Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, England, said in a recent visit to Nashville that tensions among Anglicans must be resolved soon.
“We cannot afford to have again the same sort of five years we have just had,” he said. “It has been hugely costly ”” financially, humanly and in terms of our witness.”
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church believes the Anglican Communion will not find peace and unity until feuding members set aside their theological differences and focus on something more important ”” like saving the world.
“There is communion and unity when people are focused in the needs of others,” said Jefferts Schori during a visit to Middle Tennessee last week. “When they are focused on their own doctrinal differences, that is when life is more challenging.”
[blockquote]Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church believes the Anglican Communion will not find peace and unity until feuding members set aside their theological differences and focus on something more important — like saving the world.[/blockquote]
“like saving the world.”
Hmmm…not to knitpick but I thought that was God’s job.
Yes, saving the world IS important, but Schori seems to forget that saving souls should never have been put on the back burner……as she has done.
Cennydd, saving the world is saving souls for those of us trying to follow the Faith once delivered – see #1.
I notice that Kathy does not define “save” – from what, to what, dear?
Darn it, we’re back to those pesky theological differences – maybe because your view of God is in fact your view of life?
Two religions…
Been a long six months since 2003 ain’t it?! Where’s Frank and Edmund when you need ’em? Or the ABC for that matter?
Why can’t we all just get along and follow the inspired leadership of the Presiding Bishop? (sarcasm off)
I think that Bishop Wright — again — is unaware of the leadership of TEC and its goals and values.
When he says “”We cannot afford to have again the same sort of five years we have just had” just who is “we”?
TEC leadership is more than willing to have “the same sort of five years we have just had” and another and another and another. in fact — they are counting on it.
I’ll keep saying it, although what I say has no effect or standing. But conservatives continue to not be able to grasp the goals, values, vision, and gospel of the progressive Episcopal activists. And as a result they continue to be oblivious as to strategic and tactical actions.
The Episcopal Church at its highest national level is well-prepared to “have another five years” like the last five. They are counting on it. They are ready. They are willing and able.
So . . . given their willingness, I think that Bishop Wright and others are going to have to have another plan in mind than “let’s all pull together and come to some conclusions and not have another five years like the last five.”
Obviously our PB has never read St. Matthew 7:21-23 – in her mad dash into oblivion she has ignored the reality that grapes will never grow from her thorn bush of inclusivity!
[blockquote] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church believes the Anglican Communion will not find peace and unity until feuding members set aside their theological differences and focus on something more important — like saving the world. [/blockquote]
This is like an abusive husband saying we will never have peace in a marriage until my wife lets me have my affairs and let’s me get drunk and beat her.
The article is a one-sided liberal puff piece, which does not address any concerns reasserters have. It quotes only the liberal side.
If the entrenched Episcopal Church leadership wants less divisiveness, they need to stop the lawsuits and stop insisting on their own way. If they continue the way they are going, the church will continue to shrivel up.
We’ll get there quicker if we all stay in the same handbasket.
“Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church believes the Anglican Communion will not find peace and unity until feuding members set aside their theological differences and focus on something more important — like saving the world.”
How quickly we forget that in and through Jesus Christ God has already saved the world. But as Bishop Wright would say, Christ’s victory needs to implemented – which is where the church comes in. Our primary task is not to help people in need as important as that is. As we heard in today’s Gospel it’s to make disciples who will obey all that Jesus commanded. This is what a groaning creation waits for and most longs to see.
How do we help others – “like saving the world” – when we cannot help ourselves? With out a common mission theology, a common theology, we cannot have communion and unity. Witness the last five years. And I agree with Sarah, #6, only it is too late: there are not enough left with enough energy to fight or want to fight now that options are clearly available. That time has come – maybe – and long gone – in fact!
People in power love to say,
“TRUST US. And if you you care about mission, stop asking these divisive questions.”
Bullies in power love to say,
“When will you stop your hateful little snit and TRUST US?”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
But how can any well-informed Anglican trust KJS?
— Her theology is shot through with heresy.
— She preaches strict enforcement of church rules but twists them as she pleases.
— She has a shallow, quasi-secularist understanding of mission. She does not believe in evangelism. She fosters harsh, vindictive lawsuits that will ultimately damage ECUSA even more than they harm departing dioceses and congregations.
