Credo: The Story that Reads Us [A Mini-Systemic Theology]

This was originally written in 2006 in partial fulfillment of requirements for Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. It is fairly representative of my current thought, although in several ways I have built on, or superseded, what is written here. This is especially true in matters dealing with Science, World Religions, and Socio-Economic Justice.

This is the FULL 18,000 word original version that was trimmed to around 10,000 words to be turned in. Note that all endnotes have been removed from this version, due to the limitations of the blog format. However, all sources cited and consulted are found at the end of the essay.

A Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, send forth your Spirit that I may say what needs to be said, in space allowed, and bear witness fully to your Father's Glory and His Story which writes us all. Amen+


1. Connections: History reveals that all our stories are written into His Story 

Credo. Latin for "I believe", "I have faith", and "I trust". We all trust and believe things beyond our immediate experience that enable us to live life in the "real world". We have to have faith that the world is safe enough to travel in, in order to make it worth our while to leave the house and go to school or work or Starbucks. We have to have faith in those we love, even when we cannot see them, in order to share relationships with them. We even have to have faith that the natural processes and laws of physics will continue in the future, as they have in the past, in order to do science. Life, love, and science are all based on faith. Furthermore, the more our beliefs are conformed to Reality- the world as it really is- the better we live in this world.

Our beliefs about the world- our worldview- forms a central Story or "metanarrative" that we fit our individual stories into. All of our life and beliefs are framed in stories, for being human is to be a narrative creature. We connect our lives together through plot, and the times we "loose the plot" of our lives are perhaps the worst times we go through. Experientially, we find that three central stories shape our lives, and shape the narratives we find in drama, literature, and the media. 

First, relationship stories- such as romances and family narratives- talk about people falling in love, falling away, and falling back in love. Second, victory stories- such as war and hero narratives- talk about crisis, struggle, self-sacrifice, and final victory achieved in the nick of time. Third, growth and development stories- such as mystery and suspense narratives- trace the growth of people and situations through unusual twists and turns, leading to final resolution. In all of these stories, we find a Plot: they begin by introducing the characters and setting the stage. Then they introduce a crisis that complicates everything, and tell the struggles that try to resolve it. They foreshadow future developments and weave in sub-plots and new characters. As the Plot develops, later events read new meaning into the earlier events. Finally, the Plot comes to a resolution where the crisis is solved, people get their "just rewards", and everyone lives "happily ever after".

The question is: what "metanarrative" makes sense out of all our personal narratives, and the communal narratives we enjoy in literature and drama? Are we to believe that all of these stories are "sound and fury signifying nothing", and there is no Plot (with a big "P") that all our sub-plots are written into? I believe that there is a Story that "reads us", which all our stories are "sub-plots" of. 

This Story is His Story: the Story of the Triune Creator God and his creation. It is a Love Story of the Great Lover reaching out to his Beloved. It is a Victory Story of the great Hero sacrificing everything to defeat all the powers of evil. It is a great Mystery that develops and grows and takes unexpected twists and turns. In singing of this Story, Rich Mullins says "I did not make it. No it is making me. It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man." This Story reads us and interprets all of the narratives that shape our lives.

Time does not permit a critique of all the major worldviews and metanarratives available to connect and interpret our stories (such as atheism, panentheism, polytheism, deism, and theism), but one thing is common to all of them: We put our faith in that Story which best explains all of the available data. We may test the explanation by how clear it is, how coherent it is, the degree to which it corresponds to the best data we have, and how constructive it is in creating a worldview that "works" in the "real world". 

But, nothing like absolute certainty is ever achieved, only a greater or lesser probability. That explanation which is most probable we put our faith in. So, the first step is to read the Story, hear the Story, and let the Story read us. Only after allowing the Story to read and interpret us are we in the position to evaluate how "probable" it is, and gain a clearer understanding of its implications. Thus, theology is "faith seeking understanding". We believe first in order that we might understand the meaning of His Story.

2. Creator: Once upon a time there was a God who is Love

So we begin our Story, like all stories, by introducing our main character, who coincidentally is also the Author, the Plot, and the Director of His Story. We start with God. But no sooner is the word on paper than we have a problem: how can we speak of a "being" (if it be right to call God thus) who is like God? Since the overwhelming majority of thinkers across religions insist that God cannot be circumscribed within human definitions, should we choose the "negative" route and define God by what God is not, such as infinite (not finite), immutable (not changing), and immortal (not mortal)? Or go with a more "positive" approach that paints God as the surpassing perfection of everything we know, such as omnipresent (all present), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipotent (all powerful)? Or should we refuse to speak of God at all? 

Since it seems that we can say something about God, and that words can point to Reality in more or less accurate ways, it is best that we say something about God. The "negative" and "positive" approaches thus seem to rest on an assumed third premise: that of analogy to creation. Created things, and the words that signify those things, bear a resemblance or analogy to their Source or Creator. Thus, we can use analogies from the created order to speak of God, so long as we remember that such language is limited (it cannot contain God) and tentative (we may know more in the future).

Using analogy, perhaps the best way to understand God is by looking at how we understand ourselves. We understand humans by what they are (their attributes and abilities), who they are (their character traits), and how they act (their behavior). And all three are linked, because a person's essential abilities (what they are) largely determines their personal identity (who they choose to be), and their behavioral decisions are largely based on who they are and what they can do. Thus, we may understand God by looking at God's essential capacities (what God is in reference to us), God's personality (who God is), and God's contingent decisions (how God acts). 

Essentially, God is perfection: the fulfillment of all things, the source from which they come, and the goal toward which all things are headed. God is perfect in superiority: there is no other being that surpasses God in any way, and God transcends all of our categories, definitions, and conceptual "boxes". God is perfect in splendor: God is the source of all beauty, glory, and awe. Anything that is beautiful or good is such because it shares in, or reflects, God's nature. God is perfect in space: God exists beyond all space and time (transcendence), within all space and time (immanence), and also chooses to become embodied and revealed in specific ways throughout His Story. God is thus perfect in stability: God does not change because God is outside of time. To God, all past, present, and future are an eternal present tense. While this does not preclude God reacting and emoting due to the joys and pains of God's creation, it does mean that God's "emotional" reaction to such things will be unfailingly stable and dependable. 

God is perfect in sight: Due to being present at all times, in all places, at the same instant, God presently sees, experiences, and knows all things spiritually, physically, subjectively, and objectively. Due to God's perfections in space, stability, and sight, this implies a perfect ability to act: God is perfect in strength. God has the capacity to do any imaginable thing, so long as that does not contradict God's own nature and existence. Thus, God is only unable to do un-real things, or things that are inherently self-contradictory. Finally, since only personal agents can know and act, God is perfect in self: God thinks, feels, speaks, and acts. God is not some impersonal force or power, but calls Himself by The Name of "I AM what I AM".

Since God is perfect in self, who is God? God is unconditional, unfathomable, unrelenting Love. God is a self-giving, mutually interpenetrating, relational set of persons existing together as one "being" from all eternity, outside of space and time. For God to be Love, God cannot be alone. Love is only love if it is shared between persons. Thus God must either need someone outside of Godself to Love (in which case God cannot be who God is without us, which would violate his perfection), or God has eternal inter-relationships within Godself. 

The Scriptural witness says just this, by saying: (1) There is one God, the Lord. (2) Yet, even in the oldest parts of the Bible God seems to refer to Himself as a plurality, and appear as multiple Persons. (3) Jesus Christ claims titles, rights, and abilities as God, and his disciples affirm this. (4) The Spirit is also given titles, rights, and abilities as God. (5) Throughout Scripture and Christian Tradition, both Jesus and the Spirit are worshipped along side the Father as God, and all three are given glory for our salvation. (6) Yet, all three appear as distinct individuals, and function distinctly, in the Story of salvation. This has led the Church to reject three insufficient accounts of this data: Tritheism (there are not three Gods), Modalism (God is not one being play-acting behind three masks), and Subordinationism (the Father is not the "Big God", with the Son and Spirit being "sub-gods").

The most sufficient description of the data leads us to the Tri-Unity, or Trinity of God. God is three separate "Persons" or "Subjects", eternally bound together in love as one "Being" or "Object" whom we designate as "God". They fully share in each other, and interpenetrate each other eternally, while remaining distinct Persons. Some (admittedly insufficient) analogies of this relationship include: 

(1) Mathematical: 1x1x1=1. 

(2) Geometrical: A triangle is the two-dimensional shape with the least sides, yet it is one shape. Get rid of any of the sides, and it ceases to be a shape. 

(3) Relational: Love requires three aspects: the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love shared between the two. The Father is the Lover, the Son the beloved, and the Spirit is the Love that bonds the two together. 

(4) Natural: A river requires three interpenetrating, yet distinct, elements to be a river. It requires a Source (the Father), the mouth toward which the Water flows toward (the Son), and the Water that flows from the Source to the Mouth, and through the Mouth into the ocean (the Spirit). This imitates the Father who loves the Son, and out of the overflow of that love creates the "ocean" of Creation to share his love with via the Spirit. It also provides an analogy to solve the "filoque" crisis, namely that the Spirit flows from the Father through the Son, thus combining the insights of the East (that the Father is the sole Source), and the insights of the West (that the Son is also necessary for the outpouring of the Spirit). 

(5) Economic: A Gift. The Father is the Giver of the Gift of life, love, and purpose to the world. The Son is this Gift embodied. The Spirit is the Giving, that which actualizes the Gift of Christ in our lives.

Since God is both Perfect (in essence) and Love (in personality), therefore God is good (in how God acts). God is good in his creativity: Out of the overflow of his love and goodness, God creates beings distinct from Himself to share his love with and give Himself to. God is good in his caring: his character is unchangeably involved in the lives of his creatures, so that their fulfillment makes God glad, their harm makes God sad, and their rebellion makes God mad. Yet, our creator is not coerced by creation to feel certain emotions, as if God does not have a choice. God is not forced to feel emotions for his creatures, but God has chosen unchangeably that he will act and feel certain ways in response to certain situations. This is similar to how I am not forced to create and care for my children, But now that they are here, I have chosen to enter deeply and emotionally into their lives. 

