Page 15 - THE CHURCH BEFORE THE MOCKING WORLD

If we hold to the Jesus embodied in the Symbols of history we have the ?Real?Jesus. If we allow Him to be detached from the sacred Symbols of history, and rationalised into the secular, He does in fact, disappear.
The dear men who came to Philip desired to see or encounter a living person, not a projection of the dominant value system of the time.
Slavoj ?i?ek, the Slovenian Social Theorist encourages his audience to emulate the values of Jesus and the Holy Spirit within the culture. He is though, an atheist.
But let it be said loudly, that without the Messianic notion, and its attached sacred Symbols in history, the very concept of Jesus would have been an extension of their dominant value system ? a radical political leader who would over throw the Roman Empire.
It is also interesting that it was Philip who was involved in the discussion with Our Lord Jesus Christ about seeing the Father when The Lord says, ?If you have seen me you have seen the Father?.
Let?s unpack this as we connect these thoughts to St. Paul?s statements in Colossians when he writes of Christ as being the, ?Image of the invisible God?, and when he declares that, ?The fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him?
Now let?s step back from this for a moment and put these two ideas on hold.
What we learn from our Eastern brothers and sisters is a very powerful concept. Remember, these are the ones being beheaded in the Middle East for Christ. It is, interestingly enough, a concept that both the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox can agree on. The Roman Church has a similar concept, but as is often the case, a theology based on Latin is a poor substitute for the multi-layered Greek language which was given in the ?fullness of time?.
In fairness, the term has been reclaimed in the Protestant world by Jurgen Moltman, Misoslav Wolf and in more recent times by Baxter Kruger.
The term that our Eastern brothers and sisters have given us is the Greek word ?Perichoresis?. It is the word that the Early Church Fathers used for the description of the relationship of love between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In some cases the word "God" was simply enough as the descriptor of the relational values of the Trinity, but the full meaning of Trinitarian ontology is developed in this more complex wordPerichoresis.
We have to be careful because in the Protestant world we sometimes get a subtext Trinitarian doctrine. A doctrine of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, plus another entity called The Triune Godhead. It is as if the latter is actually separate from the individual Persons of the Trinity. In short, we get by default, a Protestant Holy Quartet.