Trust her? Not unless she profoundly repents.
This is more of the same and does not deserve our attention. The problem is that California has given her the evidence she wants that the Holy Ghost is on her side. Her single-minded pursuit will only intensify. She is here trying to deflect all that has gone wrong with TEC, but no one is going to give this credence – save her true believers. LM
Please see David Handy’s comment on earlier entry Different Californians respond differently to California ruling (or something like that). It is comment #16. This entry above demands that we ask ourselves what can be done,given the kind of threat that Schori and her cultural cohort pose. + Handy stakes out an important position, and I do hope others will comment on it because we are watching a slow poison drip into the spiritual bloodstream of an entire culture, and Christianity – the Anglicans in our case at hand – is expending its energies in talk. We need new and vigorous approaches, not a new Bible as Schori desires. And I hope he will expand on precisely what he has in mind. Larry
Yes, let’s set aside those doctrinal differences. Let’s set aside God, the incarnation, the bodily resurrection, holy writ and most especially the cross. These are all after thoughts anyway, aren’t they? Made up in the minds of the Jesus’ followers. We know so much better now. We are so much more enlightened. The ‘real’ work is saving the world and of course, we can do through endless litigation. We can continue to demonstrate Christianity to the world by making sure people see no difference in the way the church behaves as opposed to the world. We need to make sure we lead people believe in nothing of any consequence or in the very least what they themselves design. After all, God blesses everyone and everything we think, say and do. As long as we all agree on our irrelevance, it will set the world free. Thanks again, PB, what stellar advice.
Oh help.
Is there no end to this?
Ross52 [#11] writes: “How quickly we forget that in and through Jesus Christ God has already saved the world. But as Bishop Wright would say, Christ’s victory needs to [be] implemented – which is where the church comes in.”
Um, sure — the same way that the U.S. has already won in Iraq; it’s just that our victory needs to be implemented. Talk about the emperor’s new clothes.
What’s tragic is that soteriology like this gives non-Christians such an easy excuse for rejecting the message Jesus preached: If God has already saved the world in and through Jesus, then why are so many people and things in it still so messed up? It brings to mind the childhood taunt: If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?
I submit that the church’s problems can be traced far more to reasserters’ demand of homage to this discredited soteriology, than to reappraisers’ desire to focus instead on saving the world bit by bit through things like feeding the hungry, nursing the sick, etc.
#17, D.C. Toedt:
I wonder what your understanding of Bishop Wright’s soteriology is, since you critique it so strongly (perhaps, on the other hand, you were merely criticizing the short summary in the comment and not the good Bishop’s more detailed understandings). I’d also be curious to know what your understanding of soteriology is if it doesn’t include Jesus’ victory through the Cross and resurrection. I can’t help but hear echoes of Nietzsche in your post.
Since D. C. Toedt and his “church” are the only ones who are apparently going to establish the kingdom, one wonders what they need God or Jesus for at all.
Perhaps you elves won’t mind if I digress just a tad here. Let’s suppose that a constitutional amendment banning gay “marriage: makes it on to the ballot here in California in November and is passed by the voters. What do you suppose Schori’s reaction to that will be?
#17, DC – then do you believe Jesus’ mission was a failure since Romans continued to run roughshod over Israel and other occupied peoples? What kind of salvation did Jesus accomplish, if at all, for it certainly was not geo-political? Bp Wright believes Jesus did achieve salvation those three days, something that made landing on the beaches of Normandy look like a game of paintball.
#6, Sarah, I think the “we” in the Bp Wright quote (assuming it is correct), is probably the Anglican Communion as a whole. He is speaking as a Christian and an Anglican leader and I believe he understands TEC’s strategy more than he lets on. On the other hand, I think it is difficult for most non-NA Anglicans (conservative or liberal) to fully comprehend that the leadership of TEC now rotates around another theological universe of meaning and that the real battle is about first order theological issues.
Tory — thank you for this line: “the leadership of TEC now rotates around another theological universe of meaning”.
It is so descriptively accurate.
“The leadership of TEC now rotates around another theological universe of meaningâ€
It’s a good phrase but overly generous. “Universe of meaning” does not do justice to the shallowness of KJS and so many of her allies.
