Restoring the Proper Place of Mystery
I always look forward to dinner with my family. Aside from a great meal, the topics of our conversations can range anywhere from the introspective to the ridiculous. Dinner is never dull.
Last week, I stumbled upon a website that discussed the differences in Christian denominations. The site also had a quiz that explained which denomination you should belong to based on a theological survey. Given that I don’t claim any particular denomination (to include “non-denominational”), I thought it might be interesting to see what I was “supposed to be”. During dinner, I confessed to my family that (according to the website) I’m a closet Mennonite (with lesser inclinations toward Methodism and Messianic Judaism).
While I was trying to figure out how to convert to Judaism, curiosity got the best of my son and wife. They grabbed their phones and worked through the questions so that the algorithms could point them toward their own ecclesiastical destiny. After several minutes of discussion regarding which answers were the “right answers”, they each clicked the submit button. It turned out that my son should be a Methodist. My wife, however, should belong to the Church of Christ, followed by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement–the official state church of the Chinese communist party (which still has us scratching our heads.)
After a good laugh, the discussion turned toward the questions themselves. It seems like they were designed to account for doctrinal distinctions of the major Christian denominations. Consequently, many of the answers were extremely nuanced. Some we didn’t have an opinion about. A few we really didn’t even understand.
For example, one question asked…
Where does a Christian’s soul go after death?
- After death, one’s existence ceases until and unless God resurrects him.
- After death, souls are conscious in the realm of the dead, with the dead in Christ in proximity of God.
- After death, souls sit conscious in an intermediate state, with Christians being with Christ.
- After death, souls sit conscious in an intermediate state, with a foretaste of heaven for Christians.
- Christians immediately go to heaven when they die.
- Some Christians first go to purgatory to be purified when they die.
- Souls are unconscious after death until God raises them from “sleep”.
- The righteous await the resurrection in Paradise, part of the spirit world.
“Wow”, I thought. “This is oddly specific…”
“What’s the difference between (b), (c), and (d)?”
“Are (a), (g), and (h) mutually exclusive? “
“If I’m wrong on this, is there a real risk of my having postmortem confusion?”
But regarding what happens after we die, Paul gives us some insight in 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. But that’s all we’ve got. Anything more specific than this is man’s assumption.
Scrolling through the quiz, it seemed like many of the issues pointed far and away from the simplicity and emphasis that Christ spoke of in the scriptures. Many of the questions seemed inconsequential. They offered distinctions without a practical difference. Yet each of these answers represented a disagreement somewhere within the Body of Christ. They were things that churches may have even split over. For some, all but the ‘correct answer’ represented heresy.
When Beliefs Collide
But is every Christian belief that important?
Personally, I don’t think so. I file Christian beliefs under two headings: essential and non-essential.
Essential beliefs are those things we hold to that actually matter. They are the beliefs that must be true, else it puts the whole Christian enterprise in jeopardy. They’re are what a friend of mine calls “the short list”.
Throughout history, the church has attempted to capture essential Christian beliefs under various creeds. Philippians 2:5-11 contains what many to believe to be one of the very first creeds. The Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed, written in the 2nd and 4th centuries are the most well-known—each containing what we believe about the members of the Godhead and their role. As good as they are, no creed is comprehensive. But if you were to ask me to summarize the most essential belief of a Christian, it would be this:
That Jesus Christ:
- was resurrected from the dead.
- was who He said He was.
In my mind, every other essential belief hinges on these two things.
Conversely, non-essential beliefs would be anything not on the short list. They might even include the how’s and why’s of short list beliefs. They may not even be true. But if they aren’t true, I believe the Lord is gracious and will forgive us for our misunderstanding of non-essentials. The problem comes when we’re so certain of a non-essential being essential that we seek to force it on another and break fellowship with believers who don’t hold to said belief.
One popular example is Calvinism. Many would cite Calvinism (a.k.a. “reformed theology”, a.k.a. “the doctrines of grace”) as an essential doctrine. As a collective, Calvinists are among the most outspoken evangelists for their doctrine. Many actively seek to convert other Christians to their doctrine. For them, Calvinism is the gospel.
Others might claim that Calvinism is nothing more than a fringe issue. It’s merely a different way of looking at things, and there are other equally valid soteriological frameworks. Even if true, it’s impractical since it changes nothing with respect to how we live the Christian life. (“If God controls everything, there’s nothing that can be done about it, so why bring it up?”). For this reason, many would consider Calvinism to be “non-essential”.