God is thus good in his consistency: When God promises to act or feel a certain way in response to his creatures, he unfailingly does so. Furthermore, God makes promises to bring about good for all of those who "love him and are called according to his promises". God will not fail to fulfill these promises. Therefore, God is also good in control: he controls all things in creation to make his promises turn out right. God does not usually do this by force (minus the occasional freely chosen miracle), but rather by conducting the choices of free willed beings toward his goals, in much the same way that a conductor conducts a symphony. He anticipates every single possible free choice and has a plan of action to deal with them all, without co-opting the freedom of his creatures. This freedom means that God has to be good in condemning those actions which hurt other creatures. If God is good, God will necessarily get upset at, and seek to limit, the evil choices of his creatures. Thus ultimately means that God will have to judge and exile all sources of evil and suffering so they can no longer hurt others. 

Yet, God would have to destroy everyone, because everyone eventually rebels against love and hurts others. This would mean the destruction of all that God created to love, and this would be bad, not good. Because of this, God comes up with a "Plan B": Redemption of those who rebel against Him. God is good in his compassion upon those rebels who turn from evil and turn back to Him. So they can be forgiven and reconciled to God, God takes their pain and consequences into Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ. Thus God's goodness is fulfilled in both his condemnation of evil and his compassion on those who turn from evil. But this is not the end of God's goodness, because being God and relating to a free creation requires a certain amount of paradox and irony. Because of this, God is good in his comedy. The God of Scripture plays jokes, turns the tables, and does the unexpected. Not only is God writing a great Theo-Drama across the pages of History, but he is also starring in a hilarious Theo-Comedy.

3. Creation: From the overflow of Love the Creative Creator creates creative creatures

So, now we have introduced God in Three Persons, but we have no other actors (nor even a stage) on which the great Drama can unfold. From out of the overflow of God's Love, God calls our Universe into being. God the Father is the Author, the Source, of all that is. God the Son is the Plot, or "Word", which is written across the pages of History, in which all of History finds its fulfillment. God the Spirit is the director of Creation, "brooding" over the chaos to bring life out of nothingness, working through time and space, to push and pull creation toward ultimate fulfillment in Christ. This creation is not really "out of nothing", nor is it made out of some type of primordial "stuff" existing outside of God. Rather, creation is "out of God", as his Love overflows to make other real, distinct beings who can freely receive and give God's Love.

The Biblical narratives of creation have often been mistaken as a pseudo-scientific textbook about how everything was made, when it should be understood more as a poem or vision about why everything was made. People operating from the former position have defended ludicrous anti-scientific theories thinking they were defending the Bible, while others have thought they have "debunked" the Christian Story by debunking these theories. The creation stories really tell us next to nothing about the "how" of everything, and are actually compatible with most scientific accounts of the Universe's origins. However, they do tell us why: In the beginning everything was "formless" and "empty". Therefore, God formed the stage for his Drama to unfold on the first "three days". Over the next "three days" God filled this empty stage with free actors- creative creatures- who could participate in the Story of God.

This means that creation is radically free, from the unpredictable movements of subatomic particles, to "chaos theory" which governs weather patterns, to the un-trainable housecat, to the erratic human, to the rebellious angel. From the top of creation down to its very depths, creation shares in the freedom of her Creator. Creation is also multi-dimensional. The "modern" idea that the physical world's particles are something like little marbles spinning and colliding in space and time has given over to a more "postmodern" understanding of physics. Quantum theory postulates that "matter" is actually a interconnected network of subatomic "strings" or "membranes" existing in 7 to 23 more dimensions than just the four dimensions of space and time that we are aware of. Thus the "physical" world is more like plants than marbles: The empirical world is interconnected at a very deep "spiritual" level like the roots of plants beneath the surface. 

Not only this, but the interactions of all "empirical" matter and energy is governed by completely non-empirical principals and powers we call the laws of physics, logic, and mathematics. What this means is first, that there is a "spiritual" aspect of the world which the "empirical" world depends on, and second, that this "spiritual" world is not so easily separable from "reality" as modern thought used to think. The Bible tells us directly what science now hints at: Creation is an interconnected physical and spiritual whole, in which the "spiritual" universe is populated by free beings much like the physical universe is. This blurs the line between "magic", "miracle", and "science". If God has the power that Christians believe, then he is able to warp, manipulate, move, speed up, and slow down our dimensions in ways that are totally "scientific" in his realm, but utterly incredible in our realm. What is "supernatural" in our dimension is purely "natural" in another.

From this very rich tapestry God's Spirit has led creative creatures to evolve and emerge from the creative process of the universe, leading to the "highest" of all creatures who are God-like in their ability to be creative: Human beings. Scripture declares that humans are made "in God's image" to reflect God in several ways: 

(1) Just as God is Triune in relationships, humans possess a triune capacity for relationship. We are body, with a capacity to relate to the physical world, but also a spirit, with a capacity to relate to the spiritual world (and the Spirit of God), yet also a soul, with a capacity to relate to ourselves and be self-aware. 

(2) Our souls, or "selves", likewise reflect Tri-unity in that we are self aware in three distinct, overlapping ways: We experience ourselves and our world through rational, cognitive "minds", as well as affective, passionate "hearts", along with volitional, active "wills". 

(3) Out of all of the free creatures in the universe, we are the only ones yet known who are self-aware of their own freedom, like God is. We alone can "think about" what we are thinking about. 

(4) Along with God, humans are unique in being able to use signs, symbolic systems, and language to represent reality. Just as God created everything through "the Word", so also humans mirror God when we build and create using words and language, especially as "story writers". No other creature known can write a poem or tell a story. 

(5) We mirror God in our communal nature: It is "not good" for us to be alone, but God has made us to exist as social beings, just as God is community in unity. 

(6) We mirror God as sexual beings. Just as the Father is the Source of life, and the Spirit is that which brings life to actuality, and the Son is the life that is given to all, so also human sexuality images God: The husband impregnates, the wife brings life to birth, and the child is the life of the mother and father given to the world. Thus both male and female are mirrors of God, and along with many ancient commentators I agree that father, mother, child is also an apt analogy of the Trinity. 

(7) Finally, humans mirror God in our capacity to govern and rule creation. God has "loaned" creation to us to care for and manage as sons and daughters of the King of Creation.

Humans occupy "center stage" as actors in the Drama God is writing, but Scripture and Tradition also make it clear that God has created a "tech crew" that works behind the scenes to keep creation going. These spiritual beings that work "behind the scenes" are called "angels". We are only told enough about them to understand some of their functions, and recognize that they are not "gods" but rather servants of the one true God. Angels are intelligent, powerful, spiritual, free creatures through which God works in his providential care over creation. Angels worship God in the "spiritual" realm of existence (what we call "heaven"). They also carry messages and reveal God's will to humans, along with performing miracles, and participating in the judgment and destruction of evil. Scripture also seems to indicate that they may have a regular role in the upkeep and maintenance of natural processes, and in that sense they may be personifications of the universal "powers", "laws" and "forms" that give structure to physics, logic, and mathematics.

Through his own direct action, along with the free actions of angels, humans, and other creatures, God providentially controls everything by allowing freedom, not by limiting it. God's control is best understood by understanding the difference between potentiality and actuality. Like we said before, God knows every possible thing we could ever choose, and God has a plan to react to anything we could do. On one hand, nothing surprises God, and there is nothing he has not thought of. On the other hand, not everything is pre-determined, on a straight line with no deviation. Within certain boundaries we have freedom of choice that God reacts to, and using circumstances, angels, and occasionally miracles, God will steer the course of events to stay within the boundaries of the field of probability he has laid out.

For instance: Have you ever read one of those "pick your own ending" books in elementary school? In these books there are decision points that allow you to see what happened if the characters made different decisions. If Susie decided to open the door, you would turn to page 16, but if she went down the stairs, you would turn to page 27. This would change how the story happened, but often the ending was similar no matter how you got there. All the choices ended up in solving the mystery in different ways. The potential field of choices is limited so there is true freedom, yet each free choice has been considered by the Author. Another way of conceiving this is to think about one of Grandma's needlepoint pictures. From underneath, the picture looks like a straggled mess of tangled thread, but from the top Grandma has skillfully knitted each thread into the correct place to make a very exact picture. Our choices, when viewed from our side of eternity, look like the threads on the bottom. Yet from God's side he is providentially weaving a masterwork of art.

4. Crisis: Creative creatures corrupt creation and fall into the failings of freedom

The image of tangled threads and mystery stories leads us to the greatest tangle and mystery in all of creation: the problem of evil. Into each story a crisis comes to complicate the lives of the actors and lead to the ultimate fulfillment of the Plot. The crisis in our Story is a "theodicy": If God is all-good, he should desire the fulfillment and health of his creation. If God is all-powerful, he should be able to stop anything that would destroy his creatures. Yet, God's creatures are destroyed, and they die unfulfilled and unhealthy. With the existence of suffering and evil, we seem to have three options: 

(1) We can deny that God exists. This gets rid of the Source of the problem, but if there is no Author, there is no Story. Thus, our stories can find no ultimate fulfillment in His Story, and we are left without meaning (and ultimately, if we are as honest as Nietzsche, we only have the "will to power"). But also, if we deny there really is a transcendent "good" in life, then we also no longer have room to say there is evil. Evil can only exist as a distortion or negation of good, just like crooked can only exist as a distortion of straight. Without God, not only is there no evil, but there is no longer any room to say any experience or any choice is bad. In getting rid of God, we get rid of evil, but only at the expense of the total "abolition of man". 

(2) We can say that God is not really good, but has a "dark side" that wills the suffering and destruction of his beloved. But, this leads us to a God who we cannot really know, understand, or trust in. He would be a God that we must submit to, but not one that deserves worship or love. This makes no sense of the Biblical or Traditional witness of God's goodness, although modified versions of this solution have been tried by Christians of a more Augustinian or Reformed bent. 

(3) We could say that God is good, but simply not powerful enough to do much about evil. God can sympathize with our pain, but cannot stop it. This is the route of many process theologians. But in the end, this makes evil stronger than good and more powerful than God, which leaves us with a God that is no longer perfect and not really worthy of respect or worship either. In this schema, we might prefer God, but we should actually serve and submit to evil as the more important reality. Whatever the solution to evil is, it must include God's existence, goodness, and power, without negating or slighting our experience of evil.

