- January 18, 2012
- 6 Comments
Submission to a Person, not a Principle or Proposition: Resisting the Temptation to De-Flesh the Word-Made-Flesh
“What if God hasn’t given us a watertight argument, but rather a watertight person?”
- Dick Lucas (from Tim Keller, The Reason for God)
“Obedience is indispensable. Not to a static code, however helpful it may be at times. But obedience to God, who is present with us in every situation and is speaking to us all the time. Every obedience, however small (if any obedience is ever small) quickens our sensitivity to him and our capacity to understand him and so makes more real our sense of his presence.”
- Albert Edward Day, The Captivating Presence
This quote sums up our two of our Spiritual Formation Axioms we’ve talked about on this blog: God is always present and at work…and…all of life is spiritual formation. It also speaks to the series on Bible Study – how we come to know more of scripture is by acting on what we already know. Our capacity to know is increased when we do. In fact, doing is how we know we know.
But – what I want to highlight is the first phrase of what Day has to say:
Obedience is indispensable. Not to a static code, however helpful it may be at times. But obedience to God, who is present with us in every situation and is speaking to us all the time.
Day helps us here to navigate the temptation to reduce Christianity to a moral propositions or helpful principles. We have this human desire to reduce complex, thick, rich realities into principles and propositions. We like to trade people for principles. So we latch onto words or phrases that ‘sum up’ for us what being a Christian is all about – “Faith Alone!” “Let go and let God!” “Always Be Closing!” (okay – that last one may have more cache in sales than in church…) Propositions and principles can rally us to a cause, fire us up emotionally, stick in our minds. They’re memorable, visceral, even primal in their attachment to our hearts. But principles ultimately are limited b/c they cannot communicate love, commitment, and relationship. Principles and Propositions are uni-directional – words to our brain. Important? – yes. The substance of our faith? – not even close.
The Word became flesh for a reason – And our “reason” keeps wanting to turn the incarnation back into words.
For God so loved the world that he gave a ridiculously awesome theological proposition, that whoever memorizes and assents to it may not perish but have eternal life.
When God wanted to save us from living a less than human existence – when he kicked his rescue plan into full gear – he sent the Word in flesh. He sent not a principle, but a person. God gets familiar in Jesus. Moves into the neighborhood, as Eugene Peterson puts it. The Word who become flesh resists being reduced to merely correct propositions and principles because in that reduction we lose the present, abiding, active work of God in our midst. The Spirit blows where it wills – unless we have the Spirit reduced to a principle. We end up living in our heads – following mental abstractions and ideas rather than the Living Word who is always with us.
Do you see this tendency in your faith? I do – here are three reasons I believe this is such an enticing temptation for me:
1. Principles and propositions are necessary and good. Our (humanities) greatest temptation is always to make a good thing an ultimate thing. This isn’t a good vs. bad discussion, but rather – how do words point to the reality of the person? How can they become a help – not a hindrance – to true redemptive relationship with the Living Word?
2. Principles and propositions are ways I can differentiate my ‘version’ or ‘brand’ of Christianity from others. In other words (which are important, remember me saying that?) – they serve the human impulse to divide, separate, boundary keep, and delineate. Not to say all boundaries are bad (I feel like I have to keep giving that caveat…), but rather to say the religious tendencies in my heart seize upon the opportunity to use words to justify self, to defeat opponents, to win and be right. The Person of Jesus does not allow me that opportunity – he won’t be used by anyone for their purposes and his re-creation activity is always towards union among Christians. Jesus subverts this temptation in me and pulls me (dragging and screaming sometimes) into unity, peace, building up…invites me out of the prison of self-justification into the freedom of a justified self.
3. Principles and propositions are methods of human control and persuasion. A friend of mine recently provoked me to think about how and when stories go from acts of hospitality that invite people deeper into Life to abusive propaganda that seek to manipulate and control. I like propositions b/c I can make them do what I want: I can use them to impress others, to demonstrate my superior intellect, to overwhelm someone I’m talking to in a way that dishonors where God has them and what he’s teaching them. Words make me feel like I’ve “got it.” That I’ve succeeded to define and sum up our incredibly mysterious and awesome God. But principles and propositions are intended to be servants of worship not slaves of a controlling self. Do principles and propositions draw me into a posture of greater surrender and love? Or – do they puff me up, make me more defensive and irritable and controlling of my life and others around me? Whenever I love my words about God more than God himself, I’m reminded of a quote by Frederick Buechner: “Theology is the study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study us and our ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.”
The Word became flesh for a reason – And our “reason” keeps wanting to turn the incarnation back into just words. We need a Person – not merely principles or propositions – to experience transformation in Christlikeness.
Do you experience this temptation to reduce a Person to merely principles or propositions?
Of the temptations I mentioned which (if any) resonates with you?
Why do you think this is a tendency in our Christian faith? What motivates or encourages this phenomena?
Categorized: Huddle, Love, Obedience, Spiritual Formation Axioms, Uncategorized Tags:Tags: Albert Edward Day, Frederick Buechner, Seth Richardson
Has God ever communicated to us in propositions?
Are propositional statements more susceptible to “language games” than narrative or other forms of communication?
Is it really either/or? Doesn’t the church need both narrative truth and propositional truth and incarnational truth?
Hey Brian,
To answer your questions:
1. Yes, of course, and I say as much in the above post.
2. No, of course not, and I say as much in the above post.
3. No, it’s not an either/or, and I say as much (over and over and over) in the above post.
And – I didn’t even mention narrative (other than in the example of how stories can be propaganda) in the post. I wasn’t talking about proposition vs. story, but about substituting our propositions for a Person.
Any idea why there is such confusion about what I’m actually saying here?
Okay. After some time to reflect – Brian – I regret responding to you in the manner I did. Apologies. Never respond to a blog comment agitated, and I was. So – I’ll leave this up for 24 hours or so so that people can see it and I’ll remove my response.
mea culpa,
Matt T.
Matt, I’m sure the confusion is because I’m a modernist dinosaur, and I approach language in a really old-fashioned way. I expect that your primary audience doesn’t struggle to understand the way I do.
Also, tone of voice is so hard in written communication. I feel like my questions probably came across the wrong way, and I want to apologize for that.
Feel free to remove that first post, too.
Brian
…but then their would be no comments left to laugh at…except mine.
Good words, Matt. An excellent proposition indeed.
I agree. The truth is a Person who descends to us. The temptation is for me to merely ascend mentally to this truth, which is what I’ve done in the past (and feel like I’ve been trained to do).
I’m finding that I must commune with this Person in order to understand the truth. In this communion I find my humanity and can obey God.
This changes what my life looks like, the way I posture myself in worship, the things I spend my time doing, the stories that dominate my life. Communion with God–the only place where truth can be grasped–is where I am transformed into the likeness of Christ.