From the Rector's Desk

Dear friends,

Sometimes some very interesting questions are asked at the vestry on call table in the parish hall. Sometimes we get complaints, sometimes we get compliments, sometimes we get penetrating, absorbing questions. One such series of questions was recently handed to me by one of the vestry members. They were theological questions of a fairly deep nature, so I thought I might answer them in this venue, hoping that the person who posed them would read this and that others might find the responses interesting.

One question was whether or not it is possible for Christians to recognize other “sons of God” such as Buddha or Abraham. The short answer is either “no” or “depends on what you mean.”

The easy answer is this one: The idea of Son of God, in the sense that Jesus was described as the Son of God, is a uniquely Christian concept. Other religions, such as Buddhism, do not believe in that concept. Such religions have teachers and sages, sometimes prophets, but they do not use the term “son of God” to describe, in any unique and particular way, a figure in their own religion. Therefore it would be arrogant and somewhat disrespectful for Christians to apply these terms to their religion. Respect for other religions should begin with an honest assessment of what other faiths actually believe, and should not consist, in my view, of trying to squeeze other religious traditions into our terminology. If, for example, one wants to take a close look at Buddhism, which is not a bad idea, we should begin by looking at what they actually teach. And we find that they do not have a figure that they consider in any way to be the son of God. We might go on to discover that some forms of Buddhist prayer and meditation are in fact very similar to Christian practices. But it is not at all productive to try to apply our theological categories to their belief system. If Abraham were to walk onto the scene, he would be horrified if anyone presumed to call him the son of God. No good Jew could assent to that designation. Among other things, Jesus’ assertion that he was the son of God is what got him in trouble with the Jewish religious authorities of his day, so that designation is probably not one we would want to try to impose upon Jewish theology either.

The better response is to try to take other theological systems on their own footings and learn what they have to say to us.

On the other hand, if you mean by “son of God” that all men and women have a common connection to God, then the Christian faith has a different answer. There are two kinds of “sons of God.” Those by nature and those by adoption (you can see the parallels to domestic family life here.) In the Christian view of things, the only one who is son of God by nature, comes naturally to the status, is Jesus. But Paul the Apostle, probably the greatest theologian in the church, pointed out that all of us can become adopted sons and daughters of God. Such adoption comes by faith. So, anyone who has faith in God is potentially a son or daughter of God—faith constitutes the adoption papers incorporating one into the family of God as a son or a daughter.

I think that it is best to be somewhat agnostic about who, in the eyes of God, is his son or his daughter. We know by 2000 years of Christian teaching that our baptism confers upon us that gift of sonship and daughterhood. But the Christian faith was formed at a time and a place when attitudes about other religions were very different—even regularly hostile. The world is now different. When asked about whether a pious Buddhist can be a son or daughter of God, my answer is that this is God’s business. It would be my hope that the world become Christian, but that is not likely to happen very soon, and I am content to pray that it will happen and that meanwhile God may well be working in other traditions to draw “all men to himself” as the prayer book puts it.

And then someone asked if we believe what we say in the Nicene Creed. Yep. It is the truth. I am convinced of that and the words of that creed and the apostles’ creed come to mean more to me with every passing year of my life. My whole journey of faith has led me to a deeper and deeper conviction that the folks who compiled these documents were men, and possibly women, of deep, accurate, passionate faith, and their words claim and compel me.

But, that said, creeds have their own language. Credal language is the language of poetry and metaphor as well as theology and history. Christians don’t believe that Jesus came “down from heaven” in the sense that I might come down to Baltimore to see some friends. Spacial metaphors often need to be reinterpreted. Credal language is often poetic. We say that Jesus is “light from light” but we are not saying that Jesus is a 200 watt bulb. We speak of Jesus as light because light shows truth, exposes sin, illuminates beauty, draws one’s attention and creates warmth—all of which are concepts or activities Christians believe to be true about God. We call Jesus “begotten not made” because Jesus represents the initiative of God, reproducing himself to live among us rather than being a result of ordinary human activity. We say he is “of one substance with the father” because we believe, to paraphrase the old Coca-Cola ad, that Jesus is “the real thing”—he is well and truly God.

And so on. Credal language is truth, but it is truth revealed in several media. Some of it is historical (even Pontius Pilate, a historical figure, wends his way into the story) some of it is metaphorical, some of it is written in imagery and symbol.

Credal language is meant to be provocative language—not in the sense that we should fight about it, but that it should provoke us to thought, reflection, and action. Thought, in that it should stimulate our intellect. Reflection, in that it should spark our creativity. Action, in that it should drive us to better the world in which we live—a world which we say, in the creed, that God loved enough to die for.

Interesting questions shared over a cup of decaf and a small Danish. It just goes to show that one never knows what might be asked of the Church, and as Paul put it, we should always be ready to give an account of the faith that is in us.

Faithfully,

The Rev’d Lloyd E. Prator
Rector