I believe, part 5

Lent 2009: The Apostle’s Creed

Session 5

I believe – and all the rest!

Well, it’s been quite a journey over this past five weeks as you’ve heard a lot of me speaking, you’ve had some pretty solid Theology, and you’ve even had the opportunity to talk to each other a bit too! As we embark on the home stretch here today I want to begin by saying thank you for being a part of these sessions, for your contributions, for your feedback and for your time and attention.

I was asked yesterday if we could have a little more discussion this evening. Well, we may have a chance to talk over some things but I just wanted to say that these evenings were something of a ‘one off’ in the sense that I didn’t set them up as discussion groups as we have around our different parishes – the purpose of this series was really to share with you some of the Church’s teaching about the essentials of our faith. Which leads me to say something else – as a society, as a culture, we don’t have much teaching any more – we’re used to information, and chatting and often a sort of pooling of ignorance! I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do believe part of my responsibility as a minister is to teach the faith as revealed (we believe) in Scripture and through the Church. Hence the particular format for these sessions… So apologies if you were expecting otherwise (obviously getting to the last evening might be a bit late to say that) but maybe next year we’ll have a discussion group course, or before then!

Having said that, tonight it was quite tempting to get you to do most of the talking, because there is so much to get through that I don’t know if I want to try and cover it all! I have called tonight ‘the rest’ – having really focussed on our understanding of God as Father and Creator, then talked of incarnation for one night and atonement for last week we have a whole lot of things to wrap up tonight.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body

and the life everlasting. Amen.

Some of these doctrines we have touched upon over the past weeks, some I have studiously avoided, and some of what is referred to implies much more than the simple statements we make week by week.

For instance ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit’ (or if we go way back to week one – I hold fast to the Holy Spirit). Unlike the Nicene Creed which goes into detail of proceeding from the Father and the Son and speaking through the prophets (which I want to address anyway) the Apostle’s creed offers this bald statement ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit’. That’s it. It leaves us to make up our minds as to exactly how we might interpret it – or so it seems, of course this simple statement comes loaded with the background to the Holy Spirit that we find in Scripture and in the teaching and experience of the early Church.

Of course to mention the Holy Spirit brings up questions of the Trinity and our understanding (or lack of, to be frank) of this question of God being one in three and three in one.

I would be interested to know what illustrations, anecdotes and ideas you have picked up over years of Trinity Sunday sermons regarding some kind of explanation or understanding of the Holy Trinity. So a bit of discussion just with your neighbour as to what you have found helpful (or not) in trying to understand or describe this doctrine. Five minutes just to talk to whoever is sitting next to you…. And for the first time in this series I would be very happy if some of you have things you want to share at the end of this discussion!

Trinity is one of the hardest philosophical concepts for us to get our heads around, at least in my humble opinion! Of course, it is a case of our human finite minds trying to get to grips with infinity, with a God who is over and above any words that we have. As I said in the first week – we have a God who is beyond our understanding, yet at the same time to stoops to reveal his nature to us and allows us to grasp, with our limited human minds, something of who he is.

Trinity is one of those doctrines about which there is much misunderstanding because we don’t really have a full understanding of what it means, nor can we know fully who and what God is. Yet at the same time there are important aspects of this belief, this theology, which should affect our everyday belief.

Let’s start off with some basic principles. Firstly God is one. There’s no doubt about that. Don’t confuse the idea of God as three in one with the idea of three Gods. When asked about the greatest commandment in the Gospel of Mark Jesus responds with the Shema, the words from Deuteronomy 6v4 which define the Jewish faith. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one God” - to quote Mark’s account in full:

Mark 12:28–33

The First Commandment

28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 29Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 31The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ 32Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; 33and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.

As an aside, it is maybe worth noting that similar accounts of the story in Mathew and Luke miss out the first part of the Shema and focus on loving God with all we are and our neighbour as ourselves – for Luke with a gentile audience this is perhaps understandable and for Matthew (often referred to as the most Jewish of the Gospels) perhaps it is taken as a given that the faithful Jews reading his account of Jeshua the Messiah’s life would know the first part of the Shema, indeed would have it on their doorposts and bind it to their hands and forehead in prayer.

So, monotheism, the belief in one God alone permeates Jesus’ thinking, as a faithful Jew. And it is crucial to understand that what Jesus preached and lived is firmly rooted in his Jewish faith – in fact I would go so far as to say that unless we understand the Old Testament – or Hebrew Scriptures as it might properly be known and its development of God we cannot really know the depth of meaning in the New – both Jesus and Paul come from such backgrounds so deeply rooted and infused with Jewish thought and reason.

So how does this understanding of God as one fit with the Christian revelation of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Isn’t that three Gods, really? A sort of Divine Hierarchy?

I don’t think I can overstress the teaching of the Church that this is a gross misrepresentation of the Trinity. The way that God is referred to as Three Persons is not as three separate individuals. This is where we are hamstrung by being in a post-enlightenment culture where we have, whether we realise it or not, absorbed this concept of ‘the individual’ so beloved of late renaissance and enlightenment thinkers. This brings me back to my statement in the first session that to a certain degree I dislike saying ‘I believe’ when we recite our translation of the Apostle’s Creed and prefer the ‘We believe’ of the Nicene Creed in its more accurate contemporary translation… For those who formulated the Creed it wasn’t about me deciding I had intellectually come to terms with certain doctrines, but about making a statement with regard to the faith held by the Body of Christ. The I was always a part of the We! The Orthodox Church has a wonderful way of putting it ‘We are saved together, we fall alone’. Our stress on individualism often leads to an unconscious and even unintentional selfishness, that I have to see something as worthwhile and acceptable to me before it has any value. The Creed views us as a body in which we all have value and are all important, but in which we find our identity from the faith we share and our place within the Body of Christ.

But I digress. the reason I think it is important to think beyond our post-enlightenment, post-modern world view is because it was easier for our forebears in faith to consider a communal identity – that a body was not so much composed of individuals, but that it was the whole which was important.

In the early Church this is crucial. The Persons of the Trinity are not individuals, they are facets of the one body, the one entity, of God.