The best solution is ultimately rooted in the purpose for our creation: the sharing of love. We cannot share God's love if we are pre-programmed robots without choice in the matter. A puppet does not love its master, no matter how much the master wants it to. Likewise, we cannot be forced to love, for that is rape. God does not rape us. We must be free to accept or deny God's love if we are to live out our purpose in the Drama. And this freedom entails consequences. God cannot give us freedom, and then take away the consequences for every bad choice we make. This is not true freedom, any more than being held inside a "do-good-only-force-field" would be freedom. Therefore, if we are to love, we must have true freedom and be allowed the full consequences of that freedom. But this entails a huge risk for both ourselves and for God: For us, it can mean self destruction as we make choices to cut ourselves off from life, love, and purpose. For God, it means the destruction of everyone he made to love. In giving us freedom, God risks everything.

How does this "freedom" fit with God's declaration that creation is "very good"? Well, I think it is like how I feel about my daughter. I say my daughter as "very good" because I get to share my life, my love, and my self with her, even though I know that she will cost me immensely in time, money, and heartache across the years. Yet, when my daughter rejects me, and rebels against the family rules, she does not live into her "good" potential. She "sins". Relationally, that is what "sin" is: it is a denial of relationship, and rejection of love. Choices which deny God and deny the dignity of God's children sever our relationship with God, as surely as adultery or abuse sever our relationship with a spouse. When viewed from the standpoint of Drama, sin is disobedience: it is "missing the mark" of our place in His Story, choosing to refuse our part in His Story, and trying to write our own story apart from Him. Finally, from the standpoint of health, sin is disease: in cutting us off from life, love, and purpose, sin gradually leads us into despair, destruction, and death. Sin is a cancer that distorts what is good, and puts us in bondage to all that is not God. 

Sin entered into the world in three distinct "crises": First, sometime before history as we know it, part of the "tech-crew" rebelled because many angels thought they rightfully should rule creation in God's stead. In this rebellion, these super-human, super-natural powers and principalities became "demons" and fell from God's dimension to plague life in our dimension in several ways: They deceive humans into destroying ourselves, by making us think sickness and evil are healthy and good. They tempt us to deny God and fall further from his love than we would have on our own. And, because spiritual powers are at work in the maintenance and providence of creation, it appears that this "angelic fall" has caused the free processes of the universe to go awry, so that creation "groans" in agony as natural disasters now occur all over her "stage". 

The second crisis was the sin of our first ancestors ages ago. When humans first became self-aware beings able to understand the consequences of freedom, and know the difference between rejecting God and trusting Him, we deliberately chose to deny God. Tempted by the powers of darkness, we rejected the goodness and providence of God, and chose to write our own story instead. This has plunged the whole of the human race into bondage to socio-economic injustice, spiritual alienation, prejudice, hatred, and guilt. We no longer naturally know the good because the "original sin" of our parents has deprived us of it. We are born into a system of deception in which we only understand goodness in an inverse or negative way, as a lack of what we need, much like understanding what pieces need to go into a puzzle by looking at the holes in it.

The final crisis is our own personal "fall" away from God's love and goodness. We are born with the potential of Sin, but we all actualize this by choosing to do individual sins. Sins are particular physical manifestations of the universal, global, spiritual Sin that has infected all of creation. By denying the shadows of good that we know, and choosing what we know is wrong, unhealthy, and unloving, we make the universal Crisis our own personal crisis. The natural consequences of these three "falls" are emotional, social, physical, and spiritual: the death of our soul from guilt, anger, and numbness; the death of relationships and families; the death of our bodies and our environment; and our spiritual death in eternal separation from God. 

The Bible tells us that God's attitude toward sin is "anger", "wrath", and even "vengeance". It represents God smiting and destroying the individuals and nations trapped in sin. But, if God is "love" what do we make of this? First it must be said that most of the consequences of sin do not come from God directly, but he "allows" us to go our own way into sin and experience the natural consequences of sin. Thus, the normal consequence of sin is more sin, and the downward spiral of suffering that it causes. Secondly, there are select occasions when God personally does step in to destroy sinful systems that continually destroy others. There are three main reasons for God's wrath, whether as active destruction of sin, or passively allowing sin to bear "fruit" in suffering, injustice, and death. First, God's wrath is for amputation: It is used to cut off evil so that it will cease hurting others. Secondly, God's wrath is for education: It is used to teach people how to be more Christ-like and more loving through training and discipline. Finally, God's wrath is for liberation: It is used to bring people home to him forever, as their "final birth" into eternity. 

But if God is a worthy of being called good "Father", he cannot let us stay this way. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and be saved. In God's "perfect will" he wants us all to freely love Him. In God's "permissive will" he allows us to freely deny him instead. But perfection and permission are not the end of the story: God also has a "redemptive will". The beauty of God's Story is that he personally enters into it to save his children. As our Father, God suffers for us, and is heartbroken about our sin and rejection of his love. And he does something about it, and sends his own Son and Spirit to help us out of the hole we have dug. In sending his own eternal Son, God the Father experiences what it means to loose the one closest to Himself. As Jesus Christ, God suffers with us, and bears all our pain and suffering in Himself. God knows what it means to suffer injustice, betrayal, loneliness, humiliation, pain, and death, because he did it in Christ. God takes responsibility for what he has made and "owns it" for Himself by becoming fully human and experiencing it from inside out. But not only does God endure it, he defeats it in his resurrection by the power of the Spirit. The death and resurrection of Christ is the ultimate paradigm for how God deals with evil: he subverts evil and uses it for good. He does jujitsu on evil and uses the worst defeat for the greatest victory. God works all things, even evil things, for the good of those who love him. Thus, as the Spirit, God overcomes suffering in us. The Spirit lives inside those who receive Christ's love, and gives them the power to endure and overcome evil as they have faith in Him. In this Age, the Trinity deals with evil by suffering for us, with us, and in us. In the Age to come, God will finally bring an end to all suffering, and the fulfillment of all we have ever hoped for. 

5. Calling: The Creator reaches out in Ages and Stages to call his beloved back

Even though God redeems, subverts, and overcomes evil, he does not do it apart from our co-operation. Thus, to redeem us from our crisis, God has to reach out to us and bring us to Himself. Like we said before, the first way that God reaches out to us is through a kind of innate, negative knowledge that there should be some type of God to fill the hole in our souls. We know inside ourselves, and in our society, that there are pieces missing and Something must fill the holes and make sense out of the Story we find ourselves in. We have four natural sources of knowledge for this: 

First of all, there is the witness of our environment. We see from the complex system of causes and effects around us that nothing happens without a cause. We know that there somehow must be a "first cause" that is beyond all time, space, matter, and energy, but we do not know what it is. 

Secondly, there is the witness of logic and reason. We know when we encounter purposeful, intricate systems (such as watches, cars, or computers) that there was an intelligent designer behind them. We see the incredibly complex, intricate system of the universe, and know there must be a Designer behind it, but we know not Whom. 

Third, we have the inward witness of experience. We feel the reality of love, of meaning, of drama, and of beauty. We know there is good and evil. Either these things are cosmic mistakes in the impersonal process of existence, or they point to a real fulfillment in a real Drama, a real Purpose, a real Beauty, a real Good, and a real Author responsible for all of these things. 

Finally, there is the witness of human tradition. Every culture at every time in History has had a religious impulse, and a knowledge that there is a "spiritual reality" of meaning and purpose beyond the brute facts of physical existence. Only a small minority of humanity that have ever claimed anything like "atheism". And yet, within very broad outlines, different cultures disagree greatly about what "Ultimate Reality" is like and how to relate to It (or him or her). We all know the hole in our individual and collective soul, but not the fulfillment. We may grope for God, but we will not find God without God reaching out to us.

Therefore, due to the limitations of our own finite understanding, and the systematic deception of sin, God has to do something to give us a true understanding of who he is. This gives us our fifth source of knowledge about God: revelation, the "unveiling" of spiritual reality, where God opens the "curtain" behind our "stage" to show us who he really is. We could never know who God is without God stepping into our world and showing us Godself. God does this through what we call "miracles". Miracles are events beyond the norm of empirical reality which reveal the identity of God. The Bible calls them "signs" which point to God and convey information about Him, "wonders" that display the reality of something beyond our everyday world, and "powers' that reveal the ability of God to save, restore, and deliver us. God uses these miracles to reach into our world in healings, casting out evil powers, and control of natural processes (such as weather and water). 

God also interprets the meaning of his miracles and acts of salvation by giving certain chosen messengers- such as prophets and apostles- visions, imagination, and words of knowledge to proclaim to others so they can understand why God has acted. The central miracle events in His Story are recorded and interpreted in the Bible, which is a collection of writings that the Spirit guided God's people to both write and "canonize" as the interpretive key through which we understand God's working in History. In the events it interprets, the truths it affirms, and the problems it raises, it is the "norm" which we compare all our thought about God to. As long as we use Scripture for what it was meant for- not as a source of esoteric knowledge, nor a textbook for science, but as a means of grace to draw us into the life of God- it is the completely reliable guide to enable us to know, love, and follow God though Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.

All cultures and most religions have some tradition of God reaching out to them through miracles, visions, and prophets. But, in the unfolding Drama of salvation, God has chosen one line of people to be the "epicenter" of his saving activity. On one hand this denies that God universally reveals Godself equally to all people at all times through means available to any "right thinking" person. On the other hand, it does not deny that God has been at work in some ways in every culture to prepare it for his arrival. 

As JRR Tolkien has said, God has given all cultures "good dreams" of Himself. From the pagan myths of gods who come to earth, as well as gods who die and rise again, to the oneness of God in monotheist traditions, to the hints of Divine Tri-unity in Hinduism, to the mindfulness and detachment of Buddhism, to the universal power of love and the "golden rule" spread across all cultures, God has indeed given "good dreams" to those on the periphery of his saving activity. In fact, even atheists and skeptics bear witness to the reality of God when they rightly deny and deconstruct the idols of our culture, and the monstrous mis-representation of the God of Love, which is found in some misguided versions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and other world religions. Every idol that is smashed allows us a clearer vision of the true Source of Reality. Every religion that is seeking after what is Good, True, and Beautiful, is seeking after the Living God, even if they do not yet know God's Name. Indeed, even in Scripture we find pagan kings who seek God, Mesopotamian magicians who worship baby Jesus, and even some ideas (like resurrection and final judgment) incorporated into the Biblical worldview from Babylon and other "pagan" nations. Another way to say this is that people outside of Christ are still in His Story, but perhaps in an earlier chapter.

