Note: This is my first crack at this and it is rough and incomplete. Also, I whipped this up at 1am after a long, long day. So be gentle. I am limited to 1000-1200 words of commentary. I’m taking some chances with gender and scripture, so think of those areas as an exploration rather than… something else.
Section I – Preamble
We hold the below to be our best understanding of the reality of God, God’s relation to creation, actions within history, and our relation to both the rest of creation and to God. We draw upon the following for our formulations: the Spirit of God speaking through the Scriptures, the wisdom of our fore-parents, the best thinkers of our day, and our communal experience. We recognize that this statement is contextual and need not be universal and may even be wrong. If so, we welcome and humbly scrutinize any criticism as we pursue God and God’s will. This statement of faith will consist of statements which are commented upon in the footnotes.
Section II – The Nature and Relation of God.
We believe in one God who is love[1] and therefore internally and externally communal.[2]
And that this God transcends gender but relates in culturally engendered ways.[3] This God relates to itself and others
- through the person of the Father, Almighty, judge, and maker of heaven and earth,
- and through the Logos, [4] the only begotten Son, fully incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth,[5]
- and through the Paraclete,[6] the Holy Mother,[7] which dwells within the members of Christ’s body and guides them through the Bible.[8]
Section III – Creation
We believe in the material and spiritual creation of all that is by God.[9]
And that there is a plan, purpose, and order to creation and that this plan, purpose, and order were disrupted by sin, rendering the whole of creation alienated from God, introducing chaos, decay, and death.[10]
Section IV – Humanity
We believe that humanity was created by God and imbued with the image of God and charged by God to care for creation in God’s stead.[11]
And that we sinned and continue to sin against God, creation, and one another, marring Shalom and separating ourselves from God, creation, one another, and from spiritual life.
And that humanity was created not to live alone, but as flourishing members of a community.[12]
And that those who accept the grace of God are crafted into the Body of Christ, made citizens of the Kingdom of God, and receive spiritual life anew.[13]
Section V – Scripture
We believe that Scripture consists of the Protestant canon.[14]
And we consider it to be human compositions[15] which were co-opted by God and breathed through by God so that it is “useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” (2Ti 3:16 NRS)[16]
And that it is the sole record of God’s revelation in literary form. [17] This message will always need to be translated by the help of the Paraclete into each culture it encounters.[18] In that way, it is subjective.[19] It is objective in that it describes the world as God wills it to be.[20]
Section VI – Redemption
In line with sections III and IV, we loudly proclaim a cosmic no! to the present state of ourselves and the universe. Accordingly, we believe that Jesus’ work on the cross is the means through which he will redeem all of creation.[21] This is happening in part now, but will only be finished at the Parousia. We look to the past for the pristine state, to the original Shalom as that which will be restored.[22] Yet, we also look forward to when heaven and earth will be created anew and heaven will descend upon earth.[23]
And that his begun with the victory of the Resurrection, continues through the present time, and will only be completed at the Parousia. Empowered by the Paraclete, we are agents of the reclamation of both sinful creatures and sin-smashed creation, as image bearers, until Christ finishes the work at the end of this age.
[1] “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1Jo 4:8 NRS)
[2] As love, God must have an object and subject of his loving and since it is dependent upon nothing, there must be plurality within the Godhead. (Grenz and Franke 2001, 195)
[3] God has no sex, save for the humanity of Jesus. God does relate to us in ways that are culturally gendered. He contains both genders, “for male and female he created them, (Gen 1:27 NET)” and so we speak of God as genderful, rather than genderless. God the Father relates to us as in traditionally constructed masculine ways. He creates us, protects us, rebukes us, and loves us. God the Son is sexually male, but genderly neutral. He carries both masculine and feminine attributes as commonly seen in cultures. He is Lord, but also Wonderful Counselor. It is noteworthy that Jesus was sometimes depicted with feminine features in Antique and Late Antique art precisely because of his traditionally feminine traits. (Jensen 2000, 124-128) The Paraclete relates to us as a mother, less as Lord, ruler, and protector, but more as a comforter, and intimate guide. See note 7 for my drawing from Christian traditions on this matter. Furthermore, to emphasize the relational aspect of the trinity, I will use he and she to refer to actions as persons and it to describe unified actions. This is more to underscore the relational nature of the members of the Trinity than anything else.
