CGR Vol. 26, No. 3 (Fall 2008)

Introduction

The ongoing debate[1] about the value of the ecumenical creeds of Christendom from an Anabaptist historical perspective has generated polarizing judgments on their efficacy and function for early Anabaptist leaders and communities. However, few participants have sufficiently taken into account the patristic understanding of these proclamations of Orthodoxy, and of the Nicene- Constantinopolitan Creed in particular. Even when this historical frame of reference is addressed, it typically elicits imprecise conclusions on its negative or positive impact on Christian responsibility or unity. By apprising the Anabaptist community of the Eastern, patristic, and therefore the original mindset, expectations, and conditions engendering the formulation of the creeds during the church’s first five hundred years, using St. Gregory of Nyssa as a paradigm, I hope to create a framework within which Anabaptist historians and theologians reluctant to abandon the church’s living tradition can be informed by the opposing view’s equally warranted concern for ethics and nonviolence.

I will try to meet this objective by evaluating the fusion of spirituality and theology in the patristic era and in the East, its process of deterioration in the West, and the emergence of Anabaptist priorities amid the epistemic theological environment of the sixteenth century. Although serious consideration of this subject can be traced back to classic treatments such as that of Roland Bainton, who contended that Anabaptists are “commonly on the left also with regard to . . . [the] creeds”[2] and Robert Friedmann’s endorsement of this designation,[3] I will limit my involvement with contemporary Anabaptist concerns to viewpoints expressed during the current decade only, and only minimally after I have dealt with the Eastern, patristic, and 16th century Anabaptist contexts and issues.[4]

After I describe the historical background, the chronological progression – from (1) the life of Jesus to (2) the observation of this divine life and its confluence with the divine operations of the Father as revealed in the Hebrew Tanak, then to (3) the imitation of and ontological affiliation with this life, and finally to (4) the creedal description of his person[5] – will begin to gain credibility. All of this transpired concurrent with Christ’s earthly ministry or almost immediately upon his ascension, with creedal expressions evolving concomitantly with the emergence of innovative heretical teachings that had to be addressed.

Many portions of the circumscribed and intentionally formulated Rules of Faith were created not for Jesus’ followers but for calibrating heterodox misinterpretations in order to preserve a pre-existing soteriology that stressed a behavioural and ontological affiliation and union with Christ who is both divine and human.[6] They did so by using christological and triadological phraseology purposely tailored for heterodox convictions that either failed to take the incarnation seriously enough or categorically rejected it. For that reason, such distant descendants of Latin Christianity as the 16th century Anabaptist leaders felt compelled to propel ethics and the imitation of Christ to the forefront of theological activity, by explicitly addressing ethical behavior[7] and avowing the necessity of one’s transformational or ontological affiliation with the incarnate Christ.

This article contends that the gradual separation of theology and spirituality in the West, not (or less than) the creeds’ ostensible silence on the ethico-soteriological implications of the narrative of Jesus,[8] contributed to 16th-century Anabaptism’s emphasis on Nachfolge and the illumination of the creeds’ soteriological and ethical intimations. I will enlist Eastern Orthodox voices that can guide us to a more thorough and accurate understanding of the purpose and essence of theology as prayer[9] and as becoming,[10] and soteriology as theosis or deification.

Indeed, the Eastern view of salvation as theosis was not foreign to early Anabaptism. No component or dimension of Eastern Christianity is left untouched by the inexorable assimilation of spirituality and theology, the mutual suffusion between things of heaven and things of earth. This is true of liturgical theology; ecclesiology; the nature of worship and the sacraments; understanding of the scriptures; humanity’s mediatory role between heaven and earth, between the uncreated and created realms; the function of icons; the role of tears; the life of a saint; and the apprehension of the person of Christ.[11]

I will appeal to St. Gregory of Nyssa’s[12] theological methodology in light of the creedal formulations to which he significantly contributed.[13] I will discuss two specific contributions: (1) his “apophasis,” which regulates and permits insight into the precise function of theological concepts or images (epinoia) and the resulting emphasis on God’s operations (energeia); and (2) his concern for preserving an Orthodox soteriology as a manifestation of the fusion of spirituality and theology as well as the capacitation and authorization for his theological involvement. Gregory’s insights resonate with contemporary Anabaptist scholarship. He will at times agree with current perspectives but will also suggest new ways of participating in what Anabaptists already stress, e.g., discipleship and a soteriology manifesting itself ethically and acknowledging the salience of Jesus’ political, socioeconomic, and nonviolent measures.

The Historical Sequence and Function of the Creeds

Fr. John Behr seeks to maintain the appropriate sequence of events leading from the life and teachings of the church as canon to the immortalization of this standard in the church’s doctrines and creeds. “The tendency is to begin with Nicaea,” he says, “and then look for anticipations of Nicene theology in the earlier periods. But, it is methodologically faulty to begin with the results of the controversies . . . .”[14] Central to Behr’s thesis is the primitive creed formulated in 1 Cor. 15:3-5:

What is most important here is the phrase that the apostle Paul repeats twice: Christ died and rose “in accordance with the scriptures.” This phrase is so important that it is preserved in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed which is still said at every Orthodox Christian baptism and celebration of the Divine Liturgy: Christ died and rose in accordance with the (same) scriptures. It is important to recognize that the scriptures in question are not the gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – they had not even been written when Paul made this statement, but rather what we call the Old Testament – the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets.[15]

The circumstance whereby such creedal affirmations existed very early was largely due to the revelation of Christ from the Hebrew Tanak as exegeted by Christ himself and sustained through the kerygma of the apostles and later by the Church Fathers.[16] The authority of Christ was intuited from his person and narrative rather than from a philosophical abstraction of the same.

In isolation from the precise creedal expressions existing during his time, Aristides could affirm Jesus’ salvific authority by observing his miracles as described in the biblical narrative.[17] Tertullian deduced from Scripture that an association between God and Jesus is evident from its implicit disclosure in the Sermon on the Mount:

[T]hat he begins with beatitudes, is characteristic of the Creator, who used no other voice than that of blessing either in the first fiat or the final dedication of the universe: for “my heart,” says he, “has indicted a very good word.” This will be that “very good word” of blessing which is admitted to be the initiating principle of the New Testament, after the example of the Old. What is there, then, to wonder at, if he entered on his ministry with the very attributes of the Creator, who ever in language of the same sort loved, consoled, protected, and avenged the beggar, and the poor, and the humble, and the widow, and the orphan?[18]

Elsewhere Tertullian arrives at the same conclusion by observing Jesus’ sinlessness,[19] miracles,[20] and transfiguration.[21] However, despite conceding the capacity for following Jesus through observing in him certain theistic characteristics, all of which Christ’s own followers could detect, patristic authors such as Ignatius of Antioch,[22] Aristides,[23] Irenaeus,[24] Tertullian,[25] Clement of Alexandria,[26] Hippolytus,[27] Origen,[28] Gregory Thaumaturgus,[29] and Cyprian[30] nevertheless did develop Rules of Faith, either for individual or regional use. Yet these creeds were intimately dependent on the “ethicosoteriological” ramifications of Christ’s fulfillment of OT precepts and of his earthly existence and humanity’s vocation in view of these ramifications. The Rules sought to defend and preserve the ethical obligations of Christians, the life in Christ, and the synergistic requirements of God and humanity for salvation.[31]

However, the particular components of the Rules seemed intent on combating heresies whose syncretistic belief systems threatened this ethico-soteriological nucleus of Christianity, this life in Christ.[32] In fact, because these heresies were syncretistic their exponents could generate ethical standards based on their beliefs – ineluctably subsequent to ideology – rather than formulate beliefs or a creed of their own that would preserve their ethics and perpetuate a pre-established soteriology, as was natural to the continuation of a living Tradition.[33]

Unlike the Orthodox situation, heresies could not base their behavior on the historical Jesus, because heretical sects were religious alloys, the products of a union between Christianity and a pagan religious system or philosophy. Patristic authors acknowledged this syncretism: Tertullian recognized the “lateness of date which marks all heresies”[34] and insisted they “are themselves instigated by philosophy”[35]; Hippolytus claimed Noetianism was a product of the philosophy of Heraclitus[36] while alleging that “from philosophers the heresiarchs [derived] starting points, [and] like cobblers patching together, according to their own particular interpretation, the blunders of the ancients, have advanced them as novelties to those that are capable of being deceived.”[37] Kenneth Scott Latourette observes that the various forms of Gnosticism can be traced to “Orphic and Platonic dualism, other schools of Greek thought, Syrian conceptions, Persian dualism, the mystery cults, Mesopotamian astrology, and Egyptian religion.”[38] Manichaeism, whose founder was of Persian background, was a mixture of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity.[39] Latourette alludes to the origin of elements in Marcion’s heresy by specifying his birthplace at Sinople, “the country of the famous cynic, Diogenes.”[40] Preserving Christianity’s ethicosoteriological core against the immorality ensuing from heretical systems of belief was the primary goal of the Church Fathers’ patronage of appropriate creedal phraseology. Their formulations modified elements of heterodox conceptions seeking to facilitate debauched behavior[41] while abating access to the divine and threatening the process of theosis.[42]

