Liturgy

At Mesquite Bible Church, I ended up getting involved in their “Worship Team.” I helped out with the music, sound, and the slide projector for the words of the worship songs. (Yes, we used a real 35mm carrousel slide projector back then.) We had regular Worship Team meetings in which we discussed how we could improve the worship experience, with an emphasis on increasing congregation participation. We knew that worship should be more than being a passive audience member. In Charismatic churches, the congregation was very involved, but we wanted something more orderly.

Bob, the leader of the Worship Team, bought a copy of The Complete Library of Christian Worship, edited by Robert Webber. He asked that members of the Worship Team read a volume of it and report back to the team. I was assigned the volume on the history of worship, which I began to read, and I was surprised at what I found.

All of the churches I had been involved in had a relatively simple order of worship, and although there were common elements, such as the singing of hymns, reading of scripture, and a sermon, each church determined an order of worship as they thought best. The New Testament appeared to say nothing about the subject, so we thought that God left up to the judgment of the congregation. However, I saw in this history of worship that there had been a rather consistent traditional form of worship that went back to the early centuries of Christianity. I also saw that this liturgical style of worship involved the congregation in the worship, but in an orderly manner. The orderly involvement was made possible through the liturgy, which was like a script for a play. The liturgy said who said what, and at what time. There were parts for the leaders and the congregation. I reported all of this to the worship team, but was told that there was no way our church could move to a liturgical form of worship.

At about this same time, I had been listening to tapes of a Christian teacher named Malcolm Smith. He taught about God’s love for us, which was rooted in his covenant with humanity. I got a catalog of his tapes, and while most of them where on similar themes, one series jumped out at me called “The Power of the Holy Spirit in Liturgy.” I was very curious about this because my conception was that the power of the Holy Spirit and liturgy were at different ends of the worship spectrum. I bought the tapes, and listened to them. They were interesting because he gave a lot of theological reasoning behind the liturgical practices of his church. However, I had become jaded when it came to theology and thought that his church had  come up with a theological rationale for their liturgy, and other churches probably had just as much rationale for their own liturgies. Therefore, I put the tapes on the shelf.

A few months later, Toni and I found out that Malcolm Smith was doing a retreat in Kerrville, Texas. We had enjoyed his tapes so much that we thought it would be nice to go to his retreat and see what he was like in person. When we arrived, I was surprised to see him dressed up like a priest, with a black shirt and white collar. It turned out that he was a bishop in a denomination called the “Charismatic Episcopal Church.” He considered himself “Catholic, but not Roman” because he said that there was one Catholic Church that went back to Jesus and the Apostles, and that it was now split into three main branches: Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox. He taught that the liturgies that these churches used were all descended from how Jesus taught his disciples how to worship, beginning at the Last Supper, with bread and wine in which Jesus was truly present.

This retreat turned my thinking upside-down in so many ways. Rather than picking up a Bible and trying to reconstruct Apostolic Christianity the way Bible churches did, Malcolm claimed that the worship of the Apostles had been passed down in a living tradition. You did not find descriptions of how to conduct a worship service in the Bible because the liturgy was taught by example, and all Christians at the time the New Testament was written already knew it. I had heard that Catholics claimed to have an authoritative tradition, but somehow the fact that there were other branches descended from the Apostolic tradition besides the Roman Catholics, made the whole idea more believable. Nevertheless, it was still another kind of theological system competing against many others. It was attractive to me, but I had no idea how to know if it was true.

In the last session of the retreat, Malcolm described how he discovered liturgy while he was a young Pentecostal preacher in England doing prison ministry. Because the Church of England is the established church there (no separation of church and state), all prison ministry had to be approved by the Anglican chaplain. Where Malcolm was ministering, the chaplain was an older priest who would have tea with him and talk about the ministry. From Malcolm’s Pentecostal perspective, this Anglican priest needed conversion, but instead it was the priest who ended up doing the converting. He casually asked Malcolm how much time he spent in prayer each day. This was a sore point for Malcolm because of the emotional nature of his Pentecostal spirituality. Although he had his share of spiritual highs, he had no consistent daily practice. Malcolm asked the priest the same question and received the immediate reply, “two hours.” This impressed Malcolm, so the priest taught him about the Daily Office of prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, and Malcolm said he’s been praying the Daily Office since then, and that it transformed his prayer life.

