An idea on advanced catechtical formation

I thought I would run this idea by this forum first, given the intelligence and open mindedness of this community, although on reflection, while I am in some respects liberal, I am in other respects moderate, in still others, conservative, and in all things, inspired by temptation.

So this morning, the thought occurred to me of taking the doctrinally correct fragment of the Gospel of Peter, the Protoevangelion of James, which reflects the traditional doctrine of the nativity of the Theotokos, and bridge them together using doctrinally correct portions of other non-canonical Gospels, and the idea also occurred to me of correcting texts like the Gospel of Thomas or the Odes of Solomon, which I believe to be authentic but corrupted by Gnostic influence, just as Marcion published a corrupted version of the Gospel of Luke and the Pauline Epistles (fortunately, we still have the original Luke-Acts).

Then, I had a bolder idea, which this thread is chiefly about, which would be, as part of the process of advanced formation of people who wished to serve the church as catechists or sacred ministers (subdeacons, deacons, presbyters, bishops), to challenge them to write a neoevangelion, ideally, multiple individuals, working together as a group, but each one writing their own summary of the Gospel, and then comparing and discussing it with the class. The idea is the summary should present the life of Christ as taught in the four canonical Gospels, with allusions to Old Testament prophecies, and His doctrine, as taught in the Gospels, Epistles, and indeed the entirety of scripture. In this manner, misunderstandings could be corrected, creativity encouraged, and with the teacher acting as an editor, each student would produce a short (compared to the canonical gospels) Epitomized Neo-Evangelion, or Gospel Summary, that would be doctrinally correct according to the Nicene Creed and the Ecumenical Councils and historic interpretations of the faith by the Early Church, while abstaining from contemporary controversies such as Calvinism vs. Arminianism. Once each part of each of the Gospel Summaries was approved, the students would share what they wrote, for mutual edification, and perhaps at the end of the class, the students might decide to select one summary as the best, or combine the best parts of each of their work, and the final work, once reviewed and approved, would be read to the congregation over lunch after the Eucharist, or before or after Evening Prayer, or at a Bible Study.

hedrick said:

At least in the PCUSA we do in various contexts ask people to produce summaries of what they believe, which is presumably largely the Gospel.

However your suggested procedure would strike many in the liberal denominations as odd, since a summary of the gospels is in some tension with traditional standards of orthodoxy. Not so much that they contradict, nor that Nicea doesn't have it's place, but I don't think the Nicene Creed provides much illumination on the Gospels. I think this would be pretty widely shared by the churches most represented in this group.

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Could you outline the summaries of what you believe? The Remonstrants, founded by Arminius, which are now the most liberal denomination that still is mostly but not entirely Trinitarian, encourages each member to write their own statement of faith. I think they have around 7,000 members in 6 parishee in the Netherlands and Germany

PloverWing said:

Back in October, when you first posted this, I thought you meant that each person should write their own Gospel -- that is, a document in the style of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, etc., an interpreted life of Jesus. I'd write the Gospel According to PloverWing, with my own choice of infancy narratives, miracle stories, selections from (my best guess at) Q, etc. This feels uncomfortable to me.

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Yeah, no, that is not what I had in mind, and I would feel uncomfortable about that to such a degree that a church that did that would show up in my list of problem parishes in Denomination Specific Theology, or I might go a step further and regard them as non-Christian and heretical, depending on what they were doing.

But now I'm not sure that's what you meant, so I'd like clarification. Do you mean

• A narrative telling of the life of Jesus in the style of the four canonical gospels?
• A commentary on one or more of the gospels?
• A creed-like document that summarizes the essential teachings of Christianity? Something like the Nicene Creed, but including more topics?
• A more detailed statement of faith, something like the Westminster Confession?

I agree that writing down the central teachings of Christianity in one's own words can be a worthwhile exercise, but I don't know exactly what kind of document you're looking for.

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So allow me to summarize the idea in a rough draft sort of way. You might call it an interactive catechism, or mentored Gospel summarization,

Of the options you listed, a few are applicable: I mean a creed like document, but in narrative form, which summarizes the key points of the Gospel message, which are conveyed throughout sacred scripture. I do not mean inviting people to make up their own stories about Jesus Christ; while there is some fiction involving our Lord that is moving* that would not be the goal.

The goal would rather be to get people to be able to eloquently summarize, to varying extents, the existing Gospel message, in a guided setting, the goal being to help people understand and reflect on what the Good News actually is.

