Wacky! Nutty! (Words of the shallow, concern troll modern theologians)
An email exchange:
Me:
I've been reading Bullinger's Decades. Written in Shakespeare's day. Look at this paragraph on sacraments:
"The ancient writers therefore applied this word symbol to our sacraments, because they represent and show us the exceedingly great and deep mysteries of God. They are allegorical and enigmatic, hard and dark to understand. And lastly, by the institution of his sacraments, the Lord himself has bound himself to us; and by partaking them, we in turn bind ourselves to him and to all the saints, testifying and openly professing to fight stoutly and valiantly under the Lord's banner."
The deep mystery of the sacraments is this: to be given by the Holy Spirit to see them as the two conscious shocks: Conscious Labor, Intentional Suffering. Let's not be fearful of going with what we've come to learn.
As for Church, it too has higher meaning once you make contact via the two conscious shocks.
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Simon of Australia:
As soon as they say deep mysteries, I always instantly think Ouspensky Fourth Way...
Maybe this is why valuation of the Work is stressed so often. Not only so that you'll do it, but because others yearned for the knowledge you have in your hand. They sensed that it was there but it eluded them.
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Me:
Exactly what I was thinking as I wrote that.
I like these older theologians. Many of the truths they taught, or alluded to, have been waved off my modern, more shallow theologians.
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Simon of Australia:
>>Many of the truths they taught, or alluded to, have been waved off my modern, more shallow theologians.
You can see the hand of the Devil in that... It is, actually, putting man above God to "wave off the mystery"...
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Me:
And to use a modern phrase, these modern theologians play the role of concern trolls. They're concerned that "lay people" can't handle such things. We'll go off into silly realms. Get wacky and nutty. Etc. Not that they understand the deeper meanings themselves.
The concern troll theologians then inevitably veer into liberal theology one way or another. They don't value the basics.
As a true Christian you have to get experiential with the basics. (You also have to believe in the supernatural and sin and little things like that which embarrass modern theologians who fear the opinion of the world and the opinion of their academic peers more than they fear God.)
3 Comments:
OK, I laid it on a little thick in my critique of the modern theologians (whom I definitely learn a great deal from), but there is a real, valid critique there.
We're told to stay to the old paths for many reasons; and the first and second generation Reformed theologians are quite different from the moderns. I use to say Calvin was a barefoot mystic compared to Reformed theologians today.
Bullinger in his Decades has a style of writing that is bracing and inspiring. It has a stormy spiritual warfare atmosphere to it. You feel when reading him and the church fathers he quotes how these biblical doctrines are epic and serious and historical and foundational. You see it in the higher realms.
Calvin's Institutes and Ursinus' Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism are similar. Yet I can see why the Decades were more popular in England back then than even the Institutes.
When reading or listening to the current day theologians, I get a sense that they enjoy the intellectual challenges and sparing more than anything. Whilst that's helpful in the beginning because it can motivate you, they never seem to get serious about studying and doing what God, through scripture, requires of us. They don't actually do God's Will for us in real time, it never becomes real for them, they don't ever get to own their knowledge, it's something to be done later or it's not even part of their faith in any sustained or serious way. They are still largely worldly men who have yet to be enlightened to those deeper mysteries of God.
Here are some verses and a comment I wrote in my study book the other day:
Luke 13:26-27 NKJV
then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ [27] But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’
They were the hearers, not the doers of His Word. Obedience of the implanted Word is what separates the wheat from the chaff. Obedience of the Word is evidence of our regeneration and true faith (not the means of salvation). Obedience of the Word flows from true faith.
James 1:22-25 NKJV
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. [23] For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; [24] for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. [25] But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
W.
The spiritual battlefield also forces doing, or action. Regeneration puts us on that spiritual battlefield whether we want it or not. Then Jesus' teachings such as be awake and love your enemy become tactics of war. Those teachings are off the radar of systematic theology. There is a category of theology called practical theology, but the academics have turned it into 'advice for pastors.'
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