This story resonated with me because I had a very poor prayer life. I had tried various systems and never had lasting success. Many of them seemed like fads, but Malcolm’s system was centuries old, and he had used it for decades. I thought it would be worth a try, so I found everything I needed on the Internet, and eventually bought my own copy of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Even though my church did not want to adopt liturgical worship, I was able to bring liturgical worship into my prayer life. I immediately took to this form of prayer. It had a depth that I had not experienced before, and the fact that it was rooted in history was very attractive. The most impressive thing for me, however, was the consistency it brought to my prayer life. After so many years of struggle with prayer, I had finally found something I could do every day over several years. I continued to pray the Daily Office in the BCP from 1999 until 2006 when I entered the Catholic Church. Then I switched to the Catholic Divine Office, which is similar, and I continue to use it to this day.

Calvinism

I think it was near the end of my Sophomore year, after a few people had suggested it, that I decided to visit Westminster Presbyterian Church. Westminster was a smaller church than Grace Bible Church, and only a few college students attended there, although there were several professors there. Westminster had no separate college Sunday school or any other specific college ministry. College students attended regular adult Sunday school classes, and Westminster spent money they would have use for their own college ministry to give to InterVarsity and some other campus groups. I thought this made Westminster a good fit with my own growing involvement with InterVarsity. I also liked being more involved with the whole congregation rather than being just with other college students.

Westminster was a Presbyterian church, but it was in a different denomination (PCA) than the church I had belonged to as a child (PCUS). In general, the PCA was more conservative and traditional than the PCUS. While I was there, I learned that the PCA had a strong missionary and church planting effort. They also had a high regard for the Protestant reformers, especially John Calvin, and they wanted to revive some of the principles of the Protestant Reformation that they thought had subsided in contemporary times.

After I graduated, and was on my own, I ended up continuing in PCA churches. At Arlington Presbyterian Church, I learned more about the theology of Calvinism, and it made a lot of sense to me. I found the strong emphasis on God's transformative power at work in the life of the Christian to be helpful in this question of whether a person can be saved without there being any change in their life.

Another thing I liked about Calvinism was its logical consistency. It was built on a few principles, including the sovereignty of God, and the sinfulness of man, and everything else in the system followed from these principles. Many Calvinists were masters of logical argument. One of my favorites in this regard was R. C. Sproul, who crushed opposing views with his logic and intellect.

However, after a few years, I came to be bothered by the realization that there were Calvinist doctrines, which although they seemed to follow logically from a system built on Biblical principles, they themselves did not seem to be Biblical. The primary example of this was the doctrine of "limited atonement," which states that Christ's death on the cross was only for the elect who were chosen by God to be saved. Although Calvinists could make this doctrine seem to fit with the Bible, it seemed a strain. I did not see how someone would come up with limited atonement by reading the Bible without the structure of the Calvinist system.

I came to form this mental image about Calvinism, and theological systems in general. I saw the truth of the Bible to be like a rugged mountain that was sometimes difficult to climb. Theological systems such as Calvinism or Dispensationalism were like scaffolding that was constructed on the mountainside to aid people in getting up the mountain. Although the scaffolding of Calvinism was firmly attached to the mountain at its base, the straight and orderly construction of the theological scaffolding did not always fit with the ruggedness of the mountain, and at certain points, there were huge gaps between the scaffold and the mountain. I came to decide that while Calvinism was one of the better built scaffolds, it still had serious problems. Unfortunately, I did not know how I could find a better system. Each system argued from Scripture, but interpreted the Bible differently.

After studying theology with excitement for a few years, I came to despair of such study leading to ultimate truth. I even came to believe that theological study could actually get in the way of a person's relationship with God. Therefore, after Toni and I married, and we had reason to consider going back to Mesquite Bible Church, I decided it would be fine, even though I had left the Bible churches a few years earlier based on theological problems. I was just going back to one flawed theological system from another flawed theological system, and I was unable to definitively rank one as superior to the other. We ended up back at Mesquite Bible Church because there were caring people there who had known us for several years, and it felt more like home.

