Five years ago, I was dismissed from the Beachy Amish periodical, The Calvary Messenger. In noting that milestone, I have no desire to lick my wounds or make myself out to be a martyr; I am as flawed as the next person, may the record stand, kind stenographer. I guess I am only processing and looking back. Usually when I read something I wrote 5 years ago, I cringe in nearly every paragraph and want to make significant changes. Surprisingly, with the article that led to my removal, I don’t know what I would change. Here it is in its entirety:
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All That Is Certain
This article was originally published in the Calvary Messenger in May of 2019.
Sometimes I am surprised at how little I know.
I was instructed—zealously catechized, more like—in a Christian home. Besides that, we live in a time heralded as the Information Age. What went wrong? Do I just need to spend more time on Wikipedia?
Years ago, I heard a quip about child training that went something like this: “Before I was married, I had six theories about raising children. Now I have six children and no theories.”
As a father of four gloriously multifaceted daughters, I can identify. And, to tell the truth, I feel as if I have fewer and fewer theories about everything.
Theories about what is most important in life, for instance; theories about happiness; theories about myself; theories about God.
On such foundational points as these, it can feel at times as if I know almost nothing.
But then I consider the Book of Job. Wisdom is hidden from the eyes of all the living. Wisdom is not found in the land of the living.
What? No pat answers?
Or I consider the words of the Trappist monk Basil Pennington. “We don’t have all the answers. There are lots of questions. And it is good to live in the question.” A pat answer, the monk went on to say, does not leave any room for mystery. Our faith, though it is solid, is also full of questions—and therefore full of hope for further revelation.
And I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, my decreased certainty and increased age is perfectly normal and even healthy. “It is better to have a little faith dearly won,” said the Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond, “than perish on the splendid plenty of the richest creeds.”
Paul gave Timothy a list of foundational beliefs, a kind of creed, if you will. But notice how short that creed is. Notice that it contains only six statements: God was manifest in the flesh; justified in the Spirit; seen of angels; preached unto the Gentiles; believed on in the world; received up into glory (1 Timothy 3:16).
Why is it, then, that subsequent creeds grew steadily longer? The 4th century Apostle’s Creed is still limited to around 100 words, but the 1527 Schleitheim Confession of Faith has over 3,000. It is noteworthy that the 1632 Dordrecht Confession of Faith and the 1963 Mennonite Confession of Faith both have more than 5,000 words.
Perhaps as more and more distortions of Jesus’ gospel came along, the formal statements of faith also had to grow.
Perhaps. But could another explanation be that we have created an idol of certainty where God envisioned a shrine of mystery?
We say, correctly, that the Bible is our sacred text, our written revelation from God. Unfortunately, thanks to millennia of cumulative misinterpretation, many people assert as nonnegotiable a host of stances only vaguely supported by Scripture. In reality, there are many issues on which the Bible gives us clues but no hard, fast answers. Theories of atonement, eschatology, cosmology, and soteriology are all interesting and, I will be the first to say it, worthy of study. But are they worthy of our over-certainty and divisiveness?
Imagine a church that dedicates minimal energy agonizing over speculative issues. Imagine a church that instead pursues the things the New Testament wants us to guard jealously, such as practicing hospitality, sharing our possessions, forgiving those who mistreat us, praying for one another, and pursuing humility. Who wouldn’t want to join a church like that!
Isaiah 57:15 tells us the two places where God dwells: in the highest heaven, and in the contrite heart. Regarding doctrinal certitude there is not a mention.
In fact, to complete the journey of faith only three things are really needed: humility, embracing mystery, and gratitude. Humility causes us to acknowledge how little we do know. Embracing mystery makes us aware of how little we can know (as St. Augustine said, “If you understand, it is not God”). And finally, we are grateful that God has revealed what we need to know, more than enough to equip us for loving Him and our neighbors.
But I don’t understand. If this was printed, why were you later dismissed? And what about this article was found objectionable? I would be interested in hearing what you were given as a reason (if any) and what you would see the reason as being. I don’t read the Calvary Messenger, so perhaps that’s the clue I’m missing.
It was published but it received pushback (and this wasn’t the only article deemed objectionable). Their publication exists to promote sound doctrine, which for them is spelt out, fixed and firmly established, and an article that promoted mystery did not fit their raison d’etre. Fair enough.
That is sad.
Hey Gid, Just read your April blog on Women Teaching. (After this month’s CM fiasco). For some help in interpreting women’s roles, a Reading Group I am with studied Kenneth Bailey’s “Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes.” In examining First Corinthians, it is a bit weighty. I highly recommend it. And it gave me some fuel to support your “mystery” theory! Not everything is always clear! But we have enough that is SURE, why ruin the fun of speculation! Keep up the good work! Laverne Miller MD
Hi Laverne, I have Bailey’s “Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes,” so I’m very interested in his book on Paul. Bailey’s years of study and subsequent conclusions is another example of how appealing to “the plain sense of Scripture” simply doesn’t hold up. Plain to whom?
I recently received, from a friend (whose husband is, not incidentally, an Amish Universalist), a copy of a 5-part article written by an Amish bishop in Maine and published in The Vanguard, comparing “fundamentalist” and “Anabaptist” theology in five points of difference. Of note to this discussion: Fundamentalists promote a “spelled-out theology” and Anabaptists traditionally prefer “allows for mystery” theology.
Be cheered, if it matters to you: by this definition, you are solidly Anabaptist.
Wow, I’d love to read that article; I always knew the early Anabaptists had something. Yes, I’m afraid the F word is alive and well, and sometimes also in progressive circles, I’m finding. But God is ever greater…