It was nice that the full article includes this quote:
[blockquote]
Bishop John Bauerschmidt, of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee, said while Anglicans should work together on aid projects, they must also find some common theological ground.”This is important and crucial work,” Bauerschmidt said. “But agreement on the things that make a common life of faith possible is necessary if the church is to move forward together as a community.”
[/blockquote]
This quote is a rebuttal of Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori’s argument that we need to set aside theology in order to unify around good deeds.
Jody+ [#18] writes: “I’d also be curious to know what your understanding of soteriology is if it doesn’t include Jesus’ victory through the Cross and resurrection.”
Tory [#21] writes: “… do you believe Jesus’ mission was a failure since Romans continued to run roughshod over Israel and other occupied peoples? What kind of salvation did Jesus accomplish, if at all, for it certainly was not geo-political?”
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If Jesus thought of his mission as that of liberating Israel from worldly oppression and ushering in God’s reign: then yes, that mission was an utter, abject, desperate, and miserable failure. To refuse to face that fact is to live in a fantasy world.
If Jesus thought of his mission as that of bringing eternal life to all who believed in him: we have just about as much reliable evidence that he succeeded, even partially, as we do that the Heaven’s Gates suicides succeeded in joining the hidden spaceship that they believed was coming for them. Intellectual honesty requires us to admit that while we can hope, we simply don’t know, what happens after we die. To claim otherwise is, again, to live in a fantasy world.
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What we can say with some confidence is that the Summary of the Law — which Jesus said was the way to eternal life — seems to touch on something fundamental in the fabric of the universe:
• The evidence for the existence of a Creator is pretty compelling, certainly more so than the evidence against;
• History suggests that, in the words of Lutheran theologian Philip Hefner, we seem to be “created co-creators,” participating unwittingly in a titanic process that has been gradually, and often painfully, creating order out of the chaos of the Big Bang;
• On balance over the long term, those who seem to contribute the most to this process of creation — and who seem most likely to survive, reproduce, and pass their genes and memes on, not just to their children but to their grandchildren — are those who face the facts of the reality wrought by the Creator, including the fact of our human fallibility. Who don’t insist that the world must be a certain way merely because they imagine it to be so. Who seek the best for others as they do for themselves. In short, who seek to follow the Summary of the Law.
For all we know, when we die, the Creator will simply discard us his tools, the way we would throw away a worn-out drill bit. But it’s not totally implausible to conjecture that it won’t happen that way. It’s not irrational to hope, and trust, that we’ll get to share, somehow, in the end result of whatever unimaginably-wonderful project the Creator has been up to.
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Returning again to whether Jesus’ mission was a failure: If Jesus thought of his mission as being to inspire all people to organize their lives around the Summary of the Law, he didn’t completely succeed on his own. But the church he catalyzed hasn’t done an altogether terrible job of continuing the mission. If we would stop insisting that everyone believe traditionalist soteriology, christology, and theology, and return to simply preaching the Summary of the Law, we likely would have much more success in reaching nonbelievers and doubters with Jesus’ message.
#25 I know many a drug addict, alcoholic and sexual offender with whom I have served in prison ministry. These people were delivered from their addictions by a power greater than themselves. It is the power of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Trying to make the gospel more acceptable by gutting it of sotierology and the necessity of faith in Christ alone and reducing it to a mere ethic doesn’t set people free. It has little power to do so. Christianity is not merely a set of propositions. Certainly, Jesus Christ did not die for doctrine but to save souls. However, the propositions you long to dismiss do describe the wondrous works of God and the deeds of power that we human beings are simply incapable of accomplishing.
I submit that if we human beings could have ‘saved the world’ we would have done so long ago and avoided milennia of misery. The plain truth is that we are sinners in need of redemption. Christ is the only way to receive the power we need to actually LIVE the way Jesus called us to live. We cannot accomplish Jesus’ ethics on our own. I appreciate that progressives would like to hold to a more positive view of humanity’s capabilities in this regard… but from where I stand… human beings are not a very impressive species.
#25, a powerful statement, although I disagree with some of its hyperbole. It is important to note, however, since you seem to understand that the reality of evolution and God’s design are at one, that the Big Bang, if it indeed did happen, was not a chaos from which order appeared but rather the Big Bang itself was at all times orderly and in obedience with the Law. If it were not, order would never have appeared in a universe contrary to order’s requirements. All explosions, however great, obey the law, fit in the design. And we note again that even random events are themselves orderly and subject to design, as a computer can generate random numbers while at all times obeying the designers.