Yet, we find the central Plot of the Drama of salvation is centered squarely on one family, who God uses to reveal his salvation to the world. God starts by picking out one family of "Patriarchs" (and Matriarchs) out of all the families of the Earth and calling them to follow him into the promised land, so they will be a blessing to all nations. This family traces its roots to the legendary figure of Abraham (the "great father"), through his descendants Isaac and Jacob (who is later appropriately named Israel, the "God-wrestler"). 

Israel in turn became a nation of people who wrestled and struggled with God. They lived in relationship with God for a time, but they rebelled and fall away. God then allowed them to be repressed by injustice, war, famine, destruction, and even exile, until they finally understood their rebellion, and repented and returned to God. At this point, God then restored Israel to relationship with Him. This Story is played out over and over in the Patriarchs, in the Princes and Kings of Israel, and in the Prophets of the Bible. It is, in fact, the Story and cycle of our own lives: relationship, rebellion, repression, repentance, restoration.

But, Israel, despite her calling to be a "blessing to all nations", kept getting locked up in the cycle at repression, and never fulfilled her purpose. So through a series of prophetic visions and victory psalms, God indicated that he would do something to break the cycle. God Himself would enter his own Story to judge, rule, and restore all nations. But this idea of the powerful God-King, the Chosen Messiah, exists in tension with prophecies that seem to say that this "Chosen One" will be a "Suffering Servant" who will suffer and even die for God's People. So, how does God work out this tension, not to mention all of the "good dreams" he has given to countless cultures? He does it in a way that no one could have expected, even in their wildest dreams.

6. Christ: The Myth becomes Fact as the Author writes Himself into his own Story

In Jesus Christ, we find out how our Author wrote Himself into his own Story as the Myth that became actual and the Superhero that became factual. The Gospel of John begins with "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... all things came into being through [the Word]". "Word" (Greek: Logos) can mean the "organizing factor", "purpose", "wisdom", and the "reason" behind something. In other words, the Word is the Plot of His Story. In Jesus, the Plot of the Story (who has existed for all eternity in the Tri-Unity of God) actually becomes a character on his own stage and the Star of his own Drama.

Ever since Jesus lived, died, and rose again, people have puzzled over what to do with him. Some have said that Jesus Christ is a hopeful legend, like the stories of Zeus, Apollo, or Superman. But, looking at Christ as a mere legend totally misses the uniqueness of God entering real History in Jesus. The narratives about his life and deeds found in the Gospel books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for instance, seem to be highly reliable. When you compare the amount of copies we have of these Gospels, and the sheer volume of archaeological finds that lend credence to them, they come out far ahead of any other ancient book written before the printing press. Also, when you consider the sheer amount of prophecy that Christ fulfills from the Jewish Bible, not to mention the themes of incarnate gods and resurrections he fulfills from pagan myths, it seems clear that he is no mere legend. Rather, Christ alone fulfills legend, and C.S. Lewis rightly calls him "the Myth made fact". 

This is substantiated by the fact that early historians, both Jewish and Pagan, treated Christ as a historical person who lived, did miracles, was crucified, was reported as resurrected, and was worshipped as God by early Christians. Without the historical reality of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, it is hard to account for how his previously scared and disheartened disciples were empowered to take this message to the ends of the known world. It is impossible to account for how the message of an obscure prophet from a disliked people on the other side of nowhere was transmitted through centuries of persecution, politics, and skepticism to the present day, and how people through all ages have experienced the living Christ, if he was mere legend.

In light of this, some have tried to divorce Jesus from the supernatural, and say that Jesus is another great human leader, like Buddha, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Jr. True, he is a great human, prophet, and leader. The Gospels paint him as a real human who was born, who grew in knowledge and stature, who suffered and was tempted, and who was tired, emotional, and limited. The Church through history has repeatedly rejected views that made Jesus less-than-human, whether as a "ghost" that appeared to be human, or as a "God-in-a-bod", a God-possessed human host. 

Yet, there is another side of Jesus. He claims equality with God. He claims to have the authority of God to forgive, judge, and give eternal life. He claims to be Lord of the Sabbath and the Lord of History. He does the work of God, like healing, controlling nature, and multiplying food. He defeats death by rising again and visiting groups from 2 to more than 500. In his resurrection appearances, he appears indoors and outdoors, has conversations, is touched, eats, and even cooks breakfast for his disciples. He gives his own Spirit to his disciples to guide and empower them. This is enough for his disciples to call him the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, and to live, suffer, and die for the message he gave them.

It becomes clear that Jesus was no mere legend or even merely a human leader, but something more, something that transcends both of them and fulfills them. Yet, some have said that Jesus was a lunatic for claiming to be God, on the same level as a "man who claims to be a poached egg". But his teaching, example, and love were completely sane, and not even Christ's enemies could get people to believe he was crazy or "demon possessed". Others have tried to make Jesus into a liar, a charlatan, and a hoax who pretended to be the "Chosen One" of the Jewish People. But, all liars and con-men have an "angle" they are trying to work and a profit to gain. What did Jesus, or his disciples, gain from their lives of selfless love and proclamation of the Gospel of Hope and Resurrection? They gained suffering, ridicule, persecution, and death. Either Jesus and his disciples were the worst con-men in history, or Jesus is what Church claims: the Lord of all. 

This is embodied in the decisions of the great Ecumenical Councils of the Church, who faced implicitly and explicitly all of the challenges to Jesus' identity listed above. These councils provided "bumpers" to help keep our ideas about Christ within the boundaries of reality. These boundaries are: On top, that he is fully God and co-eternal within the Trinity. On bottom, that he is fully and truly human in all the ways we are, except without sin. On the left, that these two natures of God and man have the most complete possible unity that can be conceived in the one person of Christ. Yet, on the right, this union does not mean that they become mixed and subsumed into one another. Further councils insisted that Jesus has human will and a divine will that fully co-operate to accomplish the salvation of the world.

Yet, to paraphrase the band Live "What he was may have been beautiful... But what a man was 2000 years ago means nothing at all to me today". What has Jesus done for us lately? It is precisely in the seemingly absurd idea of God taking human form that we find the deep logic of the Christian Story, because it is only in the work of Jesus Christ that the problem of human suffering, death, and hopelessness is resolved. For us, God does not remain high above human suffering, far removed, and uncaring. God demonstrates his unfathomable love for us by sending his Beloved to live and die as one of us. God cares enough to leave heaven (whatever dimension that may be in) and become as fully human as you or I, and undergo all our trials and tribulations. His entire life, death, and resurrection was done to reconcile us to God and make us "at-one" with Him. Thus, his life and mission are called "atonement", or "at-one-ment".

Christ's whole life is atoning as a "recapitulation" of humanity: In Jesus, God re-did what our sin un-did, literally re-starting the human race, and living a perfect life of love. He does this so that those who connect themselves to him by faith and sacrament may "re-boot" their lives, "wipe" their hard-drive of sin's corruption, be made new creations, and partake of his divine life. His recapitulation also "downloads" new software that gives us a guide and example of how to live this new life in Christ, who is the pattern that "formats" us in self-sacrificial love.

Christ's death is atoning as a "substitution": In Jesus, God substitutes Himself for us as victims of sin. He enters into the suffering of the world he created and takes all of its pain, hopelessness, and agony into Himself and owns it completely. In Jesus, God allows Himself to be mocked, beaten, betrayed, humiliated, and unjustly crucified as a criminal, so that he takes responsibility for all the consequences that freedom has allowed. In Jesus, God also substitutes Himself for us as villains who sin. Forgiveness requires self-substitution, so that the one who forgives takes the consequences of the one who has sinned into themselves. Since the natural consequence of our sin is death, destruction, and despair, then for God to forgive us he must take it all into Himself publicly, for the whole world to witness. In fact, only an infinite Person can take into themselves the infinite amount of corruption and evil that our collective sin has wrought. This God does for us in Jesus, who once-for-all becomes sin for us, and kills sin forever.

Christ's resurrection is also atoning as a "victory": Christ did not stay a dead martyr or a mourned genius, like every other human leader in History. No, he defeated sin, suffering, evil, and death by triumphing over them in his resurrection, through the power of his Spirit. In Christ's death, God put himself in our place. In his resurrection, God gives us new life and makes us a new creation. And he shares his victory by filling us with his resurrection Spirit in Pentecost, and the continuing "Pentecostal" empowering of the Spirit. At the end of the world, Christ will completely fulfill this victory when he "comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead".

Bing Crosby had it right when he sang "the hopes and fears of all the years are met in [Christ] tonight". Jesus does not destroy the cultures, sciences, or religions of the world, but fulfills all that is good, true, and beautiful in them. He is the real Superman, the embodied God, the true Myth. The universal desire of humanity to be united with ultimate meaning, hope, love, and purpose is made visible and concrete, for all to see and experience, in the person and work of the God-man, Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

7. Counselor: The Creator pours Himself out on us to re-create, direct, and empower our lives

Now that Jesus Christ has come onto the stage, we are tempted to say that the Story is over. The Star is born. The Drama is finished. But not so fast. The Plot is not finished because Christ did not come to make us perpetual spiritual infants, but to make us mature children of God. The Father sent Christ to make us into little christs, or rather "Christ-ians". Christ's work may be complete in removing our sin and re-connecting us to God, but it is not complete in our experience of his new life. God created us to responsibly share in a personal love affair with him through Jesus. And since God's love is the Person of the God the Spirit, we are not complete in our relationship with God until we fully share in the life of the Spirit. Scripture tells us that the purpose for Christ's coming was to destroy evil and to immerse us in his Spirit's resurrection life.

So, to bring us into the fullness of his divine life, the Father pours out his Spirit onto us (and into us) through Jesus Christ. The Spirit is God's personal presence that fills all of reality, yet she is not merely an impersonal "force" like the "God" of many versions of pantheism and panentheism. She is not merely some spiritual power which you cannot know or have a relationship with, but which you manipulate and "use" through spiritual techniques, like using a lightswitch to turn on a light. Rather, the Spirit tells us in the Book she inspired that she guides and leads, thinks and chooses, speaks and acts. She fully knows the mind of God and our minds as well. She feels and cares, and we can cause her to rejoice or grieve.