If we go back to the original words used to describe the Trinity we have the Green ‘prosopon’ and the latin ‘persona’. Perhaps the best analogy to help us understand these words is the world of Greek Drama and early acting. Much of the drama of the early middle eastern and Graeco-Roman world was performed by masked actors – and if you have ever seen performances of the Orestia or similar Greek plays you will have seen this. Many of the duties in Greek Drama are handled by the Chorus who tell much of the story and provide much of the reaction to the substance of the story, and individuals each have a mask to represent who they are. One actor may play many parts, but the only distinguishing factor is the mask they wear – this is their prosopon or persona, identified by the mask. The substance of the actor is the same, the presentation is different.

If we take the analogy too far it falls down as it isn’t meant to imply that God is play acting a role each time, and we remember that through eternity God is Father Son and Holy Spirit, not different things at different times, but it does help us (I hope) grasp the idea that it’s the same God, but we understand aspects of God in different ways to which we attach the names ‘Father Son and Spirit’.

We particularly refer to God the Father with regards to the creation and to sustaining the world, to the Son in God’s relationship to humanity, and the Holy Spirit in terms of the ongoing relationship God has with us. This isn’t completely inaccurate but leaves us open to the possibility of a rather reductionist understanding of God, or at worst to the heresy of ‘Modalism’ – that God acts in different modes at different times. This is not the understanding of the Church!

It also helps if we can detach our understanding of God from time! Though God is active in the world, he is also beyond the time and space we understand – so there was never a time when God wasn’t in Trinity, or when any part of God was separate from God. In the incarnation God becomes human and Jesus is distinct from God yet at the same time the Trinity is intact and eternal.

Confused? I am!

There comes a point, to be honest, when our words and ideas crack and break, the strain is too much for them. Perhaps that glimpse of God’s otherness, God’s beyond-ness (if there is such a word) is part of the value of God being Trinity! Perhaps better to think in terms of the Trinity being ways in which describe God’s action within time, not as different bits at different times, but the way in which we as humans apprehend and understand it. Sometimes we need reminding that we don’t have all the answers – even if we have been at this theology lark for twenty or more years!

To come back to the Creed. What I think holds all the parts together in this final part of the Creed is that first statement of belief. ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit’. It is the Holy Spirit that is our way of describing ‘God in action’. The Holy Spirit isn’t a distinct or separate entity from God, but (as it says in the Nicene Creed) proceeds from the Father and the Son. There is some debate over saying ‘The Father and Son; where the Orthodox Churches only say ‘proceeds from the Father’ but that’s a discussion for another time.

When we talk of the Holy Spirit we mean that part of God – or perhaps our apprehension of that part of God – which is dynamic and living and active. For shorthand from this point I will say ‘part of God’ – although I don’t think God can be broken down into constituent bits.

Anyway, many of us would consider the Spirit to be that part of God which is dynamic. We relate the activity of God as Holy Spirit to the inspiration of the prophets in the Old Testament, to the incarnation in Jesus being born ‘of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary’ to events of Pentecost and the founding of the Church, to the work of God in the Sacraments of the Church, and to the daily inspiration of the believer.

But within the eternal action of the trinity it is important to remember that the Spirit is that dynamic force within God, which can be summed up as the relationship between God himself. This is where I run the risk of really losing myself in philosophy, so you might have to indulge me further for just a moment.

The Holy Spirit can be described as the dynamic of God in relationship, that through all eternity God exists as Father Son and Spirit, and the Spirit is the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father, and the agent of God’s activity in the cosmos. He is referred to by John V Taylor as ‘the Go-between God’, ever moving, ever acting.

Why is this important? Well it is important to us because it reminds us that the essence of God is dynamic, as our faith should be. And that the very nature of God is relationship.

This is perhaps the crucial bit, that this relationship that God has with himself is mirrored, or should be mirrored, in our relationship with each other. St Paul uses the striking image of the body when he talks about the Church, and if we really think about that there is a degree of intimacy and interdependency that we rarely achieve in our Church fellowships.

Romans 12

3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

This togetherness is very much founded in our relationship with Christ and should be lived out in our lives as brothers and sisters in Christ. In this way we too share in the dynamic life of the Holy Trinity, in unity and godly love!

And it is this togetherness inspired through the Holy Spirit that causes us, as I said a few weeks back, to conspire in faith. Of course the word conspire has many negative connotations now, but the word means, breathe together – we share the same breath of the spirit, we should breathe together in faith!

So we will stop there for a moment and I will give you the chance to talk to each other for a minute! You may want to talk about something I have said, perhaps there is something new there…perhaps not. If you want a question then I will give you something personal to work with – is there a time when you have felt or experience the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, or seen it in the Church, or a time about which you could say ‘that was the Spirit at work’? Take this one in groups of four or five, and have five minutes to chat over what you would like…

I don’t know if you’ve every thought about what the Bible says the purpose of the Holy Spirit in our everyday lives is, but consider this:

Ephesians 4

1I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

7 But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

11The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

The Spirit is given that we might be built up into a body, united, and come to maturity in that body. The gifts which the Spirit distributes are given to equip God’s body in supporting and loving one another and growing together in faith.

And because of that belief in the Holy Spirit working within each one of us individually we can say ‘I believe in the holy catholic Church’ By catholic here we mean universal, rather than one particular denomination such as the Roman or the Old Catholic Church! That unity which Christ talks of in John 17 where he prays

20 ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one. As you, Father, 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. 22The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me

That unity will be the mark of his followers, though it seems to have been very well sabotaged over the past two thousand years. Yet, it is the next step in our faith, to witness through our unity to the love of God and to draw others into the body of Christ. The progression is clear in Scripture, the Spirit is given to the Church to make us Catholic – Universal, but not just for the sake of the members of the Church, but in order that through the Spirit we will reach out to a world that needs to know the love and grace of God.

