Insightful thoughts, Frank Warren and Dean Scott.  Ancient Romans considered 
Christians "atheists" because they believed in an invisible God and Christ 
as a human envelope encapsulating the eternal spirit of God.  The emperor 
Gods were living, breathing, with the power of life and death at their whim. 
In our time, we've seen governmental systems that very nearly demand 
religious faith and blind obedience from the governed.  X  Regards. 
KnoxDuncan@...


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <chasrscott@...>
To: <faithandlife@...>
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 9:34 AM
Subject: [FaithandLife] Nicean Creed


> Here's an interesting item from "Root and Branch."
>
> Frank Warren
> -------------------------------
>
>
> Thank you for the article and for the opportunity to point out once again 
> in my tiresome way the inability of Graeco-Roman philosophic systems to 
> hold the new wine of the Gospel.
>
> Great is the mystery that God was in Christ reconciling the world to 
> himself.
>
> St. Paul presents us with a paradox: God in Christ.  All of our attempts 
> to explain will only be partial, because we can only know in part. The 
> contained cannot apprehend or comprehend the container.
>
> Sustantia and ousia and all the other theological jargon we place in 
> creeds, confessions and articles will only be partial explanations to 
> questions which we often do not construct very well, because we can only 
> ask partial questions.
>
> In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus asked the question “Why call me good? There is 
> one good – God.”
>
> Last Sunday I commented that those who first heard Matthew’s evangel or 
> first read it would have not had the same conflict over that sentence that 
> post-Nicean Christians have.  I know some amateur theologians in the 
> audience must have thought I had been infected by an Arian virus when I 
> said that in Jesus day he and the disicples didn't have the Nicean Creed. 
> It took a couple of hundred years after Matthew’s day for Christians to 
> develop the Nicean Creed and other creeds to attempt to explain the 
> unexplainable.
>
> Matthew’s Gospel begins by saying simply that Jesus is Emmanuel at the 
> outset of his evangel.  Matthew ends the story with the Resurrection of 
> Jesus and the disciples worshipping him as he gives them his final words. 
> Matthew’s evangel is about the amazing fact that God has visited his 
> people.  No amount of theological jargon, confessions, creeds or articles 
> will reduce the paradox: God was in Christ.
>
> How, if he were God, could Jesus ask, “Why call me perfect – there is One 
> who is perfect.?”
>
> A problem we humans have, from this side of Nicea in contemplating Jesus 
> the Christ is the word perfect.  In a class once, a person was going on 
> about the perfections of Jesus.  I asked him if he thought Jesus ever 
> caught a cold, was bitten by fleas, stumbled as he walked rough Galilean 
> roads, sweated from the heat, dribbled his food or stepped in dung.  That 
> individuals view of Jesus’ perfect humanity was somewhat offended by the 
> question.
>
> In my opinion, Jesus question, coming as it does close to the time of his 
> final trials is placed in Matthew’s evangel to show that he was not yet 
> perfected.  The term perfect can mean not only sinless or flawless or 
> infallible, it can also mean complete.
>
> It is obvious from Matthew’s presentation that Jesus goes from baby born 
> in a dangerous world to a man who could hunger and thirst and be angry and 
> be betrayed and feel abandoned and who, as another writer of Scripture 
> said, “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that 
> God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer 
> of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. . . . Because he 
> himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are 
> being tempted.”
>
> Obviously, if Jesus had disappeared into the darkness on the night in 
> which he was betrayed, Matthew would have had nothing to write about.
> Jesus was not yet complete when he questioned the rich young ruler, “Why 
> call me good?”
>
> Good is a term carpenters and builders use when a structure is complete.
>
> Jesus was not “good” in the sense of complete until he had walked the Via 
> Dolorosa, suffered and was buried, rose the third day and ascended to the 
> Father.  Then, one could say, “this is very Christ.”
>
> Of course John 1:1 gives us the other side of the Paradox. As Matthew 
> says, “Emmanuel.”  As Paul says, “God was in Christ.”
>
> I don’t see that those at Nicea improved on leaving the paradox stand as 
> we receive it from the writers of the New Testament.  God was in Christ.
>
> The mystery of Godliness goes on as we contemplate the meaning of 
> Incarnation and the Church as the Body of Christ.  How do we explain,
> "Christ in you the hope of glory?"  Do our clutter of creeds, confessions, 
> articles and books obfuscate or illuminate?
>
> By an Anglican with suspicious Arian tendencies?
>
> Charles+
>
>
>
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