But, understanding the Spirit is not like trying to understand the Father or the Son, because she likes to hide herself. In fact, Jesus tells us that her role in our salvation is to highlight the Father and the Son, and open our eyes to their salvation, not to draw attention to herself. We can identify the Spirit when her works draw us to know, love, and follow the Father and the Son. If an experience does not draw us closer to God-in-Christ, it is simply not the work of God's Spirit. In fact, it is only by the Spirit opening our perception to God's reality that we are able to know or relate to God. Since the Spirit is the love of God, to know the Spirit is to know God. No Spirit, no God. Thus, studying the Spirit is a bit like studying our own eyes, because it is our eyes that allow us to see and study. Just as we can only study our own eyes by indirect reflections of them, we can only understand the Spirit by the reflections we see of her in Scripture and our own experience.

These reflections tell us that, like Christ, she is not separate from God, or merely a creature. She is the Creator, and a member of the Trinity from all eternity. Her Scripture tells us she is both Lord and God, the very Spirit of Jesus and the very Spirit of the Father. She is included in the Trinitarian formulas of Scripture, and she does only things that God can do, like being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present. She is the "living water" that fills us with God's life, forgiveness, healing, and power. Since male and female are both made in God's image, we may identify the Spirit as God's "feminine side". 

If Jesus is the masculine embodiment of God's rational Word, then the Spirit is the activity of God's creative Power. We find her brooding over creation to bring forth life, like a mother bird preparing a nest. We find her enveloping all of creation, and comforting God's people, as a mother comforts her child. We find her bringing God's life to birth in the physical womb of Mary and the spiritual womb of every child of God. And although both masculine and neuter pronouns and images are used of the Spirit, she is overwhelming depicted as feminine. Thus, it is preferable to refer to the Father or Son as "he" who impregnates us with divine life, the Spirit as "she" brings that life to new birth, and the Trinity as God or Godself.

Scripture and tradition tell us that she has three main roles, or tasks, that she performs in us and through us to write God's Story. First, our Creed declares that she is our "Lifegiver", and Scripture says that she is "God with us". The Spirit gives us life because she is the active agent that God used to create all life in the beginning, and she is also the power of God that constantly holds together all physical life in the universe. Not only does the Spirit give and uphold all physical life, but she is also our spiritual Life-giver. She alone opens our souls to understand, know, and accept Jesus Christ. Without her taking away our blindness, we would not be able to turn to Christ and find eternal life. She is also active in the life-giving rituals and practices of the Church (i.e. sacraments) which convey the life of God into us. Through the giving of physical and spiritual life, the Spirit creates new actors to live in God's Story.

The Spirit's second role in our lives is that of "Counselor", a term used by Jesus which can also mean guide, legal advocate, companion, and comforter. She is "God in us", who indwells our human spirits as God's permanent presence. She makes Christ real to us and forms Christ in us, as she guides us, prays with us and through us, and helps us through the hard times with support and encouragement. She does this by directing our minds, inspiring our hearts, acting in our environment, influencing our communities, and speaking through Scripture. In her role as "Counselor" she is the director who guides the cast and crew of the great Drama of salvation to complete fulfillment in the life of the Triune God.

The final role that the Spirit has in our lives is that of Empoweror, or "God upon us". In Scripture, especially the book of Acts, when the Spirit "came upon" the disciples, she gave them power to preach, teach, heal, and do miracles. The Spirit came as the wild, uncontrollable flame of Pentecost, setting the disciples on fire with the all-consuming love of God, and immersing them in the creative power of the Triune God. The same pattern happens today when people surrender their lives to Christ and allow his Spirit to fill them with power to do the very work of God. Not only does the Spirit give us new life (as Lifegiver), and direct us in God's Story (as Counselor), but as our Empoweror, the Spirit "plugs us in" to God's creative energy and enables us to co-operate with her in writing and spreading this Story across time and space.

Although those who receive Christ are indwelt with the fullness of the Spirit at the moment of new birth, this fullness is not actualized until the believer surrenders themselves totally to the Lordship of Christ. This process may be compared to emptying the vessel of ourselves, only to be "filled" or "baptized" with the Spirit. It may also be compared with an "outpouring", where water is suddenly released from a lake, when the dam is broken that is holding back the water. The "filling" of the Spirit is her "outpouring" when selfish, sinful "blockages" are removed by a person's total surrender to Christ, so that her "living water" can freely pour out of the person. This release of the Spirit is repeated over and over again in the life of the Christian as they reach crisis points of deeper and deeper surrender to the love of God and the Lordship of Christ.

This repeated outpouring of the Spirit is evidenced by greater and greater "spiritual gifts" which empower the believer to manifest the character, communication, and conduct of Christ. The gifts Christ-like character are first and foremost, because they transform our minds, reform our hearts, and conform our wills to Christ's image. This Christ-like character is called "the fruit of the Spirit", and it is compared to "good fruit" that grows from a healthy tree. This "fruit" begins with the formation of Christ's selfless love within us, and pours out into a whole host of virtues such as joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faith, humility, self-control, hope, boldness, and wisdom (to name a few). And without this love as the foundational gift, all other spiritual gifts are useless!

The Spirit further blesses us with gifts of Christ-like communication and conduct so that we may bless others and build them up into all the fullness of Christ. We are not gifted for our own sake or to be superior to others, but to humbly share with others all that God has "loaned" us. In the gifts of communication, we are given special knowledge, speaking ability, and even languages supernaturally from the Spirit so that we may speak as Christ to others. In the gifts of conduct, we are given abilities, talents, skill-sets, and sometimes supernatural powers to teach, serve, lead, heal, and even exorcise others in order to bring God's Kingdom in its fullness. Some of these gifts have been combined into certain "offices", or permanent functions, within the community of believers. This community is nothing less than the extended Body of Christ which made alive by the "lifeblood" of the Spirit running through it. It is this community we turn to now.

8. Church: God adopts a family to tell His Story and help write His Story

In our Creed we confess to believe in, and actually to be "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church". The word "Church" is the Greek word ekklesia, which refers to an assembly of people who are "called out" (ek = out, kaleo = called) of the kingdom of darkness into Christ's Kingdom of light. Christ's Kingdom is already a spiritual reality within the persons and communities where Christ's Spirit reigns as King, and rules in love and truth. Yet, the Kingdom is not yet here in its fullness, which will happen when Christ comes to reign at the end of time. 

Through the ages, God has assembled a community of "called out" people to be the visible, physical, present, partial reality of the invisible, spiritual, future, complete Kingdom to come. His purpose in doing this has always been to create a people that would call all nations and peoples out of darkness into light. In past ages this community has been localized in a particular family (that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), then broadened into a nation (Israel), and now transformed into a Spirit-empowered worldwide movement of Jesus-followers (the Church). This does not mean that non-Christian communities are devoid of God and have no part in His Story. Certainly everywhere we find truth and love, we find Christ's Spirit at work. It only means that in this Age, God has chosen one primary community to take "center stage" in the Drama of bringing His Kingdom into reality.

Scripture gives us several visions of what the Church is which all point to one multi-faceted reality of a people in union with the Triune God. One "relational" vision is that we are the Family adopted by the God the Father, in which we are brothers and sisters alongside Christ our eldest brother. Within this Family vision the Church is also seen as the beloved "bride of Christ", who is called into the most intimate union with our Lord. Another "organic" vision is that we are actually Christ's Body, the continuing embodiment of Christ's saving presence on Earth, as His hands and feet reaching out into a lost world. 

From our current perspective, it is hard to see the Church as anything but a collection of distinct individuals joined in a voluntary society, but if we were able to see the Church across time and space, we would see individual believers as "cells" making up the body, of which Christ is the head, and the Spirit is the life-blood. A final "dramatic" vision is that we are a Spirit-empowered revolutionary army, bearing "weapons" of light and love, to overthrow and undermine the kingdom of darkness, injustice, and oppression. 

The present reality of the Church is a great paradox because we are both perfect and flawed as a community, both sinners and saints as individuals, and the cause of both the greatest good and saddest evil in history. Sometimes the Family of God denies the family name through fights and feuds. Sometimes the disease of sin infects the Body of Christ, causing a "cancer" that must be removed. And sometimes God's Army disobeys orders, and even good intentioned soldiers can use weapons wrongly. Yet, we must remember that we are a community of "already/not-yet" people who are being transformed into Christ's image. We are on our way to the fullness of the Kingdom, but not there yet: perfect in our destination, but not in our journeying.

To correct the Church when she is in denial, disease, or disobedience, four adjectives are given to describe her in the Creed: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. These adjectives serve a two-fold purpose: They are promises of what the Church will be as we grow in Christ (the marks of the Church), and they are proclamations of what the Church should do (the mission of the Church). By saying the Church is "one" we are promised that we are becoming one family, one body, one army. We growing together as a community in unity, reflecting the oneness in diversity of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Just as the many members of the Body are one, yet radically different (compare an ear to an eye to an elbow!), so also we are members of one another, diverse in function but unified in purpose and love. 

But "one" is also a proclamation that we must be constantly involved in "inreach": We must reach into the Church, across divisions and schisms, and genuinely love one another. We must share in each other's weakness, temptations, and trials, and when one part of the Church is having a hard time with heresy from within or oppression from without, we must do all we can to heal and restore them to the fullness of the Church. In short, we have a mission to be in fellowship, mutually sharing in Christ's life through one baptism, one faith, and one Spirit, united with each other just as Christ is one with his Father.

By saying we are "holy" we are given the promise that we will be made holy as our Father is holy. We are "set apart" to be Christ's own, and filled with the sanctifying Spirit who will not give up until she has made us wholly holy in body, spirit, and soul. This "holiness" leads us to the mission of "upreach": We are God's people who constantly reach upward to worship the Holy Trinity and participate in Christ's resurrection life. To proclaim the Church as holy constantly reminds us that we are not just a self-help group, nor merely a charitable society, but that we are radically focused on the Trinity who alone is the source of our life, love, purpose, and power. The holiness of the Church is a powerful call for her to be faithful in the administration of the Word of God and the sacraments, through which we "reach upward" to worship the living God.