For these reasons, many file Calvinism under “non-essential”. Yet the debate rages on. In fact, there are theologians whose entire careers are focused defending their side of the issue.
Is it worth expending so much energy to change a few minds one way or the other?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that churches are strongly divided on this issue. The dialogue tends to be very bitter and callous. To me this is unfortunate.
Having researched the different viewpoints, I can tell you that the debate of how God interacts with humanity in their salvation is complicated and incredibly nuanced. There is scriptural tension on the matter. Both sides are often accused of misunderstanding and misrepresenting the other. There is no new data to consider, but only arguments based on various interpretations of scripture. While theologians will continue to debate the details, I maintain that this issue (and other issues like it) might be best resigned to mystery.
What’s Mystery?
By mystery, I mean things that can’t be fully understood this side of heaven. These are things the details of which are known only to the Lord.
There is incredible mystery in both essential and non-essential doctrines. Of course, we can believe something without fully understanding it. And there are several things in Christianity that can be reasoned out. But while it’s critical to believe the essential doctrines, it’s much more important to question non-essential doctrines due to their tendency of creating distraction, conflict, and schism within the church. Where possible, we should pursue clarity in an environment of love and respect among those who hold differing views.
But there are some things that can’t be fully understood. Finite minds simply can’t conceive the Lord’s reasoning on every matter. Such facts are hidden from us. He simply hasn’t given us the data we need.
Does this mean that some things will never be known with certainty?
The question itself is a mystery. But I speculate that the Lord will reveal things to us in time. He will make them clear to us, if not now, then on the other side of resurrection. Until then, the truths of the Lord’s mystery hold a quantum characteristic to them: We can speculate probabilities on what the truth is, but we won’t know for certain until the truth is revealed to us.
It takes wisdom to know the difference between truth that can be pursued and truth that must be entrusted to mystery. But like Aesop’s farmer who killed the goose to get all the golden eggs at once, this hasn’t stopped the church from trying to pry certainty from mystery.
Why We Pry into Mystery
When we force certainty from mystery, the conclusions we draw may not be on-the-level. Of course, it’s one thing to speculate. But it’s an entirely different thing to create complex laws, doctrines, articles, confessions, and binding interpretations around your speculation. When we do, we run the risk of putting the wrong words in God’s mouth, breaking communion with others, and making Christianity far more complicated than it was ever intended to be.
So why has the church historically pried into mystery?
One reason is that religious regulation requires specificity. Very early in church history, we began to deviate from being led by the Spirit by presuming God to speak exclusively through authority structures within the church. These authorities would later regulate behavior and discipline through doctrinal canons. Because the scriptures were never intended to be used to derive laws, doctrinal canons would have to be informed from other sources. These included Roman law and pagan legal tradition. It also required the ecumenical councils to pry specificity from mystery.
After the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD), Emperor Constantine would continue to inject imperial opinion into the matters of the church. To ensure the church remained unified in their doctrine (and his power remained intact), he would push to ensure every matter was settled. Regarding Emperor Constantine’s insistence to resolve every matter, St. Hilary of Poitiers, would later complain to Constantine,
“Every year, nay every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible Mysteries. We repent of what we have done, we defend those who repent, and we anathematize those whom we defended. We condemn either the doctrine of others in ourselves or our own in that of others; and, reciprocally tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of each other’s ruin.”
St. Hilary of Poitiers
Religious regulation demands that all questions be settled. It leaves room for neither mystery nor disagreement.
Another reason we pry into mystery is that analytical minds abhor an unsolved problem. Among all the saints throughout history, the ones we talk about the most are the ones who were smart, articulate, and highly educated. Many of them have written Christian classics. Augustine, Athanasius, Aquinas, Calvin, Lewis, Bonhoeffer, Origen, Tozer, Edwards, Kierkegaard, Wesley, Wright, Packer, Sparks, and others have provided incredible insights into the mysteries of the Lord.
Smart people are wired to solve problems. They can’t help themselves. They like to illuminate areas of mystery. But unfortunately, being highly intelligent and humble is a rare combination. Really smart people tend to be overconfident of their own ideas. Many falsely believe that any of God’s mysteries can be understood if we only apply enough research, western logic, and brainpower. But what results from this scholarship is often just a patchwork of ideas held together with a few questionable proof texts (or an even more questionable church tradition) and a heaping helpin’ of human philosophy to fill in the gaps.
