Progressive Orthodoxy of an Informed Ignorance: A Brief Review of Selected Topics. Part4
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The Church:
The Church is the Corpus Christy, the mystical Body of Christ, through which God disperses his grace for the liberation of humanity from the state of sin. In the Nicene Greed,
we proclaim our belief in the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” Church.
The Church is one. It is both visible and invisible. It consists of communities, united both in the hierarchies with apostolic secession or merely “where two or three are gathered in my name”. Although the visible unity of the Church regrettably has shattered throughout the history, it is the goal that we strive to achieve. Schism is the heresy of the Christian Faith. The severity of Cyprian’s “he cannot posses the garment of Christ who parts and divides the Church of Christ” serves as a grave caution and reminder of the oneness of the Church. This oneness is paramount due to the fact that the atonement of the humankind is achieved through the Church via God’s grace, relayed through sacraments. Thus, the Church is “the ark of salvation”. Moreover, extra ecclesiam nulla salus remains to serve as a testimony of One Church, one Body of Christ.
The Church is also holy. It is set apart and sustained by the Holy Spirit to serve as a channel of God’s grace in our world and the universe. To participate in the divine, one must be part of the Church. In this sense we repeat after the Cyprian “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother”. Our individual and communal belonging to the Church becomes prerequisite for the liberation of ourselves and our society. Thus, the Church is the catalyst and agent of God’s healing presence in our world.
The Church is catholic. It transcends not only history, death, time, cultures, languages, nationality, but also variety and plurality of beliefs. In its catholicity, the Church unites visible and invisible body of believers, united with the divine even outside of the Christian tradition. Thus, while we stress that salvation is possible only through the Church, we also remind that it is a mystery were the boundaries of the Church lies. It may be true that some of those, who belong to the Body of Christ, are ignorant about not only such fact, but even the intellectual knowledge of the person of Jesus. Inside of this Catholic Church there is a room for diverse theological and ethical teachings. The Catholic Church constantly revises its system of belief in order to provide the adequate answers for the eternal questions, asked in contemporary context.
The Church is also apostolic. Despite the ever-developing nature of the Christian belief, it holds to the basic tenants of the apostolic faith. It would be beneficial to limit the doctrines that are part of the compulsory core of the Christian belief to what can be traced to the apostolic faith and witness. In this sense the Church is the guardian of the true faith. Another dimension of the apostolicity of the Church is its episcopate with the apostolic secession and visible hierarchy. Its absence in some branches of the Church is the sign of the defectiveness of such parts.
Eternal Life:
Both the Scriptures and Tradition profess the belief in life after death and resurrection of the dead. The witness of apostles who saw Jesus resurrected has been a basis for the hope of universal resurrection. This hope has found its place in the liturgical and didactical life of the Church. Nevertheless, there is no clear teaching on the eternal life in the Bible. There is also no universally accepted teaching among Christians on this subject. Generally, most Christians confess and more or less agree on what the Apostle Creed says on the subject. Perhaps, it would be wise to define our development of the doctrine of the life after death outside of the Apostle Creed as mere speculations. These speculations may very well be not only beneficial, but even necessary for many reasons. However, the prudence of overstressing the mystery that lies beyond the death should be underlined.
Thus, while stressing our belief in concepts that we traditionally call “The resurrection”, “Day of Judgment”, “Heaven and Hell”, it would be wise to abstain from pinpointing their exact imagined by us or our predecessors properties. It is important not to mix the reality of the afterlife with speculations, based on historical, mythical, and cultural context of the present and the past. The “eternal life” exists beyond our time and the realm of the Transcendent is not possible to understand beyond metaphorical and symbolic language. It would not be unreasonable to speculate that the loving God would not condemn his creatures to the live of eternal suffering in the place we call “Hell”. It would also not be unreasonable to agree with Roman Catholics that the idea of the Purgatory is based on fundamental Christian belief in the God’s sacrificial love and the offer of redemption to souls, locked in self-centered grid of denial, refusal to see their true condition, and rejection of liberation through the union with God. Perhaps, the best literary imaginations of such state can be found in “Hois Clos” by Sartre and “The Great Divorce” by C.S.Lewis. Understandably, we can not build our theology based on the work of literary imagination. However, they are based on the understanding of our nature projections on the stubbornness of our ego and ever-existing possibility of liberation. At the end, if we accept the idea of Purgatory in some sense and degree, it would not be unreasonable to replicate Cardinal Bellarmine’s hope that the Purgatory is full and the Hell is empty.
We could also share the hopes of Hegelian optimism that at the end of the history, all created will be united with its Creator (Geist) in full reconciliation. At that time we would have an opportunity to participate in the “new creation” and become co-creators with God. Some hints of such cosmic unification and can be in Paul’s letter. However, after Wolfhart Pannengerg it should be stressed that it will be fully understood at the commutative point of the history. Until that time, we are left with our speculations and mystery of what lies ahead.
