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Chapter 1: A Conversation with a Cult Member
Excursis 1: Why My Niece Doesn't Believe in the Trinity
Excursis 2: The Monophysite Conundrum
Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Weddings
Chapter Three: Sacraments – Redefining an old idea
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The Monophysite Conundrum or, “What if a person says the wrong things but worships the right way?”
Excursis 2
The Eastern Orthodox Bishops admit they made a huge historic goof: 1500 years ago they declared the Coptic Church heretical because the Copts refused to accept the decision of the Council of Chalcedon (in 451) and were therefore declared holders of the monophysite heresy. In the 1500 intervening years it has become clear to most Eastern Orthodox theologians that the problem 1500 years ago was one of semantics. The terminology proposed at the Council of Chalcedon was rejected by the Copts (who lived in Ethiopia and who spoke a different primary language) because they understood the wording in a different way than it was by the predominantly Greek speaking church. Over the intervening centuries it is clear to those who study Coptic worship and liturgy that their beliefs are thoroughly Orthodox, although they say it in a slightly different way.
Here's the dilemma: the reality of God is far beyond human comprehension that human attempts to systematize God's revelation and describe it in orderly human terms always ends up being an approximation. We have real knowledge of God but we don't have exhaustive knowledge of God. We have knowledge adequate for salvation but we don't have knowledge that will satisfy all of our curiosities.
It has therefore been the opinion of the vast majority of Christian theologians, thinkers, and church leaders that the real determination of Christian belief should be determined by how we worship and not what we write in theology books. In the Christian West this was expressed by the Latin phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi: The way we worship will ultimately be reflected in what we believe and not the other way around. Worship primarily shapes belief; belief primarily does not shape how we worship. The same sensibilities are part of the Christian East. They don't have “systematic theology” but “mystical theology” - an attempted description of the divine reality in which Christians participate when they worship.
It is worth noting that it took me many years to come to accept this nearly universal rule of thumb because the brand of evangelicalism in which I grew up was thoroughly, proudly, and militantly rationalistic. The idea that we do not simply choose how we think, that what we think has priority over everything else in our life, was mocked at the Bible College I attended. I have since come to discover just how accurate the rule of thumb is and how misled the rationalistic evangelicalism of my youth was. (As an historical note, a very large portion of that rationalistic evangelicalism of my youth have seen the error circumscribing the living God with the limits of human rationalism. A surprisingly small number of people with whom I graduated Bible College are still serving Bible Churches. Much of them have migrated to much less radically rationalistic denominations. So this error has been largely self-correcting.)
These musings about incomprehensible actions by Christians over a millennium ago are significant because a few months ago we received a wedding invitation from my niece. She was getting married and the wedding service was going to be performed by a minister of The Way. Although I didn't know it at the time, this wedding was going to form the second chapter in my saga with the religion of my niece.
Main Essay page
[previous]
Chapter 1: A Conversation with a Cult Member
Excursis 1: Why My Niece Doesn't Believe in the Trinity
Excursis 2: The Monophysite Conundrum
Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Weddings
Chapter Three: Sacraments – Redefining an old idea
[next]
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