Going to Rhetoric Class with Elai

Yes, I voluntarily read  A History of Christian Thought in One Volume. (The “One Volume” part was a selling point) while I was with Elai in Chicago. It seemed appropriate, somehow, to be reading what looks like a textbook while she was off to her acting class, her Old Testament Survey class, her Rhetoric class (!) Actually I got to go to one of those. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and the day I went, Dr. Chase was giving examples of ancient Chinese persuasion. He quoted Confucius saying: “To fail to speak to a man who is capable of benefiting is to let a man go to waste. To speak to a man who is incapable of benefiting is to let one's words go to waste. A wise man lets neither men nor words go to waste.” (Analect 15:8) Confucius was such  a master of word play. I wonder what he and G.K. Chesterton, the English master of paradox, would have sounded like in conversation. I hoped to go to the next Rhetoric class, which was to be about African rhetoric, but I couldn’t make it, so Elai is sending me the link. I’m such a student!

Which keeps me reading my history book. It’s good because it shows you why your church teaches certain things and not others. You think your set of beliefs came down from antiquity as a package deal. But it did not. Theologians over the ages added bits and pieces, some far longer ago, and some more recently, than you might think. And if you were to read about some of these theologians, you might be dismayed. They don’t match up with what you might describe as a model Christian today. What do you do with this mixed bag of thinkers and doers who are our spiritual ancestors?

Take the Roman Tertullian, a lawyer/ theologian (as most of the Roman theologians were) from the third century, who outlined the doctrine of original sin and first described the trinity as three persons with one substance.  He also gave us the Doctrine of Satisfaction, which tells the story of salvation as a legal business transaction, a payment of debt to free sinners from their master. These are all doctrines that many Christians hold today. But Tertullian also supported apostolic succession, condemned all fornicators to hell, repentant or not, and forbade widows from marriage. He was also not clear on whether the Son existed in the Godhead before creation. What a mixed bag.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, salvation was being described in completely different terms, as a drama of Ransom and Rescue. This was the predominant view among most of the church fathers for the first thousand years of church history until a shift came at the turn of the first millennium, under Anselm of Canterbury, who took up Tertullian’s Satisfaction Doctrine, which has prevailed as the primary story of salvation among both Catholics and Protestants ever since. A writer named Gustaf Aulen  brought back the ancient story in 1931. Truth be told, though both stories describe the exact same event, Christ redeeming us forever through his life, death, and resurrection, I like the Christus Victor account best. It resonates with me—this drama about Jesus coming as the ultimate hero to conquer the enemy and rescue his fallen bride. I am glad that the study of Christian thought has given us back this story. I am glad Justo Gonzalez reminds me that my theological ancestors where (what looks to me now) a mixed bag. It gives me hope.