Dionysius, the self-professed convert of Paul, has helped shape one point of view. The true Dionysius, noted in Acts 17:34, isn’t known to us beyond his cameo Bible reference.  But a much later figure who borrowed the name and identity of Dionysius is critical to the question.  He was able to offer a version of God that still has broad credibility by using his ‘borrowed’ affiliation with Paul to speak with New-Testament-like authority.

Today this figure is known as Pseudo-Dionysius.  He was, in fact, a 6^th century philosopher who did much to import Neo-Platonism into Christianity.  His actual inspiration wasn’t Paul but Proclus (410-485) who relied, in turn, on Plotinus (205-270)—both of whom were not Christians.

This is tedious stuff for non-historians, I’m sure, but the question of what God is like is important.  And Pseudo-Dionysius plays a larger role in our modern conception of God than most of us know.  This, in turn, calls for a bit of patient curiosity, so please track with me as we note three other important figures.

A Greek Orthodox leader in the 7^th century, Maximus the Confessor (580-662), was quickly convinced that Pseudo-Dionysius was the actual New Testament convert of Paul.  He, in turn, did much to shape today’s Orthodox liturgy—of worship-as-ascent—based on what he took from Pseudo-Dionysius.

Another convert was the Brit, Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c.815-c.877), who carried Dionysian views into Latin-speaking realms.  His efforts helped develop Roman Catholic mysticism that, like Orthodoxy had already done, followed the Dionysian call to a three-step ascent into God.  This was the pathway of purgation, illumination, and union: an approach to spirituality that is gaining momentum today.

A third major convert to Ps. Dionysius calls for special notice: Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).  Aquinas is important because he offered the most elaborate and compelling blend of Greek classical theology/philosophy—with Aristotle as a guiding light—and medieval Christian faith.

A number of recent scholars—promoters of Post-Reformation Protestant Scholasticism—have shown that today’s Reformed theology is a slightly enhanced reprise of what Thomas once taught.  And they’re right.  For many—but not all—in the Reformed tradition today it’s as if the early Reformation never occurred.  Thomistic themes still reign in defining faith.

To be clear, the evidence is compelling that Martin Luther and John Calvin were repelled by the Thomistic package and meant to overthrow it—and many Puritans, including Richard Sibbes, agreed with these reformers—but that’s another story.

What we want to note here is that Thomas relied heavily on Aristotle for his methodology and his ethical framing of salvation, but many of his most significant assumptions about who God is came from Pseudo-Dionysius.  A formal historical study by Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas, charts this.

For the sake of space let’s take up just one feature: the question of where our assumptions about God begin.  Where did Aquinas start—as do many Christians today—in thinking about God?  He followed Ps. Dionysius by portraying God as utterly different from the creation. So much so that God is ultimately beyond reach.  Here is Aquinas speaking in the Summa Contra Gentiles (as offered in O’Rourke, 54-55):

“. . . he [God] is super-eminent over other things and set apart from all.  And this is the ultimate and most perfect limit of our knowledge in this life, as Dionysius says in the Mystical Theology, ‘We are united with God as the unknown.’  Indeed, this is the situation, for, while we know of God what he is not, what he is remains wholly unknown.”

Aquinas, with Dionysius, adopts an incommensurability of knowing: a complete resignation about ever knowing God as he really is.  Instead we are left knowing him only “through his effects” as the One who causes all that is, but exists outside all that is.

What kind of God emerges from this starting point?  One very different from the God who offers himself in the Bible!

Let’s spurn philosophical speculations about the nature of being and essential divinity for a moment and ask what God reveals about himself at the beginning of Scriptures.  If we allow God the privilege of disclosing whatever he/she/it may want to disclose of [him]self we find a startling reality: “Us”.

As in the one God saying in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” And then, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

What we can start with is a single God who exists in a wondrous communion as “Us” and that this “Us” generated another “us”—that is, humanity, including the readers of the Bible.  And the fact that God birthed us out of his own communion tells us of his priority to engage us in some sort of commensurate bond of knowing and sharing.  And his name is Jesus who now reveals his Father by the ministry of his Spirit.

There’s much more to say, of course, but let’s be sure we start where we’re meant to start.  With a God whom the Elder disciple was speaking of when he twice said in 1 John 4 that, “God is love.”  This love is the bond in the originating Us who now shares it with any of us who receive his love and respond.

