Phillip CaryRecensioni

First sentence: The Nicene Creed originated because ancient Christians were appalled. A teacher in one of the most influential churches in the world was trying to get them to speak of Christ and say things like "there was once when he was not" and "he came to be out of nothing." They had good reason to be appalled.

What you see is what you get: an introduction to the Nicene Creed. Phillip Cary walks his readers through the Nicene Creed. He does so--in part--by sharing his new translation of the Nicene Creed into English. Cary walks phrase by phrase through the Nicene Creed. He focuses on the original languages, the historical context, the theological/philosophical ramifications of the statements (what the Creed IS saying and what it is not saying; what it includes and what it excludes). For the record, Cary's Nicene Creed is the expanded confession formulated at the Council of Constantinople in 381. (As opposed to the Creed of Nicaea from 325). He at times discusses traditional renderings and translations of words and phrases. Occasionally he branches out into stories of word origins and associations. [The languages most referenced are Greek, Latin, and of course, English].

He points off by reminding readers that the Nicene Creed was a DEFINITIVE NO, NO, NO to the heretical beliefs creeping into churches. It was affirming what they held to be true, what they held to be biblical. It was denying what they held to be false, what they felt to contradict Scripture's teachings. He writes, "to say no is to draw a boundary and say: We're not going there, because that's not who Christ is."

Quotes:

We believe [I believe]
in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible;
and in one Lord,
Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God,
who was begotten of the Father before all ages,
[God from God,]
Light from Light,
True God from True God,
begotten, not made,
having the same being as the Father,
through whom all things came to be;
who for us human beings and for our salvation
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate
from the Holy Spirit
and the Virgin Mary
and became human,
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate,
and suffered
and was buried,
and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures,
and ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of the Father,
and shall come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead,
of whose kingdom there shall be no end;
and in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord and Giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father
[and from the Son],
who with the Father and Son together is worshiped and co-glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets;
in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
We confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins;
we look for the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the age to come.
Amen.½

Five parts

Every generation, particularly in the age of modern media, has religious buzzwords that guide much spiritual thinking and conversation. In this generation, particularly among conservative evangelicals, many of those meaningful Christian phrases revolve around the notion of surrendering oneself to God wholly, in mind, body, and spirit. While this idea is present throughout the Bible and in Christian theology across the centuries, it has taken root in particular ways recently, including such ideas as God taking control of one’s life (“Jesus, Take the Wheel”) to listening for God’s guiding voice in one’s heart in contrast to the baser desires of the flesh.

While such ideas are necessary to a point, recent trends have probably taken them out of faithful balance, argues Phillip Cary, a professor at Eastern University. In fact, the limited ways in identifying God’s will for one’s life and one’s emotional response to life at every moment is likely crippling a generation of believers, he says. In order to remedy this, he offers ten essays in “Good News for Anxious Christians.”

Seeking to respond to what he terms the New Evangelical Theology, he suggests ways in which recent trends in spiritual discourse have made young disciples – it seems clear that his primary, though implicit, audience is college-age people trying to grow into a mature faith – rather schizophrenic, trying always to separate good emotions from bad reason, trying to always emotionally feel only certain appropriate Christian feelings, trying to only have the right Christian motivations, and trying to discern only God’s specific direction for one’s individual life in contrast to one’s own desires. In each of these cases, Cary believes that the gospel has been lost and perverted into a practice that devalues critical thinking, individual gifts, and the joy of faith for the cause of everyone trying to be Christian in the same limited way.

Writing from negative to positive, he offers “10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do” to be a faithful Christian, including such things as “Why You Don’t Have to ‘Find God’s Will for Your Life’” and “Why You Don’t Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time.” In most of these, he counters what he sees as a false divide between emotions and reason, seeking to unite them and to value both emotional health and critical thinking. While his frequent assaults on the amorphous “new evangelical theology” seem a bit ad hominem, the vigor and “take no prisoners” punchiness of his writing is otherwise greatly appreciated.