Finally, the summary of the Law is simply that part of the Law that applies to humans, as far as we know. But we cannot be permitted to know to much of heaven or hell, for it would alter one central rule that is NOT in the summary, that our will must be free to choose to obey the Law or the opposite. If we knew with utter certainty that heaven and hell are as they are often imagined, our wills would be entrapped in the final reality. So we are allowed hope and the a set of standards, so that we can have something to hope for and a guide thereto. And then we are left on our own, in the real world, to choose. This is the reality. Larry
#22 Sarah – you study things fairly carefully. What is your opinion of the universe the Bishop of Durham views himself as occupying? His writings are usually fairly orthodox but he always comes across as an institutional loyalist. I have a Presbyterian friend who got her doctorate at Durham and has a very high opinion of him, personally.
Rev. Patti Hale [#26] writes: “I know many a drug addict, alcoholic and sexual offender with whom I have served in prison ministry. These people were delivered from their addictions by a power greater than themselves. It is the power of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.”
From what I’ve read, Muslim prison ministries have achieved similar results. Clearly something is happening there, but it isn’t “the power of Jesus Christ” per se.
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Larry Morse [#27], we’re in complete agreement that “the reality of evolution and God’s design are at one, that the Big Bang, if it indeed did happen, was not a chaos from which order appeared but rather the Big Bang itself was at all times orderly and in obedience with the Law. If it were not, order would never have appeared in a universe contrary to order’s requirements.” (And thanks for the kind words.)
Patti Hale [#26] writes: “I submit that if we human beings could have ‘saved the world’ we would have done so long ago and avoided milennia of misery. The plain truth is that we are sinners in need of redemption. Christ is the only way to receive the power we need to actually LIVE the way Jesus called us to live. We cannot accomplish Jesus’ ethics on our own. “
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The world certainly has its problems (call them “evils” if you like), but trends are important too; if a child is running a fever but her temperature has been dropping, that’s good news. To get a rough idea of humanity’s overall big-picture trend, try Gregg Easterbrook’s thought experiment from his book The Progress Paradox:
• Ask yourself if you would be willing to permanently trade places with a random person who lived, say, 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, or 1,000 years ago. You wouldn’t be a chrono-tourist; you’d be signing up to live the rest of your life in the earlier era. And you wouldn’t necessarily have a privileged life; you’d more likely find yourself a peasant. Even if you were a king or queen, there’d be no antibiotics, antiseptics, or anesthesia; no cheap food at your fingertips in supermarkets; no quick and easy transportation to anywhere on the globe; comparatively little social mobility; comparatively high infant- and childbirth mortality; low life expectancy; rule by despots or oligarchies, etc., etc.
Most sane people living today, no matter what their circumstances, would quickly decline to make this trade.
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• Now try my variation on Easterbrook’s thought experiment: Ask yourself if, on average, a random Jane Doe living in 1908 or 1508 or 1008 would agree to a similar trade, to live X number of years in her past. Sure, there are bound to be people who would quickly agree to do so, especially during humanity’s various downturns (e.g., the Dark Ages, the Little Ice Age). But I suspect that on average, most people throughout history would think that their lives were better than those of people living X centuries before.
Overall, the big-picture trend for humanity has been one of progress, uneven but nonetheless real. Over time, sometimes at terrible cost, somehow collectively we seem to learn from our mistakes — which if you ask me is an indicator of some sort of divine action.
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Faith in Jesus Christ and his resurrection, per se, has had little to do with human progress (because the progress has by no means been uniquely attributable to Christians). My guess is:
(A) that such faith, even if misguided, can lead to optimism and hope;
(B) that optimism and hope can help reinforce our natural concern for our fellow humans [which is also reinforced by evolutionary pressures], that is, it can help inspire us to live the second part of the Summary of the Law; and
(C) that living the Summary of the Law, to a greater or lesser degree, consciously or unconsciously, coupled with our mysterious ability to learn from experience, is what has caused much and even most of the the human progress we’ve seen.
