My friend Steven Greydanus posted this question, offered his answer, and then invited others to respond. His answer is indented. My riff on his comment is below his:
How would you define Christianity?
Is Christianity “a God-revealed set of objective truths about the nature of God and the nature of man”? That’s one definition from Peter Kreeft, whose influence on my thought as a young man would be hard to overstate. (For the record, this is not the only way Kreeft has defined Christianity; for example, he has also said that “Christianity is God’s marriage proposal to the soul.”)
These words were quoted by Facebook friend, Jon Trott (another writer whose work, as it happens, played a less notable but still formative role in my thought as a young man). Jon quoted those words to dissent from them. In place of that definition, Jon proposes the following: “Christianity is following Christ.”
Jon has more to say about that; see the link in the first comment if you’re interested. Also if you’re interested, the contrast between Kreeft’s definition and Jon’s inspired me to write the following:
Christianity is seeking to follow Jesus Christ in the belief that, in Jesus’ life, teaching, death, and (so we believe) resurrection, the unfathomable Power behind the universe is actually, really and truly (one might say “objectively”) at work on behalf of all of humanity: communicating with us, insofar as we can possibly understand, the reality of who he is and what he wants for us; bridging in some way the infinite gap between our fallen finitude and his eternal perfection. And this, not just as one way among many, but in some ultimate and definitive way. It is to say that, while spiritual light and truth can certainly be found in all cultures and in all religious traditions, the light that enlightens every human being has in some way become known most fully and definitively for all humanity in an itinerant carpenter-rabbi from an obscure village in Galilee who made a bit of a stir for a few months or years and then ended his mortal days impaled on a Roman gibbet. It is the discovery that Jesus has brought God to us, and shows us the way to God, in fact *is* the way to God, more clearly and certainly than such a way can be found anywhere else. It is thinking, choosing, and living in this light.
That’s my definition, or one way I would define Christianity. Feel free to add yours below.
Any definition of Christianity that leans toward replacing the living flesh and blood Jesus with a diagram is one that is leaning toward idolatry. I don’t mind creeds, mind you, and think them necessary since the need of human beings for clarity is a fact of life. But the moment even the Creed turns into The Thing Believed In rather than a mere pointer to the One We Believe In is the moment fossilization is replacing the living breathing Jesus with cold stone. The position of the Creed in the liturgy is wise: it is always and only a prelude to and crude sketch of the living God we meet in the Eucharist, not the climax of the rite.
At present, we are living in the middle of a centuries-long schism (unintelligible to the authors of the New Testament] between believing things about Christ and obeying Christ. Jesus himself, of course, warns against calling him “Lord! Lord!” and not doing what he says, just as he warns those who imagine they can obey him without his help that “Apart from me you can do nothing”.
Paul likewise gets this, which is why, for him, the gospel is nothing other than the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5) and why he, no more than James can envision a faith that is purely about some abstract correct belief about Jesus separate from and at war with doing what Jesus commands. Salvation, in the New Testament, is the love of God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in union with his whole body throughout space and time, living and dead, expressing itself in concrete acts of love, particularly to the least of these, including even our enemies. Getting the Creed right is implicit in that, but maimed if it is not incarnate in love. Likewise, Doing Good Things is part of that, but maimed (and ultimately impossible) if severed from the God who is Love and incarnate in Christ Jesus. As Paul put it:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ¶ And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Co 13:1–3)
This organic unity between orthodoxy and orthopraxy is why Paul will likewise say we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (which makes it sound like we do everything) because it is God working in us to will and to do it (which makes it sound like God does everything). This organic unity is now habitually severed in a Church where many Christians say “It doesn’t matter what you believe out Jesus so long as you are nice” and many others say, “You can be as cruel as you like as long as you hold to a few credal statements and rub your Precious Feet Pin.”
That schism between right doctrine and loving practice must end if we are to be whole and the credibility of the Church’s witness is to be restored.
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4 Responses
I have a friend who commented that, “Nice isn’t a virtue.”
Yes, but Charity, Kindness, Patience and Temperance are, per the evolution of Pope Gregory I’s schema, all of which are parts of the modern conception of Nice.
One can make a career out of studying Virtue. Alasdair McIntyre has a chapter in his book “After Virtue” called “From the Virtues to Virtue and after Virtue.”
>>This organic unity is now habitually severed in a Church where many Christians say “It doesn’t matter what you believe out Jesus so long as you are nice”<<
If Christians in the above sentence would say "Virtuous" instead of "nice," then they would have a stronger argument, in my opinion. One can imagine many non-Christians, or non-Catholics, that could theoretically exhibit great virtue, greater than Christians or Catholics, even. I think Jesus would remember these people, when he came into his kingdom.
Pope St. John Paul II says, in his general audience address of 4 February 1998:
"Thus in the great religions, which the Church considers with respect and esteem in the way indicated by the Second Vatican Council, Christians recognize the presence of saving elements, which nevertheless operate in dependence on the influence of Christ’s grace. Therefore these religions can contribute, by virtue of the mysterious action of the Holy Spirit who “blows where he wills” (Jn 3:8), to helping men on their way to eternal happiness, but this role is also the fruit of Christ’s redemptive activity. Thus with regard to other religions, Christ the Saviour is also mysteriously at work. In this task he unites to himself the Church, which is in a way the “sacrament of communion with God and of unity among all men” (Lumen gentium, n. 1). "
I don’t worry about Christ and other religions. I have plenty to answer for myself, what I have done and failed to do.
Catholicism gives me a bedrock of facts and the lifeblood of the sacraments, but the WWJD? of a lot of other Christians smokes me out of my truth-smug Catholic lair.