Spiritual Conversations part 3

read part 1 first
read part 2

GOD IN US
In our Protestant church tradition we don’t have many categories for understanding this first person, God-within pursuit. But Scripture teaches this first person perspective. Consider these passages in light of this 1st person conversation. (Emphasis added.)

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4)

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Col 1:27)

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple. (1 Cor. 3:16-17)

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own… (1 Cor. 6:19)

“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? (John 10:33-36)

Of course, there is no way for us to do full commentary on these passages. But we do need to note these passages are read in other Christian traditions in ways that make it sound as if a journey inward toward God, first person, is just as legitimate as a journey outward toward God, second person. For many of us in evangelical Protestant Christianity we have no room for these sorts of alternative readings, but I would suggest this is one of the precise reasons we are at a massive impasse on the spiritual conversation front within our culture.

The last passage quoted seems very tough to swallow, as does the 2 Peter 1 passage. If there are passages that really point out this first person understanding of God these are two very tough ones to get around. And what is most disquieting about the John 10 passage above, isn’t just that the word “god” was used of humans, but that those being spoken to in the passage are the Pharisees, not Christ following, “filled with the Spirit” disciples. While the other passages are presumably aimed at Christians, the most flagrant first person passage isn’t. Looking at the background for Jesus’ Old Testament quotation from Psalm 82 is also interesting. In this Psalm God is distraught because the Jews were not defending the cause of the weak and the fatherless. He calls them ‘gods’ because, having been given the Torah, they should know what is right and act accordingly in their culture, shaping it by principles of justice and righteousness.

LITTLE GODS
And just so this jars you a bit more I want to give you a couple quotes from one of the most often quoted defenders of the Christian faith of the last generation. I want you to hear what he says about this John 10 passage.

Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be remade. … we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.1

(God) said that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him–for we can prevent Him if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for.2

Shocked at C.S. Lewis? Many people are quite shocked to realize he has a very developed first person perspective. In our Protestant tradition we have a variety of words or terms we would use to describe this idea Lewis is getting at. We would call this becoming more like Christ, or using the Pauline term of “being conformed to the image of His Son,” or “more of Him, less of me”. The idea of “union with Christ” is in focus. In a wide variety of our Christian traditions including the theology of John Calvin and the Wesley brothers, one of two words often crop up in describing this idea of union, the words are theosis or divinization.3 I quote Lewis here, to help us all see this first person understanding of God isn’t relegated to some far off monks in an Eastern Orthodox Monestary in Siberia. This is a topic that finds lots of outlet and expression in much of our Christian history both ancient and modern.

I think we are reticent to engage a concept like this, and maybe even fearful, because it is risky language. But when we recognize that God wants us to be little gods, then we begin to come to know God in new and fresh ways. In other words a question arises: are we letting our current cultural conditions and fear influence how we read passages of scripture that those in other time periods seemed to see so clearly?

1 C. S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle, p. 85.

2 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 174-5.

Tagged as: culture, spiritual conversations, theology