[4] “In [the] beginning was the Logos and the Logos was beside the God and God was the Logos.” Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. (Joh 1:1 NA27)
[5] "And the Word became flesh, and did tabernacle among us…” (Joh 1:14a YLT)
[6] Just as we take Logos from the Greek in John 1:1, we take Paraclete from it as well later on in John. We are reminded most often of John 14, which is as near as you can get to a Trinitarian statement: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you.” (Joh 14:16 NLT)
[7] I follow both Origen of Alexandria and early Syriac Christians which sometimes described or approvingly quoted works which described the Paraclete as the Divine Mother. (Rogers 2009, 119)
[8] (Grenz and Franke 2001, 64-68)
[9] In [the] beginning God created heaven and earth. “in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram” (Gen 1:1 VUO)
[10] Where there was Shalom, there is now decay, death, violence. The climax of Genesis’ opening creation poem ends with God creating rest on the 7th day. This rest can be seen as all of history bundled up in this day (see Hebrews 4 for the Future Rest) or as the completion and establishment of harmony in creation and with God, the pristine state which sin marred in the next few chapters of Genesis, the return to which history aspires. (Wirzba 2006, chap. 1-2)
[11] “God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27 NET) As image bearers, we rule and cultivate creation in God’s place. (Grenz and Franke 2001, 199) See Gen 1:28 and 2:15 for a scriptural basis.
[12] We were not created as individuals plucked from the void and twisting in the wind. (Grenz and Franke 2001, 203). Instead, we are social animals, who construct, find meaning, and live in community. By community, I refer to Toennies’ idea of Gemeinshaft instead of Gesellshaft. Gemeinshaft refers to “relationships encompassing human beings as full personalities rather than single aspects or roles of human beings,” to which Gesellshaft refers. (Grenz and Franke 2001, 211) This is a by-product of living within God’s design, not an end in and of itself.
[13] Called out of the rebelling masses of humanity are those who respond to the call of God to accept the gift of grace which is offered by Jesus and made possible through his work on the cross, which is the apex of history. Those that respond to the seed of faith are grafted into the body of Christ which is his bride. This body extends temporally from the past, through the present, and into the future, and geographically throughout the whole world. For the seed metaphor, see Luke 8:11-15; for the basis of grace and the cross, see John 3:16 and Col 2:14.
[14] We have no scriptural basis, no manuscript basis, and no scientific basis for this claim. It rests solely upon our faith in the Spirit guiding our historical spiritual community. It was not delivered to us on plates of gold; it came into being through much struggle, trepidation, and time. We listen to other Christian works such as the Catholic Apocrypha, popular Christian devotional and academic works, and even ancient Christian non-canonical texts (such as the Acts of Mar Andrew and Mar Matthias) for human and divine wisdom, but hold the Canon over and above all these as the only set of works co-opted by God as his instrument of communication.
[15] We rebel against the notion that God is the initial crafter of these texts.
[16] We cling onto usefulness and deny the practice of using it as the fourth member of the trinity, as God incarnate.
[17] As such, we elevate it above all other texts and base our construction of the world upon our readings of it. Insofar as worlds are constructed by the language and categories as socio-cultural worlds, the Paraclete creates the Christian world through the melding of the revealed biblical stage and the present and local cultural stage.(Grenz and Franke 2001, 75)
[18]Additionally, it was produced within a specific geo/cultural-historical context and must be translated into each successive and adjacent context by aid of the Paraclete. The Paraclete enhances our ability to read the Bible and understand its overarching narrative and to craft and translate it into our interpretive frameworks. (Grenz and Franke 2001, 81)
[19] Though subjectivity in this sense is not of the same sort that plagues Christian apologists in their nightmares and writings; it is truth in context.
[20] (Grenz and Franke 2001, 272)
[21] “[A]nd through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.” (Col 1:20 NLT)
[22] See Hebrews 4, especially Hebrews 4:9: ‘So then, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God;” (Heb 4:9 NRS)
[23] Consider “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Rev 21:1-2 NLT) This will fulfill Jesus’ prayer to God that “May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. (Mat 6:10 NLT)