By saying we are "catholic" we are given the promise that God will spread His Kingdom across the entire universe through His called-out people. The Greek word "katholikos" means "throughout the whole", and it is a proclamation of the Church's mission of "outreach". Our "catholic" mission is two-fold: First, we are to take all the gifts, talents, and treasures that God has given us and reach out and fulfill people's deepest needs out of the depths of God's riches in Christ. This is a mission to reach out to a hurting world through social justice, healing, and reconciliation. 

Secondly, we have a mission to spread the message of reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ. This mission to proclaim the "good news of the Kingdom" cannot be separated from social justice, because they fulfill each other. People will not care how much we know about God until they know how much we care for them. Likewise, they will have no reason to live a healthy life if we do not help them fall in love with God through Christ. We combine both aspects of outreach by starting with prayer for those in need, that we would have the power and passion to reach them, and that they would be open and receptive. Then we care for their physical, emotional, and social needs as a sign of Christ's love and liberation. Then we share His good news with them, and dare them to make a decision to join with Christ and His Family. Finally, we prepare them to follow Christ by immersing them in His body's catechetical and sacramental life.

The adjectives one, holy, and catholic fulfill the Great Commandments to love the Lord above all else (upreach), and to love our neighbors (outreach) as ourselves (inreach). Yet, it is the word "apostolic" that reminds us of that which enables us to do all of these things. Apostolic is a promise that the Church will bring to completion what Christ's apostles began. But this promise is also a proclamation that the Church must constantly strive to faithfully hand down the tradition of Christ's apostles through each generation. If we loose the central vision and power that Christ gave his apostles at Pentecost, we loose our whole reason to be one, holy, and apostolic, and become a merely human political entity. 

Therefore, we continue this "apostolic succession" in doctrine and leadership: In doctrine, we continue succession by only teaching that which grows organically out of the explicit and implicit teachings of the apostles. Like an oak tree that grows from an acorn, so also the great Tradition of the Church grows out of the Scriptural materials found in the Bible. Yet, like a tree occasionally needs to have disease or parasitic growth cut out of it, so also the Church's doctrine must be "pruned" and reformed from time to time. 

In leadership, we continue succession by carefully testing and discerning whether or not potential leaders have apostolic lifestyles in their beliefs, morality, and leadership abilities. Once potential leaders are tested and recognized, they are "ordained" to official positions of leadership through prayer and laying on of hands. This laying on of hands should ideally have a "tactile succession" that reaches back through the generations to the original apostles. These specially chosen leaders are called "clergy" (from the Greek word for "chosen by lot") who lead the "laity" (from the Greek word for "people" of God) in accomplishing the mission of the Church. Clergy form the "skeleton" of the body of Christ. 

They do not perform the entire mission of the Church, but they provide shape and structure for muscles and organs of the laity to do their work. Without this charism of structure the Church would (and has) fallen into sheer anarchy. Another way to view clergy is as a coach and a team. It is not the job of the clergy to "play" the game, but to guide and exercise the team to play. Clergy are "pastors" or "shepherds" who guide the "flock" of God away from danger and heresy, to good food and living water so they can fulfill their mission.

A final way to view such leadership is according to family systems. Ministers, or "deacons", are elder brothers and sisters that lead younger brothers and sisters in catechesis and service. Elders (i.e. "presbyters" or "priests") are "mothers" and "fathers" who serve as the spiritual parent for local families of believers, and who "preside" over the celebration of the sacraments in the same way that parents preside over family meals. Overseers (i.e. "bishops") are "patriarchs" and "matriarchs" who oversee whole clans, or regions of the Church. They make sure that the Church is healthy in inreach, upreach, outreach, and apostolic teaching. They ordain healthy leaders who will continue in this pattern, and discipline those who will not. When they encounter problems too great for individual decision, they gather together in councils or synods to seek the guidance of the Spirit as she leads the Church to understand the implications of the gospel over time.

9. Conduits: God opens windows for us to directly experience his healing presence

One of the most important functions of a body is to open conduits to get nutrients and life-blood to every part of the body. When we confess that there is "one baptism for the forgiveness of sin", we are confessing that God has opened physical conduits (such as baptism and the communion meal) to supply his body with the Spirit's presence and blessings (such as forgiveness and healing). These conduits are like "windows" that God opens to show us Himself. The Hebrew Bible calls these conduits "dabar", which refers to the words or acts that God uses to speak to his people through his messengers. 

The Eastern Church calls these conduits "mysteries", in which a physical reality, such as water, oil, wine, bread, or marriage, is used to mysteriously convey his presence to us. The Western Church calls these conduits by the Latin term "sacrament", which can have a similar meaning to "dabar" and "mystery", but also refers to the solemn oath that a soldier would give to his commander to show that he intended to follow his orders. Thus, these conduits consist of three things: The Word of God's promise to act through the conduit (dabar); The matter that is used as a conduit of God's presence (mystery); and the intention of the person receiving them to believe in God's presence, and follow Christ as Lord (sacrament).

How does God's promise, the matter, and our intention work in a sacrament? Well, when we look at the original sacrament, Jesus Christ, we see the pattern. He is God's Word and Promise embodied in the matter of a physical body. For those who receive Him with the intention of encountering God and following Him, He is the Source of eternal life. Yet, for those who deny God in Christ, and intentionally reject Him, they cut themselves off from God's life and love. Likewise, the Church is now the embodiment, or sacramental presence, of Christ in the world. Those who know that the Church is Christ's Body, yet cut themselves off from the Church, have cut themselves off from Christ. And just as the Church is Christ's embodiment to the world, so also the sacraments are Christ's embodiment to the Church. 

A sacrament always conveys God's presence to us, but depending on the intention we receive it with, we will be drawn into God's life, or pushed into sickness and death. Sacraments are like a power line. When the power is hooked up to a properly wired appliance (good intention), it works and does what it was created to do. But, when hooked up to something that is improperly wired (bad intention), it will short-circuit. 

Another example is a kiss between two people. If they both love each other, the kiss becomes a way of confirming the promise "I Love you", and strengthening the love between the two people. Yet, if one of them dislikes the other, making the them kiss will further destroy the relationship. In the same way, sacraments received with the right intention confirm and strengthen God's presence in our lives, but receiving with the wrong intention actually pushes us farther from God. 

A final example is how a magnifying glass can focus the sun's radiance into a hot beam of light. The sunlight is all around us, but the magnifying glass is able to make this light more apparent, more focused, and more powerful. In the same way, the sacraments focus the presence of Christ's Spirit who fills all things.

Some say there are an infinite amount of sacraments because all of creation is sacramental and conveys God's presence and glory to us. But this forgets that Christ promises to set apart certain actions in Scripture as specific conduits of his grace. Others say there are no sacraments because they refuse to believe the Spirit works through physical means. They insist these are mere symbols, or acted out remembrances, of what God has done for us in Christ. But this denies God's whole purpose in making us embodied souls, and coming as Jesus Christ, to give spiritual life through physical means. 

Humans were made for ritual, to act out what we believe. We do it everyday in relationships with hugs, kisses, pats on the back, and nicknames. Most religions make use of this human bent toward ritual, and Christians recognize this in sacraments. Many say there are as few as two sacraments (baptism and communion), while others as many as several dozen. We will focus on 10 sacraments that have explicit Biblical promises attached to them.

There are at least five sacraments through which God bestows on us an identity in His Family:

(1) Baptism is the washing or immersion of someone in water in the "family name" of the Father, Son, and Spirit, whereby they are cleansed of sin's infection, and raised to new life in Christ. In baptism, God and His Church adopt people as "children" in God's family. Baptism is for our forgiveness in the same way as we get a present for our birthday. Just as the gift does not cause our birthday, but celebrates our birthday, baptism celebrates our forgiveness and adoption as God's own. 

(2) Confirmation is a two-fold sacrament. On one side, the Christian makes a mature, knowledgeable affirmation of their faith and dedication to serve Christ. On the other side, the Church confirms these people as "adults" in Christ, and prays for the Spirit to empower them to serve Christ. 

(3) While baptism gives one the identity of "child" of God, and confirmation gives one the identity of "adult" in God's family, ordination gives one the identity of "parent" in God's family: a spiritual "mother" or "father". In ordination a person who has been a faithful servant of Christ is recognized as such, and given a position of leadership and parenthood to tend the family in Christ's place. 

(4) In marriage, a man and a woman are given the identity of "co-creators" with God. As husband and wife, they create a love relationship that is analogous to the love within the Trinity. As parents they are given the awesome privilege and responsibility of creating new eternal persons who can love God forever. 

(5) Finally, in the sacramental act of fellowship, God's family regularly gathers to enjoy each other's company, to learn and worship together, and to encounter Christ in each other as His body.

God also uses at least another five sacraments to strengthen our ability to love and serve Him: 

(1) In communion we remember the last supper of Jesus, in which He commanded us to use bread as his body, and wine as his blood, to encounter His presence and proclaim His coming again. In this sacrament we worship Christ by tasting, drinking, and digesting His presence in the wine and the bread. This makes His sacrifice present to us, right here, right now, so we may be strengthened and healed by Him. 

(2) In confession we share our sins, faults, and dilemmas with a spiritual parent in the Church, and we receive assurance that Christ has forgiven us, and are given guidance about how to overcome what we are struggling with. 

(3) In healing we share our pain, sickness, and problems with other Christians, and allow them to pray for us by applying oil and healing touch in the Name of Christ. Through this action, God promises to heal us in visible and invisible ways. 

(4) In the sacramental act of service we reach out to be Christ's healing hands to the needy by feeding, clothing, visiting, and sharing with them. In this act, we encounter Christ in the needy, and they encounter Christ in us as we unselfishly give our time, talent, and treasure to serve them. 

(5) Finally, in formation, we allow God's Word to form Christ in us. This includes any activity in which we receive or confess God's Word through Scripture in meditation, learning, preaching, praise, and prayer. In the receiving and giving of God's Word, the pattern of Christ begins to transform our minds, reform our hearts, and conform our wills. God promises that when His Word goes forth into the world and into our lives "It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it". That purpose is to make us Christ-like.

10. Cure: The great Physician heals our spirit, soul, body so we can heal the world

Now we come to our own chapter in His Story: How we become written into the great Drama of salvation that God has been creating ever since time and space began. The paradox of salvation is that at the exact same moment we are on center stage as individuals experiencing Christ for ourselves, we are also just one of the billions of actors in the Drama. So, to understand salvation we must simultaneously see it in individual and communal terms, as both a personal relationship with God through Christ, and a communal existence as God's Family. 