I should not say that this ‘unity’ means I believe we must all be subsumed into one big religious blob, and forgo all desire to be individuals. I am not dismissing the work of the enlightenment and its expression of the importance of the individual, but I do believe we have come too far away from what it means to be the body of Christ and that the Church, as well as our culture, has bought into this expression of individuality that means we no longer subject ourselves to the discipline of what it means to be in community.

And, as we travel on through the Creed this leads us on to this wonderful meaning-laden phrase ‘the Communion of saints’. It means our one-ness with all those who believe and have believed in Christ. St Paul refers frequently to the people of God as saints, not just to special individuals who we venerate for their example and holiness of life.

And this communion we believe is over and above death. We will be united with those who have died in faith after death but also we have a connection with them now – hence at the Communion service when we say that ‘with Angels, Archangels and the whole Company of Heaven.’ we say ‘Holy Holy Holy’. We have the wonderful pictures in the book of the Revelation to St John – not a book that I get much everyday theology from, to be honest, but there are vivid descriptions of the worship of heaven in which all join together to worship God. We are a part of that worship whenever we gather, and the Church universal, for all of its factions and splits is united when it worships God together.

Then our creed makes this declaration bound up with the work of Christ that we believe in the forgiveness of sins. In itself this is a bold statement – that sins are not just tolerated, but forgiven. That God remembers our sins no more is one of the great promises of Scripture, and is something we should rejoice in. I honestly believe that if we all had that full sense of forgiveness that is promised in Christ then we would be freer to proclaim and live the good news of Christ! I think that for many of us, myself included, we put conditions on our own salvation! Conditions that aren’t scriptural, for our forgiveness is unconditional, Christ died for us whether we deserve it or not, or whether we feel we deserve it or not. If only that freedom were readily apparent in the Church and we were seen to be those unburdened of the sins which weigh us down!

I won’t go into detail with regards to the resurrection of the body as we covered that last week! It is important to say – and this perhaps is the antidote to my rampant anti-individualism – that in common with Jewish thinking Paul is very clear that there is a bodily resurrection, not a spiritual ascension, but that eternity consists, or will consist, of having a body – we will be ourselves! This is important because it says that we have value as ourselves, that we are important both as individuals and as part of the body of Christ! Like many parts of our Christian faith, there is a tension there – and I hold my desire to stress the togetherness, the communion, of being in Christ alongside the value God places on each one of us, and the promise that we will be who we are, or perhaps who we are truly meant to be, through all eternity.

And this concept of eternity is the finish of our statements of faith here this evening, and indeed of our series of talks. We translate it as ‘life everlasting’ but its important not to just consider that in terms of after death, but life fully now.

The Creed is meant to be a life affirming and faith affirming document – something that gives us a glimpse of the wonder of God and all that God has done. May it add to our faith and life.

I believe, part 4

As we continue our Marathon trek through the Creed (well, it feels like a marathon to me!) here is the next part... I know that there are a few sentences that didn't quite make it to the standard of making sense that I would prefer, but unfortunately I am not awake enough to correct and want to post this before bed :-)

Lent 2009: The Apostle’s Creed

Session 4

I believe in Jesus part 2

I want to begin tonight’s thoughts by restating a couple of things which I perhaps didn’t make completely clear last week. I have spent some time thinking about the nature of these evenings and some of the discussions that have come both as part of the sessions and around after the event too!

At the beginning of these talks on the Creed I said that I wasn’t going engage in a purely academic exercise, nor was I going to take apart all the bits of the Creed and dismiss them – on the contrary I think I would restate that I wholeheartedly believe in all of the articles which make up our Creed and hope that these talks would assist you in feeling more confident in proclaiming these truths also. In particular, I want to say that when last week I said I wasn’t going to discuss the ‘Virgin Birth’ as I thought it was a red herring, I didn’t mean that I didn’t believe in it and didn’t want to talk about it, I wholeheartedly affirm it. My concern is that (like discussions over a six day creation) discussions about the mechanics of how this or that might have happened are often a distraction. My belief in the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ, which is founded in Jesus taking flesh from the Virgin Mary and by the power of the Spirit is at the heart of my own understanding of the Incarnation.

What I am hoping to do is highlight both how some of these articles of faith ended up in the Creed, and to ask ourselves exactly what we mean, and what those who put together the Creed meant, when these things are and were recited over many hundreds of years. The Creed is not the end of faith, nor is it meant to be recited parrot fashion without addressing the serious, foundational beliefs of which it is comprised. It is easy to drift, or ‘freewheel’ through faith, accepting what might be the accepted interpretation of a particular minister, writer, or tradition within the Church, without grappling with the truths both behind our Creeds and within our Scriptures.

Some of the ideas and concepts which make up our Creeds are, frankly, immense – including this Evening’s theme – and we risk missing out on some of the riches of our tradition, of the depths of Scripture, and of a very personal faith, if we skirt over the issues and teachings contained in them. In the three weeks we have already spent on these Creeds I have only just scratched the surface of our Christian faith, tradition and interpretation, and I know that some of the things I have said have been surprising – but this is the faith of the Church, and together we claim to hold this faith, so lets get to grips with what we profess and proclaim.

This evening’s thoughts are based around this profound, disturbing and challenging part of the Apostle’s Creed – talking of Jesus we affirm that we believe he:

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried;

he descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again;

he ascended into heaven,

he is seated at the right hand of the Father,

and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

There are some phrases in this section I will tackle at greater, some at lesser, length. Much of this overlaps with what I said last week, and much of it overlaps with itself, it is difficult to disentangle much of the Creed from itself – to be honest – and I hope that what I say won’t be so much as telling you what you have to believe, though there are some essentials that I think are core to calling ourselves Christians, but offering you different interpretations of what Christian thinkers and teachers have said over many years with regards to these core understandings of Christian faith.

But I must take a moment to say something very personal here. If last week was the reason I was inspired to lead this series of talk, this week is probably the hardest of all the sections for me to talk on, mainly because I can’t claim to have all of this sorted out for myself, and I am very much in the midst of my own journey of faith, my own struggles with Scripture and Reason and Tradition and Experience in my own life in Christ. It would be easier perhaps if I could say ‘this is what the Bible teaches’ or even ‘this is what the Church says’ but our Creeds bind us with the essentials of faith – the interpretation is something we all must struggle with for ourselves.

