Session 2 One God, the father, the Almighty

Our discussions were very much in the spirit of asking questions and exploring our faith from different perspectives to learn from each other and grow.

A prayer of St Anselm

MY PRAYER IS A COLD LITTLE THING, LORD, because it burns with so faint a flame. But you are rich in mercy. As your kindness is above all human love, so let your eagerness to hear be greater than what I feel when I pray.

LORD, I AM NOT TRYING TO REACH YOUR HEIGHT, for my poor mind could not even approach it. But I do want to understand the little of your truth which my heart already believes and loves. I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and further, I believe that unless I believe I shall never understand.

I HAVE FOUND A FULLNESS OF JOY that is more than full. This joy fills the whole heart, mind, and soul; it fills the entire person, yet there remains more joy that is beyond measuring. God of truth, I ask that I may receive so that my joy may be full. Meanwhile, may my mind meditate on it, my tongue speak of it, my heart love it, my mouth proclaim it, my soul hunger for it, my flesh thirst for it, and my whole being desire it, until I enter into the joy of my Lord, who is God, triune unity, blessed forever.

YOU ONLY ARE MIGHTY, LORD; you only are merciful. Whatever you cause me to desire for my enemies, give it to them and give the same to me, and if what I ask for them is ever outside the rule of love, whether through weakness, ignorance, or malice, give it neither to them, good Lord, nor to me.

Amen.

Learning from ancestors in the faith we began by praying a prayer of St Anselm and noted how lovely his way of praying for his enemies was.

Loving your enemies and Jesus’ divinity

We discussed what struck us about the preparatory material.

·       There were two dramatically opposed understandings of Jesus: the one that is reflected in the Nicene Creed and the one of Arius. The view of Arius (a senior clergyman from the time that the Creed was written https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arius) was that Jesus came into existence in the nativity and was not equal to God;

·       There was no New Testament until 382, after the Creed had been written;

·       The ‘one God’ presented by Jesus through his Jewish faith was different from pagan gods in that he summons us to freely choose what is good and his love is unconditional. Pagan gods were transactional in that people believed the gods favoured them with good things if they worshipped and sacrificed to them. The Romans even believed that they could curse their enemies through their gods and used curse tablets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_tablet.

We looked at quotations and extracts from the Bible to understand how Arius arrived at his conclusions.  It was necessary to put some in context in order to understand them.

Arius used popular songs to spread his views (particularly among the working class) in a similar way to Wesley and General Booth and was eventually exiled for not believing that Jesus was equal to God and for believing that Jesus only came into existence at the nativity.

We discussed the existence of Jesus with God at the beginning of creation and the meaning of the ‘word’ of God and the concept of us all coming from God and returning to be with him. We also questioned what is meant by loving God with our souls.

Love the Lord your God

The Jewish Shema from Deuteronomy, Chapter 6, verses 4-5, (in bold below) resonates with the Nicene Creed and appears in Christian liturgy:

Our Lord Jesus Christ said:

The first commandment is this:

‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

With all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’

 

Jesus added ‘with all your mind’ and challenges us to love God with our whole person. Loving a monotheistic God is at the heart of both the Christian faith and Judaism.

Jesus spoke from a Jewish tradition and his Jewish audience would immediately recognise his wording from sacred texts. When referring to himself as ‘I am’ for example, he is directly identifying himself with God.

It was suggested that the Creed is one way in which God writes his law on our hearts. God promises to do this in the Old Testament. The Jewish people wrote the law on scrolls and still do. Orthodox jews tie boxes of scrolls to their bodies.

One way in which orthodox jews interpret writing the law: What are tefillin?

We also discussed how texts can be interpreted differently according to the psychology of listener and even the way in which the text is read. We discussed how contradictory things can sometimes be simultaneously true with God. 

Over the next two weeks we will be focusing on Jesus: both his humanity and his divinity.

This is a picture of the actor Jonathan Roumie, who plays the role of Jesus in a popular television series.