Greetings in the Name of the Lord, 

Last week (here is the link) we explored some of the ways conflicts emerged within the early church. Much of our liturgy bears the marks of these old debates. The phrase we have been exploring the last few weeks to help us find possible pathways through our current era of polarization is certainly not immune: 

    We’ve explored how the term mystery, or mysterion in Greek, highlights Greek influences on the Jewish movement that was the early Church. In the Acts of the Apostles we can see the influence often in real time, as Paul was seeking to make allowances for Greek converts, while Peter and the rest of the church in Jerusalem often wanted to maintain Jewish Practices. But as time went on, the expansion of the Church into the Greek world led to debates well beyond Jewish practices, eventually interrogating a central tenant of the emerging Christian Church: Monotheism.

As the church grew and incorporated more cultures and viewpoints, much of the world outside of Judea still adhered to a pantheon of Gods. Monotheism was still a minority viewpoint and those in Jerusalem, more than anyone, wanted to maintain the centrality of monotheism at all costs. As Greek polytheism entered the picture, questions around the nature of Jesus started to come up, particularly about how he related to God the Father. Could the son of God, also be God? Surprisingly, for the first 250 years or so of the church there was not a lot of consensus on this, most likely because there was still not a great deal of formalization to the fledgling religion and a probable desire to maintain at least some sense of unity in the midst of so much diversity.

But as the Gnostics made more and more noise about the certainty of their secret knowledge there must have been increasing disruptions to the sense of unity in the Church. At first, out of a desire to find general theological agreement on major questions that were arising, Church leaders began to tackle some of these major issues and try and find common ground on them. Since the Gnostics made such a big deal about knowledge, it is not a stretch to think that the more rigorous theology that began to emerge was very much a direct response to the enduring tenacity of the Gnostics. I have to imagine that at some level there was a desire to “beat” them at their own game and philosophize the Gnostics away into oblivion.

As debate became more formalized, one argument in particular started to become very problematic for the early church.  Right around 300 CE the question of what Jesus’ true nature was started to become more and more contentious. Since the Church had always insisted on monotheism in the face of Greek Influence many thought that allowing for anything else would tear the church apart.  Was Jesus a God separate from the Father, was Jesus the same or similar to the Father, was Jesus a lesser being like an angel or maybe simply a prophet? Much of the debate got bogged down in semantics and what specific word would go on to explicitly define Christ.  The biggest debates came down to the Greek words homoousios and homoiousios, the first meaning “of the same substance” the latter meaning “of similar substance”. Look closely, and you will notice only one letter difference, an i or iota as it is known in Greek, hence this is where we come up with the phrase “one iota’s difference”.  

These two terms may only have one letter difference, but it was a big debate. If the Church suggested anything other than monotheism, how would it survive? Amid all this, in 313, the Roman Empire decided to formally accept Christianity, which led to increased formality across the Church as a whole. This formality was made clear, when in 325, Roman Emperor Constantine himself called together Church leaders to the Council of Nicaea in an effort to figure the whole mess out. Let me note that this whole mess is referred to today as the “Arian Controversy” in case you want to do more reading on the subject independently.

Unfortunately, the Council of Nicaea ended up making things worse and the debate only got fiercer. Over the next 55 years the greatest theologians of the day tried to make a clear and explicit case for their views on the nature of Christ. Opposing factions oscillated in and out of popular favor as their leaders were exiled, welcomed home and exiled again. The arguments presented were rooted in logic, rhetoric, dialectical debate (think platonic philosophy) and even on occasion math.  All these approaches, the day’s standard for determining a victor within a given debate, were failing to end this particular argument.

I have to be careful here because I wrote a paper on this subject in Seminary, and could go on for quite a while about the ins and outs here, but I think it is important to try and get to the resolution here as quickly as we can.

Interestingly enough, in the end the debate was never “really” settled--at least not in the finite way theologians had been trying to settle it for a generation. The theologian Gregory of Nazianzus was able to show that the logic of the group claiming Jesus was of a lesser substance than God (the Arians) was in fact absurd. It was this argument to absurdity that essentially ended the debate. But it did not yet provide a clear explanation of how exactly to understand Christ’s nature and which specific word, homoousios or homoiousios, was the definitive one.

What ended up happening was that Gregory was able to move past the either/or nature of the debate that directed things for decades and lean into the emerging theology of the Trinity. In the midst of what was proving to be an intractable two-sided debate, a third way emerged. It was there that Gregory really broke through, not by providing explicit answers, but by leaning into the mystical elements of Christianity. Instead of trying to solve it like a math problem, Gregory was able to hand the argument over to God and encourage everyone to trust in the concept of a Triune God. 

If you have ever tried to explain the Trinity to a confirmation class or a particularly inquisitive non-Chrisitan, you can appreciate that it is not a doctrine that provides explicit and finite answers. Instead, it relies on one’s ability to have a sense of God, a knowledge of God, acquired through encounter, through the third mystery: contemplation—silent meditation, stillness and prayer seeking presence in the Divine. It takes being able to appreciate that God is beyond what we can rationally know and a trust in the Triune God offered amid the great poetry of the Gospels.  

If anything, Gregory codified the mystical understanding of God into the foundations of Christianity. I like to think of this shift as one from a Church often caught in either/or dilemmas to one that fully embraced the yes/and nature of God. Yes, God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Each time we affirm the Triune God, we tip our hat to Gregory and the gift he offers the church. In the process he helped place the Gnostics firmly outside the mainstream. Both the Gnostics and the Arians were deemed heretics by the relatively new organizational structure of the Church. The Mystics’ embrace of a yes/and infinite God beyond our rational understanding moved the Church beyond the formulaic, explicit, either/or, quasi-mathematical, borderline magical approach of the Gnostics, an approach that often leads to a finite and limited either/or God.

Next week we will delve more in the finer points of Christian Mysticism, how it stands in contrast with most contemporary definitions of mysticism and explore how it might provide healing for a world that seems to be coming apart at the seams. But as we close this week and reflect on Church history, this historical narrative highlights the commitment and the work of the Church Fathers, individuals who endeavored to formulate a religion that would magnify Christ’s Love, not limit it. It can be so easy to look back at Church history as nothing more than a bunch of edicts and esoteric dogmas that have little relevance to the Church today, but we can see here the crucible in which the foundations of the Church were formed. The liturgies, histories and institutional structures we are left with did not arrive in the world polished and complete but were formed through prayer and dedication and a willingness to let God in and transform.  What has been passed down was intended as loving guides towards a deeper relationship with God, not as barriers intended to close ourselves in.

As Reformed Protestants, we also understand that the Church is reformed and always being reformed by God. We can treasure these ancient artifacts peppered throughout our tradition, but still need to hold them, responsibly, respectfully and prayerfully, up to the refining light of Christ’s Love, because just as what was handed down to us was passed through the refiners fire of real world debate, we are similarly called to continually engage and refine our traditions prayerfully, knowing it is never truly finished, that it is always a work in progress. It highlights the great responsibility we have been endowed with as well and hopefully reminding us to always commit to maintaining the integrity of a Church rooted in the very Love of God made manifest in Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.
In Peace,
Mike