The Eastern Indissolubility of Spirituality and Theology

The original outlook, retaining the fusion of theology and spirituality, is upheld to this day within the Eastern tradition, while the West has largely abandoned it in favor of a more analytical approach. As John Binns claims, “The word ‘theology’ […] is a case in point. In the East the theologian is committed to the experience of God, not to the discussion of God,”[43] an observation echoed by John Chryssavgis.[44] No doubt with free-church sentiments in mind, Peter Bouteneff observes that “Some insist that dogmas get in the way of their relationship with Jesus.”[45] However, such concerns, usually associated with J. Denny Weaver,[46] over apparent omissions in the creeds is not foreign to the Orthodox disposition: Jaroslav Pelikan asserts that “Maximus Confessor had observed that even […] the doctrine that salvation conferred deification had not been included in the creed or formulated by the councils.”[47]

Orthodoxy does not pay mere lip service to retaining the fusion of spirituality and theology, soteriology and doctrine; it is an authentic expression with a deep imprint on the Orthodox conscience. Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow declared, “The Creed does not belong to you unless you have lived it.”[48] Metropolitan Kallistos Ware affirms that “True theology […] is always living, a form of ‘hierurgy’ or holy action, something that changes our life and ‘assumes’ us into itself.… [T]heology is not a matter for specialists but a universal vocation; each is called to become of ‘theologian soul.’”[49] Bouteneff observes that Christianity “does not consist in a series of verifiable and interlocking hypotheses. Nor is it a philosophical system consisting in satisfactory, mutually consistent presuppositions. Our approach has to be different,”[50] eventually concluding that dogmas must “orient our lives.”[51] This “existential character” of theology is familiar to both the Orthodox and Anabaptist experience.[52]

What is unique to Orthodox theological inquiry – and what Anabaptists might learn from, adopt as their own, and even bring to its logical conclusion while being mindful of matters of social justice and nonviolence that Orthodoxy has occasionally overlooked – is the indissolubility of theology and spirituality. Vladimir Lossky insists that “spirituality and dogma, mysticism and theology, are inseparably linked in the life of the Church.”[53] Chryssavgis adds that “Truth is profoundly mystical, never merely intellectual. It is a reality that ultimately cannot be told. It is a knowledge that is translated into love and life,”[54] and declares that theology uses “the language of silence translated as poetry, as liturgy, as doxology and as life.”[55] This silence has epistemological implications that require an “entering into” truth. Serge Verhovskoy maintains that “When we speak about knowledge, we do not speak about abstract theories. True knowledge is a participation in its object. To know God is to be in communion with Him.”[56] Commenting on John 1:18, Chryssavgis remarks, “This is the foundation of a language that through apophasis (or negation) opens up to the silence of theosis (or deification).”[57]

“Unlike Gnosticism, in which knowledge for its own sake constitutes the aim of the Gnostic, Christian theology is always in the last resort a means: a unity of knowledge subserving an end which transcends all knowledge,” says Lossky. “This ultimate end is union with God or deification, the [theosis] of the Greek Fathers.”[58] This end is also a concern for the ontology of God into which humanity enters and for which Gregory of Nyssa, along with Athanasius, Basil the Great, and Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen), toiled amid the doctrinal uncertainty and tumult of his day.[59]

The bond between theology and spirituality began to evaporate in the West through numerous religious and cultural inducements. Although the shift in theological priorities is highly complicated, some historians, such as Fr. John Meyendorff, locate the separation of spirituality and theology during the era when “Christian theology acquired, in the medieval Western universities, the status of a ‘science,’ to be taught and learned with the use of appropriate scientific methodology.”[60] Lossky contends the separation occurred earlier, immediately after the 11th-century schism between East and West; the fusion was espoused by both East and West up until roughly 1054 C.E.[61] Latourette identifies hints of the division during the mid- to later patristic era:

Certainly [the Western] part of the Church was not so torn by the theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries as were the Eastern portions of the Church. This may have been because the Latin mind was less speculative and more practical and ethical than was the Hellenistic mind of the East. It may be significant that the greatest schisms over questions of morals and discipline, the Novatian and Donatist, had their rise in the West, while the main divisions over speculative theology […] had their birth in the East.[62]

However, this does not mean the West was more cognizant of ethical issues than the East, but that the West could and did solve ethical disputes directly and in isolation from conceptual descriptions of Christ and theT rinity. The implications are important. When Christians in the West assimilated the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as their own, they unavoidably acquired its ethical and soteriological implications. The West nevertheless addressed ethically-stimulated schisms without summoning or acknowledging the salvific components inherent in the creeds, thus allowing the Christendom of Roman partisanship to adopt a more lenient ethical stance – as it did in the face of concerns raised by Novatian and Donatus, however heretical these were.[63]

Onto-behavioral Priorities in Gregory of Nyssa and Anabaptism

In De Professione Christiana, Gregory of Nyssa declares, “If we who are united to him by faith in him, are synonymous with him whose incorruptible nature is beyond verbal interpretation, it is entirely necessary for us to become what is contemplated in connection with the incorruptible nature and to achieve an identity with the secondary elements which follow along with it,”[64] which he identifies as the divine virtues emanating from God. For Gregory, the nucleus of Christianity is ontological or existential rather than epistemic:[65] “The Lord does not say it is blessed to know […] something about God, but to have God present within oneself.”[66] Such emphasis on “onto-behavioral” Christianity resembles early Anabaptist emphases. Hans Schlaffer, after describing behavioral characteristics such as forgiving the sins of others, declares that “From all of this it is easy to conclude who are the true believers and proper Christians and who not. Since not everyone who says Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does the will of the heavenly Father.”[67] Michael Sattler identifies the defining element of being a Christian as love, “without which it is not possible that you be a Christian congregation.”[68] Peter Riedeman identifies the core of Christianity as ontological affiliation with Christ: “We confess also that God has, through Christ, chosen, accepted and sought a people for himself, not having spot, blemish, wrinkle, or any such thing, but pure and holy, as he, himself, is holy.”[69]

Drawing on Alvin Beachy’s equation of the Anabaptist view of salvation with divinization,[70] Thomas Finger claims that “Vergöttung[71] was a common theme among early South German/Austrian Anabaptists, while expressions like ‘partakers of the divine nature,’ with obvious allusion to 2 Peter 1:4, frequently appeared in later South German/Austrian and Dutch Anabaptist circles.”[72] Dirk Philips affirms that Christ’s followers become “participants in the divine nature, yes, and are called gods and children of the Most High”[73] and that “whoever has become a partaker of the divine character, the being of Jesus Christ and the power and character of the Holy Spirit, conforms himself to the image of Jesus Christ in all submission, obedience, and righteousness serves God, in summary is a right-believing Christian.”[74] In order to incorporate all major strands of 16th-century Anabaptism – Swiss, Dutch, and South German-Austrian – Finger employs more inclusive language: “However, since divinization language was uncommon among Swiss Anabaptists, I proposed the broader concept of ontological transformation, of which divinization is a variety, to designate the personal dimension of the coming of the new creation.”[75]

In addition to this ontological urgency of Anabaptism, the patristic era, and Gregory of Nyssa, the ineffability of the christological composition and trinitarian economy that the creeds seek to disclose also leads us to reexamine the apparent creedal rigidity and noeticism of the patristic era. In this regard, Gregory serves as a capable example.

Beyond Abstraction: The Narrative of Jesus and God’s Energeia

Regulating Conceptual Efficacy: Gregory of Nyssa’s Apophasis

We soon recognize the centrality of an “apophatic”[76] outlook in Gregory of Nyssa’s writings. The incomprehensibility and ineffability of the divine essence is arguably the most prominent element in his philosophy. Further, he acknowledges the epistemological limits imposed on humans. Robert Brightman claims that “apophaticism is central” in Gregory’s approach[77] while insisting “that man cannot know the essence of God” is “at the heart” of Gregory’s theology.[78] Brightman contends that any study that “does not give adequate treatment to his apophaticism is ipso facto defective.”[79] Gregory himself declares:

The divine nature, whatever it may be in itself, surpasses every mental concept (epinoias). For it is altogether inaccessible to reasoning and conjecture, nor has there been found any human faculty capable of perceiving the incomprehensible; for we cannot devise a means of understanding inconceivable things.[80]

As Deirdre Carabine recognizes,[81] Gregory is acutely aware of the limited function of trinitarian metaphysical categories, as he explains in his Great Catechism:

And so one who severely studies the depths of the mystery, receives secretly in his spirit, indeed, a moderate amount of apprehension of the doctrine of God’s nature, yet he is unable to explain clearly in words the ineffable depth of this mystery. As, for instance, how the same thing is capable of being numbered and yet rejects numeration; how it is observed with distinctions yet is apprehended as a monad, how it is separate as to personality yet is not divided as to subject matter.[82]

Gregory concedes the insufficiency of metaphysical categories to summarize the trinitarian economy. However, he applies his apophatic outlook not only to the divine essence and the trinitarian economy but to each hypostasis separately, since they each share in God’s ousia:[83]

