Thursday, January 18, 2007
Grace is uniquely about Christian Spirituality...
In our brave new world of postmodern 'Spirituality' rather than 'Religion', the uniqueness of Christian Spirituality can be found in the concept of 'Grace'. Too often this has been a somewhat neglected part of the faith, but it is key if we are to recontextualise the imminence of the significance of Christ as well as the more philosophical transcendence that most in the emerging church focus on. Christianity is unique as a faith - in that it is imminent and transcendent. Most faiths are 'either-or' rather than 'both-and'. The Emerging Church is good on transcendence and not very good at imminence, a mistake of the gnostics and others.... Paul Tillich, an important figure in C20th Theology puts it well:
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaning-less and empty life. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for-perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades ... Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into the darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know."... Simply accept that you are accepted! If that happens, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed... and nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.
What Tillich is describing, is the presence of the Christ, the bringer of hope and transformation - as the face that exposes the invisible and divine. Christ the human who expresses fully the mystery of God, and whose actions brings us Grace.
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