the periodic ramblings of a contemplative student
The world is bigger than I,
Billions on billions of souls.
Such a cloud and a crowd far outmatch me
If I try setting me against billions.
Thoughts, motives, feelings crowd in me,
Billions on billions of motions,
And I find myself strangely uncrowded
By the billions crowded in billions.
Allow me to step back from the project for a bit and look at what is foundational to it.
The believer in the Christian faith is primarily a believer in a particular cosmology. It is characterized by a Triune God, invisible/non-corporeal beings (primarily angels and demons), humans (that is, corporeal beings with a soul… halfway between spirits and beasts), beasts, and inanimate created things. It is in examining the relationships one has with each of these beings or created things and that each has with every other that we come to understand morality, etc.
Now, the primary relationship anything has is with the Triune God, who created all things, and is therefore the source of every relationship. That is, all other relationships flow from and are necessarily related to every thing’s relationship to the Triune God. If one’s relationship to God is correct, one’s relationship to all other things will also generally be correct, plus or minus a few degrees of error. Thus, it makes sense that the definition of a Christian should outline who their God is, how he interacts with men and how men should interact with him.
The thoughts in this post are incomplete without its sequel, Definition of a Christian Revisited.
In a past post, I offered the following definition for a Christian:
To be a Christian is to be in communion with the God who revealed Himself through His Scriptures and through His incarnation in the person of Jesus in the context of the Church striving toward personal and universal salvation.
It prompted so much dialogue that I promised a post defining the terms I used in the definition for the sake of clarity and better conversation. This is that post. I plan to do two things: first, in this post, I will work through this definition piece by piece, explaining the thoughts behind it as thoroughly as I can. This will be in order to allow the previous post’s conversation to be continued at least in that I directly respond to it. Second, in a post to follow I will, as I hinted in the last post, offer a slightly revised definition and summarize my understanding of the entire discussion.
My next sentiments post is not getting anywhere currently, and in light of that, I’ve decided to begin posting again on other topics rather than waiting for a project that looks like it will take a little longer in the making than I had anticipated. Unless I hear cries of horror and petitions for a renewed effort in that direction, therefore, I shall consider this blog debogged from the mire of that series.
I promised an elaborative post on the definition of a Christian that I suggested a few posts back, and I plan on fulfilling that promise. It will be the next post of great substance that you will find on this blog. Expect to see the definition revised from its original phrasing in this iteration as a result of thoughts produced or encountered in my class on the Trinity this semester under the illustrious Dr. Fred Sanders.
In the meantime, I offer you these succinct scrap paper scribblings I’ve unearthed from the miscellaneous writing I worked on over the past year or two. It’s interesting and somewhat humorous to see which thoughts I considered most worthy of being scrawled out. There’s no method to the madness, at least no intentional method, so don’t spend much time looking for connections. I simply picked out the shortest and most stylistically correct blurbs I could find. It’s like eating jelly beans… small, and you’re not sure which flavor is coming next. Enjoy!
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