Whatever your thought suggests to you as to the mode of the existence of the Father, you will think also in the case of the Son, and in like manner too of the Holy Ghost.[…] For the account of the uncreated and of the incomprehensible is one and the same in the case of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. For one is not more incomprehensible and uncreated than another.[84]

This is not surprising, given Gregory’s common reference to the divine and human relationship in Christ as a “mystery of the incarnation”[85] and a “mystery of godliness.”[86] Gregory insists that the union of divine and human in the person of Christ is “beyond all circumscription.”[87]

Despite his cynicism about the limited function of theological concepts, Gregory does offer hope. He insists that they correspond to the operations (Greek, energeia) of the Godhead, as opposed to its essence.[88] After mentioning terms commonly used to characterize the divine essence, he asks, “Do they indicate his operations, or his Nature? No one will say that they indicate aught but his operations.”[89] Theological concepts are reflections of divine actions as apprehended in the created realm, not of the divine essence: “When we look at the order of creation, we form in our mind an image not of the essence, but of the wisdom of him who has made all things wisely.”[90] God is “invisible by nature, but becomes visible in his energies, for he may be contemplated in the things that are referred to him.”[91] This is precisely how God is “known by analogy.”[92]

An Anabaptist Response

Gregory’s apophaticism is not represented in early Anabaptist theology to the extent accentuated by the Church Fathers, especially in the East. But Anabaptist emphases do demonstrate the limited function of objective theistic descriptions, and their language is at times compellingly similar to that of patristic sources. The Anabaptists’ stress on communal biblical hermeneutics reveals their acknowledging subjective dissonance when comparing one interpretation to another, thus requiring a certain amount of cooperation when illuminating scripture. Menno Simons insisted that church members could not use “human investigation” to conceptually explain and add to scripture’s “incomprehensible depths” but should “walk all their lives before their God with calm, glad hearts.”[93] His analogy, comparing the inability to conceptualize God to pouring “the River Rhine or Meuse into a quart bottle,”[94] is remarkably similar to Gregory’s statement that as the “hollow of one’s hand is to the whole deep, so is all the power of language in comparison with that nature which is unspeakable and incomprehensible.”[95] 

Menno additionally declares that “This one and only eternal, omnipotent, incomprehensible (unerforschliche), invisible, ineffable, and indescribable God, we believe and confess with the Scriptures to be the eternal, incomprehensible Father with his eternal, incomprehensible Son, and with his eternal, incomprehensible Holy Spirit,”[96] while claiming that Christ is not a “literal word” but is instead the “incomprehensible Word” (emphasis added).[97] Within the Anabaptists’ Western setting, such apophatic language is quite striking and significant, particularly when tethered to their attitude toward the creeds as powerless to preserve an onto-behavioral focus.

Adherents of nascent Anabaptism sought instead to imitate Jesus’ observable teachings and example, and to determine how far Jesus’ actions correspond to the operations of God,something of which humans can certainly obtain knowledge, as Gregory argued above. Alain Epp Weaver relates how John Howard Yoder concluded that for early Anabaptists, “the proper way to discuss Jesus’ unity with God was in terms of his motivation and his actions. […] Such unity, which makes visible Jesus’ perfect obedience to the will of the Father, has ethical and political implications.”[98] Christ’s observable actions thus directly correspond to God’s energeia or operations. Since Jesus manifested his authority by means of observable behavior, what it means to be a Christian revolves around the extent to which a human replicates such behavior; the nucleus of Christianity for 16th-century Anabaptism was thus behavioral and transformational, rather than knowledge-based.

Menno again leads his audience to Christ’s very words and actions to be observed and imitated, in addition to complying with the creeds’ conceptual structures:

I trust also that we who are grains of the one loaf agree not only as to the twelve articles [of the Apostle’s Creed] (as [Gellius Faber] counts them), but also to all the articles of the Scriptures, such as regeneration, repentance, baptism, Holy Supper, expulsion, etc. which Christ Jesus [whom together with Isaiah, Peter and Paul confess to be the only (einzige) foundation of the churches – and not the twelve articles as he has it (und nicht jene zwölf Artikel, wie er thut)] has preached by his own blessed mouth, and left and taught us in clear and plain words (und mit deutlichen Worten gelehrt und hinterlassen hat) [emphasis added].[99]

Jesus’ words are clear and plain for the purpose of Nachfolge or discipleship. Elsewhere, Menno affirms Jesus’ salvific role, not because of his metaphysical composition but because of the “acts and attributes which are found in abundance with Him, as may be clearly deduced and understood from […] Scriptures.”[100] These acts are Jesus’ authority to forgive sins, judge humanity, and discuss the nature of the kingdom of God; because of this, Jesus “bestows eternal life”[101] or has the capacity and authority to do so.

Pilgrim Marpeck identifies the foundation for Christian practice and responsibility as the observation of Jesus’ words and example derived from the biblical narrative, not from intellectual exploration:

Nor can an inward testimony be recognized, except when it is preceded by such outward teaching, deeds, commands and ceremonies of Christ which belong to the revelation of the Son of God in the flesh and which are like a new creation in Christ. These things must be received in a physical manner before the inner testimony can be felt and recognized. Although reason and thought and almost all conceited spirits strongly resist this act, nevertheless, they must all come under the physical feet of Christ.[102]

Marpeck is attempting to subordinate “reason” and “inner testimony” under the physicality of Christ’s teachings and deeds, the latter informing humanity of its salvific status and how far it has become a new creation in Christ. Dirk Philips also states that human obedience is rooted in the biblical witness of Christ rather than in creedal proclamations, since “humans do not live by other human words brought forth out of human will, but alone by the words of God proclaimed to us through Christ Jesus and his apostles.”[103]

Anabaptist leaders were thus content to acknowledge the intersection between the motives of both Jesus and God apart from the assistance of human words. This affirms Gregory’s insistence that God’s energeia can be known, while Jesus’ salvific authority can be determined based on how far his actions and teachings replicate the Father’s actions and teachings.

Christian Responsibility Preserved by Subsequently Developed Creeds

The Fusion of Spirituality and Theology: Gregory of Nyssa’s Theological Chronology and Priorities

In order to verify how Gregory is in solidarity with the patristic concern for inner transformation and behavior, and how doctrine developed after and in support of this ethical concern, we must determine how his christology and trinitarian convictions sustain his pre-existing soteriology. We may thus ascertain his theological motive, the same stimulus as that of the early Church Fathers who sought to systematize a theology to abate decadent behavior arising from an accommodating heretical ideology.

Accordingly, we must show that Gregory’s soteriology appeared first, after which his christological and triadological formulations emerged consequentially. In fact, since one is permitted to apprehend God’s energeia alone, God’s salvific operations must be recognized initially, after which Christ’s divine/human composition can be approached delicately and cautiously within a pre-established soteriological framework. Brian Daley expresses how Gregory is unique in this regard:

[Gregory] is concerned above all with Jesus Christ as the man in whom and through whom the infinite and saving reality of God touches us all: with preserving the transcendence of the God who is present in him, and with emphasizing the transformation of that human reality which God, in the man Jesus, has made his own.[104]

One method for determining if his soteriology was envisaged first is to consider whether Gregory may have formulated an ad hoc christology dependent on the situation in which he found himself.

Gregory’s customization of christological language to substantiate specific features of his soteriology is quite evident. His emphasis on Christ’s humanity is conspicuously expressed in Ad Simplicium de Fide: “He who was formed in the virgin’s womb […] is the servant, and not the Lord. […] He who was created as the beginning of his ways is not God, but the man in whom God was manifested to us for the renewing again of the ruined way of man’s salvation” (emphasis added).[105] Christ is thus seen as human because humans need salvation and the restoration of the likeness of God.

However, when the context is reversed, Gregory modifies his accent. Johannes Zachhuber claims that Gregory “under the pressure of maintaining, against Eunomius, the salvific necessity of Christ’s full divinity, shifted the emphasis of his soteriology away from the humanistic approach […] towards an approach stressing the salvific activity of the Logos.”[106] Notice the austere contrast between the sentiment expressed in Ad Simplicium de Fide and that conveyed in Contra Eunomium: “Then he took dust from the earth and formed man, again he took dust from the virgin and not only formed man, but formed him around himself; then he created, afterwards he was created; then the word made flesh, afterwards the word became flesh in order to transform our flesh into spirit by partaking of our flesh and blood” (emphasis added).[107] Evidently, Gregory is more concerned with maintaining a balanced soteriological approach by conveniently stressing Christ’s humanity or divinity and his equal status within the trinitarian economy when required.[108] It is this balance that had to be immortalized in the final Nicene-Constantinopolitan formula.

Gregory is thus a fitting example of the fusion of spirituality and theology. In addition to his concern for substantiating a pre-existing soteriological outlook, his insistence thatwemust attend to our spiritual needs before participating in theological speculation is even more pronounced.[109] Indeed, our progressive transformation into, and union with, the Incarnate Christ is itself the way we know and see God with the eye of the soul.