Toni

At this point, the story of my faith journey would be incomplete without introducing Toni. I knew Toni in High School through her sister Dena, whom I met in Sophomore World History class. Toni was a year ahead of me in school, and I had occasional contact with her at their house, at Band activities, and in a Physics class my Junior year.

After Toni graduated, she went to the local community college. When I graduated a year later, I went to Texas A&M, but during my Sophomore year, Toni transferred to A&M. My roommate Greg and I made it a point to welcome her to the campus. Her dorm was near ours, and we all ate at the same dining hall, so we often had meals together. Toni didn't have a car, so I would give her a ride when I went home to Mesquite.

Toni's family was not religious. I had my conversion from atheism to Christianity after I had become friends with Dena, and I had tried to talk to Dena about it. She was very nice about the subject, and was glad it was helpful for me, but was not interested in the gospel for herself.

During one of my trips to Mesquite with Toni, I thought I should talk to Toni about the gospel. I heard talks and read books about sharing your faith, but I was very nervous. The times I had tried before with other people had either been politely refused, as with Dena, or had made the other person angry, as happened with an old friend. However, I believed it was important, so I was going to try again.

I was unable to work up the courage to bring up the subject on the way to Mesquite. It was not until half-way back to College Station, traveling on I-45, that I finally got up the courage to use an opening line I had read in a book: "Do you ever think about spiritual things?" Toni's response surprised me; she said that she had been wanting to talk to me about the subject for a long time. We ended up talking so much that I missed my exit at Madisonville, and did not realize it until the surroundings looked unfamiliar, and I realized we were in Huntsville, 25 miles past the exit.

I turned around, and we made it to College Station fine, just a little bit later than planned. Toni and I had many more conversations, and she soon become a Christian herself, receiving baptism at Mesquite Bible Church, the same church that had been instrumental in my conversion. Toni and I formed a strong bond of friendship in the process, and a few years after our college graduation, we got married, also at Mesquite Bible Church. Next month we will celebrate 21 years of marriage. I am thankful that God used me in the early stages of Toni's journey of faith, and that he has allowed us to continue to travel that road together.

InterVarsity

Now, back to Texas A&M, where my conversion story left off.

Although I continued to go to Sunday worship at Grace Bible Church, my concerns about the college minister's teaching led me to look for alternatives for college Christian fellowship. Campus Crusade was probably the largest group on campus, but after attending a few meetings, I didn't feel like I fit in. They focused on evangelism using a little booklet called "The Four Spiritual Laws," which essentially gave a four step process for becoming a Christian. This was not the way I came to the faith, it was the very kind of thing that would have turned me off before I was a Christian, so I couldn't whole-heartedly get behind it.

Instead, I was attracted to a quaint little group on campus, whose primary method of outreach was to just set up a "book table" with a dozen or so books and booklets for sale. The people manning the table were kind-of nerdy and shy, but the books were very interesting, covering a wide variety of topics concerning Christianity and various issues. The group was the A&M chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, one of the oldest evangelical college student fellowships. The books were all published by InterVarsity Press, which soon became my preferred source for deep-thinking Christian books.

I started going to their weekly meetings, and met Christians from a variety of denominations, including Presbyterian, Bible Church, Baptist, Assemblies of God, Methodist, and Catholic. Like most Christian fellowship groups, they had a time of singing, but in addition to the simple chorus songs that were popular at that time, they also sang traditional hymns that had deep lyrics. They had a speaker at each meeting, often a guest, and the talks were usually challenging and smart. One of the guests was a woman who had been a missionary in China when the Communists took over, and continued to work there until she was forced out. The students seemed to all be serious students, and they saw their dedication to their studies as part of what was required as serious follows of Christ in college. I was also impressed that we had faculty sponsors who were Mathematics, Physics, and Mechanical Engineering professors. They each gave talks at some of the meetings.

