Part one of this sermon (posted several Thursdays ago) reflected on the rational cynicism that is evident in the ministry of Jesus, and necessary for genuine Faith, Hope, and Christian Love. While many churches — all along the political spectrum from conservative to liberal — offer a naïve comfort that turns a blind eye to the cynical realities of the world, AUR refuses to offer “salvation on the cheap.”
Part two explored the dangers of becoming stuck on cynicism, allowing skepticism and contrarianism to become idols worshipped at the expense of personal growth and a clear vision of reality. Sectarian atheism is a particularly common example of that in today’s world.
Reform Unitarianism recognizes that true wisdom is post-cynical, lying on the other side of a blood-sweating struggle against instincts of self-preservation and sociability, and the “unchallengeable” sacred cows of culture.
Quid Est Veritas?
Having cynically smashed all the idols, how do we smash the cynical smashing to keep it from becoming an idol? What is the truth, post-cynicism? The Gospel of John leads us to answer that “the Word is truth.” (17:17)
Ok, then. What is the Word?
Central to understanding the Christian idiom is the concept of the Word, or Logos, of God. Early Church leaders wrote that, while all things were created by God, they were created through the Word, also called Son of God or “the image of the invisible God.”* Other terms for this Divine Agency include the Name of God and the Face of God.
It is a difficult concept to characterize, because it is the source of all characteristics in existence.
Pulpit language has tragically been stained by generations of amateur preachifying. Many of us have learned that the “Word of God” is the Bible … or Jesus. We learned that the “Son of God,” the “Name of God,” or the “Logos” was Jesus. But, Jesus was these things only by specific example and effort. These terms for the Divine Agency of God predate the birth of Jesus and refer to a deeper, spiritual entity, a Divine Agency to which Jesus himself subsumed his material existence, particularly at Gethsemane when he said: “Nevertheless, Your will be done.”
To get away from the pulpit language, let’s get back to cosmological basics. The ineffable Source of existence (the “invisible God” of the Letter to the Colossians) is translated to sensible form, the material world, through the Logos. Since all things are brought to sensible form through the Logos, all things are reconciled—that is, made consistent and coherent with each other and with Ultimate Truth—in the Logos.
The Logos is the channel between the unknowable God and the knowable evidence in the world. Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans (1:20) “since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people have no excuse.” And, how was this ineffable Source made clearly seen? The Letter to the Hebrews (11:3) states: “By faith we understand the universe to have been caused by the Word of God, that detectable things did not arise from something detectable.”
God is unknowable but made knowable, through Divine Agency, in the knowable, created world.
This entity called the Logos—this Word, or Name, or Son of God—is not only the expression of causation, but also the rational context of all existing things. Another term to add to our list is “Lord,” as we read in the First Letter to the Corinthians 8:6: “Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”
Why do we use “Father” to refer to God. We’ll see in a bit. For now, it is important to see that, as all things were created by God through the Logos, all things are only reconciled and fully understood through the Logos.
It is this Logos that Christians see manifest in Jesus, who acts to bring God’s will into being as an Anointed agent, and who likewise teaches us the all-embracing Logical ethic of loving others as oneself (Mark 12:28-31 and Matthew 22:36-40), sending sunshine to the good and evil, and sending rain to the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45). What the ancient Christian would call agape, “loving” or valuing without partiality (“Judge not”), we in the modern age could also define negatively by calling it impartiality.
Christ Means “Anointed”
Ok, then. What does it mean to take this teaching to heart?
In the Letter to the Romans (8:14-17) we read:
All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, for you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we say “Father,” it is that that very Spirit bearing witness with ours that we are Children of God—and if children, then Heirs… Heirs of God and joint heirs with the Anointed.
Both Christ (Χριστός) and Messiah (משיח) simply mean “anointed” in reference to an ancient ceremonial tradition in which a king grants agency to an emissary (often a son) or, by analogy, God grants Divine Agency to a king, priest, prophet, or ritual item. For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth was so Anointed, and through the granting of Divine Agency was the Son of God. As Christian scriptures make clear repeatedly,** those who live by the cynical, iconoclastic ministry of Jesus become Children of God themselves, participants in Divine Agency.
But, what do we mean by this term, “Divine Agency,” which we’ve used as a stand-in for scriptural terms like Logos, Word, and Son? And isn’t this just another idea about God to be smashed?
Divine Agency and Free Will
Philosophers and theologians have long debated the seeming contradiction of the free will of mortals vs. the omnipotence and omniscience of God, the question of how individual souls can truly act freely if God knows and does everything. This debate spills out of religion into secular philosophy as a contest between Free Will and Determinism, the latter recast in psychology as Behaviorism.
The essence of all these opposites to Free Will is that things are moved not by anything inherent in themselves, but subject to actions from outside themselves. Interestingly enough, the Letter to the Romans specifically addresses this debate, starting at chapter 8, verse 20:
The universe waits in eager longing for the revealing of the Children of God, because the universe was subject to futility—not by its own will, but by the will of that which subjected it—in hope that the universe itself will be freed of its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the Children of God.
We may forgive the author for his archaic language, but the concept seems clear: determinism rules created things until they are reconciled as Children of God to the freedom (the free will) of God.
The concept of the Logos reveals this classic debate as a false dilemma. By shedding individual and tribal instinct to act with true reason, impartial and objective to the point of loving others as oneself, we overcome determinism. The Word through which all things are created reconciles all things, freeing us from being driven by partiality. Freeing us to be Logical. The Word is truth, and the truth will set you free.
* Colossians 1:15
** See also the Gospel of John 1:12, 1st Letter of John 3:1, Letter to the Philippians 2:15, Letter to the Romans 8:14, and in Jesus’ own words in the Gospel of Matthew 5:9 and Gospel of Luke 20:36