An Orthodoxy that Never Was

Like the last several years, I currently find myself a minority. I'm a white middle-class male, but I am a minority nonetheless, and not just in society, but in the church, perhaps especially in the church. I struggle with this. Frankly, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of having to defend myself from people who are clueless, but think they know because they've read the Bible once or prayed about it and have a "feeling." I'm tired of being on the outside. I don't really have a space in the church, at least locally. Conservatives think I'm too liberal and liberals think I'm too Orthodox, and I'm certainly not polite enough to be either and join them in their captivity to various cultural and political forces. My lack of space, and thus supportive community, sometimes makes me a bit cranky in "discussions," which often doesn't help my case.

I do resonate a lot with what's going on in the Emergent Church movement, less so because I'm influenced by them and more because I think we read the same people. I like what's going on there, most of it anyway. It's not totally united, and in some forms it seems to be just a repackaged evangelicalism. Same junk food in a shiny wrapper. No thanks. I don't want a new box. I want to ditch the refined sugars and have something hearty--organic, whole, and healthy spirituality.

Some of the irony of evangelicalism is that it's basically 80 years old, a reaction against the liberalism of the 19th-century. Though captive to modernity, it is awash in illogic. It's doctrines can't be reconciled, as it's critics often point out. My older brother is one such critic. He raises various objections, I explain them away using the skills I've acquired in my theological studies and he accuses me of remaking Christianity in my own image. Interesting. I don't. I have my methodologies. They're sound. But they lead to radically different conclusions than those drawn by evangelicalism. This doesn't make me unorthodox. In fact, I am quite orthodox. I really enjoy patristic and medieval theology, especially the early trinitarian stuff. The problem is that evengelicals don't read anything before the Jesus Movement. They don't know who the Cappadocian fathers are. They know Augustine by name, but that's it. Ironically, though sometimes accussed of not upholding Christian doctrine, I am much more orthodox in my christology and trinitarianism than most evangelicals. They dont' study, they read the Bible and know what it says. (They dont' intrepret because interpretation is the "traditions of man," failing to realize that their reading is itself an interpretation.)

This doesn't mean that I always agree with everything the Church catholic has professed. I'm a universalist ultimately (There is, however, a strong universalist tradition in pre-Constantine Christianity. In fact, it was not decided that eternal damnation was part of Chrsitian Orhtodoxy util 543, and then by a murderous Emperor, not theologians.). Why? Because God is love (I John 4:8), because Love keeps no record of wrongs (I Corinthians 13), and because our unfaithfulness will not nullify God's faithfulness (Romans 3:3). God will be our God and we will be God's people. God will love us without condition because that's what fathers do. My brother's death helped me see this more clearly. Even though he did drugs, drank, slept around and made choices that we weren't happy about, this doesn't mean that we didn't love him. We did, more than he realized. If we loved him, how much more so did God, who sees our pain and dysfunction and knows the roots behind the poor choices we make and the evil we do? God loved him through all his unfaithfulness. And even though my brother said he didnt' care what God thought, now he's with God. His pain is God; his dysfucntion is healed, and his tears are wiped away because that's who God is. God is Love.

Even in this I'm not alone. Origen of Lyons, Karl Barth, and Hans Urs Von Balthasaar are all Orthodox thinkers (though Origen was pre-orthodox) and are all univerasalists, though each may have different reasons. I understand objections. There are evil deeds done in our world. But instead of fighting and hating, what if we viewed the person who did these things as if they were our child or brother? Would we hate them? Not if we seek God. God's justice is reconcilation. As Paul tells us, we are agents of reconciliation so reconciliation is what we do. That doesn't mean that there is no hell, just that hell is "for a time" and will ultimately lead to purification and reconciliation. Such is the will of God.