The first part of the Creed considered today is easy in theological terms, but hard in personal terms! We talk of Christ who ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried’. This suffering is real – and I think it is important to say this. The agony that Jesus went through in the lead up and over his crucifixion cannot be underestimated – nor can we explain it away by saying ‘It’s OK, he was God’ or that he knew he would be resurrected. As I said last week, and as has been very much the point of Christian scholarship for two thousand years, Jesus was human, not God in a human suit. When it came to the scourging, the agony of his passion, and to being nailed to the cross and dying this was real, all too real, and painful beyond endurance. The sense of desolation and agony was enough for him to cry out ‘My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?’

And without going over all the ground we covered last week, its worth reminding ourselves that at heart the death that Jesus suffered isn’t a theory, or a theology, or a statement of belief – it is God’s ultimate identification with us. If God in trinity feels through eternity what Jesus felt on the cross, God knows what suffering is, and knows what it is to die. In Christ, God truly is one of us and the Creed writers wanted to make that clear by saying that he suffered, not that he seemed to suffer or appeared to suffer, but suffered. At the same time they wanted to locate that in a real, physical, tangible time and place in order that it didn’t become just a theory or doctrine but that Jesus ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’ – it was real, it happened.

Then we have what for many is the key issue in this part of the Creed.

Was crucified, died and was buried.

Again, a desire to keep the reality of these events at the heart of faith. Jesus actually died, and because of that he was buried. No tricks, no body snatching, but the everyday reality of death. And behind it the pain and the loss that his friends, family and disciples suffered – as we will hear in the passion stories in the coming weeks.

Interestingly there is no mention of ‘what happened’ on the cross. In this key document of the Church it doesn’t say he died for our sins, or that his death took our sins away, or that he was a sacrifice for our sin. These are interpretations of the death of Christ that come from Scripture and from the theologians of the Church over the past twenty centuries. The Creed just wants to make it clear that he died, and leaves us to – with the help of our Bibles and the tradition and teaching of the Church – make sense of this.

And this is where I have been struggling over this past week, or indeed over the past few decades of my Christian life. It’s also something that I think many of us don’t think about perhaps as much as we should – what happened on the cross and why did Jesus have to die.

I think that this is a good spot to stop for a breather and to talk to one another. I am aware that this week is very much more about me talking – but there is a lot to get through – but I realise you need a break from that! So I want you to talk to each other about what your own response to that question ‘why did Jesus have to die?’ might be – and I don’t want you to feel concerned that I am going to correct your belief, I am going to lay out some of what the Church has said, and hopefully reflect that through Scripture – but it would be presumptuous of me to claim I have sorted this out and have all the answers for you. It would also be wrong. So share what you feel, please.

It is easy, or perhaps more accurately ‘an oversimplification’ just to say that Jesus ‘died for our sins’. Though I believe that to be true, and many of us would describe his death in that way, there are many ways in which that simple statement could be construed. I think it is important to open this out a bit, though I can’t really do justice to it in the time we have here or perhaps even in a lifetime, because what we believe happened on the Cross also affects our view of God and of the salvation we as Christians believe Jesus somehow won through his death.

The word that we use to sum up this teaching is ‘Atonement’ – commonly taken to mean ‘making up for something’ – that Jesus somehow made up for the sins of the world in dying for us. I prefer to consider ‘Atonement’ by dividing up the word ‘At-one-ment’. Somehow through his death Jesus broke down the barriers or bridged the Gap between God and human beings. A barrier or a divide caused by sin, which brings death into the world. But how might this have happened, what did Jesus dying actually achieve?

I looked up a number of sources to try and offer some definition of the various theologies which surround the death of Jesus – and must acknowledge that I used a particular website – not one I was completely impressed by but one which had a broad approach to these issues – called ‘religioustolerance.org’ to get hold of some definitions, they say that, on the whole the current accepted theories can be grouped into certain definitions:

First, Ransom Theory, mainly held by Eastern Orthodox Churches and what is known as the Protestant Word-faith Movement. This is perhaps the oldest theory of the Atonement, and if arguments about theology and belief were settled just by how old they are this would be the winner!

Ransom theory says that sin brought a debt into the world, which was payable by death. This debt was a result of Adam & Eve’s disobedience and meant that Satan aquired formal dominion over, and ownership of , all of humanity and the rest of the world. So that all might be freed from this ownership God offers his only Son Jesus as a ransom to ‘buy back’ humanity and Satan agrees believing that he would then ‘own’ the Son of God, Jesus. God pulls a fast one, though, and having thought he had won, Satan is defeated as Jesus is brought back from death and raised to eternal life with the Father. Therefore, says Origen, one of the early Church theologians, if humans trust Jesus as their saviour, they too share in this new life.

Next is a theory which is broadly held by the Roman Catholic Church (though not officially accepted as 'dogma') and is called Satisfaction Theory. This finds its roots in ancient and mediaeval thinking about serfdom. A serf or slave owned by a master is the cause of dishonour to that master if s/he disobeys them. In this way sin dishonours God and a price must be paid to satisfy honour. In this atonement theory Jesus, through his offering of himself, his torture and his death satisfies the requirement and, effectively, through a human sacrifice he appeases God’s sense of honour which has been offended by sin. It is similar to the ransom theory, only that the price is paid to God rather than Satan.

As it says on ReligiousTolerance.org

The theory suggests that God's honour would only be satisfied by a ritual sacrifice of a god-man -- his own son. Michael Martin writes: "Only the God-Man is able, by his divinity, to offer something that is worthy of God and, by his humanity, to represent mankind."

Now we move onto a theory that many of us will recognise, and perhaps adhere to, as it is the theology often held by those who would refer to themselves as ‘Reformed’, and by fundamentalist groups, and some main stream protestant denominations it is known as Penal Substitution Theory and is a variation on Satisfaction Theory

Again I will quote the religious tolerance website

In the Penal Theory, the effect of human sin is not seen as dishonouring God. Rather it is perceived as incurring a debt to God which requires repayment. "...a debt is incurred and punishment is deserved." God is viewed as holy and perfect. He established an impossibly high standard of holiness and perfection for humanity. When we fail to live up to that standard, a sin debt to God is created. Such sin inevitably happens; all have fallen short.