If only Thomas had started with the Son—who offers real Love as an ultimate starting point—in place of Ps. Dionysian and Neo-Platonic speculations about the unknowable One, many might have a more satisfying and winsome faith today.

Thankfully it’s not too late to reconsider: to enjoy the God who is known as a Triune Us and who tells us he loves us.

The post Where Should We Start? first appeared on Cor Deo.

“Cynicism is taught in our schools, embraced by our culture, and lifted up as ideal.  It seems insidious to me.  Somehow these dulled, partial truths often feel more real to me than the truths taught by Scripture.  It is easier for me to feel skepticism and nothing than to feel deep passion.  So cynicism takes root and ‘feels’ more real to me than truth.  I know that I am not alone in my struggle with cynicism.  But most of us are not aware that it is a problem, or that it is taking hold in our hearts.  It just feels like we can’t find the joy in things, like we are too aware to trust or hope.”

Miller goes on to resonate with these words from his friend, as he states,  “Cynicism creates a numbness toward life.”  How true this is.  Somehow there is an air of sophistication in some Christian circles today that scoffs at others, at their theology, their practice, their hope, their lack of sophistication.  Yet this is not living.  It is the pseudo-action of being on the sidelines, protected from hurt, but paralysed from doing anything.  Back to Miller:

“To be cynical is to be distant.  While offering a false intimacy of being “in the know,” cynicism actually destroys intimacy.  It leads to a creeping bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit.”

Yet in contrast, he goes on to state,

“A praying life is just the opposite.  It engages evil.  It doesn’t take no for an answer. The psalmist was in God’s face, hoping, dreaming, asking.  Prayer is feisty.  Cynicism, on the other hand, merely critiques.  It is passive, cocooning itself from the passions of the great cosmic battle we are engaged in.  It is without hope.”

Somehow I doubt that the world is watching most of the church and pondering what is the reason for the hope that is in us.  It seems to have been squeezed out somewhere along the line.  But hope is a far greater feature of the character of God than cynicism.  Somehow we need to dare to look at God’s heart and allow our hearts to be stirred with hope again.  Just imagine the implications in our prayer lives, in our churches, in our giving, in our involvement in missions, in our families, in our conversations, in our responses to the broken world we live in.

As Paul wrote, ‘may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.’ (Rom.15:13)

Am I just being cynical by observing a lack of hope in many today?  What do you think?

The post And the Opposite of Hope Is…? first appeared on Cor Deo.

So I’m struck as I read in the Old Testament and then in the New Testament about the New Covenant.  Set in the context of thousands of years of anticipation, to finally be living in the era of the New Covenant must have been very exciting!  But I suspect that I’m not the only one who sometimes takes the New Covenant for granted?

Think about the New Covenant blessings that we enjoy today, but perhaps we don’t enjoy enough. We have our sins forgiven, and there is no ongoing ritual in relation to our sin – it is dealt with.  We have hearts of flesh instead of stone.  We have the law written on our hearts instead of inscribed on stone.  We have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit – all of us believers, from the moment of new birth, unendingly!  Oh, and what about the notion of people truly “knowing the Lord”… personal, genuine relationship!  The indwelling Spirit empowers us to fulfill the “new commandment.”  Sins forgiven, indwelling Spirit, beating heart, personal relationship, love God, love others, it is all so relational and so very much, well, so alive!

The longest quote in the New Testament is about the New Covenant.  I could fill up the word count for this post with Bible references alone.  And yet how easily it becomes the Familiar Covenant for us.

To be honest, I understand the feeling of fresh fading into familiar, I go there myself all too easily.  Sins forgiven, indwelling Spirit, a heart beating for God, yes, but the pulse can drop all too easily.

What I don’t understand is when Christians seem to almost forsake it and yearn for the Old Covenant.  Why would we do that?  Nostalgia?  Misunderstanding?  Recalcifying hearts?  I suppose a retreat into the old allows for God to be kept at a safe distance, and for my spirituality to be about my own efforts . . . but why?

When he speaks of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete (Heb.8:13).  May God reignite our hearts with the thrill of the New Covenant!

The post Covenants Familiar and Forsaken first appeared on Cor Deo.