Compassion: The Only Acceptable Extremism
One of our core values at Firebrand is intellectual virtue, which necessarily involves the open exchange of ideas. At times that means we will publish pieces that do not necessarily represent the theological perspectives of the Lead Team and Editorial Board. The following is a response to a Firebrand article by Drew McIntyre which we offer in the spirit of dialogue and fair representation.
Orthodoxy is complicated.
For over a decade I’ve sought, imperfectly so, to empower laity, plant contextual churches, and nurture maturing disciples. I now direct the work of cultivating contextual Christian communities for my denomination while remaining an appointed pastor in a local church. An essential aspect of my ministry is offering Christ, crucified, risen, alive and present now, and our churches have led our conference in baptisms and professions of faith. Each week I proclaim the Apostles’ Creed alongside the people that I serve in tattoo parlors, dog parks, burrito joints, VR spaces, and an old-fashioned sanctuary with a cross and flame on the door.
There are many like me who will continue as United Methodists. We are longing for a faith that is more deeply Wesleyan, but not limited by an overly legalistic vision. We can affirm with Wesley,
For neither does religion consist in orthodoxy or right opinions; which, although they are not properly outward things, are not in the heart, but the understanding. A man may be orthodox in every point; he may not only espouse right opinions, but zealously defend them against all opposers … He may be almost as orthodox as the devil … and may all the while be as great a stranger as he to the religion of the heart (Wesley, The Way to the Kingdom).
For many of us, the center of our faith is not a set of doctrinal distinctions. After all, even regarding aspects of Christology, there are nuances that are unsettled between millions of Christians in a truly global church.
Consider that Ethiopia is home to one of the oldest continuous churches in the world.
Local tradition identifies the Ethiopian eunuch converted by Philip on the road to Gaza as Qināqis (Acts 8:26–39) and insists that he was martyred for teaching Christianity in Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia). The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles tell of Mathew making the journey to Ethiopia, working alongside the Ethiopian eunuch, until his execution (Irvin and Sunquist, World Christian Movement, 216).
Historians disagree about the validity of these claims, citing a lack of archeological evidence. Yet it is widely accepted that as early as the 4th century Ethiopia (then known as Axum) had become a Christian empire under King Ezana. Ezana’s conversion and declaration of his kingdom as Christian around 347 CE can be validated by royal inscriptions and minted coins (Irvin and Sunquist, 217).
The fact that the Ethiopian Church represents the formation of the faith in an independent nation, outside the borders of Rome is significant. The Ethiopian church translated portions of the Bible into the ancient Ethiopian language of Ge’ez and to this day balances contextuality (a culturally appropriate form of church) and universality (belonging to the wider church across time and space). This is a church birthed not in Constantinople, Chalcedon, or Canterbury, but rather in Ethiopia. This is an ancient African church, planted not by white European missionaries, but by, with, and for Africans.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church had a population of at least sixteen million in the early twenty-first century. It belongs to a connection called the Oriental Orthodox Churches. This is a group of six autocephalous (appointing its own head) churches: the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church which together make up 60 million members worldwide (Lamport, Encyclopedia of Christianity, 601).
While the Oriental Orthodox shared in full communion with the Imperial Roman Church for a period, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE they parted ways. The point of separation was primarily a difference of Christology. Oriental Orthodoxy rejected the Chalcedonian definition of Jesus’ nature as “hypostatic union.” Hypostasis refers to the mysterious joining of Jesus’ two complete natures, both fully human and fully divine, in one person.
The Oriental Orthodox claims to be holding to an earlier miaphysite formula (Greek μία (mía, “one”) and φύσις (phúsis, in this case “nature”), or that Jesus is fully divine and fully human, united in one nature (physis). Early Oriental Orthodox prelates were concerned that the Chalcedonian definition implied a possible repudiation of the Trinity or a concession to Nestorianism, which was condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE.
While to some inhabitants of the western Church this may seem like a matter of theological hair splitting or mere semantics, this is not the case for adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The adjective Oriental is synonymous with the adjective Eastern, meaning there is no real distinction between the terms. Nevertheless, these are two distinct bodies of Christians, who while sharing some beliefs, remain divided over the mysterious mechanics of Christology.
The Eastern Orthodox Church considers itself the oldest Church in Christendom. It is the second largest body of Christians with 225 million people worldwide (yet less than six million in North America). The Eastern Orthodox describe Oriental Orthodox as a connection of false churches, outside the historic faith (The Non-Chalcedonian Heretics, 41).
While many consider Oriental Orthodox as broadly part of the trinitarian Nicene Christianity shared by today’s mainstream churches (indeed maybe even one of its oldest branches), two ancient and major expressions of the Christian faith do not agree on an essential aspect of dogma.
In the eleventh century another split occurred in the Church between the Orthodox East and Latin West. The “Great Schism” of 1054 represented a formal separation between Rome and Orthodoxy based on two areas of disagreement: the role of the papacy, and the manner in which doctrine is to be interpreted.
