I had to write a short “This I Believe” statement for a wonderful “Seminar on Mission” that I’m participating in at Seton Hall’s main campus. My statement is way too theological-ish. It was interesting, though, how many of the participants structured their statements in reference the Creed, as I did:
I believe in the God who is in His undivided essence the fullness of every perfection. He is fully good; fully merciful; fully holy; fully just; fully beautiful; fully wise; fully love; all of these, without division, without lack, without tension or contradiction – “simple,” and complete.
I believe the God of perfection is the Triune God. He is Father, Son, and Spirit, three persons in one essence, undivided yet distinctly personal, coinhering in each other in the perichoretic dance of eternal fellowship.
I believe in creation. The God of perfection and Trinitarian relationality created a universe that flows from, but is distinct from, His own nature and being. Goodness, mercy, holiness, justice, beauty, wisdom and love inhere in the fabric of the cosmos because the cosmos is the craftwork of the Divine logos. The logic of creation is a word of blessing imbued with a Divine origin — “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen. 1:31) – and a word of promise imbued with a Divine future – “So that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). And the adamah, the human creature, is imbued with the Divine neshemah the “breath of life,” breathed by the Divine ruach, the Spirit that “was hovering over the waters” of primeval chaos before structuring life (Gen. 1:2; 2:7).
I do not “believe” in evil, or sin, or death, though I know they threaten the creation God called “very good,” not least the adamah who can choose or not choose the good. Evil, sin and death are nothing – no “thing” – no kind of essence or being in the ontology of the very good creation of God. Yet evil, sin and death invade, deprive, corrupt, distort, and we of the adamah participate in its deprivations continually.
I believe in revelation, incarnation and redemption. The God who in His essence is transcendent of creation and thus unknowable is immanent in creation in His energies, and therefore can in a manner be known. The same God has disclosed Himself – “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14) – and called a community of justice and redemption in Israel. And the same God, the very Logos, who created, entered into the suffering of creation as a human peasant and took on all the power of evil, sin and death as a suffering servant executed by an imperial power.
I believe in resurrection. The Christ who suffered and died on the cross rose again, defeating evil, sin and death. By the power of his victory all of creation will be renewed. The creating Logos who is also the suffering Christ who is also the victorious Christ will pronounce the final verdict by which all that could threaten the very goodness of creation will be banished forever (Rev. 20:11-15), and every tear will be wiped away from the eyes of his people (Rev. 21:4).
I believe that in this time in between times, the life of a teacher and scholar is a life in participation in grace. It is ideally a life of participation in goodness, mercy, holiness, beauty, wisdom, justice, love, a product of the Divine energies, a breath of Divine spirit, a vehicle of redemption.
4 replies on “This I Believe”
Once, for a mission job application, I had to write about what I believed ‘that Christians don’t generally believe’; that was quite a challenge, but I would have liked more space to develop the answer.
That was beautiful David; a cup of cool water for my weary soul.
Good summary
I do not “believe” in evil, or sin, or death, though I know they threaten the creation God called “very good,”
I’d say rather that I do not trust in evil, or sin… I do believe in evil, sin and death are realities, dependent realities and that we, at least I, must wrestle with them. Your use of believe tends towards the definition used in the US and not necessarily in the rest of the English speaking world.
Something missing IMO from your summary is your position wrt Scripture.
I never know exactly what people mean by attributes of God like Simplicity or Impassibility. In fact as far as I understand impassibility I reject it. It seems hard to claim whether a transcendent being is simple or not. Is God in his essence simple or not? If yes how do you back that up from scripture. My position is agnostic on that attribute.
Dave W
Dave W., good comments.
I take an Augustinian / Barthian approach to evil – it is an absence or lack rather than an ontological category. Evil as an ontological category would suggest God created it.
I covered “revelation” and in this personal statement I didn’t feel the need to say more about scripture. Obviously to flesh it out I’d need a more detailed and careful statement specifically about scripture.
I didn’t mention impassibilty one way or the other, though I did refer to a realtional model of the trinity. I’d hold to the unchangeabilty of God’s essence and character within a relational Trinitarian ontology. Wrt simplicity, I think this a beautiful truth and it makes perfect sense to me. Everything God is, He is all together, all at once, and without division, and this is how He is the source of all Being.