Ruminations After a Dinner

This past weekend I learned a lesson that I must have forgotten.  There are numerous times in the scripture where the one asked a question chooses not to give a full answer, or  any answer at all.  Angels have done it, the Lord Jesus Christ did it, and others as well.  Over dinner, an elderly man who is trying to get a handle on Orthodoxy asked, "so, what does your church teach about the 'rapture'?"   I have thought that I  should not have opened my mouth about the subject, as nothing good came of the discussion at the time.    This person is a premillennial pretribulational dispensationalist.   I know the type.  I used to be one.  I explained that the doctrine of the "rapture" is a new doctrine (only a couple of hundred years old), and then I began to explain how it had been popularized over the years, including some mention of  the book written by John Walvoord   in the 1950's, Hal Lindsey's books and movie of the 1970's, and the "Left Behind"  book series of the 1990's.  He got more and more agitated, and every time someone else around the table got us on another subject for a few minutes he was bringing us right back to it.  

It is one thing to hold to an opinion about something as a matter of faith.  It is another thing to dispute facts that can be documented.  If you can't agree on the latter, you certainly can't get anywhere with the former, and this was the case that night.  The gentleman did  call me a few days later to say that he had looked it up, and that I was right, it really was a new doctrine.  It is not so much about me being right as it is that he might take the information and make some changes in his thinking that will draws him closer to the Triune God.   Even though he agreed that his doctrine was new,  will he abandon it?

It must be human nature to  want to follow whoever is most persuasive.  I think of the so called theologians who I have studied over the years.  What made them theologians?  What made them worthy of reading?  How do they stand up against the theology of the early church, and the early church fathers.  The trouble today is that most people in our society equate theology with the rationalism/scholasticism of  Western Europe.  In the west, people want to quote St. Augustine as if he was the only church father.  They don't know that he didn't even read Greek.  How could he have possibly been able to understand the nuances in understanding of the  early fathers who wrote in Greek?   The time honored understanding as found in the eastern church of Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Asia Minor, etc. is  unknown.  In this tradition, theology is direct personal knowledge acquired as one is exposed to the uncreated energies of the Triune God.  It is experiential understanding that only ones who live holy lives are privy to, because it is a gift of the grace of God.

There are so many things like the rapture, larger issues of eschatology, evolution, etc. that  would cease to be the issues that they are if people could only return to the early church fathers.  

Through the prayers of our holy fathers, may the Triune God bless those who  read these words.