Are the millions of Christians, many faithful adherents who live a life of holy love for God and neighbor, actually less than “true” Christians based on these historic doctrinal disputes?
In a recent blog The Weaponization of Orthodoxy I followed other church historians and mission scholars in describing distinct streams of theology across history (Bevans and Schroeder, Justo González, and Dorothee Sölle). My reflection was intended to point out the potential for harm in weaponizing theological positions. This weaponization is done equally by traditionalists, centrists, and progressives.
Most of us who study the transmission of the faith across time and cultures accept the reality of a diversity of Christian theologies as normative. Lesslie Newbigin has famously said, “There is not one Christian interpretation of Jesus: there are many different ones, shaped by different cultures. The church itself is a changing reality, and its confession of the faith has changed and must continue to change.” (Newbigin, Open Secret, 89).
Does this position depart from the “rule of faith” (Latin: regula fidei)? Historically, Westerners have considered regula fidei as the standard for adherence to orthodoxy, which originated with the Old Roman Symbol (an earlier, condensed version of the Apostles’ Creed). Each Christian tradition expands this in some way with further statements of faith including the Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, Augsburg Confession, Articles of Dort, Westminster Confession, and even the “inner light of the spirit,” as described by mystics.
The rule of faith is a summary of essential Christian dogma. Different traditions built theological methods upon these core claims. For example, Scripture and Apostolic Tradition among Catholics; theoria, among the Eastern Orthodox; Sola scriptura, among some Protestants; the Outlerian Quadrilateral (Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience) among modern Methodists.
Dogma is a word originating from the Koine Greek, δοκέω (dokeō) which means “to seem good” or “to think.” It was translated into Latin, then at the turn of the 17th century dogma entered English meaning “philosophical tenet.” The Biblical source of its use occurs in Acts 15:28, where it is translated, “it seemed good.” It’s necessary here to put this meaning in context, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements” (Acts 15:28).
Acts 15 reports a monumental moment in the history of the Church. The council at Jerusalem is discerning what to do with gentile believers in Antioch. Ultimately, they do away with circumcision (literally the mark of a Jewish male) and expecting gentiles to uphold the 613 Levitical restrictions. In one sense they are uprooting an entire system of accepted doctrine, that of the Mosaic Law. It was in Antioch where the disciples were first called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Jürgen Moltmann notes it was also here the word church was first used to describe something distinct, an expansion beyond a majority-Jewish group housed at synagogue which contained both “an element that is critical of the law, and a rejection of the temple cult in Jerusalem” (Moltmann, The Church, 142). The Jerusalem leaders had the humility to acknowledge dependence on the Spirit into a new situation.
In reality, they were merely continuing the compassionate ministry of Jesus, who ate with sinners (Lk 15:2), healed gentiles (Lk 7:5, Mt 8:5-13, Mk 7:27), and shared with Samaritans, considered racially impure and religiously heretical, that an age of the Spirit was coming when these points of contention would be made irrelevant and true worshipers would worship in “spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23). This unorthodox behavior put Jesus at odds with the religious establishment (Matt 12:1-14).
In Acts, the Spirit continues the compassionate work of Jesus. The disciples understood they were not simply transmitting something only in the past, but a living and breathing faith taking new shapes in the present. After all, Jesus didn’t tell them he had given them all truth, but that when the Spirit came, he would guide them “into all truth” (Jn 16:13).
Acts unfolds as a story of the Spirit guiding a flawed and failing group of humans forward into boundary-crossing mission. The Spirit tells Philip to catch up with the Eunuch’s chariot (8:29) and snatches him away once he’s been baptized (8:39). The Spirit pushes Peter past his convictions about what’s clean and unclean, telling him in a vision to take and eat (10:13). The Spirit places a vision in Cornelius and initiates the gentile Pentecost (10:3). The Spirit of Jesus restrains Paul from entering Bithynia (17:7) and inspires him through a vision to travel to Macedonia (17:9).
In each of these situations, it was the ongoing movement of Christ’s compassion, now embodied by the church, that took precedence over rigid and confining theological formulas. Perhaps any dogma that’s become merely a “philosophical tenet” not freshly evaluated through discerning the Holy Spirit’s ongoing activity extending the compassion of Jesus is something foreign to its Biblical origins?
Hans Urs von Balthazar notes in Truth is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism that hypostasis is not a biblical word. It’s a Greek philosophical word, within a system of thought that was foreign to Hebrews. He raises the question, what would stop Indian or Chinese or African theologians from using words and concepts that explain the nature of Christ in their own language? (Balthazar, 30). Indeed, they have, as every culture must, for the Gospel to be appropriately contextualized.
Leo Tolstoy argued that the concretization of dogma emerged from a dispute over what was considered the only infallible church to label opposition as heretics (Tolstoy, Kingdom of Heaven, 25). Tolstoy goes on to name the historical examples of those who saw themselves as upholding the one true dogma … “And these bodies, having in course of time, aided by support of the temporal authorities, developed into powerful institutions, have been the principal obstacles to the diffusion of a true comprehension of the teaching of Christ.” (Tolstoy, 27).