Mostly, though, his necessary corrective to bad theology and bad Christian anthropology is applauded. While the nature of sin is corrosive, it has not completely defiled human emotions and reason to the point that they are completely dysfunctional. Otherwise, it would be impossible to ever respond to grace in such a way as to grow into the person God desires one to be. Also, there are trends in Christian teaching that suggest certain thoughts and emotions that are healthy and unavoidable are always signs of personal sin, which Cary refuses as an almost unforgiveable assault on human integrity and the source of unnecessary and irresolvable anxiety.

While I do not agree with all of Cary’s arguments, I heartily support his overall effort to remind people of the holistic nature of the faithful life. His pointing to the human-created paradoxes, particularly the recurrent theme about the impossibility of finding God’s will in your heart alone, that have been substituted for the paradoxes of the Gospel (to suggest the writings of Karl Barth and others) is correct. And the student of Scripture in me loved his insistence that the Bible, in itself, is beautiful without always needing to find ways to “make it relevant” or “apply it.”

If this book had ended after chapter 8, I would have given it 5 stars. But beginning in chapter 9, and more fully in chapter 10 and the Conclusion it became evident that, while the author was very good at pointing out the dangers of modern evangelical Christianity, what he offered in its place was in its own way just as misguided. He decries a faith fed by experience (He expresses the anxiety this approach fosters with questions like "What if I am not experiencing the "right" things? Am I not really Christian?") yet offers in its place a theology based on his own experience of Christmas carols and liturgy. So I might ask, What if liturgy means nothing to me? Does that mean IU don't have saving faith? What if I am not moved as he is by Christmas carols? Am I not a "real" Christian? He speaks of the "application" part of sermons as boring and "doesn't really do us much good," yet Jesus' preaching was predominantly application, and the letters of Paul each tend to start with theology and end in application - and the application sometimes is the longer part. The gospel he offers is as empty as that of Liberal Protestantism and modern evangelicalism, and sounds very much to me like the emptiness of medieval Catholicism - a religion, not a faith, that would be damaged more by the loss of liturgy than the loss of Christ, despite his claim that he is keeping the focus on Christ alone. He is so close . . . yet regrettably so far away from a very excellent book. Having started in the Spirit, he ends with the shadows and form of religion void of the Spirit.

No where near as stuffy as some of the other Great Courses. Highly recommended.

Course Lecture Titles


1. Introduction—Philosophy and Religion as Traditions
2. Plato's Inquiries—The Gods and the Good
3. Plato's Spirituality—The Immortal Soul and the Other World
4. Aristotle and Plato—Cosmos, Contemplation and Happiness
5. Plotinus—Neoplatonism and the Ultimate Unity of All
6. The Jewish Scriptures—Life with the God of Israel
7. Platonist Philosophy and Scriptural Religion
8. The New Testament—Life in Christ
9. Rabbinic Judaism—Israel and the Torah
10. Church Fathers—The Logos Made Flesh
11. The Development of Christian Platonism
12. Jewish Rationalism and Mysticism—Maimonides and Kabbalah
13. Classical Theism—Proofs and Attributes of God
14. Medieval Christian Theology—Nature and Grace
15. Late-Medieval Nominalism and Christian Mysticism
16. Protestantism—Problems of Grace
17. Descartes, Locke, and the Crisis of Modernity
18. Leibniz and Theodicy
19. Hume's Critique of Religion
20. Kant—Reason Limited to Experience
21. Kant—Morality as the Basis of Religion
22. Schleiermacher—Feeling as the Basis of Religion
23. Hegel—A Philosophical History of Religion
24. Marx and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion
25. Kierkegaard—Existentialism and the Leap of Faith
26. Nietzsche—Critic of Christian Morality
27. Neo—orthodoxy—The Subject and Object of Faith
28. Encountering the Biblical Other—Buber and Levinas
29. Process Philosophy—God in Time
30. Logical Empiricism and the Meaning of Religion
31. "Reformed" Epistemology and the Rationality of Belief
32. Conclusion—Philosophy and Religion Today
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