Tuesday 14 January 2014

Chalcedonian AND 21st Century Thinking

I have to learn that a dog does have to give up a bone from time to time, to leave to one side what isn't going to get resolved. 'Leave it there' is a sort of mantra.

Until something seemingly new and ridiculous gets mentioned and I want to point it out. I refer back to the post on Thinking Anglicans where Simon Kershaw was good enough to reply to my criticism in detail and then I wanted to reply to that. And then he replied to my reply.

He's entitled to think the Chalcedonian definition can be useful combined with 21st century thinking. I think it doesn't work. Leave it there. But for this:

There's another, different, discussion to be had about just what can be understood by 'the Word of God through whom the universe came into being' etc.

Now we all know our classical Christian theology. It is that the Word, that is Jesus Christ, was the person who created the world. In classical Arianism God first made Christ and then Christ made the world, and in trinitarianism Christ made the world as part of the eternal person in the Godhead.

So how does this relate to the Chalcedonian and twenty first century thinking? My reply is this:

I thought, oh leave it there. What's the point of saying, well, Chalcedonian via 21st century thinking (if such is possible) equals non-Chalcedonian nineteenth century thinking.

And then, rereading it, you have the fully man limited, fully God, 'through whom the universe came into being'.

How does that work then? So this, the word, Jesus Christ, sets the universe into being, and creates it (it's his job), through which, on a pale blue dot, an asteroid knocks out dinosaurs, little mammals succeed, human beings come about (evolution is chaotic, it is local, specific and unplanned) and then this second person of the trinity pays us a visit as fully man fully God.

Can I suggest that, actually, twenty first century thinking, or even later nineteenth, doesn't fit with the Chalcedonian, and it is in fact a form of nonsense to try and join the two together?

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