Gentlemen of Theologos:
Wandering through this material, I wonder if anyone else has arrived at the obvious question: Do Christians effectively sell their souls to Jesus Christ? Further, I raise the following question without hesitation: Is this a good idea? Those of us who have struggled through the Bible and its myriad inconsistencies are often want to know if the point of Christ's teachings is serving his flock or rendering them in practical enthrallment.
It behooves us to examine this as if we may have bought a pig in a poke. Let us bestir ourselves and examine something that isn't in the Book as if it mattered to us, eh? We are concerned with our eternal outcome, aren't we?

By the way, I'm a philosopher too but do not adhere to your definition of our pursuit. I would agree that Theologians do get constitutionally stuck in textual interpretation in one form or another as they evidently define themselves in terms of and behind the Book. That is the evident problem of a Faith and is expressed in an aggravated form in the ever-present Scholastic tradition. However, for us coming out of Thales, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Democritus and (God knows) Homer, a philosopher had better be "stuck" in reality or he is a windbag. We are interested in a map that fits the territory properly and are not inclined to be distracted from conviction that both the territory and a proper map are realizable.
So be it.
David Gordon Howe, Ph.D.
 
 

 [email protected] wrote:

In a message dated 98-09-07 10:13:56 EDT, [email protected]
writes:

Why then do we need sacramental ordination???

We need sacramental ordination, and sacraments in general (as commanded by our Lord), for two reasons.

First, Christianity is not so much a religion as a Church, a new community that constitutes the Mystical Body of Christ.  And as the Incarnational religion, Christianity is a deeply physical religion that has eluded the docetic (docetism was the heretical view that Christ really did not
become a human but only appeared to be physical - he was really purely spiritual - modern spiritualizing trends are forms of this heresy extended to ecclesiology) trends of modern Protestant Christianity (although beginning in German Pietism).  It is Karl Barth who probably realized more clearly than anyone else within the Protestant fold the deep and wide ramifications of this errant "spiritualizing."  In the English and in a predominantly Protestant culture, "mystical" is read as "spiritual," or "non-physical."  This is an error.  The Greek is more accurately translated as "Sacramental Body of Christ."  The Greek also makes clear through this sacramental body of Christ we are made bodily one with Christ's Body (note, this oneness is literally somatic).  We are saved as we are perfected in our Church membership, i.e. in our bodily identity with the body of Christ.  Thus, birth into the Church is through the Sacrament of Baptism.

Second, as a physical entity, the Church as the Body of Christ and God's Kingdom, at least in its this-worldly aspect, is also a historically concrete reality.  And as with the prophets of old, the passing on of the Spirit of the apostles is through anointing and laying on of hands by which the continuity of the Church through time is preserved by apostolic succession.

If you wonder why it has to be all this seemingly unnecessary physical rigamarole, you are not alone.  But if the inability to answer why this physical rigamarole is needed leads to the temptation to think, "since I can't explain it to myself rationally, it must in itself be irrational,
and thus, rejected," then this line of reasoning goes to the heart of the doctrine of the Incarnation and its even more elaborate physical rigamarole.
This is one of the differences between theology and philosophy.  I am trained in both theology and philosophy.  Like Job, theologians sometimes have to stop and not reject what they can't make rational or explain to themselves and live with the questions, practices, and beliefs.  Unlike Job, philosophers may reject what he or she can't make rational or explain to themselves as irrational and unreal unless it is a reality whose existence they can't deny (thus, certain core questions about the mind, time, and being persist).  And if it is a set of practices that seem to have no immediately understandable purpose, the philosopher (sort of an efficiency expert in practical social and political philosophy) may critique them as the legacy of prejudice or superstition.  The great temptation in modern theology's spiritualizing and rationalizing is to inadvertently leave theology behind and to become a philosopher in this process.