And so D.C. Toedt, we keep progressing merrily along until . . . when? The Law of entropy is relentless. Eventually life on this earth will cease when the sun goes supernova and what of all our evolutionary progress then? Nothing more than a pile of carbon residue. What point then has the progress you speak of? It would be better to eat, drink and be merry for tomorow – quite literally – we or humanity’s descendants will die. Not a very hopeful worldview.
Bishops Wright and Jefferts-Schori both in Tennessee recently.
‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello – what’s going on ‘ere then?
Ross52 [#31] writes: “The Law of entropy is relentless. Eventually life on this earth will cease when the sun goes supernova …. Nothing more than a pile of carbon residue. … Not a very hopeful worldview.”
You raise a valid concern, Ross52. What I didn’t think to mention is that we do indeed have reason for hope, in the knowledge of how regularly we get surprised by startling new revelations about the nature of the Creation. (As just one example, consider the accelerating expansion of the universe.). Despair over the ultimate fate of the universe is certainly a pitfall, but it’s unwarranted, that is unless we assume that we already know everything relevant that there is to know. Personally I’m not about to make that assumption.
We don’t know what our ultimate fate will be. But we do know something of the past 13.7 billion years and their trends. This knowledge gives us plenty of reason to hope, and to trust, that in the very, very long run, all will be well, indeed unimaginably wonderful — and to conduct our lives accordingly, seeking to follow the Summary of the Law as Jesus so presciently urged.
[blockquote]We don’t know what our ultimate fate will be.[/blockquote]
This statement led me to immediately think of Hebrews 9:27
[blockquote]Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment[/blockquote]
We do know that we will die and stand before the Lord in judgment. For some it will be “unimaginably wonderful”. But fundamental (pun intended) to Christian belief is that this will not be true for all. For some it will be unimaginably horrible.
I’ve often wondered how the left would interpret Acts 2:47.
[blockquote] And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.[/blockquote]
Just what were those people being saved from?
Tamsf wrote: ‘Just what were those people being saved from?’
As someone who has been profoundly influenced by the theology of Bishop Wright, I would be more inclined to rephrase the question and ask, “What were those people being saved for?” Why, to be nothing less than God’s restored image bearing representatives in the world, as people in whom the power of the resurrection provides a foretaste of God’s new heaven and earth in the here and now in joyful anticipation of a creation restored.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, D.C Toedt. I could enjoy discussing this with you over a pint or two.
You wrote: “We don’t know what our ultimate fate will be. But we do know something of the past 13.7 billion years and their trends. This knowledge gives us plenty of reason to hope, and to trust, that in the very, very long run, all will be well, indeed unimaginably wonderful — and to conduct our lives accordingly, seeking to follow the Summary of the Law as Jesus so presciently urged.”
Excuse me for putting it like this, but isn’t this more like agnostic wishful thinking than hope? When I look at what we know about the past 14 billion years, I see stellar extinctions. At the global level I see the extinction of species. Most of what preceeded us came up against a dead end. If the past is any indication of the future I am not particularly encouraged by it.
The resurrection of Jesus, however, tells me that God has other plans. It signals the beginning of an incorruptible new creation that God is making from the old. It is in that hope alone that we find both the reason and the means to obey the Summary of the Law.
HI DC. Well I certainly don’t see heaven as some sort of escape nor do I think of salvation as mere rescue, though I think we humans are all in the grip of a profound psycho-genetic defect. Your emphasis on the law sounds unwarranted optism and a tad moralistic. I agree with much of what you write about its being tied into the fabric of the universe, but this fabric, to quote a recent line, has been torn at its deepest level – the problem of evil. When I read the gospels, I don’t see a Christian Rabbi Ishmael or even Akiva. Jesus is not a talking head; most of his great teaching comes out of being interrupted from his redemptive work: healings, exorcisms, reconciliations, and the like. His disciples are disoriented and reoriented by his example… and transformed by his redemption. The redeemed become the redeeming, the forgiven become the forgiving, and salvation achieved by Jesus is implemented – or to use your word – it progresses through the world. I agree with much of your view of the importance of the great commandment, but I suspect it is harder to live it out than you suggest. And maybe that is where we diverge the most. The human predicament is such that we need more than a coach or guru; we need a savior. We need a transformation of our desires so that the Great Commandment becomes our great vocation, obsession even. Peace.
