I think therefore I am ? I believe Christ is God, therefore I am a Christian ?
Well, as St James says, even the demons believe. Indeed, they have a perfect theology.
"What if, instead of starting from the assumption that human beings are thinking things, we started from the conviction that human beings are first and foremost lovers?”
From James K.A. Smith's book "You Are What You Love"
"The key is to know that love is a habit, not merely a choice. ... Learning to love God is like learning to play Bach: it requires daily immersion in habits and practices that train the 'muscles' of my heart to desire, and thus do, what it ought."
Gracey Olmstead adds in her review.
Georges Florovsky writes,
“From the very beginning Christianity was not primarily a doctrine, but exactly a community. There was not only a Message to be proclaimed and delivered, and Good News to be declared. There was precisely a New Community, distinct and peculiar, in the process of growth and formation, to which members were called and recruited."
Florovsky's assessment highlights the priority of the ecclesial body over its own message and doctrine. The goal of early Christian preaching was not to establish and defend doctrine, but to inaugurate and develop a community of disciples.
As Francis Young points out, "religion" was not about doctrines or dogma's, but ritual. You shared a meal with your god, there was a communion, a give and take, perhaps even an exchange of life - bios, biological life, from flesh and blood, exchanged for the life of God, to ZOE, spiritual life.
His life for mine.
It is about initiation, not information.
Well, as St James says, even the demons believe. Indeed, they have a perfect theology.
"What if, instead of starting from the assumption that human beings are thinking things, we started from the conviction that human beings are first and foremost lovers?”
From James K.A. Smith's book "You Are What You Love"
"The key is to know that love is a habit, not merely a choice. ... Learning to love God is like learning to play Bach: it requires daily immersion in habits and practices that train the 'muscles' of my heart to desire, and thus do, what it ought."
Gracey Olmstead adds in her review.
Georges Florovsky writes,
“From the very beginning Christianity was not primarily a doctrine, but exactly a community. There was not only a Message to be proclaimed and delivered, and Good News to be declared. There was precisely a New Community, distinct and peculiar, in the process of growth and formation, to which members were called and recruited."
Florovsky's assessment highlights the priority of the ecclesial body over its own message and doctrine. The goal of early Christian preaching was not to establish and defend doctrine, but to inaugurate and develop a community of disciples.
As Francis Young points out, "religion" was not about doctrines or dogma's, but ritual. You shared a meal with your god, there was a communion, a give and take, perhaps even an exchange of life - bios, biological life, from flesh and blood, exchanged for the life of God, to ZOE, spiritual life.
His life for mine.
It is about initiation, not information.
Orthodoxy, as McGuckin writes, is not a “system of doctrines. . . . Orthodoxy is the living mystery of Christ’s pres ence in the world: a resurrectional power of life. It cannot be understood, except by being fully lived out.” He continues: “Our God is the One Who Is. When the disciple is in ontological harmony with this God, the disci ple also comes into life.”
Religion is a habitus, a disposition of the soul to be in the world a certain way.
The grammar of God is spoken in communal performance of song, praise, and thanksgiving.
James KA Smith says,
“Discipleship, becoming Christ-like, empowered by the Spirit to image God to the world is not magic. Nor is it merely intellectual. It’s a matter of re-forming our loves, re-narrativing our identities, re-habituating our virtue. And that is centered in the practices of the people of God gathered by the Spirit around Christ’s Word and the table.
Love takes practice. Worship is our gymnasium. . . .”
In liturgy, we are immersed in a narrative that shapes and forms the way we inhabit our lives.
James KA Smith ends with this :
That's why the Triune God doesn't just send us an "objective" Word; he sends his Son who, upon his ascension, imparts the Spirit who gives birth to a community of practice to enable us to read his world.
He doesn't just send us a message;he enfolds us into his body. And that body is the community of practice in which we learn to mean the world—the context in which we learn what the world is for.
Our seeing the world as a gift to be used is relative to our immersion in the Story in which that makes sense. The church is the language-game in which we learn to read the world aright.
The church is that"conventional"community in which the Spirit trains us to know the real world.
The grammar of God is spoken in communal performance of song, praise, and thanksgiving.
James KA Smith says,
“Discipleship, becoming Christ-like, empowered by the Spirit to image God to the world is not magic. Nor is it merely intellectual. It’s a matter of re-forming our loves, re-narrativing our identities, re-habituating our virtue. And that is centered in the practices of the people of God gathered by the Spirit around Christ’s Word and the table.
Love takes practice. Worship is our gymnasium. . . .”
In liturgy, we are immersed in a narrative that shapes and forms the way we inhabit our lives.
James KA Smith ends with this :
That's why the Triune God doesn't just send us an "objective" Word; he sends his Son who, upon his ascension, imparts the Spirit who gives birth to a community of practice to enable us to read his world.
He doesn't just send us a message;he enfolds us into his body. And that body is the community of practice in which we learn to mean the world—the context in which we learn what the world is for.
Our seeing the world as a gift to be used is relative to our immersion in the Story in which that makes sense. The church is the language-game in which we learn to read the world aright.
The church is that"conventional"community in which the Spirit trains us to know the real world.
Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen tells us :
“There is a temptation to reduce Orthodoxy, especially among young male converts, to a rational system of doctrines and dogmas, canons and rituals....
All these things, doctrines, dogmas, canons and so forth, are there in order to support one primary purpose: the transformation of our souls in theosis, in short, salvation.
Just because you have the right doctrine, pure dogmas and strict observance of the canons does not mean that you are deified. In fact, the great spiritual fathers all say that knowledge puffs up, inflates our ego, and inflames our passions. These things will not save you. They are the context for the spiritual struggle but are not its content....
The Fathers tell us, over and over, that until we have achieved a substantial degree of purification from the passions, we must not touch theology. In the early Church, the three year period of catechesis was primarily devoted to moral teaching from the Old Testament. You have to live Orthodox to understand the Faith.”
Question - is your quotation correct?
ReplyDelete"to enable us to read his world." - Should it be "word" instead of "world"?
I kind of like the former ("world") - but just wondered..
Thanks!
Yes, “world” is correct. The material practices of ritual precede and shape the subjectivity of adherents, making it possible to experience and construe the world in certain ways.
DeleteWe *all participate in some liturgical body - political, secular, or religious - that unconsciously forms how we receive the world. By participating in the rhythms of religious ritual we order our modes of perception to receive the world as sacrament.
However, a different communal body may have a different way of reading the world, with a different logic, and immerse your life in a different narrative to shape the habit of your mind to receive the world as, say, a burden….