Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Bullock-Rest on 1st mo. 6, 2010 at 9:13am

Hi Scott,

I do not have "a personal relationship with Jesus" either. The connection and salvation I feel is with an ineffable Spirit of G-d. Yet I cherish the teachings and life of Jesus and turn to them daily in my mind and heart. My sense is that it is not a heresy to admit this; it is just being totally truthful about my experience.

Grace & Peace,

Elizabeth

Permalink Reply by DianeReynolds on 1st mo. 6, 2010 at 10:10am

Scott,

I think you are not getting ahead of your leading. I don't call that heresy but like Elizabeth, see it as honesty. I happen to have a sense of Jesus as a personal friend, and I also see him, like you, as model of God's desire for humanity. The problem with the friendship situation is that when someone attacks Jesus, I feel that emotionally, the way you would if a close and beloved friend were trashed, that sick feeling. But I remember too that people have been wounded by rigid Christian ideas and that it's not personal ...

Permalink Reply by scot miller on 1st mo. 6, 2010 at 3:48pm

Thank you both for your posts. I appreciate your sensing that I am trying to be honest about my Christ-centeredness, as it has a certain distancing quality from both my FGC meeting and my Conservative meeting in that it seems to land me right in the middle. As for the heresy language, Friends have long been branded as heretics, and I am happy to be included, or exclued, at the same time, from such company!

Permalink Reply by T. Vail Palmer, Jr. on 1st mo. 6, 2010 at 5:19pm

As a matter of my own experience, I am pretty much with you -- I pray and listen to God, and am thankful to God for the great victory over the forces of darkness won in the incarnation, crucifixion, & resurrection. I think the "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" ties in with "accept Jesus Christ as personal savior:" -- a thoroughly unbiblical phrase. "confess Jesus Christ as Lord" is closer to the biblical witness. I have a strong sense of being part of the people of God -- a cloud of witnesses through history -- and of the mighty acts of God in history, of which the incarnation-crucifixion-resurrection of Jesus Christ are the greatest.

Vail

Permalink Reply by Stephanie Stuckwisch on 1st mo. 13, 2010 at 10:22pm

Hi Scott,

I don't have a "personal relationship" in the way that fundamentalists mean it. I deep wisdom in the Bible, particularly in the teachings of Jesus. I try to understand those teachings deep in my soul and live them in my life. I fail a lot.

Once, in a time of deep despair, I did have a strong sense of being held by Jesus. So, I guess I have an experiental relationship with Jesus.

In the Light,
Stephanie

Permalink Reply by Tyler Hampton on 1st mo. 28, 2010 at 5:06pm

Hey there Scott!

I feel like I am one of those folks that stumbled backwards into orthodoxy. I never "got" the Trinity, and I still as a Friend do not think that trying to come up with an almost mathematical (geometric?) formulation between the three that are mentioned in Scripture as God: The Father, Jesus, and the Comforter. But after I had been reading the Bible again and worshipping with Friends for six months or so, I had an undeniable encounter of God in Jesus Christ.....where he demanded my life. Whereas before I had though probably in a sort of modalist line (I experience the Creator when I am in nature, I experience Jesus as his teachings and way of compassion, I experience the Spirit in worship) I couldn't deny anymore that Jesus is God. I am almost more comfortable with Oneness Pentecostalism (Jesus is the name of God) than I am with theology that has Jesus as anything less than both God and man. I feel that this is what is backed up in Scripture.....the same Jesus who taught us who the Father is and how to live also says "Before Abraham was, I AM," "I and the Father are one," "No one comes to the Father except by me," "I am the Alpha and Omega" and on. The Bible never calls the "Three who witness in heaven" a Trinity, or says who proceeds from who or whatever. But repeatedly they are all mentioned as continually present.

The Synopsis of Friends faith put forth by the Conservative yearly meetings in 1913 says:

Friends believe in the "Three who bear record in heaven, Father, Son and Holy Ghost," and that these are one; yet we have ever been concerned to avoid the word "Trinity" as applied to the Divine Being, as not found in the Bible, as less appropriate, and more confusing than the plain and simple terms used in the Scriptures: or as expressed by Thomas Evans, in his exposition, "Avoid entangling ourselves by the use of unscriptural terms, invented to define Him who is undefinable, scrupulously adhering to the safe and simple language as contained in the Holy Scriptures."

I'm not sure the language is always safe and simple....but trustworthy, yes.

Maybe if we want to be simple, I believe what Jesus says to us in Matthew 28:20: 'Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'

I may see you this First Day, we shall see!
Tyler

Permalink Reply by Micah Bales on 1st mo. 29, 2010 at 12:15pm

Hi, Scott!

I think that you are being honest and seeking to be faithful in what you have written. I would have resonated strongly with what you wrote up until a couple of years ago, when I had a vivid experience of Jesus' presence. This experience was confirmed by another person who was present at the time; herself a Buddhist! Since this experience, I have increasingly settled into a sense that Jesus is indeed God. I don't know how to explain it, but I sense it as a deep truth that deserves my recognition.

That said, I do not think that your views are harmful. Just stay open to the possibility that Jesus might indeed be a present reality; still God-with-us. He might show up in unexpected ways.

Your friend in Truth,

Micah
http://www.lambswar.com
http://www.valiantforthetruth.com

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 1st mo. 30, 2010 at 6:35pm

Theology is intended to be poetry, not a structure of precisely-defined abstractions connected via mathematical logic. People can learn from and find inspiration in the effort of constructing such systems, but we can hardly expect to find God neatly confined by them. People have to describe God's nature via metaphor and parable because God is innately beyond any net we wrap Hmr in.