He who would approach the knowledge of things sublime must first purify his manner of life from all sensual and irrational emotion. He must wash from his understanding every opinion derived from some preconception and withdraw himself from his customary intercourse with his own companion, [that] is, with his sense perceptions, which are […] wedded to our nature as its companion. When he is so purified, then he assaults the mountain.[110]

Again Gregory maintains it is God who is “promised to the vision of those whose heart has been purified.”[111] One recognizes the identity of the archetype, namely the Incarnate Christ, by beholding one’s own purified soul: “If a man who is pure of heart sees himself, he sees in himself what he desires; and thus he becomes blessed, because when he looks at his own purity, he sees the archetype in the image.”[112]

For Gregory, doing theology, in the sense of ascertaining the metaphysical composition of Christ and the Trinity that the creeds seek to expound, involves inferring from one’s own purity and the synergistic process involved, what the Incarnate Christ is. As Lossky observes, “This mystery of faith as personal encounter and ontological participation is the unique foundation of theological language, a language that apophasis opens to the silence of deification.”[113] Participation in the purification process is doing theology.

An Anabaptist Response

In effect, early Anabaptist leaders re-initiated the historical concatenation of events surrounding the creeds to resemble what unfolded in first-century Palestine before the composition of any detailed Rule of Faith. History teaches that an understanding of Christ’s metaphysical composition was formulated after acknowledging the exceptionality and significance of Jesus’ behavior, ministry, and message, and after resolving to obey and imitate this same Jesus. Menno affirms that it is Jesus “whom we should serve and worship; that he is the truth, the One who forgives sins and bestows eternal life, in whom we must believe and who at the last day will raise us from the dead and judge us as it has been said, and so it follows of necessity (so ist es gewiss unwiderlegbar) that Jesus Christ must be true God with the Father” (emphasis added).[114] Obedience to Christ emerges as a result of observing those actions of Jesus that correspond to the operations[115](energeia) of God (forgiving sins and bestowing eternal life); after identifying the salvific authority of Christ, Menno is prepared to follow him (in whom we must believe) and therefore establishes a rudimentary soteriological directive.

Here Menno can validate the creedal claims concerning Christ and his relationship to the Father within the trinitarian economy. Significantly, Menno equates God’s operations that Jesus embodies as “glories, honors, works, and attributes which belong to no one in heaven nor upon the earth, except to the only eternal and true God.”[116] This again shows how Christ’s exceptionality and salvific authority and license could be acknowledged apart from philosophical disclosure and instead through Christ’s fulfillment of OT patterns and precepts.

The priority in Anabaptism of purity of life and ontological soteriology, both chronologically and ecclesiastically, nuances the function of creedal descriptions. Early Anabaptists did not engage the creeds unless they were initiated into the discussion externally.[117] Finger’s contention that “while Creeds provide a somewhat unnatural starting-point for Mennonites in ecumenical discussion, they do provide a possible one,”[118] though theoretically true, can lead to difficulties and internal contradictions that may be why early Anabaptists rarely invoked the creeds as a starting point unless they felt it was necessary to draw attention to their limitations.[119] In this way, since the creeds were a historical reality for 16th-century Anabaptist leaders, they commandeered their high christological claims in an attempt to convince the wider church of the normativity of Jesus’ teachings and example for Christian ethics.

Ben Ollenburger’s somewhat dubious citation of Menno in a recent issue of Mennonite Life[120] exemplifies the agenda of those who seem less willing to account for the nuances inherent in early Anabaptist engagement with the creeds. Ollenburger provides a three-sentence quotation that spans five pages in the original, using it to affirm Menno’s endorsement of the creedal formula.What it omits are the ethical and thus soteriological additions that motivated Menno to write about the creeds in the first place. The missing elements include his insistence that, in addition to the creedal words, Christ is the “eternal, wise, Almighty, holy, true, living and incomprehensible Word”[121] who thus “purified our hearts”[122] so we can “serve the true and living God.”[123] Overtly connecting soteriological concerns with trinitarian expressions contained in the creeds, Menno also states that Christians should “give no one the praise for our salvation, neither in heaven nor on earth, but the only and eternal Father through Christ Jesus, and that through the illumination of the Holy Spirit.”[124] Elsewhere, with reference to Orthodox proclamations about Christ, Menno asserts that all who believe these things “obey his Word, walk in his commandments [folgen darum seinem Wort, wandeln in seinem Geboten], bow to his scepter, and quiet their conscience with grace, atonement, merit, sacrifice, promise, death and blood.”[125]

Similarly, in affirming the creedal formula and the Orthodox understanding of Jesus therein, Peter Riedeman averred, “This Word proceeded from the Father that the harm brought by the transgression of Adammight be healed, and the fall restored.”[126] However, “a power other than human strength [Christ’s divinity] was necessary,”[127] which has “now taken us captive into his obedience and leads us in his way, teaches us his character, ways and goodness.”[128] In opposition to the more epistemic soteriology of Western Christendom, Hans Denck, in his so-called Recantation, affirms both Menno’s and Riedeman’s additions to the creeds by declaring, “Glaube ist der gehorsam Gottes (faith is obedience to God).”[129]

If the early Anabaptists merely stated the creeds and indicated consent and unqualified endorsement, that would show they were satisfied with the creeds’ structure for their own context and concerns. However, in order to criticize something, that something must be introduced into the conversation. So, although the creeds were introduced externally by virtue of their historical survival, early Anabaptists willingly addressed them not only to affirm their statements but to scrutinize them and illuminate what they omit.[130]

B. Royale Dewey’s remark that “rather than write off Nicea, Mennonites should be grateful for it”[131] is contestable when within their own 16th-century setting the creeds failed to nurture what is central to Anabaptism, namely discipleship, nonviolence, and socio-economic equity and justice. While patristic initiatives and intentions at Nicea were arguably laudable and valid, an analysis of the process, subsequent outcomes, and political manipulation of creedal priorities warrants, for early Anabaptism, regulation of the creeds and amendment to the priorities of Christianity in general.The issue is thus not the legitimacy of the Church Fathers themselves, but the ramifications of the Constantinian and Nicene politico-ecclesial union, specifically in the West where access to the creedal mechanisms for preserving a life in Christ inherent in the Eastern conscience was limited.

The 16th-century Western context within which Anabaptism emerged required a re-focusing on ethical matters. Ideally, creedal formulations could resolve behavioral and soteriological scruples. However, with Anabaptism’s emergence in a setting where the creeds were impotent to reinvigorate the affluent, fraudulent, and unscrupulous state of the magisterial Roman Catholic Church because of the separation of spirituality and theology, Anabaptist leaders had to address ethical concerns directly and explicitly. This is exactly what they did when they made soteriological additions to the creeds.[132]

In this sense, Anabaptist attempts at persuading the historical church of the importance of priorities such as nonviolence mimic Gregory’s insistence that creedal formulations emerged subsequent to, and in support of, a pre-existing soteriology. Like Gregory, the Anabaptists were primarily interested in defending their unique soteriology, which developed on the basis of observing Jesus’ teachings and example as described in the biblical narrative. If the metaphysical Greek categories used to describe Christ and the Trinity can be employed to support a pre-existing soteriology, Anabaptists could appeal to them for that reason alone, much like Gregory and other patristic bishops and decision-makers did.

Indeed, as Alain Epp Weaver contends, “Nothing prevents contemporary theologians from appealing to the Creedal identification of Jesus as true man and true God in order to persuade other Christians of his normativity for ethics.”[133] And specifically for Anabaptist values, only a high christology can “provide the basis for discipleship to a non-resistant Jesus and an ecclesiology which renounces the violent ways of the world.”[134] Gregory is a fourth-century example of someone who contributed greatly to the discussion of appropriate christological and triadological language, but who periodically tailored this language for his own, and Orthodoxy’s, pre-established soteriological purposes.[135] However, he was interacting with an Eastern audience who recognized the soteriological significance of such creedal language; this is precisely how Anabaptism’s emergence presented itself with the opportunity to be a prophetic voice to the Western church, whose separation of spirituality and theology resulted in distorted priorities.

Although his effort to reclaim traditional Christian expressions and priorities is laudable, A. James Reimer seems to undermine the chronology inherent in the development of the creeds, as is evident from the title of his book Mennonites and Classical Theology: Dogmatic Foundations for Christian Ethics. If Reimer were more aware of the original circumstances and mindset out of which the creeds arose, the title should have been The Ethical-Soteriological Foundation for Christian Dogmatics.[136] In reference to the ecumenical creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries specifically, Reimer would like to see “a theological imagination that is disciplined by the doctrinal categories.”[137] Elsewhere he argues that the content of the creeds has “profound implications for how we live and act.”[138] For all his oversights, J. Denny Weaver is nevertheless more responsible in his management of history in this regard: “If Jesus Christ is our foundation, then it is Jesus’ story and the ‘politics of Jesus’ – not the shape of a national ethos or fourth- and fifth-century Creedal formulas – that should determine the contour of our theological agenda,”[139] a claim congruent at least with Finger’s methodology though not his conclusions.[140] This assessment in no way conflicts with the priorities and typical avowal of the Church Fathers, and, surprising as this may be to someone of Weaver’s persuasion, is a sentiment shared by nearly all Orthodox theologians.