I guess this is why I’m not a big fan of catechisms, systematic theology, or religious academics. Aside from being heady, they always present their theological biases as truth. Whereas some theological ideas are offered up as possibilities compatible within the framework of essential doctrines, others are argued as settled fact elevated to the status of essential. The former is good in that it respects the place of mystery while the latter seeks to displace it.
A third reason why we pry into mystery is to identify and settle distinction between Christian denominations. This is because we’ve viewed the church as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Let me explain…
Think of the church as an organism. It’s a living thing whose life and function is driven by the instructions in its DNA. Some might think of the church’s DNA as its doctrines and theology. As with biological systems, evolution involves mutation of a church’s DNA. This might make later ‘forms’ better adapted to their environment.
The Reformation resulted from such a mutation. It led to a new “species” called Protestantism. Since then, several other species have evolved from Protestantism with each new denomination justified by a tweak to the doctrinal DNA of the denomination before it. Of course, there aren’t enough distinct essential beliefs in scripture to account for the denominational variety we see today. New information had to be added. I would suggest that this ‘new information came from attempting to pry truth from mystery.
One famous example of this comes from Great Schism of 1054. In a nutshell, there was disagreement between the Eastern and Western Churches. It involved several details, but the critical issue was that the Western Church believed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father “and from the Son”. These words were added to the Nicene Creed by the Western Church without consulting the other Church. Ultimately, the churches split over this detail, resulting in the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Historians suggest that this distinction was driven by the difference in how the Western Church (who derived its theology from Greek philosophy) and Europeans (who derived their theology from Roman law) thought about something as impossible to conceive as from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds within the Godhead.
Was this detail worth a schism?
I don’t know, but here we are.
The Grace of Mystery
Historically, the church has viewed mystery as a problem—a barrier to knowing the Lord and understanding truth. The early church thought by deriving rules from mystery that we could preserve unity. But ironically, such rules only created burden which resulted in division and broken communion.
But what if we shifted our perspective on mystery? Rather than seeing it as an obstacle, what if we saw mystery as gracious. After all, it allows for a more generous orthodoxy. It enlivens our imaginations. It draws us near to the Lord who is pleased to reveal mysteries in His own time (Daniel 2:22; Isaiah 45:3; Mark 422). Appealing to mystery allows us to trust a Lord who’s in control (even when we don’t understand the details). It allows us to put issues on a theological back burner so that we can better focus on being responsible for the things we’re clear about. Mystery provides a buffer. It allows us to “agree to disagree” about the details of our speculation so that, together, we can move forward in the work of the Kingdom.
This said, I offer the church a challenge. It’s this:
To hold non-essential truth derived from speculation in abeyance and restore the proper place of mystery.
I think this is what Augustine was aiming at when he said, “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, love.”
Someone might ask, “But if we do that, how will the church ever find complete agreement?”
I’m not sure that’s it’s ever been a goal to be in complete agreement in every possible matter. The phrase “in one accord” found throughout Acts and elsewhere in scripture suggested an inner unity and harmony of thought and action among those in the early church. This was the goal. But this was also during a time when Christianity was viewed as a “messianic cult” within Judaism. A good portion of the New Testament shows Paul trying to sort out and explain the distinctions between the Old Law and the New Freedom. Yet, in seems from scripture that the Judiastic believers (who advocated circumcision and the keeping of the law) were still viewed by Paul as believers.
It was messy. But when it came to sorting out a specific situation, what we see in scripture is believers (not just “leadership”) coming together to seek the Lord and finding agreement on the next step. What we don’t see in scripture are these groups writing their decisions down as law to be obeyed by everyone for all time. Canon law and authoritative doctrines over the church came later in history. The earliest church remained continuously dependent on the Lord for their guidance.
While complete agreement within the church was (and remains) elusive, what’s clear is that the Body of Christ was not to be divided (1 Cor. 1:10-13). In fact, the Lord’s prayer was for His Body was to be as close to one another as the Son was to the Father (John 17:22-23). His prayer extended beyond the disciples. It extends beyond those we gather with on a Sunday morning—even beyond those who share theological doctrines.
It extends to all in whom Christ dwells.
The church isn’t evolutionary, but revolutionary. It’s revolutionary because we don’t derive our DNA from our religious doctrines based on philosophical speculation, but rather from the indwelling life of Christ. He still speaks. Should we listen, He is faithful to show us the way.
This incredible fact is the banner under which we unify.
Image credit: Diego Gonzalez