The punishment for sin must involve the shedding of blood. In the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), this was the ritual sacrifice of animals; in the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) it involves the ritual sacrifice of a human -- Jesus. God is apparently unwilling or incapable of forgiving sin in any other way.

Anselm of Canterbury, a great Christian Scholar from the 11th and early 12th Century wrote:

"...without satisfaction, that is, without voluntary payment of the debt, God can neither pass by the sin unpunished, nor can the sinner attain that happiness”

Another theory, held by many more Liberal Christians is known as Moral Theory. This theory suggests that Jesus Christ's life and death is primarily a moral example to humanity. It can inspire us to lift ourselves out of sin and grow towards union with God.

Rejecting any sense of ‘payment’ to Satan or God – either because of a need to punish sin, buy back humanity or satisfy honour, the moral theory teaches that atonement is achieved by Jesus example of self-giving love and sacrifice. This provides for us an example and inspiration to seek wholeness and to leave our sin behind. The focus of the Atonement is not Satan or God instead it is the individual Christian believer seeking wholeness.

Finally, there is what is often called the Christus Victor Theory or a recent variation which I found recently called the ‘narrative Christus Victor theory’. The Essay which I recently read on this subject is very good and can be found online at http://www.crosscurrents.org/weaver0701.htm – discussing all of the theories of Atonement I have just looked through and answering them with an alternative. In this understanding Jesus voluntarily allowed himself to be executed not to satisfy a God who demanded it or to fool the devil, but because his death defeated the power of evil and released humanity from its sin. The death of Jesus is the result of evil forces, as epitomised by the religious leaders and occupying forces of Jesus day, and shows the response of evil to the purity of purpose and action which Christ had. In this understanding Jesus actively defeats evil by his non resistance when confronted by evil men (and women perhaps) and by offering his own life. God rewards this offering by raising Jesus to new life, and Jesus becomes the one through which all can share in this new way of being – the Kingdom, or more accurately, the reign of God.

Second discussion – do any of these help you? Are there any that you particularly react to – either positively or negatively?

Having thrown these various theological theories at you, all of which have currency within the Church today and departure from which can cause someone to be cast out of some Church circles! For instance, just a few years back the Baptist minister and broadcaster Steve Chalke mentioned in a very good book he wrote called ‘The Lost Message of Jesus’ that penal substitution might not be the only way we could look at the death of Jesus and was vilified within many of the groups he used to represent and relate to. It was as if Scripture had put the one way of understanding Jesus death nice and clearly and Chalke was completely heretical to even consider there might be an alternative.

But the Bible doesn’t give us any simple answers to this. It presents a variety of views all mixed up together and makes us come to terms with them ourselves.

I know that some of you will want to have an idea of my own take on this issue, which I why I began by saying that I don’t have it all sewn up. I do have my own personal understanding, but it is not set in stone – as my own reading of Scripture, my growth in knowledge and experience and use of reason lead me to new understandings I may well say something different in a few years, or even days!

I do believe that sin has an effect on God’s creation – a vast, cosmic effect. And that it damages men and women - Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.". The result of sin is, ultimately, death.

I believe that Jesus took upon himself that death which is the result of sin. In this sense he ‘paid the price’ – I don’t, though, subscribe to the idea that God punished Jesus on our behalf. For me the defining statement about God is found in the first letter of John 4.16 ‘Those who do not love do not know God, for God is love.’

It’s not ‘God is loving’ but God is Love. If that is the ultimate statement about the nature of God, which I believe it to be then I find this inconsistent with a punitive or vengeful God. Therefore I believe that Jesus took the consequence of Sin, and indeed the consenquence of a Godly life live in the face of evil, and his death on the cross removed from us the ultimate consequence of sin.

But this idea, like me generally, is a work in progress.

Now I am conscious of the fact that we have gone back to the idea of talking about one or two words in our Creed and there is much more to take in and to consider in the few lines we have this week. And I would like to attempt to look at these too. I spent so long on the doctrine of Atonement because I think it informs for each of us the way that we perceive God – if we take one view or another then we are likely to see God as forgiving, or wrathful, or pure, or angry or whatever. In common with much of our faith I think the healthy belief is the one which can encompass more than one idea and hold it together, sometimes in tension and is willing to continue to wrestle with the issues involved in a ‘true and lively faith’.

And I will acknowledge that my wrestling hasn’t really come to terms with this phrase ‘he descended to the dead’ – for some it is just a fanciful way to say he died, but I think it is there for a reason and some talk of the harrowing of hell – that Jesus preached salvation to those who were imprisoned in hell because they had not heard of him and offered them his new life. I am not sure about that, but it is important to acknowledge that even back in the fourth century, indeed at the beginning of the Church’s life, Christians were struggling with the question ‘if faith comes from hearing, what about those who have never heard?’ I leave that one with you for now….

So we continue through these lines with this amazing and rather mind-blowing concept of resurrection. Of Christ being brought from the dead, of Christ being alive even today! Present with us through his Spirit and ascended to the right hand of God where he lives and reigns for eternity.

One of the things I find rather difficult about the Alpha course is that (like me this evening) it tends to focus very much on the death of Jesus and what he did on the cross. It wants the hearer to have a conviction of sin and to recognise the price paid – though it may have something more of a penal substitution theology than I would hold to!

We do need to remember, though, that in essence it is not the cross that defines us as Christians but the empty cross! It is the empty tomb that brings about our shout of alleluia! (not that I am meant to say that in Lent). I can’t remember where it comes from but I love the quote that defines Christians thus

“We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song”

In the new life God gives to Christ we see the acceptance of Christ’s offering of himself, and the triumph of love over judgement, of grace and mercy over death and hell.

The resurrection tells us that death is not the end. It shows God’s embrace of the work of Jesus and his blessing on all people.

Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we have a hope of new life, of life forever in the presence of God – not just a life beyond death, Jesus’ new life can bring about a fullness of life that he mentions in John 10v10 – it show’s that God has accepted the life Jesus led as well as the death Jesus died.

The resurrection is the moment that defines a new order in the cosmos – of the defeat of our ultimate enemy, sin and the death it brings. This has changed the very being and nature of creation and we now live in a time which contains all the promise and potential that Christ’s fullness of life offers.

I haven’t gone into details about how the resurrection happened, or at least theological debates about the resurrection, in the same way that I didn’t want to venture into the discussions about the Virgin Birth or a six day creation – we can quickly become bogged down in the mechanics of it. I do think it is important, though, and the Biblical record is clear that Jesus came back in some way bodily, not as a ghost, he was able to eat with his friends, to touch them – yet at the same time was seen to appear and disappear in a way no one could comprehend. I believe Jesus rose bodily, but that he had a resurrection body, St Paul seems to say that Jesus is the prototype resurrection body that one day we will all share. How God might do that is beyond me, and beyond most comprehension, but I believe that he will.

And at the end of forty days, says the account in the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus ascended, taken into heaven to be with the Father, to take his place in the trinity. I will be preaching on this in about fifty five days at our Communion Service for Ascension day at Shute on May 14th – so I won’t say too much now, but I do believe it is important not to take this too literally in a sense, as those who related this story and wrote it down would have had a view of God up there in heaven, of earth here and of sheol below. We know the earth is a sphere, that above is an atmosphereless void filled with stars, planets and more than we can ever imagine. We no longer believe God lives above the clouds but that he lives over and beyond this world in which we live, beyond time and space. What is important, though, is that Jesus goes to be with God, taking his place as ruler of all and within the dynamic of the Holy Trinity (about which there will be more next week).

This leads on to the issue of Jesus’ return, which again I don’t think I can do justice to in the few moments we have left. I will say that this anticipation of perfection, of Jesus coming back one day, should not divert us from fulfilling our calling to be a part of God’s kingdom coming here on earth. We are called to make real the life of Christ in this world and not to be distracted by being ‘so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly use’. Our Christian faith is in a living active Christ who is with us now, who by his Spirit changes and transforms us that we may share his life and light in the world. One day he will come, we don’t know when, but until then we work for the transformation of the world through our words, prayers and deeds.

And on a final note I want to mention judgement.

There is a common idea that the judgement of God will involve us all being lined up and the book of our life will be opened and we will get a ticking off for all the bad things we have done before we get into heaven.

This is tied up, I think, with a very Roman and Western way of considering judgement, just as Pilate took his place at the judgement seat to condemn Jesus. In the Old Testament a judge proclaimed God’s will, and the values of God’s way of doing things. A judge wasn’t someone who weighed up the evidence and pronounced for or against, but who spoke up for, who was an advocate, who sought truth, restoration, a new state of being. It was a model of judgement that was concerned with reconciliation and restitution rather than punishment.

I believe Christ is our judge, who judges for us, who seeks to bring out the best in us, restores wholeness from our brokenness, and opens up the possibility for reconciliation with God for all eternity.

And on that note I will leave it. may God continue to find us eager to serve and open to the touch of his love that we may be more like Christ, day by day. Amen.

I Believe, part 3

Part Three comes with another confession, as well as the opener! I wrote much of the substance of this talk for Greenbelt Arts Festival a few years back, then adapted it for a previous series of Creed talks in the Papworth Team Ministry and for an evensong at Emmanuel College Cambridge (MP3 of that talk here). So, this talk is based on previously published talks, though it has been amended for this set of talks (which took a few hours in itself :-) )

Lent 2009: The Apostle’s Creed

Session 3

I believe in Jesus part 1

I have to begin with a confession – that this evening is probably the reason I wanted to do this series of talks on the Creed in the first place. Tonight’s thoughts come under the general theme of ‘Incarnational Theology’ – and it is Incarnational Theology that made me truly fall in love with Theology in the first place! It was in studying the early Creeds and particularly why the Church said what it did about Jesus, that I really began to grasp the depth and the meaning of that sometimes glibly bandied about phrase ‘I believe in Jesus’. I should warn you though that this might mean that tonight I might do even more speaking than last week, as I have so very much to say!

Bearing in mind my thoughts in the first week of our series, I don’t want tonight’s presentation to be an academic exercise – it is important to ask whenever we find ourselves in theogical debate or discussion ‘what difference does this make to my own walk of faith, and what does it say about the faith we share?’ The things I am going to say, and that will hopefully be a part of your discussions, have changed my own perspective on faith, and have (I feel) enhance my faith and bound me more to the life and witness of the Church I serve. There are some ‘big’ theological ideas in tonight’s subject and I will try not to get lost in my own enthusiasm for the subject and start disappearing off into a theological world of my own.

So what is our subject for this evening? Well again I have taken just a few lines from the Creed and want to look into these. In fact I have just taken the one concept for tonight (next week’s will have much more to range around) and I do want to focus on this strange, peculiar, uniquely Christian belief we have in ‘The Incarnation’

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son,

our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary…,

It would be easy with the part of the Creed that I am covering this evening to be distracted and talk about whether the Virgin birth really happened. In the same way that last week it would have been easy to simply recite the arguments for and against a literal interpretation of a six-day creation story. Now whilst it is a fascinating argument, I am not sure that going off into such realms will really advance us on our journey of faith here this evening.

Though the assumption of human form, enfleshed through the human nature of Mary and enlivened by the Holy Spirit of God is an important part of the theology of Jesus being both God and Human, it is an explanation, rather than part of the core theological concerns of the Creed. I don’t want to disappear into talking about what some do and do not believe, but in the spirit of the Creed to talk about what we as Christians are claiming when me make these statements in the Creed and to talk about what we do believe. And again, following on from my thoughts of the past two weeks, there is something about the impact that knowing Jesus as both God and human that I want to draw out, to think in terms of ‘what difference does this make to me? To the Church? To the world?