Reimer should be praised for trying to resurrect classical expressions of Christianity. However, by acknowledging the chronology that anticipated the creeds (while rejecting the notion that they function(ed) as a foundation for ethics) and by affirming, indeed living, the fusion of spirituality and theology inherent in any dogmatic investigation by the Church Fathers, we could follow through with Reimer’s vision while allowing ourselves to be better informed by the patristic conscience. Such an approach will, I hope, also appease those holding to Weaver’s view, since behavior, ethics, and soteriological concerns are not only enhanced by what the creeds communicate about the fusion of theology and spirituality, but, more significantly, because the church’s ethico-soteriological concerns could be – and indeed were – acknowledged before and apart from creedal prescriptions.

Conclusion

By evaluating the 16th-century Anabaptist attitude toward the creeds through examining the appropriate textual attestation as well as patristic sources, and particularly those of St. Gregory of Nyssa, what it means to be a Christian from a historical perspective begins to surface. If creeds were developed to preserve a pre-established emphasis on obedience and the imitation of Jesus, and could not even be formulated veraciously until this obedience and imitation or purification took place first, undoubtedly the nucleus of Christianity was, in both patristic and Anabaptist thought, the ontological affiliation of its adherents to the example and person of Christ.

Eastern Christianity, with its distinctive history, is entitled to endorse this decidedly ontological understanding of what it means to be a Christian with the use of creedal concepts alone, since here the fusion of spirituality and theology has not been defiled. However, in much of the Christian West, while retaining the possibility that the dominant epistemic conception of faith and doctrine might be forfeited in the future, the creeds’ ethical and ontological implications must be addressed unequivocally and forthrightly. Sixteenth-century Anabaptism’s resolve to do exactly that is justifiable when we consider the degeneracy of their ecclesial context, the consequence of the segregation of theology (doctrine) from spirituality (ontology), with the former regrettably taking precedence. The assimilation of the Anabaptists’ accent on the purity of the church with their affirming yet restrained approach to the creeds suggests a return to an emphasis on repentance and restoration typical of the patristic era, and an intentional estrangement from the unbridled, often violent focus on recantation during the sixteenth- century Western ecclesial setting.

Notes

[1] See discussions on the creeds by J. Denny Weaver in Anabaptist Theology in Face of Postmodernity: A Proposal for the Third Millennium (Telford, PA: Pandora Press, 2000); by A. James Reimer in Mennonites and Classical Theology: Dogmatic Foundations for Christian Ethics (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2001); the dialogue in Mennonite Life (September 2005) among Ben C. Ollenburger, B. Royale Dewey, J. DennyWeaver, Duane K. Friesen, and Gerald Biesecker-Mast; and a paper presentation at the Anabaptist Colloquium at Eastern Mennonite University, April 7-8, 2006 by Andy Alexis-Baker, “Anabaptist Use of Patristic Literature and Creeds.”

[2] Roland Bainton, “The Left Wing of the Reformation,” The Journal of Religion 21.2 (April 1941): 125.

[3] Robert Friedmann, “Conception of Anabaptists,” Church History 9.4 (December 1940): 349-50.

[4] Some treatments of this issue that I will not be interacting with, but are worth looking into include: A. James Reimer, “Doctrines: What Are They, How Do They Function, and Why Do We Need Them?” CGR 11.1 (Winter 1993): 21-36; A. James Reimer, “Trinitarian Orthodoxy, Constantinianism, and Theology from a Radical Protestant Perspective,” in Faith to Creed: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Affirmation of the Apostolic Faith in the Fourth Century, S. Mark Heim, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991, 129-61); J. Denny Weaver, “Christology in Historical Perspective,” in Jesus Christ and the Mission of the Church: Contemporary Anabaptist Perpectives, Erland Waltner, ed. (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1990), 83- 105; J. Denny Weaver, “Christus Victor, Ecclesiology, and Christology,” MQR 68.3 (July 1994): 277-90; John Howard Yoder, Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method (Elkhart, IN: Goshen Biblical Seminary, 1981), 121-58.

[5] Even the writing of Paul’s epistles and the gospel accounts, and subsequent acceptance of these writings based on what the Church already was and how it worshipped.

[6] The emergence of these heresies required a method for determining another’s ontological state or behavioral intentions, since soteriological variations resulted from specific theological deviations; it was not that being a Christian now meant believing the right thing, but that how a Christian was going to behave, or being a Christian, could now be predicted by her or his belief system. Latourette describes the Apostles’ Creed as a symbol that was a “sign or test of membership in the Church.” Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity: Beginnings to 1500, vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 2003), 135. The Creed was an indicator of one’s affiliation.

[7] An Orthodox theologian observes that the Protestant concern for Christian ethics coincides with the Roman Catholic concern for moral theology and the Eastern Orthodox concern for Christian spirituality. See John Chryssavgis, Light Through Darkness: The Orthodox Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 25n.

[8] This opinion is voiced continually by J. Denny Weaver. While Weaver is correct to voice it where needed, he is falling victim to a separation of spirituality and theology. “Orthodox theology runs the danger of historically disincarnating the Church; by contrast, theWest risks tying it primarily to history, either in the form of extreme Christocentrism … lacking the essential influence of pneumatology or in the form of social activism or moralism which tries to play in the Church the role of the image of God”: John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 20.

[9] Evagrius Ponticus (346-399 C.E.) famously said that “If you are a theologian, you truly pray. If you truly pray, you are a theologian.”

[10] Metropolitan Kallistos Ware states that “we are to become theology” in his Foreword to Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 9.

[11] See Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996) and his For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1963); Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995) and his Foreword to Hymn of Entry, 9; John Chryssavgis, Light through Darkness: The Orthodox Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004).

[12] Born around 335 C.E., Gregory of Nyssa was one of the three celebrated Cappadocian Fathers, the other two being Basil the Great, his older brother, and Gregory Nazianzen, their friend. Gregory of Nyssa continued Basil’s work on isolating appropriate triadological language, especially against the teachings of Eunomius after Basil’s death. Gregory was also involved in combating the Apollinarian heresy. Basil, then bishop of Caesarea, appointed Gregory as bishop of Nyssa in 372 C.E., a little known See in Cappadocia. He was instrumental in the second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381 C.E. and died around 395 C.E.

[13] Most of the information on Gregory of Nyssa is adapted from Andrew Klager, The Eye of our Soul and its ‘Ontological Gaze’: The Iconic Function of Theological Epinoia in the Philosophy and Spirituality of Gregory of Nyssa (M.A. thesis, McMaster University, 2006).

[14] Fr. John Behr, “Faithfulness and Creativity,” in Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 174.

[15] Fr. John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 22.

[16] “Doctrine is a living testimony – in thought, word and experience – of what has been heard, seen and touched (1 John 1:1). It is the tested evidence of what has been contemplated in faith and experienced in love”: Chryssavgis, Light Through Darkness, 58.

[17] Aristides, The Apology of Aristides (Greek version), eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, vol. 9 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2004), 276. Here, Aristides claims Christ was crucified because his accusers ignored his “good deeds and the countless miracles.”

[18] Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, IV-14, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 365. Latin text from Ernest Evans, trans. and ed., Tertullian: Adversus Marcionem (Oxford: Univ. of Oxford Press, 1972).

[19] “For God alone is without sin; and the only man without sin is Christ, since Christ is also God.” Tertullian, De Anima, XLI, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 221. Latin text from J. H. Waszink, trans. and ed., Tertullianus, De anima (Amsterdam, 1947).

[20] “[B]eing in truth the God and Christ of Israel [...] He raised also the widow’s son from death [.…] Now so evidently had the Lord Christ introduced no other god for the working of so momentous a miracle as this, that all who were present gave glory to the Creator.” Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, IV-18, in op. cit., 375.

[21] Addressing Marcion’s allegation concerning the demiurge of the OT and his dissociation with the God of Jesus Christ, Tertullian declares, “You ought to be very much ashamed of yourself on this account too, for permitting him [Christ] to appear on the retired mountain in the company of Moses and Elias, whom he had come to destroy. This, to be sure, was what he wished to be understood as the meaning of that voice from heaven: ‘This is my beloved Son, hear him.’” Tertullian designates Jesus as the Christus creatoris on evidence of the transfiguration. Ibid., 382-83.

[22] Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol.1, 69-70.

[23] Aristides, The Apology of Aristides (Syriac version), in op. cit., 265. Cf. Aristides, Apology XV, in The Faith of the Early Fathers, ed.William A. Jurgens (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1970), 49.

[24] Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol.1, 330-31.

[25] Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 249.

[26] Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2, 509-10.

[27] Hippolytus, Against the Heresy of one Noetus, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, 230.

[28] Origen, De Principiis, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 240-41.

[29] Gregory Thaumaturgus, A Declaration of Faith, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6, 7.

[30] Cyprian, Epistle LXIX: To Januarius and Other Numidian Bishops, on Baptizing Heretics, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, 376.

[31] Immediately before delineating his Creed, the early second-century bishop of Antioch, St. Ignatius declared, “Become the imitators of his suffering, and of his love.” Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians, in op. cit., 69.

[32] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971), 7-8; Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke&Co., Ltd., 1957), 9-10; Metropolitan KallistosWare, The Orthodox Way, 73; Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 31, 34.

[33] “For tradition is thought to be ancient, hallowed by age, unchanged since it was first established once upon a time. It does not have a history, since history implies the appearance, at a certain point in time, of that which had not been there before”: Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, 7-8.

