Am curious as to the thoughts of clergy on the following: 10 years ago I set out on a search to discover what it mean to be a Christian in light of the fact that Christianity involved specific beliefs and practices as the result of a conscious awareness of a deeper reality to existence. At the time my Christian faith and my life were in conflict, so I set about reading to discover just what Christianity is in its essence and what a Christian is in his/her essence. Gradually I learnt that a Christian was a mystic, a saint, a servant, a pilgrim, a disciple, a person of prayer, compassion, wisdom, hope, faith, purity, humility, and ultimately love, whose love for ones fellow human beings as brothers and sisters in Christ/Children of God manifested itself through the acts of chairty that you mention. But I soon also learnt that few Christians were that ideal, meaning that a Christian - in that full sense of how I understood it - was something to which we aspired to through grace from our vocation at Baptism. It was not something we became straight away by virtue of baptism. It was not something we became by our own good deeds. It was not something we were when our lives were contrary to that ideal, immersed in hatred, gossip, jealousy, bitterness, anger, malice, pride, etc. So I carried on reading and learnt that there were people who called themselves Christians not because they believed the depth of the Christian Faith as I was discovering it to be, but because they were baptised as a child, or because they went to mass one a year at Christmas, or because they like to think they were a good person, or simply because they believe in the existence of God as understood in the Christian tradition of God as being a compassionate Father. Then I discovered Deification/Theosis (Google it) and the theology that suggested a person becomes a Christian by affiliation at Baptism and grows to a more mature and fuller Christian through conforming to/growing into/being transformed into, the likeness of Christ, towards an ever greater perfection that were called and exhorted to (Matthew 5:48, Hebrews 6:1, Ephesians 1:4, 1 Thessalonians 3:13, 1 Thessalonians 5:23), and thus enabled to achieve through the One Who calles us to it. Which means to be filled with the selfless and sacrificial love of God as manifested in the life of Christ. That this was not something we do, but rather something which is done to us though the sacramental life of the Church. As Athanasius concluded, the “Son of God became son of man, so that the sons of men, that is, of Adam, might become sons of God...partakers of the life of God...thus he is Son of God by nature, and we by grace”. So yes, I do differentiate between forms of Christian. Because by their fruits we shall know them, and that there are many who shall say Lord, Lord but who are not known by Him. At no point though do I place myself or anyone else comparatively to another - to do so would be, I believe, judgemental. But I certainly do say when required that this or that (for example the hatred of ones enemies) simply isnt Christian in the ideal sense or in any other sense. And do not excuse myself from often having to be reminded that my own behaviour/thoughts/desire is un-Christian and in need of amending through Gods grace, if I am to reach that idea state of perfection in God which characterises the ideal/ultimate Christian, that Christ enables us to achieve though the Spirit and through union with Him who has transformed our fallen nature, and enabled us to rise above our falleness with Him. ( 1 Corinthians 3:18, Ephesians 4:11-13) . As Eric Mascall so adaquetly put it: Being a Christian is an ontological fact, resulting from an act of God [...] The Christian is a person to whom something has happened, something moreover which is irreversible and which penetrates to the very roots of their being: they have been re-created in, and into, Christ [...] Becoming a Christian means being re-created by being incorporated into the glorified manhood of the ascended Christ, so that, in the words of the Epistle to the Ephesians, we are raised up with him and made to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus”. Thus a Christian is one by nature, and one who has entered into that life of God and thus shares in that nature of love which God is. Love is not what we must do, but what we must be and who we must be.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 01:16:00 +0000
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