After I had been involved for only 2 or 3 weeks, I was invited to a weekend "Bible and Life" conference in Austin. A group of us drove down together, and there I met InterVarsity students from UT, SFA, and other area campuses. During a break period, I stumbled upon a conversation between a couple of the A&M students and the InterVarsity staff worker, Pete, who was responsible for the UT and A&M groups. I was surprised to hear that the topic was concern over the teaching of Dwight at Grace Bible Church. These students had some of the same concerns that I did.

A few days after the conference, Pete contacted me to talk about the conference. We met on campus and had a good talk, and then he asked me about how I felt about the Grace Bible Church situation. I told him my concerns, and he said that if I wanted to ever try another church, I might want to check out Westminster Presbyterian. Although I stayed at Grace for the rest of my Sophomore year, I would remember his recommendation and try Westminster out the next year.

I remained involved in InterVarsity for the rest of my time at A&M, with some continued involvement even after graduation. There are two things I want to point out about InterVarsity that were important in my life. The first is that since it was a small organization, I was soon invited into leadership roles, first as a small group leader, and eventually as chapter President. Although being President was an overwhelming experience for me, and I stepped down after one semester, it was good for me to be stretched like that. If I had stayed in the Grace fellowship, or gone into Campus Crusade, I could have easily spent all four years on the sidelines since they were such large groups with plenty of strong leader types.

The other important thing about InterVarsity was that I got to know strong Christians from many different traditions. They all clearly loved God, and we agreed on the core of the Christian faith, although we disagreed on many non-core issues. This was eye-opening for me because before then I had a pretty narrow idea of what it took to be a real Christian. I think this experience made it easier for me to begin to think critically about my own beliefs, knowing that Christians I admired thought differently about them.

Salvation, East and West

In the last post about my faith journey, I described the theological controversy around the meaning of salvation by faith alone that I encountered while in college. Although I came to a few conclusions on the subject, I had not resolved it satisfactorily when I encountered the Eastern Orthodox church over 15 years later. The Orthodox ended up helping me see the question from a different perspective.

What I found was that Eastern Christianity was not so focused on sin and forgiveness as much as a new kind of life and the transformation of our natures. Salvation is a process called theosis, which is being changed from our fallen human condition into sons of God, brothers and sisters of our Lord, transformed into his image, and partakers of the divine nature. We enter into this new life by faith, but our initial response of faith is just the beginning of this life of transformation. We receive the Holy Spirit, who works in our spirits, and we commune with God through prayer. However, we are not just spiritual beings; we are also physical. Therefore God makes use of physical means such as the sacraments to transform us. Our changed nature is reflected in the way we live our lives.

In short, the life of discipleship is not optional for a Christian, but the very path of transformation that saves us from a life of self-destruction, and brings us into eternal life. Heaven is not so much a reward for believing the right thing, but the fulfillment and completion of a supernatural life that begins in this life. What I found in Eastern Orthodoxy was that faith, good works, the work of the Holy Spirit, and salvation, were all intertwined in a dynamic relationship with God.

I read a booklet by Bp. Kallistos Ware where he responded to the Evangelical question, "are you saved?" He said that he was saved by Jesus on the cross; he is being saved now as he grows in his relationship with Christ; and his hope is to experience the completion of salvation in heaven. Notice that heaven is his hope, not his guarantee. He knows that he freely entered into this relationship with Christ, and he could freely leave it, even as a bishop. Apostasy and turning to a life of sin is always a possibility for any Christian in this life, so we must be vigilant so that we don't drift away. Don't get me wrong, God does not easily let go of us; he wants our salvation more than we do. However, he does respect our free will, and it is possible for a Christian to get so caught up in the world and sin that he prefers it to God, and is in danger of destruction.

