as liturgy, but not as actual theology. And that was spoiled as I said previously. If we're not at peace we're looking in the wrong place.
Show me the right one. Be the right one.
At the moment, evangelical cognitive dissonance seems to expel people immediately to the farthest margins of the church. I believe this to be a consequence of the bias in favour of an excessively propositional, cognitively based faith within Evangelicalism. Its sufferers are incapable of seeing the product of any other process as authentic faith. This is why I believe Evangelicalism to be so limited and such a danger to the rest of the church. It inoculates its sufferers against all other approaches.
ThunderBunk where do you see examples of theology deriving from action in the church? That sounds very interesting.
I do not know what the sacraments represent, I know I encounter the divine in them, therefore I participate. I participated as a child because they were marks of a community I belong to, I continue to participate as an adult because through them I have found a deeper belonging. I know have been taught and have read widely in sacramentology and know that what I encounter in the practice goes beyond any of them.
Sorry, the representation only works really in a Zwinglian Memorialist position. When that becomes insufficient for your experience of participation then it is less important.
Calvin's comment on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist has always resonated with me: “It is a mystery of Christ’s secret union with the devout which is by nature incomprehensible. If anybody should ask me how this communion takes place, I am not ashamed to confess that that is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it” (Institutes, IV, 17, 32)
Nah, that's pretty universal in religions, Western or otherwise. The majority of Western Catholics, for instance, are not particularly interested in what's in the catechism. Just about any large, old religion will have a few people heavily invested in the doctrines and a majority who connect more through rituals and customs. The endless reams of doctrinal tomes of the various Hindu and Buddhist schools, and the very exacting debates that produced them, make it clear that doctrine is key for at least some people.
Unless the action is something God does, which sacraments are.
Coming at the tail-end of the renaissance, the Reformation had quite a bit of hyper-Platonism in its DNA. Erasmus wrote in the Enchiridion that Christ's ascension was necessary so that we would stop being distracted by his body (and by the flesh in general) and hold to pure doctrine. His doctrine of the sacraments was quite dualistic as well. Luther wasn't really on board with this kind of thinking but other reformers took it and ran. Zwingli's sermon "On Providence" strikes me as basically an exercise in pagan philosophy.
God does. We join in and believe.
We join in and experience God's action. By this our faith is strengthened.
No proposition was harmed or strengthened in this reinforcement of faith.
I find myself getting stopped at the idea that the sacraments “represent” something. That seems like suggesting that what’s important about time spent with my wife is what that “represents.”
It also seems to me that “believe” is being used in two ways—intellectual assent to ideas on one hand and trust in someone on the other hand.
And there are the lines of Percy Dearmer’s hymn, Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether: “All our meals and all our living make as sacraments of thee.”
No doctrinal tomes are the equivalent to the theology books. Nobody has ever said, "Unless you accept every word of Barth's Dogmatics you are not a Christian". Every Christian, however Barthian they are, knows at some point they will struggle with something in a volume that size.
The same with the "no creed". Most individual Quakers and Unitarians have a good idea of what they believe, that is, has a personal creed. It is the institutions not the people who are non-creedal.
The question is not does this layout a theology, but are people defining belonging by that theology.
Not sure what you're responding to here. I was responding to the suggestion that doctrine is less important in non-Western religions. For at least some of them that is definitely not true.
Having doctrine isn't the same as having a statement of faith. You can even teach doctrine. I mean we have whole secular theology faculties where they teach doctrine.
You're going to have to unpack this, because as it stands it's an oxymoron.
I believe the Eucharist represents Christ feeding us with his body. I believe the Eucharist IS Christ feeding us with his body. But what exactly does that mean? Sure as snuff looks and chews and tastes and no doubt digests like bread. It's a mystery. If I have to unpack that mystery and plumb it until it's no longer mysterious for there to be a point in my taking part—well, that's counterintuitive at best and Protestant chauvinism at worst.
What's the difference then? Nobody on this thread has managed to say in any coherent way how to differentiate between a "doctrine" (whatever exactly that means) and the various points in a statement of faith.
I don't do well with Zwingli - he irritates me, and it is mainly his humanism that does it. Erasmus ticks me off as well. In the main I am mildly Reformed in theology, but there are some caveats to that, the main one being that I am very conscious of the mystery element, though there is also a side to me to which the mediaevalism of Luther appeals. For example, I know/believe that we receive Christ in the Eucharist, and I believe the elements to be vehicle of that reception, but I would be disinclined to say that the elements "become" the body and blood of Christ even though they "convey" the spiritual benefits of the same. I think that is because at the end of the day whether there is a "change" in the elements is not important to me
The first time I attended an Orthodox service I clocked that whatever else was going on, it was effectively a multidimensional dramaturgy intended to 'enact' and convey a Nicene-Chalcedonian approach to the Christian faith.
Whether the adherents are there through custom or conviction, that's what it seeks to present: 'We have seen the True Faith ...'
Whether it's a full-on charismatic tongues-fest, a non-conformist hymn-prayer sandwich or a Quaker silence what all of them are doing are presenting a particular ethos and belief system in a 3-D Sensurround form.
The only option we have is the degree to which we reduce it down to a set of propositions. I don't think any tradition does that, although some may do it more than others.