Ramblings on a Coherent Christian Theology

I had to start somewhere. I had to sit down, and try to work out what precisely it is that I believe.

Odd, I hear you metophorically say. Surly, your training to be an Ordinand, your obviously Christian, how can you at this point start trying to work out what you believe?

Well, it’s like this. Before coming to study Theology, I knew what I believed. They were Belief Islands. Little bits of Christianity which I believed, and held to be true, but didn’t in any way affect the other parts of what I believed. I knew the arguments for and against the places where I stood, but for some reason, never really tried very hard to link the Islands. I knew that I wanted too, and knew that my arguments eventually fell over when I reached the parts where they started to leak onto the other Islands, but that never really concerned me. That, however, is slowly begining to change. This is not something that it’s only me that’s experiencing it. We all do, in some way or another. We find our beliefs challenged in ways that we weren’t expecting. Perhaps it was because we didn’t really understand the recriminations of what we belived, or we simply, as I did, never looked at how one belief affected the other. Over the three years here, of course, I’m going to have to work out a full, and cohesive personal theology. A Big Task. I would also like to write a comprehesive overview of my theology. An almost systematic theology. Also a Big Task.

I thought it would be best to start with what I believe:

1. I don’t believe in Original Sin
2. I Believe a lot of the Stories in the O. T. walk the line of Myth. Where some of them are true, for a certain value of true. For example, I believe that Noah did gather all the animals he knew about on an Ark, and the world he knew was flooded. I however happen to think that it was only as far as he could see. A small view of the world, so only the animals he knew about. I think that there were places that were not flooded for the 40 days and 40 nights. A fairly psudo-logical way to approach the Myths. However, I will confess that I’ve not grappled with the entire O. T. yet.
3. I see no problem with Homosexuals/Lesbians or with Female Ordination. I believe that it should be possible for them to be married in the sight of God, just like anyone else.
4. I belive that Jesus died on the Cross for Us. (Which is a good thing), but what precisely happened, I’m no-longer sure. If God love us, why was Jesus’ death necessary? If there was no Original Sin, why did we need to be redeemed? Even if we had walked so far from God, why was sending his only Son necessary?
5. I belive in a Loving, Fair God. I use Fair rather than Just purposefully.
6. I believe that there is an evil, a Satan.
7. I belive that there is a war between good and evil
8. I don’t belive that all good comes from God; I don’t belive all evil comes from Satan
9. I belive in Miricles
10. I belive in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit
11. I’m don’t think that Christianity is the only path to God/heaven
12. I see no problems with re-incarnation

I hold on to a lot of these things because I know them to be true. My other posts on this blog explore some of them more fully, but I think you can begin to see where the problem is. It comes down to the paradox of a loving and fair God, and the death of Jesus on the Cross. Of course, this has been brought more to the fore as we are in the season of Lent, and so it’s all around at the moment. I know that something happened, my belief tells me that. But what, precisely? Did Jesus simply atone for all our Sins? If so, why was this necessary? Why was it that Jesus needed to die for that? The Jews believe that we can go straight to God with out sins, and ask for forgiveness, why do we need Jesus for that? I’m not sure that we do.

There’s this worrying emphasis on Sin. It crops up all over the place, and the emphasis feels… wrong. Like the point has somehow been missed. It’s linked into the strange idea that we must be pure to come into the sight of God, and that our sin some-how makes us impure.

The idea also that a Sin has dishonoured God is now so alien to our culture, I’m not sure we know what that truly means anymore. When was the last time you truly felt dishonoured? I can’t rember a time I felt I had honour, so I’m not sure I can see how I could be dishonoured.

The awkward bit is getting this to all nit together. I need to know what it means so that I can preach on it. I need to know what God did for us on the Cross, and what it all means. Hopefully, I’ll explore that more as lent progressess.

~BX