Three metaphors help us grasp the richness of what salvation is: 

Organically, salvation is union, participation in the divine life as the Holy Spirit connects us to God through Jesus Christ. It is like a plant that grows out of the rich soil of God's grace, filled with the living water of the Spirit, reaching upward to the "Son", bearing the fruit of good works. 

Relationally, salvation is marriage to God through Christ, bound together by the love of the Spirit. It is an intimate personal relationship that knits us together into a new family, and gives birth to new life in the world. 

Dramatically, salvation is liberation. It is a great heroic story in which Christ rescues us from the evil that holds us in bondage, and then makes us part of His revolution to overthrow the dark powers that hold us all in captivity. Like a plant, a marriage, and a story, salvation is a process that includes several crisis moments: it starts with God's preparation of us for salvation, is realized in our reception of salvation, grows in our co-operation with the Spirit, and finally ends in Christ's completion of our salvation.

Salvation begins with God's preparation of sinners to receive his love, just as a good harvest begins with a farmer preparing the soil. Just as the soil can do nothing to prepare itself, so also we must rely entirely on God preparing us. Due to sin's communal and individual corruption, we have no merit to "deserve" salvation, nor any ability to "earn" salvation. We are entirely lost in darkness, and must rely Christ's light to waken us from the sleep of death. 

Therefore, in order to be saved, the Triune God must reach down to us as an act of absolute grace, to give us a gift we could never deserve on our own. In grace, the Father gives us "moral law" to convict us that we have sinned and need a Savior. In grace, he sent Jesus as our Savior, to atone for every individual's sin, on the condition that we have faith in him. Yet, because of sin, we will not realize our need or choose faith in Christ on our own. Therefore, in grace the Father chooses certain people to be realize their need and be brought to faith.

But, since God is love for all, yet nothing in us makes us "worth" saving, it is clear that God cannot choose people at random (because this would make him capricious and unloving), nor because He foresees their ability to have faith and do good works (because this would be salvation by our merit). Therefore the Father elects Christ and those "in Christ" from before all time, based on who He foresees his Son sacramentally reaching out to through his body. Although the lost are completely separated from the Father, his own family can co-operate with him because he has chosen them to "bind" or "release" his love in the world through their prayer and action. 

Thus, election is adoptive: Just as a human father will not adopt into his family someone whom his family rejects (even if he wants to adopt them), so also the Father will only choose those whom his family reaches out to, even though he wants to adopt everyone. Yet, even though God's family is his instrument of election, he will not give up on saving the world. His Spirit keeps prodding and disciplining his family until they realize the depth of his love for all people, and act on it.

Once chosen, the Father then sends His Spirit to draw the elect to Him, using psychology and circumstances, to make Christ so attractive that they will definitely choose faith. The Spirit does not force us to accept Christ. Yet, because she knows us completely, and is infinitely patient and perfectly creative, she eventually offers us Christ in such a personally appealing way that we will not refuse. Thus the grace of God that saves us is triune in nature: 

1. Grace is first the unconditional love of the Father which leads him to have mercy on those who do not deserve his love. 

2. Grace is also the gift of forgiveness and atonement offered through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. 

3. Grace is finally the outpouring of the Spirit that leads us to accept Christ, and enables God's very life to dwell in us forever. 

The moment we choose Christ is our reception of salvation: our reaction to God's gracious action toward us in Christ by His Spirit's power. We receive Christ by faith, much like a baby accepts a parent's love by faith even if she cannot fully understand it. Faith has several aspects, and is much more than intellectual beliefs or sentimental emotions. First, faith is cognitive, and includes belief in Jesus as Lord of our lives, and risen Savior. Faith is also affective, and includes a personal trust in Jesus to meet all our needs and rescue us. Faith is finally volitional, and includes repentance, whereby we turn away from sin and lesser "lords", and turn toward Christ as our sole Lord. Thus faith fundamentally re-orients our whole soul, so that we change from being essentially self-centered to having our entire life revolve around Christ. This faith opens the door to loving God, because love is not possible until one truly has faith in the beloved.

At the time of reception, several things happen: First we are "re-born" by the Spirit, who comes to live in us forever, becoming the "seal" which keeps us secure, and the "down payment" that certifies we belong to Christ. This makes us a "new creation" that is no longer the "old person", but a "new being" indwelt by Christ's resurrection life. We are justified, forgiven, and put in a right relationship with God. This justification reconciles us to God and destroys the wall of sin, estrangement, guilt, and anger that had been raised up between us and God. We are adopted as a child of the living God, and made a new member of His family. We are transferred from the kingdom of darkness to become a citizen-soldier of the Kingdom of Light. We are delivered from the forces of evil and given the power to deliver others. 

Yet, just as the Church and the Kingdom now exist in an "already/not-yet" state of being, so also several aspects of individual salvation are "already/not-yet". For instance, these benefits are all conferred potentially in the sacraments, but they await our personal faith and surrender to Christ to make them actual in our lives. The outward sign of the sacrament is effective to both point to, and effect, the inward change of grace, yet the performance of sacraments may precede, coincide, or come after this change in our time. Likewise, many believers do not live fully victorious because they have not entered into the full surrender that makes deliverance completely actualized. This is illustrated by the Biblical concept of sanctification: We are positionally sanctified, or set apart for full salvation, when we receive Christ. We are progressively sanctified as we surrender more and more of our lives to Christ, and only perfectly sanctified and "fully saved" as we stand in Christ's presence after our "final birth".

This preparation and reception of salvation leads to our co-operation, or growth, in salvation. Before we are in Christ, we cannot truly co-operate with God to choose good, because his Spirit is not resident in us. But, as new creations, the Spirit as a permanently dwells in our spirits, and enables us to freely "will and act" according to God's good pleasure. As we grow in Christ and become more healthy, we will more and more become co-actors with the Spirit in the Drama of salvation, living in the glorious freedom of the children of God. In this journey, we will have times of uphill progress, times where we reach plateaus, and times where we slip and fall downhill. 

In fact, while there is one "conversion" where we move from death to life and from being "outside of Christ" to being "in Christ", it is better to think of the Christ-life as a series of crises and conversions as we progressively yield more of our life to the Spirit's control. Like physical birth, receiving "a relationship with Christ" is the beginning of a new life. Yet, just as our birthday is in many ways less important than what we do with our life, so also our new birth is just one of the thousands of crisis points and conversions that forms Christ in us.

Switching metaphors, the "saved" life is like a plant that constantly grows upward toward the Son. There will be seasons of growth, seasons of draught, and seasons of the "latter rain" of the Spirit to revive us and kick-start new growth. In the organic life of salvation, the grace of God is given in three ways: In the "soil" of the Church which our new life grows in, in the "living water" showered on us by the Spirit, and in the "Son-light" shone on us by God's self-revelation in Christ. 

We are rooted into this soil by faith, but the root of faith is not complete in itself. We may be saved by "faith alone", but faith is never alone: It must yield the fruit of good works or else it dies. Good works are necessary for salvation as a sign of living faith, not as a cause of salvation, just as the root causes the fruit, and the fruit cannot exist without the root. And just as having a fruitless root means the root is probably dead, so also possessing a so-called "saved" life that is not becoming more and more Christ-like is in serious danger of spiritual death.

But, at no time in this life can we expect to be completely "perfect" because we will always be able to grow more Christ-like. Yet, we should never loose heart because God promises to bring to completion the work He has begun in us, and to never leave us for forsake us. We will keep growing until we are perfected in Jesus' presence after our "final birth". We cannot loose salvation because Christ and His Father will not let us slip from their all-powerful hands. God's grace is so much more powerful than anything we can do, and God will not allow one of His children to be aborted once they are "born again" into Him. We are "new creations" who cannot go back to being "old creations". No created thing (including ourselves) can separate us from the love of Christ, not even death. Even if we act faithless, he will remain faithful to us. He will discipline us and draw us back to himself using consequences of our sin, until we repent and return to him. 

Yet, some who seem to have faith later deny Christ and become evil, indicating that their conversion was insincere, and they never belonged to Jesus. This is because they only had an intellectual belief, not a complete faith. They came to Christ for the wrong reasons, and once times got hard, they left Christ. Careful examination of Scriptures that seem to indicate people can loose salvation shows that they were written about people who had insincere faith. This is especially true for those who think they can "earn" the benefits of salvation through some sort of "commercial transaction" with God, yet do truly love Christ. 

Only one sin is unforgivable, and that is to die denying the Holy Spirit's work, thereby refusing God's love in Christ. If someone worries that they have committed the unforgivable sin, this almost certainly shows that they haven't, because those who have committed this sin do not care about Christ, nor about whether they are forgiven by him or not. If we believe we have cut ourselves off from Christ by sinning, there is only one solution: confession and surrender. We must repent and return to the Lord, and God promises to forgive, heal, and deliver us no matter what we have done!

11. Consummation: God will be all in all and we will live happily ever after

And so we reach the end of our Story, the focus of our Hope, and the fulfillment of the Plot, where we all "live happily ever after". This fulfillment is the convergence of all that is good, true, and beautiful in our individual and collective lives across space and time. We have three sources for having such optimism about the future, despite the inevitable certainty of the death of ourselves, our culture, and our entire universe. 

First, nearly all of the great stories and myths of the world (even the cyclical ones) point toward a final eternal age where "all will be well". 

Second, the physical, historical, verifiable resurrection of Christ (and subsequent outpouring of his Spirit) is both the foretaste and model of what the final fulfillment will be like. 

Third, God has revealed this perfected future through a series of predictions and visions in Scripture. Scripture paints a picture of the Trinity standing at the end of time, beckoning and drawing us into ultimate fulfillment in His eternal Kingdom. While these visions are often symbolic, mystical, and somewhat ambiguous, enough can be gleaned from them to get a general outline of what the future will hold for both individuals and the entire universe.

As individuals, it seems that our physical death is a "final birth" into eternity. Just as our physical birth and spiritual birth in this life issue forth into a lifetime of growth, so also it seems that our final birth will also lead to growth until we are perfected at the resurrection. Scripture seems to indicate that at death we enter into Christ's presence, for "to be away from the body is to be present with the Lord". For those who have received Christ, this leads to immense confidence, because we can be assured that at death we will be face to face with Christ, and we will be changed "from glory into glory" through a process of healing and cleansing until we fully reflect His image. 

