Dialogue with A Young Friend – On Fearing God

For some time now I am engaged in a sort of ‘distance discipleship’, in I call it that way. We use mostly email, as he lives on another continent. Here is the latest exchange we had.

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Q – I have a rather blunt question to ask you this time. I’ve heard the term many times and I’ve never been able to interpret it in a way that would coincide with a loving and forgiving God. What does it mean to be “God-fearing” ?

A – The term ‘fear of God’ originates in the aristocratic age, if I can call it that, at the time of monarchy, when kings and emperors were to be feared. We would call this today simply respect, even if the term is clearly insufficient. Maybe ‘awe’ would be a more adequate term. Profound admiration, also, though it sounds odd.

Religious language is fundamentally analogical. As such, it cannot speak directly about God. A quadri-dimensional (spatio-temporal) being as we are, cannot speak adequately, but only analogically, about a multi-dimensional being, as God is. As a result, we load religious terms with meaning coming from our own human experience. For instance, when we say God is father, this is unavoidably bound to our experience of fatherhood. That is why when people have traumatic relationship with their father, it is very hard, though not entirely impossible, for them to relate to God as a loving and fully accepting divine being.

Ecumenical Dialogue Clarifies Baptist Beliefs

Prof. Steve Harmon

Why are some people afraid of ecumenism? I suspect that, besides fundamentalism, this fear is rooted in unclear identity.

Baptist theologian Steve Harmon, adjunct instructor of Christian theology at the Baptist-affiliated school in Boiling Springs, N.C., argues that ecumenical dialogue can help people clarify and refine their own beliefs. He refers in particular to the latest dialogue with Orthodox theologians.

Here is more on this topic:

Ecumenical dialogue between Baptists and other Christian traditions clarifies Baptist distinctives rather than dilutes them, says a Gardner-Webb University professor who participated in recent preliminary conversations between Baptists and Orthodox Christians.

“The purpose of ecumenical discussions is not to water down core Baptist doctrines, or to sacrifice congregational autonomy,” said Steven Harmon, adjunct instructor of Christian theology at the Baptist-affiliated school in Boiling Springs, N.C., in a university press statement. “Rather, ecumenists strive to clearly understand what other traditions believe on their own terms, rather than relying our own caricatured images of them.  That also involves more clearly understanding those doctrines and practices that make us different, even as we search for the convergences that will help us establish unity.”

Harmon was part of a three-person team representing the Baptist World Alliance which held exploratory talks in Crete Oct. 30-Nov. 2 with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — widely regarded as the spiritual head of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians — that could lead to formal dialogue between Baptists and Orthodox Christians internationally.

Other members of the Baptist delegation were BWA general secretary Neville Callam and Paul Fiddes, professor of systematic theology at Oxford University in England.

Associated Baptist Press – Baptists, Orthodox consider formal dialogue

Associated Baptist Press – Baptists, Orthodox consider formal dialogue.

Here is a new ecumenical effort between Orthodox and Baptists. Let’s hope it will go beyond words.

Steve Harmon – The Goal of the Baptist-Catholic Dialogue

Ikon of St. Peter & St. Paul

Updating my Facebook status about being in England last week to participate in the final of current international theological conversations between the Baptist World Alliance and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, prompted a friend to respond: “What’s the big goal?”

A lot of Baptists probably share the question. Some may be intrigued that theologians from such seemingly opposite Christian communities would spend a total of five weeks over a five-year period in sustained dialogue with one another. What do they talk about? What are they trying to accomplish, and how?

Christian unity and Baptist-Catholic conversations

Since 2006, representatives from the Baptist World Alliance have held annual meetings with counterparts from the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Each year has had a central focus and the dialogues have concerned, successively, Scripture, tradition and the role of the Virgin Mary. A document will be produced out of the final meeting in 2010 to share with the respective denominational groups.