If we, as Christians, claim to know Jesus, how much of that knowledge is (to be frank) ‘made up’ – by ourselves, by the Churches we are a part of, by a lack of understanding of what the Church believes. IF we want to know Jesus better, then I think we need to know what we believe about him….

By many people’s standards Jesus was a failed teacher with a disastrously short ministry and a life ending with a fiasco. Yet those who had shared Jesus life for three or so years had no problem at all expressing both the human and divine side of him. There was something more that they had to express, and their talk of ‘resurrection’ added something beyond normal comprehension to their message.

Sometimes these early Christians struggled with the words they had, sometimes they took over words being used for something else and sometimes they made up new ones. As this understanding was passed on the most important thing that was passed on what that Jesus was absolutely and completely human, and at the same time utterly and completely divine. He was God made flesh. Hence St Paul in Philippians talking of Jesus writes down a hymn that had probably been in circulation for a while

“who being in very nature God

he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped

but made himself nothing

taking the very nature of a servant

and being found in human form

humbled himself and became obedient to death

even death on a cross’.

And so we’re off. This becomes the first problem. The educated Romans, Greeks and Jews who heard this message could not believe that a God would really go through this. So the logic dictated that Jesus wasn’t really human. Or that he was much more divine than human. So Jesus only seemed to be human.

St Paul himself encountered this 1 Cor 1:23 explains that ‘Christ crucified’ is ‘a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to Gentiles’. Many thinkers in the Jewish world thought Jesus could not have been divine because he suffered and Gentiles whose thought was based on Greek philosophy said that Jesus could not have suffered because he was divine.

For those who like to read up on heretics one of the most strident on this was Clement of Alexandria. His Christ had no physical passions, neither digested nor excreted, had no need to eat (sustained by Divine power). The only reason he did seem to eat was (says Clement) to confound those who might have thought we wasn’t human. (Clement obviously knew otherwise….)

In order to think a bit about what we do believe, perhaps it would help to think about what we don’t believe. After all, the finely honed truths to which we hold were hammered out upon the Anvil of heresy! So lets consider a few heresies – and if nothing else this may prove an interesting diversion…

Marcion: who believed that God of the Old Testament and the New were different, opposing Gods. His was an anti-Jewish Christianity which dismissed any kind of continuity with the Jewish faith. It is partly due to his influence that the idea of a canon of scripture appeared – so that Christians could not pick and choose as they wished!

Which point brings me somewhere which offers a springboard into our own thoughts and a chance to talk to each other for a minute. As we managed last week to arrange ourselves very quickly into small groups here rather than wandering off to find other rooms I would like you, in groups of five or six, to think about this…

What is your favourite bit of the Bible…? Simple enough, but lets also lead into whether there any bits of Scripture you find difficult, or would prefer to do without?

I asked you to talk about that because I think it is important to remember that when it comes to Scripture we can’t pick and choose what we like, or rather we shouldn’t! There are bits of the Bible that make my hair curl with the violence and bloodthirstiness of it, or the blatant sexism, or the lack of understanding. These parts have something to teach us, and should cause us to ask whether all of Scripture is ‘right’ – eg is it good to smash the heads of our enemies children against rocks as Psalm 137v9 says – or whether we have as much to learn from the parts of scripture that are obviously the author trying to find God in the midst of pain, anger, desolation and lonliness… Do we learn, with God’s grace, as much through what is wrong in scripture, as much as what is right! And by right and wrong I mean in terms of a certain type of morality, or cultural expression rather than making a value judgement about what is ‘true’ or ‘false’… That is a discussion for another time!

I think this question about Scripture is an important one too as it begs questions about how we approach our faith – and whether we cherry pick the bits we like, or whether we – to a certain point – submit ourselves to the discipline of faith, and particularly to the discipline of the Creed – as was the original intent in adopting Credal statements in the Church.

But moving on, and going back – to continue with our roll of shame – the list of heretics against which our Creeds were formed. Having mentioned Marcion and his dismissal of anything Old Testament, there were some others the Church felt it necessary to exclude as heretics!

Montanus: who believed that the Holy Spirit was the only bit to be concerned about. He considered himself to be a spirit filled prophet, and some considered him to be the Spirit incarnate. He was rapidly kicked out – an early example of getting rid of the extremists.

Gnostics: These were perhaps the most insidious heretics in and around the early Church. claiming that matter was inherently evil. There was no one Gnostic philosophy, but broadly speaking they had a philosophy that separated spirit and matter, claiming that matter was evil. Matter only came into being as some kind of fall from perfection. Human beings were alienated from their true being as Spirit by the material world. But only some humans were potentially able to be freed from this, those who were superior (the pneumatics) – naturally this group was made up of Gnostics. It was these who were able to attain salvation through growth in knowledge, particularly arcane knowledge known only to a few. Those of you who are keen sect-watchers may recognise certain tendencies there which are shared by groups such as the Knights Templar of the 14th Century… the foundation of most of the twaddle around the DaVinci code. This kind of Gnostic knowledge seems also be the foundation of Scientology, though instead of being Pneumatics we, or at least some of us, are actually sort of re-incarnated Aliens… But enough of that, moving on…

Arians: Not big blond people who thought they should lead the world. Again there is no one movement of ‘arianism’ but it’s a title that brings together a number of schools of thought. Nominally led by Bishop Arius they believed that the logos was a creation of the Father, who was not ‘Father son and spirit’ but God who created a unique human being with a logos ‘just for the job’ of coming to earth. Arius was quite firmly trodden on by the Church, as he seemed to distract from the eternal nature of the word as offered in St John’s Gospel.

Appollinarius: He claimed that Jesus was different to the rest of us, with a different type of humanity. The flesh and soul of Jesus are separate, the soul, the controlling agent of Christ, is the logos, distinct and separate from the body which is Jesus. In this way the body just becomes a vessel to carry around the world.

In the most extreme kind of thinking the logos (the word of God) which is Christ, takes on human form like a costume (for the sci-fi fanatics like me there are no end the possibilities for parallels here, an Edgar suit for those who’ve seen Men In Black’ or the Aliens in Dr Who who wear outers suits but underneath are rather ugly flatulent creatures) and fails to become fully human. The man Jesus thereby serves as a front for the deity but is not God made man.