It’s not hard to see Tolstoy’s point bearing out repeatedly throughout history, and particularly in the ongoing schism within Methodism today.
Is there a way that we can disarm a weaponized church, to beat our swords into plowshares on the anvil of compassion?
The heart of Christian faith is a living relationship with Jesus Christ. Christian doctrine can tell us who Christ is but cannot save us and cannot form us into holy people. E. Stanley Jones found 365 ways to make the same point, Christianity is not a religion of “word become word,” that would make it indistinguishable from every other religion or philosophical system. At the heart of our faith is a living being, Jesus of Nazareth, born of a virgin, died, resurrected, and utterly alive and accessible now. This is Word become flesh (Jones, Word Became Flesh).
The heart of Christianity is a relationship with this wound-bearing Lord, a relationship that transforms our life incrementally each day, enabling us to grow in the likeness of God, empowering us to embody his own compassion. Jesus did not come to establish a religion of precepts, doctrines, and dogmas. He came to give us life, life abundantly (Jn 10:10).
Jones also wrote, “Is the Way a principle or a Person? It is both! Jesus put them together in this statement, ‘I am the way’ (John 14:6). Here the Word became flesh, the Path became a Person” (Jones, The Way, 108). Is “right belief” about Jesus important? Of course, but it is secondary to a right relationship with Jesus, and how that relationship is transforming us to become more compassionate people.
We can encounter and know the Risen Jesus completely apart from dogma, and many across history have been met by him in this way. Conversely, we can know all the dogma about Jesus and not actually know Jesus.
Consider for example many mainline churches who equated discipleship with indoctrination into dogma, but inadvertently deemphasized an embodied and relational faith lived out in our daily rhythms. Dogma that’s not re-forming us (through continued sensitivity to and reliance upon the Spirit), as kind, compassionate, Jesus-like people… is useless.
Can one be a worshiper of doctrine, rather than a worshiper of Christ? Overemphasis on doctrine can produce a Jesus trapped in the ivory tower of academics, a Christ imprisoned in the ink of history books. And doctrine of this nature cannot resource a living faith.
The church is more than having right answers. The church had the wrong answer about slavery for much of its history.
The church was supposedly upholding the regula fidei as it led inquisitions, holy wars, and burned witches. Mobs of well-meaning Christians flooded town squares to witness heretics being burned alive. They cheered with a roar of holy triumph, in the name of orthodoxy. The Church was “orthodox” dogmatically speaking, as it justified the transatlantic slave trade.
We in the West can have a small minded, Eurocentric version of orthodoxy. It’s unlikely we need more extreme versions of it. Overemphasis on orthodoxy (“right belief”) or orthopraxy (“right practice”), while disregarding orthopathy (“right experience”), leads to a faith that is all head and no heart.
A compassionless Christianity is a Christless Christianity.
This compassion is not something we get to define for ourselves, it is embodied in the kenosis and incarnation of Christ. This is why movements like Passio Dei, are springing up to remind us that the way to fulfill the Great Commission (go, make disciples) is to embody the Great Commandment (love God and neighbor).
The unbounded mercy of God manifests fully in Jesus’ ministry of compassion, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion” (splanchnizomai: moved from the bowels, Matt 9:36), and finds ultimate expression on the cross. Orthopathy is literally “right suffering” which flows from Jesus’ crucifixion and death (paschō: passion of Christ). A theopachitic paradigm comprehends the quality of God’s being as expressed through immersion in human vulnerability and suffering. This should be our mode of mission, informing right praxis, and grounding right belief in a theology of compassion.
An active, practical, inclusive compassion should emanate endlessly from the church.
For Christians compassion is not mere emotionality, but rather a new mode of being, empowered by the Spirit. Its embodiment requires a new and different ecclesiology that counteracts the dominant social stratification (Louw, “Missio Dei as embodiment of Passio Dei,” 351). Thus, compassion centered expressions of church will be inclusive of all regardless of age, status, race, or gender.
I believe the crisis of Methodism is less about orthodoxy or even orthopraxy, and more about orthopathy.
Perhaps we need a historically-rooted affirmation of being a Wesleyan Christian that is not tied up in “right dogma” but points in the direction of “right heart and living”?
No matter which expression of Methodism we find ourselves at home within, may we all strive for a more deeply compassionate faith, and a life ripe with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, remembering “there is no law against such things” (Gal 6:22-23). If our dogma doesn’t make us more kind and loving people, whether we are conservative, centrist, or progressive, we are Christian in name only.
Jesus reminds us that the world will know us by our love (Jn 13:35). May our orthodoxy ground us in the reality that the only appropriate form of extremism is an extreme compassion.
Michael Adam Beck is the pastor of St Marks UMC, Ocala, FL, Director of the Fresh Expressions House of Studies at United Theological Seminary, and Director of Fresh Expressions UM. To learn more about Michael, visit: https://michaeladambeck.com/