To have a look-see at the reading for this week (06.12.2006) just click
HERE. Dr. Howell opens with a verse from Mark’s gospel (
Mark 9: 32) where the disciples have witnessed Jesus cast an evil spirit out of a boy and later foretells his coming betrayal, death and resurrection. Yet, earlier in the passage the boy's father offers the best for us budding theologians to say to ourselves over and over again…to pray…to chant…to keep in mind so as to posture ourselves correctly before our Lord…he says, “I believe, help my unbelief.” Powerful! I believe, yet I recognize that my belief is nothing without help from the Almighty. Theology, unlike any other thing we can study does not allow us to remain detached from our subject. If we detach from God, the object of our studying (I prefer the word “seeking” or even "loving" to the word “studying”) we are doing little more than sociology or philosophy of religion, but not theology. This brings us to this week’s lesson, “
Doubt & Dogma.”
“But what if we have doubts and hard questions? Does the Apostles’ Creed alienate thinkers? The Creed in a surprising way, invites doubt…. Isn’t there a faithfulness in our doubting? Haven’t all great discoveries in history happened because somebody doubted?” · Consider the questions Howell poses in the above excerpt.
· What is the relationship between faith and doubt? (For those of you who were in our first class back in February you may remember me mentioning something about the theologian
Paul Tillich. I’ll share some more on him this week, specifically his book
Dynamics of Faith.)
· Where does one draw the line between “healthy skepticism or doubts” and “unbelieving?” Can such a line even be drawn?
· What are your greatest sources of doubt?
· “I believe, Lord help my unbelief.” This line makes for an awesome prayer. Theologians have talked for ages about a “faith that we believe” and the “faith that it takes to believe it.” What are your thoughts on making a distinction between a belief and the strength it takes to believe it?
When I read Howell’s second paragraph, I came up with the following questions/comments:
· How does the Creed function as a frame through which we can then ask questions about God? More importantly, how does it help our forming answers?
· God is mystery. Think about it, God is greater than our minds can conceive. Our knowing God, the infinite and almighty, is like our trying to carry the oceans of the world in a shot glass…you’ll get something in there, but never all of it. Yet, God invites us to embrace this mystery and we are embraced by the mystery…by God. Should this fact cause us not to want to study God? If God is a subject we cannot master (say like carpentry) then is our studying God something like a doctor or lawyer “practicing” medicine or law? (They practice to know the subject better, but they never master it.) Is theology then more like a marriage (us to God, appreciating that God knows us far more than we know God) in that the longer we stay in the relationship the more we come to know the object of our love?
· One of the footnotes (for those of you with the book) for this section offers this quote, “those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even without despair believe only in the idea of God, not in God himself.” Wow! What are your thoughts on this quote, how is studying theology, studying God, a discipline (I chose this word intentionally) unlike anything else one could study (again, I prefer the word “seek” or “seeking”) because it demands so much of us?
“Can anyone prove there is a God? What about science and the Bible? How can God be good if there is evil? Why call God “Father?” Does it matter if Mary was a virgin?”
· What are the questions that cause you the most doubt about your faith?
· What questions do you want considered during our time together each Sunday?
“We may all know fervent Christians bristling with faith who say, ‘Just give me Jesus.’ But the Creed not only gives us Jesus. In
Rowan Williams’ lovely words, it is ‘the job of doctrine…to hold us still before the name of Jesus. When that slips out of view, we begin instead to use this language to defend ourselves, to denigrate others, to control and correct—and then it becomes a problem.’”
· When I say the word “fundamentalism” or “fundamentalist” what do you think it means? What thoughts or images spring to mind? Now, what if I argued that fundamentalism is faith without doubt what would you say in response? (I admit that this question reveals that I think faith is never an absence of doubt.)
· What problems result from fundamentalism? (Note: I am not talking about the on-going debate between liberalism and conservatism; you can be either and still be fundamentalist!)
Howell quotes
Dorothy Sayers who said “It is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling…And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ.”
· Is it the case that increasingly people know less and less about what it means to be a Christian? (I ask this wanting us to consider ourselves, those who are a part of the church.) A great many things have and are being done in the name of Christ…I wonder if Christ would want his name attached to all those things?
· How are our beliefs and our actions connected?
· How is theology more than a matter of the head?To stir the proverbial pot, is being a faithful Christian always going to give others the perception that you’re a loyal citizen?
