I had an interesting convergence of personal struggle, class readings, and spiritual practice last week.
In a previous posting, I noted that the honeymoon ended, and I’ve had some frustrations, doubts, and questions about the way I’m doing this whole seminary thing. While my experience hasn’t entailed a crisis of faith or any fundamental doubts about my basic call to serve, I have spent some time wondering if I was called to be here, at this place, doing this study, this way. Since I thought I had discerned that I was supposed to be doing this, I’ve been rattled by these questions. I’ve found a deep need to try and reconnect with my call, to reconnect with my sense of God working in my life.
Meanwhile, I’m reading the Pelagius-Augustine of Hippo debate in not one but two classes. For those of you not immersed in early 5th century theological debates, this one centers on the relationship between grace from God and human free will. Pelagius was a great believer in the power of the human will. He argued that humans can freely choose to be good, can, in effect, use their free will to live a good life and achieve salvation. Augustine of Hippo, Mr. Original Sin, argued vehemently against this, emphasizing the total dependence of humans on God. He felt that even our ability to choose good is a grace from God. (For those of you who are or have been immersed in early 5th century theological debates, I admit that just generalized a great deal. In case you are wondering, as far as the Christian Church at the time was concerned, Augustine of Hippo won the debate).
Hearing this debate and pondering it in the midst of a personal struggle to reconnect with God, I found Augustine of Hippo’s viewpoint very amenable. Wrestling with doubts, doubts for which there really is no simple or obvious answer certainly made me feel, realize, and/or recognize that I am, in fact, highly dependent on God and God’s ongoing grace. I’m dependent on something beyond my own murky, cloudy desires; that even my own will is insufficient power in my own attempt to live in a right relationship with God. St. Augustine may have been wrong about some other things, but I think he nailed this one.
That realization hit me just as I was trying to find concrete steps to aid my ongoing discernment. I had been debating whether or not to go attend a small-group spiritual formation meeting. I had a moment of great clarity where I realized that A: If I am, in fact, admitting my dependence on God and B: If I continue to believe (as I long have) that one way to hear God is through community, I should C: Go to said group meeting. I did. It is a long-term commitment, that I’m following through, like a lot of this, on raw faith that if I keep working as attentively I can, and follow what I know in my heart and head, I will, through the grace of God, hear what I need to hear.
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4 comments:
Boy, that was a lot to digest! I'll tackle just a few points. The other day I told a mutual friend of ours that a trick in life is to keep on keeping on. It's so easy to get excited about something and to find the energy immediately to tackle it, but it is neither easy nor energizing to stay the course. That said, the course itself may be energizing and certainly the goal worthwhile.
I myself believe I've experienced "miracles" in my life. These might even be those "a-ha" moments when the lightbulb goes on and we realize that some path is clear or defined. Funny thing about those moments - we always want to reproduce them.
I don't think that happens. We are lucky - or blessed - by such revelations or by some amazing event in our lives, and I suppose it's human nature to want to recapture them.
But surely it's not God's role to keep feeding us with that uniquely spiritual adrenaline that comes with moments of clarity. He gave us a gift in that moment, and it is our job now to move forward, to deal with mundane realities of actualization.
Perhaps it's your over-simplification that is confusing me, but from your summary of the debate, I am unsure that they cannot both be true. And I am sure that I want to read more of this argument. So, since I'm slightly lazy, and not sure exactly how to google that to come up with a good result, is there a particular book(?) of the debate that you would recommend? My goal for winter reading (28 days of no school) is 35 books I haven't read before, and I'm thinking this would be a good addition to the list.
Kathy, thanks for the encouraging words. I actually do seem to be moving out of the funk!
April, you're not alone, in fact, most of my classmates had a huge affinity for Pelagius and his reputation has been somewhat redeemed in recent years. Like a lot of debates over heresies in the early years, they made a big deal over fine points. In some ways, this one became a big deal because it had implications for a popular practice, namely infant baptism. Pelagius said you don't need to baptize infants because God's saving grace entered the world at creation, Agustine said you do because The Fall has tainted all humans and we need ongoing grace to fix us. Again, this is a simplification, and both arguments have good points. It tends to be which points you want to stress or not that becomes key. For reading, you might want to try "The Experience and Language of Grace" by Roger Haight. You'd probably have to order it, it doesn't tend to reside in your average bookstore. He gives an overview that covers the positive and negative aspects (from today's perspective) of both Agustine and Pelagius.
Matt, that's what interlibrary loan is for. I don't really have a book buying budget, or shelf space for more books. I don't even have shelf space for all of the books I have now...
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