[34] Tertullian, Adversus Praxean, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 598. Latin text from Ernest Evans, trans. and ed., Adversus Praxean liber (London: SPCK, 1948).

[35] Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 246. Latin text from R.F. Refoulé, trans., De Praescriptione Haereticorum, in Quinti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani Opera Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vol. 1, ed. Dom Eligius Dekkers (Turnholti: Brepols, 1957).

[36] Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, 126.

[37] Ibid., 47.

[38] Latourette, A History of Christianity: Beginnings to 1500, vol. 1, 123.

[39] Ibid., 95.

[40] Ibid., 125.

[41] Some Gnostics “felt free to go to pagan festivals and to gladiatorial contests, and even to have irregular unions with women who had accepted their doctrines.” Latourette, A History of Christianity: Beginnings to 1500, vol. 1, 125.

[42] “Now if this ‘being made god’, this theosis, is to be possible, Christ the Saviour must be both fully God and fully human”: Ware, The Orthodox Way, 20.

[43] John Binns, An Introduction to the Christian Orthodox Churches (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 107.

[44] “In the Orthodox Church, the authority of the early Fathers, of the communion of the saints, reveals a virtual continuity between tradition and Christ. There is, here, no stifling enslavement to tradition but rather a striking embodiment of tradition, whose authority lies more in living and less in professing or decreeing”: Chryssavgis, Light Through Darkness, 49.

[45] Peter Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey: Orthodox Thinking on Dogma and Truth, Foundations Series, vol. 3 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 20.

[46] J. Denny Weaver in Anabaptist Theology in Face of Postmodernity, 113. Weaver wonders whether there could be an alternative to the more philosophical concerns of the historical creeds by appealing to the life, behavior, actions, and teachings of Christ as recorded in the NT. He has in mind the nonviolence of Jesus.

[47] Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974), 286.

[48] Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, as quoted in Ware, The Orthodox Way, 8.

[49] Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Foreword to Hymn of Entry, 9. See also Archimandrite Vasileos, Hymn of Entry, 17-39 for an excellent analysis.

[50] Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey, 36.

[51] Ibid., 39.

[52] Chryssavgis, Light Through Darkness, 57. Recall Friedmann’s contention that Anabaptism is more “existential” than representing any systematic expression of theology. Robert Friedmann, The Theology of Anabaptism: An Interpretation. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, vol. 15 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973), 18.

[53] Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 14. Cf. 8-10.

[54] Chryssavgis, Light Through Darkness, 56.

[55] Ibid., 57.

[56] Serge S. Verhovskoy, The Light of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982), 12.

[57] Chryssavgis, Light Through Darkness, 57.

[58] Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 9.

[59] John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 16-17.

[60] John Meyendorff, “Light from the East? ‘Doing Theology’ in an Eastern Orthodox Perspective,” in Doing Theology in Today’s World, eds. John D. Woodbridge and Thomas Edward McComiskey (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1991), 340.

[61] Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 12.

[62] Latourette, A History of Christianity: Beginnings to 1500, vol. 1, 146.

[63] Latourette explains how both the Novatians and Donatists “broke from the Catholic Church in part or entirely in protest against what they held to be too great leniency of the latter towards moral lapses, especially apostasy.” Ibid., 216. The Inquisition helped shift Christian corrective measures and emphasis from the rigorous penitential procedure of the patristic era (ethical or behavioral-based) to recantation (knowledge-based). This shift had a large impact on the more than four thousand Anabaptist martyrs highly touted for their ethical and moral behavior by the same magistrates who executed them.

[64] Gregory of Nyssa, On What it Means to Call Oneself a Christian, trans. Virginia Woods Callahan, Fathers of the Church, vol. 58 (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1967), 84.

[65] Lossky emphasizes the regulated though not entirely destroyed or restricted efficacy of theological knowledge: Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978), 14.

[66] Gregory of Nyssa, De Beatitudinibus, Oratio VI, in Hilda C. Graef, trans., Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 18 (New York: Paulist Press, 1954), 148. Gregory of Nyssa, De Beatitudinibus, Oratio VI, ed. J.P. Migne, Patrologia Graecae, vol. 44 (Paris, 1863), 1269-1270C.

[67] Hans Schlaffer, A Brief Instruction for the Beginning of a Truly Christian Life, in Sources of South German/Austrian Anabaptism, trans. Walter Klaassen, et al. ed. C. Arnold Snyder, Classics of the Radical Reformation, vol.10 (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2001), 85.

[68] Michael Sattler, Imprisonment: Letter to Horb, in The Legacy of Michael Sattler, trans. and ed. John Howard Yoder, Classics of the Radical Reformation, vol. 1 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973), 59.

[69] Peter Riedeman, Account of Our Religion, Doctrine and Faith (Rifton, NY: Plough Publishing House, 1970), 38.

[70] “Five of the seven representatives of the Radical Reformation […] (Menno, Dirk Philips, Denck, Hoffmann, Schwenckfeld, while Hubmaier and Marpeck do not) specifically state that their concept of salvation is that of the divinization of man [….] Thus, grace is for the Radical Reformers not so much a forensic change in status before God as it is an ontological change within the individual believer […]”: Alvin J. Beachy, The Concept of Grace in the Radical Reformation (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1977), 4.

[71] “divinization”

[72] Thomas N. Finger, “Response to J. Denny Weaver’s ‘Parsing Anabaptist Theology,’” Direction Journal 35.1 (Spring 2006): 152 (note 8). For a succinct analysis of the “personal dimension” of Anabaptist soteriology and “the coming of the new creation,” see Finger, A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology: Biblical, Historical, Constructive (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 109-32. Cf. Frances F. Hiebert, “The Atonement in Anabaptist Theology,” Direction 30.2 (Fall 2001): 122-38.

[73] Dirk Philips, The Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in The Writings of Dirk Philips, trans. and ed. Cornelius J. Dyck, William E. Keeney, and Alvin J. Beachy, Classics of the Radical Reformation, vol. 6 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992), 145.

[74] Dirk Philips, The New Birth and the New Creature, in op. cit., 294.

[75] Finger, “Response to J. Denny Weaver’s ‘Parsing Anabaptist Theology,’”152 (note 8).

[76] Often referred to as “negative theology,” the apophatic approach to theistic discourse is derived from the Greek apophatike, which means “away from speech”: Deirdre Carabine, The Unknown God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1995), 2. Carabine asserts that “We may understand apophatic theology to begin with the assertion that God is unknowable to the human mind and that one must proceed by means of negations, ultimately, even to the negation of the negation in order to attain to some ‘positive’ knowledge of him.” See also J.P. Williams, Denying Divinity (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pres, 2000), 3-4.

[77] Robert S. Brightman, “Apophatic Theology and Divine Infinity in St. Gregory of Nyssa,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 18.1-2 (1973): 111.

[78] Ibid., 106.

[79] Ibid., 111

[80] Gregory of Nyssa, De Beatitudinibus, Oratio VI, op. cit., 146.

[81] “[Gregory affirms] that all the qualities predicated of the Father must also, of necessity, be predicated on the Son and the Spirit. The consequences […] are immediately clear: if the Father’s primary characteristic is unknowability, then the same must be true of the Son and the Spirit.” Carabine, The Unknown God, 248.

[82] Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, trans. William Moore, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 5 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2004), 477.

[83] Greek ontological term usually denoting the essence or substance of a thing.

[84] Gregory of Nyssa, Letter XXXVIII, In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 8, 138.

[85] Gregory of Nyssa, De Vita Moysis, II:159, trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 93.

[86] Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, Bk. II, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 5, 101.

[87] Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, 486.

[88] “Gregory in effect denies that the ousia of anything can be comprehended through its energeia. But in the case of God, it is only the energeia that we can know.” Paulos Mar Gregorios, Cosmic Man: The Divine Presence (New York: Paragon House, 1988), 117.

[89] Gregory of Nyssa, Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 5, 265.

[90] Gregory of Nyssa, De Beatitudinibus, Oratio VI, 147.

[91] Ibid.

[92] Ibid.

[93] Menno Simons, Confession of the Triune God, in The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, c. 1496-1561, ed. J.C. Wenger and trans. Leonard Verduin (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1956), 497-98.

[94] Ibid.

[95] Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, Bk. VII, 198.

[96] Simons, Confession of the Triune God, 491.

[97] Ibid., 491-92. “Inasmuch as God is such a Spirit, as it is written, therefore we also believe and confess the eternal, begetting heavenly Father and the eternally begotten Son, Christ Jesus. Brethren, … they are spiritual and incomprehensible (geistlich und unbegreiflich), as is also the Father who begat; for like begets like. This is incontrovertible” (491). With the number of times Menno uses the terms unerforschliche, unaussprechliche and unbegreiflich, we could conclude that he became acquainted with apophasis from his education for the priesthood, exposure to Canon Law, and glossa ordinaria or the various patristic florilegia of his era.

[98] Ibid.

[99] Simons, Reply to Gellius Faber, in op. cit., 761. German text from Menno Simons, Klare Beantwortung einer Schrift des Gellius Faber, in op. cit., 138.