For example, my Patristic view is that the Gospel is that the Only Begotten Son and Word of God put on our finite humanity in an act of extreme humility, trampled down death by death, and rising again on the third day, as prophecized in the Old Testament, and in so doing becoming the New Adam and restoring the tarnished human image, allowing us to be saved, and not just to be saved, but to attain, according to the early church fathers, a state higher than Adam, and in His incarnation He revealed the Father, with whom He is coequal but from whom He is eternally begotten, and He sent the Spirit, who proceeds eternally from the Father, as our Paraclete and Comforter, enabling us to perceive the truth of Christianity and overcome ancestral sin to the extent that we can choose to join the church, or remain in it if we were blessed to be baptized as infants, and through membership in the Church, which is the Body of Christ, which posesses the means of sacramental grace, through Baptism, Chrismation, the Eucharist, and Reconciliation, in which our sins can be washed away, we can receive the seal of the Holy Spirit, we can partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and life everlasting, the literal medicine of immortality, and the bishops and presbyters of the Church have been delegated the ability to forgive and retain, to bind and loose, and therefore can pronounce absolution over sinners who confess and desire metanoia. And through membership in the Church, at the last trumpet, when the dead shall rise again in their bodies, we have the strongest and best hope of salvation before the dread judgement seat of Christ Pantocrator, for our God is infinitely loving and merciful, and perfect in every way, and promised the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against His church, and thus we have hope through Jesus Christ of repose in Heaven and at the resurrection, not being cast into the outer darkness but being welcomed into the life of the world to come.

The above is how I would summarize the Gospel, although I envisage a longer summary, and different churches and traditions emphasize different parts of the Gospel, and different people will stress different aspects, reflecting Eastern or Western theology, and Calvinism or Weselyan/Arminian/Patristic approaches to soteriology, the primary variation being whether or not we have free will; it might be desirable depending on the denomination to de-emphasize that or certain other controversial points.

The essence of the Good News is of course simply that Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son and Word of God, became incarnate and died and was resurrected, and through faith in Him we can attain life everlasting. But there is more to it than that, and also we want to make sure that people do not believe any errors which amount to false Gospels, for example, Unitarianism or Arianism or Pelagianism, so it would be very important that everyone be given a list of points to cover, and guidance so if they started to veer off course, the correct doctrine could be explained to them.

The idea is basically for a more interactive form of catechesis than the rote memorization of the question and answer style Catechism invented by Martin Luther, which in todays society, youth do not enjoy (and fortunately the Orthodox Churches generally do not impose that kind of tedious catechesis on youth or converts, contrary to what Seinfeld might have us believe; the children in the Eastern churches receive chrismation and communion immediately after baptism, even if they are still infants).

My thought is that by making the process of catechesis more interactive and an opportunity for some element of creativity, older children would enjoy it and not develop a hostile attitude to the Christian Church, which does happen with some teenagers, and not every prodigal son returns in a timely manner.

However, if someone made up their own accounts of what Jesus did, they would be told to go back and write down what is actually recorded in the scriptures.

The best analogy for what the students would be writing would be something of a hybrid between a rewording of the Nicene Creed, the Gospel narrative itself, and a book summarizing the Christian faith, the best and most accessible of which is probably Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, but there are others, such as The Fount of Knowledge by St. John of Damascus, An Example of the Apostolic Preaching by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, and finally, the Summa Theologica, Calvin’s Institutes, Barth’s Church Dogmatics, and Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, but I seriously doubt that even the most dedicated young Christians would have the time or attention span to get some of those. To put it another way, they would be writing the answers to questions one finds in a catechism, but the questions would be up to them and not required to be written, unless they wanted to write it in the style of a catechism; there would rather be certain key points which they would have to cover correctly, in their own words. The length, style, format, etc, would largely be up to the participants.

There might be the possibility of allowing for the expression of their own examples of what the Eastern Orthodox call theolougoumena, which means theological opinions in areas where the church has not defined a doctrine. For example, a reconciliation of some aspects of the synoptic Gospels, or opinions concerning the identity of Melchizedek and the importance of that event as a typological prophecy. And speaking of that, the use of Antiochene literal-historical exegesis, Alexandrian typological-prophetic-metaphorical exegesis, and the hybrid exegesis we see advanced by the Cappadocians, would be allowed, up to a point (some things must be defined in a literal historical way and some things defy description, for example, the Divine Essence, for God is unscrutable in His ways.


*I liked Ben Hur quite a bit, although it greatly mischaracterized the brutality of the Roman Empire; the depiction of the Roman Navy as having slave galleys is utterly false, for the Roman Navy was all volunteer, and a vast fleet of slave galleys in the Mediterranean was rather a Venetian thing, 1500 years later, and I am disturbed that the awesome character played by Jack Hawkins** is named Arrius. Conversely, I feel it overlooked the actual problems with the Roman Empire; Kubrick’s Spartacus does a much better job at that.

**one my favorite period actors (he is excellent in Lawrence of Arabia, and as Khufu in The Land of the Pharoahs, he is spectacular; I have a nagging suspicion William Shatner wisely based his depiction of Captain Kirk on that performance, and with Joan Collins playing a femme fatale character, it feels a bit like Star Trek set in ancient Egypt, despite having only one actress in common, but she did appear prominently in City on the Edge of Forever, which is widely regarded as the best Star Trek episode. It would have been better however had they actually used Harlan Ellison’s script.

hedrick said:

I would point to recent PCUSA confessional documents: the Confession of 1967, the Brief Statement, and the Catechism. Presbyterian Creedal Standards. In general I accept the Incarnation and Trinity, but prefer modern statements of them. I honor the intent of the classic statements, but I don’t think Greek metaphysical terms are complete representations of the Biblical descriptions.

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But surely you agree with the Nicene Creed?