by The Reverend Wayne Kinyon, Chaplain to the Retired, EDUSC
Daily I read my
Bible in search of God's truth and ethics, and so I should. Also I read
my Bible standing in awe of the great drama of God in history as spread
out from Genesis to Revelation. But lately I have been reading my Bible
with a fascination for the Bible as dialogue.
Of course the
Bible is a place where I am drawn into dialogue with the Holy Spirit, as
has been true for Christians down through the centuries. But my current
fascination is the dialogues, sometimes the debates, that exist within
the pages themselves.
Right off the bat,
we have the two creation stories. In one, humankind is the concluding
and crowning piece of creation, while in the other a human being is
created before the animals, and is created as a servant, a laborer. Each
version has its truth to tell and needs to be there, but in details
contradicts the other. Later, we have the Book of Job. Of course Job the
man is in dialogue, debate, and conflict with the others in the story,
even God; but more, Job the book is in loud debate with parts of the
Psalms and Prophets which say that if we trust the Lord and follow in
his ways, all will be well. And within the Book of Job, are the prose
and poetry sections in conflict about the nature of God and his gift of
material prosperity? Sometimes in Scripture we see a God who is tough
and demanding and sometimes a God who is gentle and easily forgiving. Is
He in total control, or is everything the product of free will? Does He
love everyone or just those who do his will? The temptation is to
believe one strand and ignore the other.
Years ago, a
family friend in Oak Ridge, The Rev. Dr. William G. Pollard, a nuclear
physicist who later also became a priest, wrote a book: Chance and
Providence. From the book and his talks on the topic, I picked up the
word antinomy. It means paradox but avoids the idea that somehow the
obvious contradiction is to be solved. Using examples from physics, Bill
shows that sometimes the nature of a thing (light, for example) is such
that one must carefully embrace contradictions (wave versus matter). He
sees Genesis 50:20 as an expression of antinomy when Joseph says that
what his brothers did to him was evil but God had caused the same event
intending it for good. Sometimes seeming contradictions actually hold
the greater truth.
I am picturing an
elderly woman on the back pew of St. Pius Church saying her beads and a
young man in a pentecostal church with hands upraised and praising God
in tongues. Which one is the true Christian? Or is Christian worship
better understood by knowing both of them? My grandfather did not
approve of our Episcopal congregation having Holy Communion available so
frequently; when he was a boy, his Congregational Church had the
sacrament rarely, but work stopped for days to allow people to prepare
themselves spirituality for this important event. Is one right and the
other wrong, or does each catch a part of the truth?
And what about two
opposite positions on a serious ethical issue, both held by devout
Christians? Is it possible that God's truth is not in just one side or
the other, but dwells in the tension of the debate? When should the
rule of antinomy apply?
This piece republished courtesy of the EDUSC Retired Clergy News from Wayne's column, Chaplain's Chat.