[100] Simons, Confession of the Triune God, 493.

[101] Ibid., 494. Referring to the impotence of creeds to affect obedience, Menno observes, “These foolish people imagine that they are Christian, but are to my mind more unbelieving, blinder, more hardened, and worse than Turks, Tartars, or any other far away heathen. Their works testify that I write the truth. They cannot be moved to hear or obey the truth by godly means and services, neither by doctrine nor exhortation […]” (emphasis added). Simons, True Christian Faith, in op. cit., 384.

[102] Pilgrim Marpeck, The Writings of Pilgrim Marpeck, eds. and trans. William Klassen and Walter Klaassen (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1978), 78-79.

[103] Dirk Philips, Concerning the True Knowledge of Jesus Christ, in op. cit., 167.

[104] Brian E. Daley, “Divine Transcendence and Human Transformation: Gregory of Nyssa’s Anti-Apollinarian Christology,” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Sarah Coakley (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 73.

[105] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Faith, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 5, 337; Ad Simplicium de Fide, ed. J.P. Migne, Patrologia Graecae, vol. 45 (Paris, 1863). The Greek form of “not” that Gregory uses here is ουχ, which he employs only one other time in this treatise to indicate that the heretical view of Christ as not sharing in the Father’s essence is “not (ουχ) our God.”

[106] Johannes Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical Background and Theological Significance (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 217.

[107] Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, as quoted in Zachhuber, 216.

[108] For Ware, in a situation where an important characteristic of Christ is undervalued, this characteristic must be accentuated to preserve the ontological affiliation with Christ, deification, theosis, salvation. “A bridge is formed between God and humanity by the Incarnate Christ who is divine and human at once.[...] Each heresy in turn undermined some part of this vital affirmation.[…] Each council defended this affirmation”: Ware, The Orthodox Church, 21.

[109] For an Eastern Orthodox espousal of the notion that our capacity and authority to engage in theological inquiry is commensurate with our purity, see Chryssavgis, Light Through Darkness, 53 and 56, and Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 17.

[110] Gregory of Nyssa, De Vita Moysis, II:157, 93.

[111] Gregory of Nyssa, De Beatitudinibus, Oratio VI, 143.

[112] Ibid., 149.

[113] Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 25.

[114] Simons, Confession of the Triune God, 494. German text from Simons, Ein ermahnendes Bekenntniss von dem dreieinigen, ewigen und wahren Gott, Vater, Sohn und heiligen Geist, in op. cit., 261.

[115] Menno uses “operation” in reference to how one approaches God in hopes of salvation: “Who is it that is raised up into the new life by the faith of the operation of God? Once more, is it not the believer?” Simons, Christian Baptism, in op. cit., 261.

[116] Simons, Confession of the Triune God, 494.

[117] For an example of how Anabaptists interacted with the creeds when the issue was initiated into the discussion externally, see Simons, Reply to Gellius Faber, 625-781.

[118] Thomas N. Finger, “The Way to Nicea: Some Reflections from a Mennonite Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 24.2 (Spring 1987): 229.

[119] J. Denny Weaver illuminates two such problems: (1) If Mennonites initiate an ecumenical discussion by invoking the Creeds, they are admitting the insignificance and dispensable nature of distinctively Anabaptist elements such as nonviolence and discipleship; (2) It is contradictory to affirm the salience of the creeds that neglect the elements many early Anabaptists sought to preserve through martyrdom. See his “IdentifyingAnabaptist Theology: A Response to ‘True Evangelical Faith: The Anabaptists and Christian Confession,’” Mennonite Life 60.3 (Sept. 2005): http://www.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2005Sept/weaver%20response.php. Weaver’s perspective on the creeds may be somewhat purposespecific, where some of Reimer’s more insightful reflections might be able to fill it out more, but it is a moderating voice that must be heard, nevertheless.

[120] Ben Ollenburger, “True Evangelical Faith: The Anabaptists and Christian Confession,” Mennonite Life 60.3 (Sept. 2005): http://www.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2005Sept/ollenburger.php.

[121] Simons, Confessions of the Triune God, 491.

[122] Ibid., 492.

[123] Ibid.

[124] Ibid., 493. I admit that I am sporadically quoting from these same five pages, but with the sole purpose of filling in the gaps left by Ollenburger.

[125] Simons, The True Christian Faith, 392. German text from Simons, vom rechten, christlichen Glauben, 219.

[126] Riedeman, Account of Our Religion, Doctrine and Faith, 22.

[127] Ibid., 23.

[128] Ibid., 25.

[129] Hans Denck, Widerruff [1527], in Schriften, ed. Walter Fellman, Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, bd. 6 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1956), 107. Hans Denck, Recantation, in The Spiritual Legacy of Hans Denck: Interpretation and Translation of Key Texts, trans. and ed. Clarence Bauman, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, vol. 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 253.

[130] “A Jesus identified only in the abstract categories of ‘man’ and ‘God’ cannot be followed. When faith in Jesus Christ, or being Christian, means to shape one’s life by his teaching and example, these formulas are insufficient; they have omitted the specifics of the New Testament narrative on which faith can be based [and] describe Christ apart from his rejection of the sword and teachings about love of enemies.… The formulas do not give shape to the peaceable community of Jesus’ disciples that poses a contrast to the world. In effect, they have marginalized ethics from christological understanding, or have provided the space for ethics to express convictions that do not stem from the particularity of Jesus”: Weaver, Anabaptist Theology in Face of Postmodernity, 124-25. I would nuance Weaver’s thoughts by appealing to the Eastern fusion of spirituality and theology, but Weaver’s fittingly acerbic comments should be heeded for the current state of the Western, and specifically North American, church.

[131] B. Royale Dewey, “Making Peace with History: Anabaptism and the Nicene Creed,” Mennonite Life 60.3 (Sept. 2005): http://www.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2005Sept/dewey.php.

[132] “[I]n evaluating any Creed Mennonites will likely ask not only what it affirms but also what it leaves out, as well as what its ecclesiastical and social functions are”: Thomas N. Finger, “The Way to Nicea: Some Reflections from a Mennonite Perspective,” 212.

[133] Alain Epp Weaver, “Missionary Christology: John Howard Yoder and the Creeds,” MQR 74.3 (July 2000): 426. Weaver gives credit for this idea to John Howard Yoder.

[134] Ibid., 436.

[135] For examples of how Gregory emphasized either Jesus’ humanity or divinity in different situations, see Andrew Klager, The Eye of our Soul and its ‘Ontological Gaze’: The Iconic Function of Theological Epinoia in the Philosophy and Spirituality of Gregory of Nyssa (M.A. thesis, McMaster University, 2006), 67-71.

[136] To achieve the results Reimer seeks, it would be better to educate an Anabaptist audience on the creeds’ importance not by showing how ethical behavior can be derived from creedal expressions but by showing that the creeds emerged in service of a pre-existing understanding of salvation. Becoming cognizant of the historically accurate sequence is a better service to the ongoing debate.

[137] Reimer, Mennonites and Classical Theology: Dogmatic Foundations for Christian Ethics, 355.

[138] Ibid., 358.

[139] Weaver, Anabaptist Theology in Face of Postmodernity, 47. Stuart Hall contrasts the nucleus of Jesus’ instruction with that of the creeds: “The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers…. [W]hy an ethical sermon stood at the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ and a metaphysical Creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth century is a problem which claims investigation”; see Stuart G. Hall, Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 240. “Dogmatic definitions are made with the means and content of a given epoch and […]. reflect the style and peculiarities of that epoch. The Christological controversies and the definitions of the ecumenical councils most certainly reflect the spirit of Greek thought”: Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, 31-32.

[140] Finger discusses investigating the person of Christ “from above” or “from below.” He favors the latter, which is how he discusses the work and person of Christ, as does Weaver but with less nuance. See Thomas N. Finger, A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology: Biblical, Historical, Constructive, 330. Finger also acknowledges the correct chronology that anticipated the creedal formulations in the 16th-century Anabaptists and therefore the fusion of spirituality and theology.

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Andrew P. Klager, a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow, is evaluating sixteenth-century Anabaptist literary access to patristic sources, with special attention to Balthasar Hubmaier

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) volunteers cannot help but engage persons of other faiths when living and working in a religiously pluralistic context. Often the most significant encounters happen in the humblest ways, over a cup of tea. These little conversations accumulate significant relational capital and run counter to growing religious antagonism and fracture evident in so much of the world today.

The Anabaptist tradition inculturates a biblical set of values that have a practical side to them when engaging the religious neighbors. These values make bridges, in turn creating space where conflict over ideology or resources has left little room for conversation. Through a relational orientation, careful listening, incarnating Jesus’ love, honesty, and a belief in transformation, amazing dialogical space is opened up. For MCC in the Southern Philippine context, these values have helped to span the gaps between peoples locked in decades-long violent conflict.

This is the story of a sojourn by five Mennonites who connected with broad spectrum of MCC’s interfaith relationships on the Southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The reader will be introduced to some friends of MCC who are co-laborers in the field of inter-faith conversations, in order to extract the underlying principles that draw Mennonites to those partners. For the reader, then, these practical examples will form a dialogue of the feet.

