The eCrozier

Miroslav Volf, in writing about the relationship between the Holy Trinity and the Church (After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Holy Trinity. Eerdmans, 1998, p. 199), argues that since God has revealed God’s self to the world as Trinity then it is right for the Church to convert Trinitarian ideas to ecclesial ones. But he cautions that we must not go too far. While such a relationship is not mere analogy, we still face the danger of deifying the Church if we equate the Trinity with its ecclesial creation.

Volf’s reformation temperament causes him to be wary of placing too much authority in a divinely born, yet still human institution like the Church. The Church is not the Trinity, to be sure. When the Church historically has elevated its authority to that of the Holy Trinity, we have seen her all too real sin. As a necessary corrective to a potentially arrogant Church, Volf concludes his comments by writing: “God is accessible to us only in our own thoughts about God.” That is quite a conclusion to reach. It reflects how profoundly Enlightenment thought has pervaded theological reflection. Volf falls into the Cartesian trap by limiting our accessibility to God to thoughts alone. Maybe this is to be expected from an academic who lives the life of the mind. Volf has made a great contribution to theology, but he unwittingly, it seems, is underwriting the very misguided constructs of the Christian faith that have brought us a distorted understanding of what faith is. Faith is not merely intellectual belief.

If God is only accessible to us “in our own thoughts” as Volf contends, what is to prevent us from becoming the individual “spiritual tyrants” Stanley Hauerwas has written about? My mind, my reason, if you will, is chock full of crazy thoughts and ideas. If I acted on every thought that goes through my head, then I would have been arrested long ago for an assault on a few area motorists. I would alter Volf’s assertion and say: The living and true God is accessible to us only through our faith in this God. That faith, to be sure, includes our thoughts, ideas, and imaginations, as they are enlivened and provoked by faith. But that faith also includes how we live and relate to the people, things, and circumstances of life. Faith is more than intellectual thoughts contemplating propositions about God. It is placing a compelling trust in the God who became flesh in Jesus and who calls us in our flesh to be the ongoing heart, hands, and feet of Jesus in the world.

This is important to our parochial ministry because we have a lot of people in our congregations who see the Christian faith as only propositional, which leads them to conclude that as long as they think the right thoughts about God or proclaim certain written formularies then that is all there is to it. Faith is much more than that and we are doing our people a disservice if we do not show them that.

+Scott