The Church:
The Church is the Corpus Christy, the mystical Body of Christ, through which God disperses his grace for the liberation of humanity from the state of sin. In the Nicene Greed,
we proclaim our belief in the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” Church.
The Church is one. It is both visible and invisible. It consists of communities, united both in the hierarchies with apostolic secession or merely “where two or three are gathered in my name”. Although the visible unity of the Church regrettably has shattered throughout the history, it is the goal that we strive to achieve. Schism is the heresy of the Christian Faith. The severity of Cyprian’s “he cannot posses the garment of Christ who parts and divides the Church of Christ” serves as a grave caution and reminder of the oneness of the Church. This oneness is paramount due to the fact that the atonement of the humankind is achieved through the Church via God’s grace, relayed through sacraments. Thus, the Church is “the ark of salvation”. Moreover, extra ecclesiam nulla salus remains to serve as a testimony of One Church, one Body of Christ.
The Church is also holy. It is set apart and sustained by the Holy Spirit to serve as a channel of God’s grace in our world and the universe. To participate in the divine, one must be part of the Church. In this sense we repeat after the Cyprian “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother”. Our individual and communal belonging to the Church becomes prerequisite for the liberation of ourselves and our society. Thus, the Church is the catalyst and agent of God’s healing presence in our world.
The Church is catholic. It transcends not only history, death, time, cultures, languages, nationality, but also variety and plurality of beliefs. In its catholicity, the Church unites visible and invisible body of believers, united with the divine even outside of the Christian tradition. Thus, while we stress that salvation is possible only through the Church, we also remind that it is a mystery were the boundaries of the Church lies. It may be true that some of those, who belong to the Body of Christ, are ignorant about not only such fact, but even the intellectual knowledge of the person of Jesus. Inside of this Catholic Church there is a room for diverse theological and ethical teachings. The Catholic Church constantly revises its system of belief in order to provide the adequate answers for the eternal questions, asked in contemporary context.
The Church is also apostolic. Despite the ever-developing nature of the Christian belief, it holds to the basic tenants of the apostolic faith. It would be beneficial to limit the doctrines that are part of the compulsory core of the Christian belief to what can be traced to the apostolic faith and witness. In this sense the Church is the guardian of the true faith. Another dimension of the apostolicity of the Church is its episcopate with the apostolic secession and visible hierarchy. Its absence in some branches of the Church is the sign of the defectiveness of such parts.
Eternal Life:
Both the Scriptures and Tradition profess the belief in life after death and resurrection of the dead. The witness of apostles who saw Jesus resurrected has been a basis for the hope of universal resurrection. This hope has found its place in the liturgical and didactical life of the Church. Nevertheless, there is no clear teaching on the eternal life in the Bible. There is also no universally accepted teaching among Christians on this subject. Generally, most Christians confess and more or less agree on what the Apostle Creed says on the subject. Perhaps, it would be wise to define our development of the doctrine of the life after death outside of the Apostle Creed as mere speculations. These speculations may very well be not only beneficial, but even necessary for many reasons. However, the prudence of overstressing the mystery that lies beyond the death should be underlined.
Thus, while stressing our belief in concepts that we traditionally call “The resurrection”, “Day of Judgment”, “Heaven and Hell”, it would be wise to abstain from pinpointing their exact imagined by us or our predecessors properties. It is important not to mix the reality of the afterlife with speculations, based on historical, mythical, and cultural context of the present and the past. The “eternal life” exists beyond our time and the realm of the Transcendent is not possible to understand beyond metaphorical and symbolic language. It would not be unreasonable to speculate that the loving God would not condemn his creatures to the live of eternal suffering in the place we call “Hell”. It would also not be unreasonable to agree with Roman Catholics that the idea of the Purgatory is based on fundamental Christian belief in the God’s sacrificial love and the offer of redemption to souls, locked in self-centered grid of denial, refusal to see their true condition, and rejection of liberation through the union with God. Perhaps, the best literary imaginations of such state can be found in “Hois Clos” by Sartre and “The Great Divorce” by C.S.Lewis. Understandably, we can not build our theology based on the work of literary imagination. However, they are based on the understanding of our nature projections on the stubbornness of our ego and ever-existing possibility of liberation. At the end, if we accept the idea of Purgatory in some sense and degree, it would not be unreasonable to replicate Cardinal Bellarmine’s hope that the Purgatory is full and the Hell is empty.
We could also share the hopes of Hegelian optimism that at the end of the history, all created will be united with its Creator (Geist) in full reconciliation. At that time we would have an opportunity to participate in the “new creation” and become co-creators with God. Some hints of such cosmic unification and can be in Paul’s letter. However, after Wolfhart Pannengerg it should be stressed that it will be fully understood at the commutative point of the history. Until that time, we are left with our speculations and mystery of what lies ahead.