We do not know what this process will be exactly, but it is compared with a refiner's fire that cleanses gold until it is completely pure. It seems that our capacity for physical relationships (our body) is taken away for a while so our soul and spirit can be "incubated" until we are ready for our perfected bodies at the resurrection. C.S. Lewis likens this process to a man who comes home from the rain and peels off his cold, wet clothes to bask in the warmth of the fireplace, or like the relief of a person who finally gets a rotten tooth removed. It will certainly include enjoying the presence of the Triune God, but also may include interceding for people on earth, as well as possibly reaching out to those in hell. For those in Christ, there is nothing to fear, and everything to look forward to, because God's compassionate grace, mercy, love, and gentleness will heal all our defects and remove all of our blemishes. This will not happen in some "purgatory" apart from Christ, but in the purgatory that is Christ.

For those outside of Christ, death seems like something to despair over. Since Christ is God, then to know Christ is to know God. No Christ, no God. Those who knowingly reject Christ reject God, and at death can only go to that which is not God. This means they fall into the midst of utter nothingness. This is traditionally known as "hell", and Scripture tells us that: 

(1) Hell is a reality and a possible destiny to be avoided. It cannot be dismissed merely as "pre-modern" myth, and to be honest it is necessary. If Christ made everyone live forever in his presence even if they rejected him, he would be a rapist, not a good God. 

(2) Hell is the natural consequence for denying God’s Love in Christ. It is not something imposed by God, but is a self-chosen rejection that disconnects us from all of God's love, life, and purpose. This ontological, organic disconnection from God has the ultimate natural consequence of total separation from all created realities upheld by God's will. Thus, existing as a soul in the midst of nothingness is only possible by God's grace keeping them in existence. 

(3) Hell is utter isolation from God and all others. It is a cosmic quarantine which stops the infection of sin from spreading even further, and the only way out of quarantine is when the patient is fully cured. 

(4) Hell is the worst suffering imaginable. In Biblical language it is compared to extreme loneliness, fire and darkness (notice the contradiction here), and "the worm that does not die".  It, in short, is a reality that is horrible beyond what words can fully describe, just as "heaven" and "God's presence" (one in the same thing) are beautiful beyond what words can describe. 

(5) Hell lasts as long as we can possibly imagine, and some Scriptures tell us that hell's duration is what we translate as "eternal" and "into the ages of ages".  

But, why would a good, gracious, loving God keep sinners alive in hell if not for a redemptive purpose? How long can we possibly imagine being without God's love? Scripture tells us that not even death can separate us from God's love in Christ. So, if we can no longer imagine life without Christ, will God then bring us into his presence to be healed and purged of sin? Are the eternal "flames" of hell the same as the relentless "consuming fire" of God's love, burning away layers of selfishness and hate until the soul finally "opens" and receives Christ (like a seed that eventually opens after being incubated by the Son's heat)? Will believers who "judge the world" with Christ continue their ministry of reconciliation and be instruments for God to reach the lost in hell, as Jesus' parable about Lazarus may indicate? 

Does George McDonald have a key to the mystery of hell when he says "The fire of God, which is His essential being, His love, His creative power, is a fire unlike its earthly symbol in this: it is only at a distance it burns - that the further from Him, it burns the worse"? What do we do with Scriptures which hint that hell is something temporary, that God will take us out of? And what about other Scriptures that say that God is present even in hell, that it is God's will to save all, that God can save all, and that God eventually will save all through Christ? Far from being clear, Scripture puts us uncomfortably in between confidence and despair about those outside of Christ. He puts us squarely in the realm of hope in His love!

Regardless of whether the answer to the above questions is that hell is a redemptive process for the ultimate salvation of sinners, or that hell is a quarantine for people who have rejected their humanity and forever exist as sub-human "viruses", it is clear that both heaven and hell are ultimately instruments of God's love, and are the fulfillment of seeds that were planted on earth. The amount of subjective time that each person spends in heaven or hell seems to be relative to the amount of healing and growth they need between the moment of "final birth" and the resurrection. Even if the "real time" between physical death and the resurrection is 10,000 years, the time for those very advanced in holiness may seem like five minutes, while it may seem like a million years for others. Heaven and hell are "already/not-yet" because they exist alongside and inside each of us now, and will bear the ultimate fruit of the life we have lived in the Age to come. 

So, when will this "Age to come" come, and what will it be like? In answer to the first question: no one knows. Jesus and St. Paul give a list of symptoms which indicate that the next Age is coming, such as political instability, religious persecution, societal self-destruction, and ecological disaster. But since these things are always present in greater and lesser degrees, this seems like yet another way to say that "no one knows the day or the hour". As for what it will be like, there is debate over whether the Kingdom of God will be actualized by the Church in this age (a realized reign of God), or whether the Kingdom refers to the eternal state at the end of this Age (a spiritual reign of God), or whether the Kingdom will come in two stages through a rule of Christ on Earth in this Age, followed by the destruction of this universe and the eternal state (a future reign of God). 

The Scriptural evidence seems to say that: (1) The world will grow darker and darker until the end comes when Christ has to intervene and save his people (negating a realized reign). (2) There seems to be a concrete hope for a restored Israel and a real, historical reign of Messiah over all nations on Earth that cannot be fulfilled by merely "spiritualizing" the promises to Israel as promises about a timeless state (negating a spiritual reign). (3) The success of the Church in her mission to be Christ to the lost world seems to be so effective that it will "hasten the coming of the day of God" by forcefully invading the kingdom of darkness. The enemies of God will rage "because they know their time is short", and they will "make war against" the Church in a last ditch effort to stop the spread of God's Kingdom. In short, the brightness of the God's light will reveal the depths of hell's darkness, and as the Church spreads heaven on earth, all hell will break loose and rage against her.

[2013 Editing Note: While most of this essay represents my current thought, at least in implicit or embryonic form, I think I have moved significantly beyond the previous paragraph, and the paragraph immediately after this. This essay was written when I was in my last stages of "premillennial" eschatology (a two-stage future reign of God). My current view is both more amillennial and more open. It is more "amillennial" because I view the "first resurrection" as the spiritual intermediate state, where we reign with Christ in his presence until the end of all things. Thus, the "Earthly Kingdom" prophesied in the Scriptures are filled with symbols which are fulfilled beyond the empirical dimension with Christ, as we rule and intercede with him "in the heavenly realms" for a perfect or complete amount of time ("1000 years"), until the end of History, and the final resurrection and New Creation. My current view is more "open" because I think the Scriptures intentionally allow us to read about the future in a pessimistic way (things will get worse and worse until the end) or in an optimistic way (the Gospel will progress and grow and heal until the end). Both pessimism and optimism are legitimate reads out of Scripture, and in these reads, God gives us the choice about which way we will direct history. Will we direct it toward fulfillment in Christ, or to self-destruction that has to be rescued by Christ? It is our decision.]

This will set up the final battle of Christ and his Church against all that is anti-Christ. The tribulation will be great. The prospects will look bleak. It will seem as if darkness is about to shut out the light forever. And at just the right moment Christ will come in power and glory with myriads of heavenly hosts to rescue and resurrect his people. This cataclysmic, cosmic struggle will utterly destroy forces of darkness and establish the Kingdom of God on Earth, headed by Christ ruling from Jerusalem. Christ's holy ones will rule with him on Earth, being rewarded for their good works by governing with him.  Christ will rule over all creation and over the survivors of the final war, until all things are put under His feet.  This Kingdom will be a golden age on Earth filled with peace, justice, prosperity, and long life.  Israel will be restored as a nation, God's people will worship in the Temple again, and  there will be massive revival where the knowledge of God will fill all of creation. This "Messianic Kingdom" will last for a perfect amount of time until time and space dissolve at the end of the Universe. 

When this universe is dissolved, it seems to be "turned inside out", as the spiritual and physical realities are fused into one glorious re-unification.  All the dead will be resurrected, and brought before the great white Throne of Christ for the final judgment.  Christ will judge them with the "Book of Life" and the other books.  The Book of Life records those who know Christ and are saved, and condemns those who deny Christ by their evil deeds, and sentences them to the lake of fire forever. 

Yet, while the Bible explicitly pictures myriads upon myriads of saints and angels in heaven worshipping God, it only explicitly shows a few things that are actually thrown into the lake of fire. And furthermore, these are all things, not people, such as the sea, death, and hades (all places that hold the dead), and the "devil" (the power of condemnation), the "beast" (the coercive power of government), and the "false prophet" (false religious systems). It is not clear whether any actual persons are thrown in the lake of fire at all. The "other books" record our works and our sufferings, and these determine our level of reward or punishment. When everyone is rewarded according to their deeds and brought into the fullness of God's love in Christ, then everything including death will be put under Christ's feet, and he will hand the Kingdom over to the Father.

At this point, everything will be re-created, and we will have perfected, glorious bodies that are both continuations of our earthly bodies, yet also gloriously different, following the pattern of Christ's resurrection body. These bodies will be able to perfectly love and serve God forever, and never tempt us through bodily weakness or addiction. This New Creation points to the final eternal state of joy, happiness, and peace in the presence of Christ.  It is described in radiant symbols as streets of gold and crystal rivers, and never ending light shining forth from Christ.  

In the New Creation God will dwell with man face to face, just as creation was originally meant to be.  We will be His people and He will be our God, and there will never be any more crying, pain, or suffering.  The Church will be Christ's beautiful bride, and God will be her husband, and we will live together in total fulfillment forever as we share perfect fellowship with each other in the Triune God of love. This is the ultimate consummation of all the great hopes, dreams, myths, and stories across History. It is the fulfillment of the cosmic love story, heroic epic, and mystery tale that God has written, and all creation has been aiming for and growing toward. Amen+

Sources Consulted

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• Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Theologica (translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 Volume Set). (Garden City, NY: Image Books. 1967)
• Augustine. De Trinitate (in volume III, series 1, of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers). (Grand Rapids, MI: T&T Clark. 1998 republished)
• Augustine. Enchiridion. In Augustine: Confessions and Enchiridion, translated and edited by Albert C. Outler (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1955)
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