Ross52 [#36] writes: “When I look at what we know about the past 14 billion years, I see stellar extinctions. At the global level I see the extinction of species. Most of what preceeded us came up against a dead end. If the past is any indication of the future I am not particularly encouraged by it.”
Maybe this is a half-full / half-empty problem: Where you see stellar extinctions, some scientist-theologians see God using supernovae to fashion the raw materials that eventually ended up being … us. It’s that, not the putative resurrection of Jesus (about which I’m agnostic in the strong sense), which tells me that God has other plans.
(See, e.g., the writings of the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS, former Cambridge University mathematical physicist [and Fellow of the Royal Society; he was knighted a few years ago], a late-call Anglican priest who went to seminary at age 49 and is now in his mid-70s. In one of his books, he said something like, we are all made up of the ashes of dead stars.)
On a related note, Dr. Nick Bostrom published a thought-provoking essay this month in the MIT Technology Review, conjecturing that our failure to find extraterrestrial life could actually be good news for the human race: It might mean that we have already successfully navigated the evolutionary hurdles that, by hypothesis, have prevented life elsewhere from coming into being and eventually colonizing space. (He also wonders, however, whether instead we might not yet have encountered the most dangerous filter(s), and whether existential doom might await us in the future.) I summarized his essay here.
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Ross52 writes: “… isn’t this more like agnostic wishful thinking than hope?”
I’m not sure I see a difference between the two. Wishful thinking means you’d be very pleased if X were to happen; agnosticism (in the weak sense) means you don’t really know whether or not it will. That sounds to me like hope.
Correction: That sounds to me like hope, in the weak sense. Perhaps hope in the strong sense entails something extra: A certain willingness to act as though X were going to happen, to make significant bets that X will happen, even though we’re not completely sure it will.
For you, hope springs from what you believe to have been the resurrection of Jesus. Like most of humanity for the last 2,000 years, I’m not persuaded the resurrection happened the way the church claims — I think there are more-plausible alternative explanations for all the reported phenomena, as I’ve written about extensively on my own blog — but I find ample reason for hope, and for trying to follow Jesus’ teachings, in what we have been able to discern about the putative workings of the Creator in our universe.
[blockquote] “It’s like the sin against the Holy Spirit, believing that there is no other possibility. Believing that we’ve got the whole thing right now and God can’t possibly do anything else, anything unexpected [/blockquote]
Does she speak infallibly as the PB?
Her whole “episcopate” is from a parallel universe. How long oh Lord? How long?
D.C. , John Polkinghorne is one of those authors I’ve heard a lot about but just haven’t gotten around to reading. But I have no problem with his thesis that we are all made up of the ashes of dead stars. (although Joni Mitchell beat him to it – ‘We are stardust, billion-year-old carbon’. Of course it’s multi-billion year old carbon, but who’s counting). But even if the stars provided the raw material for life as we know it what’s to say that you and I too aren’t just so much more raw material in the great scheme of things besides a blind trust in the evolutionary process? There’s is no way we can know how the story will end or if there in fact really is a story beyond what our minds may invent unless the Creator let’s us in on it. This, of course is where, Jesus as the incarnate Logos comes in.
Ross52 writes: “There’s is no way we can know how the story will end or if there in fact really is a story beyond what our minds may invent unless the Creator lets us in on it. This, of course is where, Jesus as the incarnate Logos comes in.” (Emphasis added.)
The premise stated in your first-quoted sentence above seems to ring true. Unfortunately, your conclusion, in the second sentence, doesn’t necessarily follow from the premise. Muslims say that this is where Muhammad as God’s prophet comes in, not where Jesus comes in. I can’t think of a reliable way to determine a priori who’s right, and why.
I think the way the Creator “lets us in on it” is (A) by establishing (and perhaps even closely supervising) an orderly, albeit incredibly complex, universe; and (B) through the gifts of memory, reason, and evidence, with which over millennia we build and test mental models of how that complexity works and use them in deciding what to do or not do. (Cf. Deut. 18.21-22: If what a prophet says turns out not to be true or doesn’t come to pass, it was not a word the LORD told him to say.)
This has been helpful; thanks for the discussion.