The Trinity can serve as a good metaphor, indirectly affirming that God is embodied in human life, which is therefore not a condition to despise. It provides a tidy analysis of the ways God interacts with us, externally via the Father (through our life in Hmr's creation), and through the Son (embodied in each human life around us, and in the wisdom of the man Jesus), internally via the promptings of the Spirit (which lives us, but which utterly transcends our conscious identity).

I've had barely a glimpse of the truth that God "is" (but not "merely is"!) us. Sometimes it seems most appropriate to remember how I am personally finite and limited; sometimes it's helpful to remember that nothing is truly separate from me-- that whatever it may be, it and "I" can't be anything but God's hand in different gloves.

If God has designated Jesus to rule the Earth in perfect accord with God's intention, so that anything Jesus might say to us would be what God would say, and so that anything God might do would be 'in character' for Jesus as approximately shown us via Christian sacred texts, the distinction should in practice be entirely moot. And that, for now, is evidently how God wants me to see it.

Permalink Reply by Algirdas Davidavicius on 2nd mo. 18, 2010 at 4:20am

Dear Friend Forest,

if theology is 'more like' poetics and we do not need sharp and precise distinctions (which are probably not possible at all on any human scale), we should not then subscribe to any theological metaphor (like Trinity or G-d Himself) in a strict manner at all, but only use them for expressing 'that of G-d' in us, our glimpses of Revelation etc.?

This stance can be perverted to a zen-like silencing of each other or oneself, not being able to sensibly talk about it in any way, or being lost in a quagmire of metaphorizations. Hence we still do need some more authentic (provable with our whole life) theological position and, in some way, a more or less stable set of thological notions to be able to share anything -- don't you think?

Quakers are not to be said to have a ficed creed and we all are on our journeys -- but does this not mean, that we can actively establish goals for this journey in a manner clearer than an ironic silence or poetical ambiguities?

I can personally state that yes, I am "modalist" and "unitarian" in respect to Jesus and G-d, and yes, I subscribe to Pelagius' and Arius' arguments in favor of these positions. My experience as a former catholic and former buddhist proves validity of these positions to me :), not that I am telling that these are absolutely, universally valid.

I guess Nicolas from Cusa was right when calling human knowledge "learned ignorance" (docta ignorantia) :)

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 5th mo. 15, 2010 at 12:07pm

I think you have to seek the truth of who Jesus is with all your heart. Don't settle for anyone else's truth. You might want to start with John 17 and 1 John and whatever other scriptures the Spirit leads you to. Remember George Fox attributed his faith to "Christ Jesus" and knowing God experientially.
"And when all my hopes in them [i.e., preachers, and "those called the most experienced people"] and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do; then, oh then I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thy condition": and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord did let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief, as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence, who enlightens, and gives grace and faith and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let it? And this I knew experientially. My desires after the Lord grew stronger, and zeal in the pure knowledge of God, and of Christ alone, without the help of any man, book, or writing. For though I read the Scriptures that spake of Christ and of God, yet I knew Him not, but by revelation, as He who hath the key did open, and as the Father of Life drew me to His Son by His Spirit."

Having spent years in the evangelical church, it is my opinion that the Quaker's "experiential" knowledge of God through Jesus Christ approximates the evangelical's personal relationship with Jesus.

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 15, 2010 at 9:32pm

Sorry I missed this at the time... Sometimes I find insights that I consider gifts from God: sometimes these are new metaphors but sometimes they're "merely" a new way of seeing an old metaphor.

Thy assumption that "ambiguities" are more poetic than "clarities" comes from a literary concept of what poetry should be, not a poet's experience of it. Making pretty verbal artifacts is fun, but it's not what I intend when I feel a poem straining to incarnate.

Metaphor is the human method for understanding anything whatsoever, beyond those few basic matters we can grasp by direct experience. So there's no reason not to use metaphor (aka "reasoning by analogy"); we find Jesus in the Bible doing that regularly! The only caution is to remember that we're doing so-- which implies that all features of an analogy may not fit where we're trying to apply it.

I'm not at all sure that the "spiritual journey" metaphor sheds much light-- except to imagine ourselves on a treasure hunt for what exists right here at the starting point! God sets the "goals" as God sets the goals for an acorn; an acorn does not need to strive to be an oak.

One can (and should) pray for an increase of wisdom, as James in the Bible suggests; this can only help fit us better into God's intentions. This doesn't imply a passive subjection to God's ongoing teaching-process; it implies that if our minds hunger they will be fed.

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 15, 2010 at 10:40pm

As a great many people have diligently sought to know "the truth of who Jesus is," and emerged with diverse answers, this can hardly be 'knowledge essential to our salvation.'

Having gulped down a lifetime's worth of Historical Jesus books, I can say that most of them added something to my understanding. But neither they nor any of the devotional sources have ever, in my experience, quite been able to contain the man-- or even to dependably discriminate his true sayings from what are probably misquotes.

But in another sense, these writers almost uniformly "know" him, know what sort of thing is "in character" for Jesus and what sort of thing would not be...

Aside from that, I know that it's possible to know God, much as I know the person down the hall from here. That isn't "know" as in: "being able to write a complete and fully-accurate biography and description of the person down the hall"! It's "know" in the sense of "I know him too."

God does not appear to me in a Jesus-shaped package, but the qualities of God are as Jesus said they were.

The effort to understand better continues to be rewarding.

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