But why is it so important for God to be Incarnate? To be made flesh. To be conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary? And why such a crucial part of this creed?!

Now that’s your next question. In conversation with someone yesterday I was asked ‘well I believe this to be true, that Jesus was God and human – surely that’s a given’. This is true, but have we really thought about what that means, and more so (and I know I am repeating myself but this is worth it). WHY is it important for God to be Incarnate? Not just theoretically, but in the life of the Church, and in my own life?

The early Church was convinced that Jesus was (and is) a unique person – exactly what God would look like if he became human. This revealed something about God’s absolute commitment to humanity and also made it possible for us to become God-like. The death of the real, physical Jesus was also the means through which God healed the rift between God and humanity, and if he was only pretending to be God then surely our salvation is only a pretence. Gregory Nazienzan (end of 4th Century) said ‘…what has not been assumed, has not been healed.’ It was only through the reality of God becoming human in Jesus that the reality of salvation was made possible.

For the early Christians this was the crunch issue. In some way God had completely taken human form and thereby had changed reality, making it possible for humanity to share life with God at a deeper level than ever before.

Now, you may have seen the adverts on TV for shampoo or cosmetics where someone looks at the camera in a kind of knowing way and says ‘this si the science bit’. Well, this is the theology bit!

The first Christians wanted to make these things clear:

That God is eternal and unchanging. Always of the same nature and substance.

That the Word (Logos) exists within this eternal unchanging God and remains God at all times.

YET They wanted to maintain that

Jesus was God Incarnate Not just taking the appearance of flesh, but becoming human.

This meant that they wanted to stress the uniqueness of human nature alongside the

uniqueness of the Divine nature.

So Jesus was described as being two hypostaseis – two substances or two Ousia, two natures. This is often summed up in the term ‘the hypostatic union’. These natures are so perfectly fused that there is one prosopon/persona, one concrete reality that is Jesus.

Lets put it another way, there are two major ways of looking at this whole subject – Christology from above and from below (no fancy names for these)

From above (also called ‘descending’ or ‘salvation’ Christology) Christ is stressed as the incarnate word, God in human form. Through God assuming, not absorbing, human form humanity is raised to a new level of dignity, a new fuller humanity is made possible. Hence Jesus is not something ‘more than human’ (as docetics, Gnostics and a few others might maintain) but he is ‘more human’. Hence, perhaps his preferred title for himself ‘Son of Man’ or ‘human one’. In this way human beings become fully human as they are restored to a relationship to God.

The second form is ‘From below’ – ascending Christologies. Christ is seen as a human being in history who made real the kingdom of God and worked towards its coming in fullness. This kind of understanding is tied up with the Quest for the Historical Jesus I mentioned just now. Jesus example is that of living and teaching the kingdom, and thereby his life draws us up to Abba the father and makes real the fullness of God. The primary focus, though, is his earthly life leading to a greater understanding of the divine life (hence ascending).

Well, for me neither of these seem adequate and we need to take both of them on to have a full approach. And this strikes me as so much of the method of Christianity. In Christology especially there is so much to grasp that we must take on board the historical development, the Scriptural basis and our own faith in order to come to a fuller knowledge of who Christ is and what he has achieved.

And this is what the earliest fighting was about in the Church. Various individuals popped up with their own concerns and disagreements. These heresies and more all offered a challenge to a Christian faith, which was inclusive, that claimed God was one God, always the same, that this God had, in Christ, become human and thereby had identified with the material world and embraced it, and had made it possible for all people to know and be more like God. Many of our greatest thinkers in the Church, the Early Church Fathers and others set about refuting those things which were contrary to the understanding passed on by the first Christians, the work of such theologians culminates in our creedal statements, both the Apostle’s (as it is traditionally known) and Nicene creed. Of course the particular part we want to consider is this:

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

Why is all this important I ask again? Well it so often impacts on the Church of today, we have forgotten our roots and so often forget who it is we follow and why he is unique and special. If we fail to grasp exactly what it is that the Church spent so many centuries coming to grips with then we perhaps fail to grasp exactly what our faith can be about.

Orthodox Christian Faith has always maintained that Jesus is exactly as we are, but without sin. He felt as we do, he suffered, he laughed, he ate and drank, he got tired, he made mistakes, he learnt, he got angry etc etc. He suffered and he died. Yet at the same time there was something about him, and this was made clear after and due to the resurrection, that he was God. Not just like God, not just inspired by, but actually God. It is this God who understands exactly what it is to be human and this human being that is an expression of God to us.

If Christ is fully human, then he really does understand exactly what its like to be us, not in a detached and clinical sense, but in a true, earthy and real sense.

If he is fully divine Jesus offers us the hope of eternity straight from God. He offers us the chance for an intimate relationship with a God who is truly involved in and engaged with the world.

We are called to be Christ-like, and through God’s spirit we can be so. We strive for perfection, therefore, not thinking that we are bound to fail but that if we are called by God we know it is possible for us to be perfect like Christ. FOR HE WAS EXACTLY LIKE US – YET WITHOUT SIN. I think that so many Christians start by saying I can’t be like Jesus because he was special. Yes he was, but only in the same way that we can be special, say the teaching of the early Christians, those who knew Jesus, and those who knew them..

Last natter spot! Have you ever consider the possibility of being perfect? Instead of believing that we are too sinful to succeed, would it not be more appropriate, and indeed world changing to see ourselves as too redeemed to fail?

In conclusion, I believe that if we are constantly pushing Jesus' divinity then we will miss out on what he achieved as a human being, if we just see him as a human being (albeit divinely inspired) we will lose out on all that he achieved for us through being God made flesh. It is only in taking the issues the early church spent so much time on seriously that we can understand just how much God can make of us, as brothers and sisters of Christ, fellow heirs. And then we can get to grips with being, in Christ, who God really wants us to be – fully human.

So I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

But that’s not the end of the story, and we will hear more next week. Amen