That's my quick sketch of the Eastern Orthodox view of salvation as I understand it. What surprised me years later was that this was very similar to the Catholic view. Indeed, the worldwide Catholic Church includes Eastern Catholic churches whose theology of salvation is no different than the Eastern Orthodox. When you get to Western Catholic theology, there is more of an emphasis on sin, punishment, and forgiveness. Western categories are more distinct, and Western theologians try to nail down answers to questions that Eastern theologians prefer to leave unanswered. Western theologians use the term "sanctifying grace" to talk about the presence of God that accomplishes theosis. They use the term "mortal sin" to describe the kind of act that completely kills our relationship with God, and "venial sin" to describe an act that damages but does not kill the life of God within us. Eastern Christians recognize both kinds of effects of sin, but they are reluctant to categorize things in that way.

Nevertheless, Catholic theology recognizes that we need the grace of God to forgive our sins and to lift us up into the life of God. We respond to God's work in us by faith, and so cooperate with him. In other words, God will not change us if we don't want him too. We, in ourselves, can add nothing to what God does, but we can say "yes" to the offer of Christ to live his life through us. As in the Eastern view, there are physical as well as spiritual means through which God works in us. Although there are lots of activities involved in the Catholic walk of faith, known as works of charity, they are all actually works of Christ, because it is Christ who does them through us.

Well, these are huge topics, which I've barely touched on. I hope, however, it clarifies things a little bit. Please feel free to ask specific questions, and I'll see if I can find some answers.

Christ and the "Dying Gods"

Happy Easter, everyone!

I am using a new search engine, duckduckgo.com. I typed in "C. S. Lewis dying god" and this popped up in the "red box" instant results at the top.

Christian mythology: Comparative mythology: Christ and the "Dying Gods"

The more recent writer C. S. Lewis regarded the pagan "dying gods" as premonitions in the human mind of the Christ story that was to come. Pope Benedict XVI expressed a similar opinion in his 2006 homily for Corpus Christi: "The Lord mentioned [wheat's] deepest mystery on Palm Sunday, when some Greeks asked to see him. In his answer to this question is the phrase: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit' (Jn 12: 24). [...] Mediterranean culture, in the centuries before Christ, had a profound intuition of this mystery. Based on the experience of this death and rising they created myths of divinity which, dying and rising, gave new life. To them, the cycle of nature seemed like a divine promise in the midst of the darkness of suffering and death that we are faced with. In these myths, the soul of the human person, in a certain way, reached out toward that God made man, who, humiliated unto death on a cross, in this way opened the door of life to all of us." There have been some modern attempts to discredit the notion of a general "dying god" category of which Christ is a member. More at Wikipedia

I did the search because I remembered how C. S. Lewis, when he was an atheist, believed that Christianity was just another "dying god" myth. However, he came to wonder why there were so many dying god myths in human cultures, and came to believe that they were all premonitions of an actual event that was so cosmic in its scope, reaching across space and time, that it made a deep impression in the human psyche, even before it played out in human history.

The first link brought me this quote:

“In the New Testament, the thing really happens. The Dying God really appears—as a historical Person, living in a definite place and time. . . . The old myth of the Dying God . . . comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens— at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We must not be nervous about ‘parallels’ [in other religions] . . . : they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.”

By the way, I think DuckDuckGo (DDG) is the first serious alternative to Google. One of their biggest selling points is that they don't track you like Google does. They also make a bigger effort to keep out spam, which I like. I also like their nice user interface. Give it a try!

The Lord descends into hell

From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Make a Friar

A few weeks ago, I saw a young man speak at my parish, Patrick Gothman, who is in the process of joining the Little Brothers of the Lamb, a missionary branch of the Dominican order based in France, and operating in several countries around the world. This branch not only sees St. Dominic as their spiritual father, as do all Dominicans, but they also look to St. Francis of Assisi as a spiritual father. I find this remarkable because Dominic and Francis lived at the same time and started similar reform movements, but the orders which resulted from their work have often been at odds with each other. The Little Brothers and Sisters of the Lamb appear to take the best of both movements, and have the potential to be an effective reform movement in the Church. They have fully the adopted the mendicant practice that characterized these movements in the beginning by trusting God to provide for them day by day through the gifts of others.

Patrick has set up a website about his vocation not only to inform, but also to raise some money he needs to pay off student loans before he enters religious life. If you would like to learn more about Patrick, the Community of the Lamb, and possibly help him out, check out www.makeafriar.com.