Part 3 (sorry, more prolegomena) on the Incarnation - not only David struggles with it; we all do

If we say there is a God and we say we believe in God, then, as responsible adults we are accountable to not lie about it, not absolutize our grasp of it (which is also lying), nor at all costs to hide it. We are commanded NOT to hide the fire NOR to boast that it is ours. We ARE accountable to work out our faith in humility as well as determination to tell the truth as best we can.

The first truth to tell, then - speaking out theology, as we learn in the 2nd and 3rd truths - is that we have experienced God's presence. We have felt and heard God and we have been moved in the Spirit to enthusiasm, maybe even ecstasy. If we haven't experienced God's presence with us, then we lie about believing in God: we are, instead, just identifying with faith, maybe with that which we were given, but we ourselves are not believers unless we believe because of the experience of God. The Samaritan town told the woman at the well, "We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard of ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world." Thomas  is not doubting so much as he is seeking the experience of the risen Lord; Jesus says, "Because you have seen Me, Thomas, you have believed." 

The first truth is to confess that we have heard God, felt, known God's presence. It is God who offers us the grace of faith. No one and nothing else has grace to give of their own. 

(Be aware: because God is perfectly faithful, God makes Godself known to all. In fact, we are all made to seek out this faithful presence by our natural desire to relate to God.)

The second truth is that we need to tell the truth - speaking theologically - to ourselves to begin with, because, as conscious creatures we are made to compose our understanding. Inchoate is an impossible situation for us. Passive reception is cowardice for us. We are creative intellects that must make language as our process for understanding. And this first word in telling ourselves is to confess that our language seeks to express the inexpressible. The presence of God as experienced by creatures is ultimately inexpressible in any absolute way. But it is necessary for us to seek and work out language that approaches the ineffable in terms that best communicate our experience of God. And so we begin to talk about what it was like and we seek to re-experience the presence of God always. We know God is real and near because we have experienced the reality: God is relating to us. What does that make us feel? What does that make us think? What does that make us do? And what does it lead on to? All of this is theological material because theology is always and only putting the experience of God into language for ourselves. And as Paul says, it must be language that makes sense. Otherwise it is  a selfish fetish.

The second truth is to confess that we make - immediately - expressible language to understand the inexpressible. We are created to do that and so ineluctably do it. This is our spiritual reality, our act of faith. 

(Be aware: because making language about the experience of God is expressing the inexpressible, making sense of the ineffable, we are, therefore, symbol making. Religious  knowledge is symbolic knowledge. The symbol mediates a perception AND knowledge of something other than itself. And so, the symbolic knowledge of the presence of God is sacramental. The symbolic language of faith is both God and not God by virtue of being the way we grasp the ungraspable mystery of God and express the inexpressible of God's presence. Symbolic language is the tangible medium communicating the unseen grace that is God's favor present to and effective in us. As Roger Haig writes, "God is present to the symbol and through it present to human consciousness.... Since God is both present to and transcendent of any finite symbol, the symbol both makes God present and points away from itself to a God is other than itself.")

The third truth is that we must do so - we must work out theological language (the inexpressible expressed) about our experience of God - in community. Because our personal experience of the presence of God is inexpressible, ineffable, outside our control or wish or command but is performed by God's will, it is necessary to work out meaning in language along with the community. Otherwise we are both unloving and unchecked on our sense making. The community bears the history and abiding teaching presence of the Spirit. It is from within the historic, collective, and relational life of the church, as presided over by the Spirit, that the language expressing our experience takes part in reflection by both community and believer, sharing between both community and believer, and effecting growth in truth and spirit for and by both community and believer, everyone together. We effect each other and we effect what is revelation in our experience of God's presence.

And so, ,the third truth is that our experience of the presence of God becomes wisdom by sharing our language for it within the church. The church is the body of Christ and therefore the medium of the Spirit for God's work in the world. The church is a sacrament, for within it, God's grace flows down on the faithful in the power of the Spirit. This is true to an eternal degree that is not true of any one soul. In Heaven ALL will worship God in Spirit and Truth: in perfect communion together. The church is greater and more to be honored than any one person because Christ is spiritually embodied within it. Even the Desert Fathers did not live for themselves. They prayer for the church and wrote for the community to digest and reflect and discern the holiness of their experience of God. No one is an island.

(Be aware: Jesus did not tell us that the Spirit would teach any individual everything. Jesus DID tell his apostles and disciples and all believers, in John 14, that God the Father would send the Spirit to the faithful, the church, and would teach THEM/US everything. And subsequently, we see this on Pentecost; we see this in Acts 11 with Peter's shock, and the Church at Jerusalem's shock, that God was also offering the promises to the Gospel to Gentiles [ie, the whole rest of the world]. And we see that it is the life of the Spirit which continually does this. Jesus did not promise a book. Not even a holy book to teach us everything. Jesus promised us the living God in the form of the 3rd person of the Trinity.)

The fourth truth, then, is that it is the life of the Spirit within the church that moves us toward greater faith, greater love, and deep, rich, joyful, enduring life. And what is the medium in which the Spirit is communicated in the life of the church? By word and sacrament. Scripture and sacrament are the sign and symbol which mediate an experience, a perception and a knowledge of the Son of God. Word and sacrament are NOT the Son of God or the Holy Spirit. But word and sacrament are our religious symbolic language, communicating both God and not God by virtue of being the way we grasp the ungraspable mystery of God and express the inexpressible of God's presence. Augustine spoke of each of the Church’s sacraments as a “visible word” (verbum visibile), and of the word as an “audible sacrament” (sacramentum audible).

(Be aware: The central act that defines protestantism is to reify God - to make God the effective equivalent of a book of Holy Scripture - by denying the presence of God's transcendence. Protestantism makes the symbolic language of the word stand in an absolute sense for the reality of God. God is contained within the word because no other spirit and no other truth can be ascertained outside it in any certain way. Therefore, in protestantism the stakes for interpreting scripture are raised to an ultimate value and judgment. Any real disagreement on scripture cannot stand because there is no other allowance for revelation beyond interpretation.)

The fifth truth is that life in the church, life in its spirit and truth, as mediated by word and sacrament so fills us faithful with the love of God that we go forth into the world and love it altogether. All creatures, all of creation, and, closest to the heart of God, each other, all humankind as one.

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David has raised some scriptures that need interpreting for any idea of the symbolic sacrament of the Incarnation to be spiritually grasped and materially redemptive. Yet, neither he nor Dan seem to be immediately conscious of any direction on how to interpret them. To me, that is because interpretation is extremely dangerous in protestantism. And so the faithful tread very, very lightly. If they don't, they divide angrily. But, direction on reading the gospels and grasping, expressing the ineffable profundity of the incarnate Son of God has been given and keeps being given over 1900 years now. By the church.