I found myself standing in between two Catholic priests who have a well known history of being at odds with each other over approaches to interfaith dialogue. One has a center focusing on the spirituality of inter-faith dialogue. His approach is for people to retreat from the pressures of daily life and find an inner peace in the quiet of reflection, thus opening the doors of the heart to people of other faiths. The other priest is an activist who has been in the thick of inter-faith tensions during some difficult years. He advocates for dialogue to happen in the rough and tumble of life, getting one’s hands dirty with issues of justice and peace. Here was I, a Mennonite, standing between the two priests, knowing both and empathizing greatly with each philosophy.

Being an Anabaptist within the Mindanao mix is a strange and wonderful gift. The intent is to connect that which is disconnected, moving into the empty space between two parties who are in conflict or bridging the gulf between those who are not aware of each other. The paradigm of “standing with” yet being a “bridge” symbolizes the MCC approach to inter-faith relations in the Philippines. This sojourn is representative of the tremendous relational capital built up over thirty years of MCC life and work in Mindanao, as we have been the bridge.

MCC in The Philippines: How Did We Get There?

The Mennonite Central Committee has had two complete histories in the Republic of the Philippines, a nation of more than 7,100 islands and a population of 85 million people. The two periods of MCC presence, separated by 27 years, responded to different realities. The first time frame was post-WorldWar II, spanning 1946 to 1950, when relief and development were needed. The work was mainly in the northern island of Luzon in the mountains, and took the form of medical and housing reconstruction. The second block of history covers 1977 to 2005, when Mennonites stood in solidarity with Filipinos who were seeking justice under the repressive dictatorial regime of Ferdinand Marcos.[1] Throughout this second period, beginning from a base in Mindanao, MCCers rubbed shoulders with many different expressions of Christianity and Islam.

On a “presence/project” continuum, the MCC program in the Philippines has been characterized by presence with Filipinos as they struggle for justice and peace in their communities. This has been done almost exclusively through seconding MCCers to organizations, whether church or secular. The work itself has been dialogical.

It was at Mennonite World Conference in Zimbabwe in 2003 that I bumped into David Shenk as he was giving a short input session on Islam and dialogue with other faiths. His input was delightful, primarily because he peppered solid biblical and Anabaptist principles with stories of his lifelong vocation of engaging other faiths in dialogue. Since September 11, 2001, he has focused primarily on engaging with Islam. I invited him to come to Mindanao to visit some of the inter-faith partnerships MCC had nurtured over the years. That invitation was reinforced by Luke Schrock-Hurst, former MCC Country Representative and Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM) missionary working with the Integrated Mennonite Church (IMC) of the Philippines.

Two other persons were invited on this Mindanao Sojourn in order to give them exposure for an ongoing Anabaptist presence in Mindanao. Richard Rancap is the president of the IMC and is from Lumban, Laguna, Luzon Island of the Philippines. The IMC has only Mennonite churches in Luzon at present but has expressed interest in church planting in Mindanao. Dann Pantoja, a former activist, is a Filipino who migrated to Canada twenty years ago during the height of the purges after the fall of Marcos. Dann found his way to peace theology and is currently a member of Peace Mennonite Church in Vancouver, BC.[2] He has been engaged in an immersion and presence ministry among Muslims in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao to test the idea of a longer-term service to Muslim communities in the Philippines.

Religious and Historical Context

Muslims make up just five percent of the Filipino population,[3] although Islam first established a beachhead in the Sulu Archipelago in c. 1380 as part of its spread throughout Asia.[4] The Sulu Sultanate was established in 1450 and is still seen by many Muslims as the legitimate governmental system for Muslim Mindanao. The Spaniard Magellan arrived in the Philippines in 1521 and claimed them for the Spanish King. The Spanish met Muslims in Mindanao and transferred the title “Moro” to these adherents of Mohammed after the Moroccan Muslims-Moors who had occupied much of Spain for hundreds of years. What began as a pejorative term has been taken now by Mindanao Muslims as a term of pride: “Moro.”

Spanish colonization didn’t begin until 1565, and the Catholic Church established a dominant presence. Today, 83 percent of Filipinos consider themselves Roman Catholic, with the Philippines having the third highest number of Catholics of any nation behind Brazil and Mexico. A quick scan of urban and rural areas reveals a large number of churches and Roman Catholic institutions.[5] While Catholics come in many shapes and sizes, MCCers have tended to gravitate toward orders with members sharing the values of working with the poor, speaking to injustice, and building peace.

The Spanish were unable to subdue the Mindanao Moros during their colonization, and when the Americans took over Spanish territory at the end of the Spanish/American War in 1898, the Philippine Islands became a US colony. Through a combination of hard power (superior firepower) and soft power (education and treaties), the Americans drew the Moros into agreements that eventually contained their influence to a few select areas of Mindanao. Through the policy of giving land to Christian settlers from the northern islands of Luzon and the Visayas, first by the Americans and later by Filipino policy set by the Manila aristocracy, the Moro populations were diluted and made minorities in their own homelands.

This migration from the northern “Christianized” populations caused no great conflict at first. The Muslim inhabitants welcomed new neighbors and even gave them land nearby. But wiser to the ways of imported laws and statutes, the Christians registered their land and gobbled up vast tracts of property, displacing those who welcomed them in the first place. Animosity between Christian settlers and Moro inhabitants reached a peak when, fueled by third force terror and vigilante groups, executions, destruction, and displacement became a state tool under President Marcos’s tyrannical rule in the 1970s and ’80s. While there are still elderly people around who remember living peaceably among their religiously different neighbors, younger Muslims know only war and displacement in Mindanao.

We left early in two cars to travel the road from Cotabato to Marawi City. The day sprang up sunny and the sky was cloudless. Winding up the road outside of Cotabato, the beauty of the physical landscape belies the reality that this area was depopulated during the 2000 “all-out war” declared by President Estrada of the Philippines. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) over-ran the Islamic Center at Camp Abubakar, a site for Muslim separatists pressing for an Islamic state in Mindanao, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Painful atrocities, like the AFP eating pork and drinking beer in the main mosque, are still fresh in the Moro psyche.

Passing the turn-off to Camp Abubakar reminded me that the people of this part of Mindanao face prejudice aimed at them for their Islamic roots. An occasional armored personnel carrier or truckload of soldiers, and the numerous military detachments dug into the side of the road, were reminders that the area is still heavily militarized. In recent years this stretch of road has seen many kidnappings and car-jackings, and it is not recommended to foreigners. Warned that our convoy would not be making any stops, we were surprised when our two dark-tinted-window vehicles halted on the shores of Lake Dapao in Borug for a sight-seeing stop. Further along we took a break to eat lunch at a restaurant at the southeast end of Lake Marawi. I was amazed that, in a place with such a bad reputation among westerners, we could walk freely and were shown gracious hospitality by local people who knew we were foreigners, outsiders.

Father Bert: Living Catholic Faith as Reconciliation

Maguindanao province of Mindanao is the epicenter of displacement from a series of wars since the 1970s. Our destination was the Immaculate Conception Parish in the town of Pikit to meet with Father Bert Layson, an unassuming Catholic priest usually found in a tank top, short pants, and flipflops. He began his personal journey to inter-faith transformation by telling us about being assigned to the remote, predominantly Muslim Philippine island of Jolo in the Sulu Archipelago as a new priest, “because he was naughty” as he describes it. For nine years he served on this small remote island of 4,000 Christians in the midst of 600,000 Muslims.

During this time two things happened to shape his attitude towards the work of the Catholic Church and more specifically his order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI). First a destitute man approached him for aid, which he refused to offer, saying it was the government’s responsibility. Six months later Father Bert, after reflecting on the words of Jesus in Matthew 25, “Whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me,” had a vision on retreat of this destitute man’s face and Jesus’ face interchanged. He realized he had failed this man and Jesus.

The second formational event occurred when, after nine years in this Jolo parish, his beloved bishop was martyred. Father Bert began to hate Muslims for this act. But after a transfer to the Pikit Parish in Central Mindanao, and an almost immediate crisis of massive displacement of the Muslim communities surrounding his parish due to war, his attitude changed. “When you hear mothers crying and see families displaced, you don’t ask if they are Muslims or Christians,” he mused. So he set about providing relief to uprooted people, who were mostly Muslims, in his parish during four major displacements from 1997 on (1997, 2000, 2001, 2003). He says that “helping the poor is not a matter of choice for Christians, it’s a social responsibility.”

Through his humble service to the displaced in his parish, Father Bert has proven that he holds the basic principle of dialogue, which is “the belief in the basic goodness of every person, that is, the goodness of God.” He sees dialogue as “an integral part of the evangelism of the Church,” not in a narrow soul-winning way but in a holistic demonstration that “the Kingdom of God is bigger than the Church.” When asked how his mission is received by his fellow OMI priests, he laughs and says, “It’s difficult for priests to transcend their biases.” Indeed, Father Bert works tirelessly to change Catholic altitudes toward Muslims among his parishioners, by crossing social and religious boundaries and even by putting himself in harm’s way on the front lines of war in pursuit of peace.

I have made central Mindanao the focus on my work in the Philippines. Nearly two years prior to our Mennonite delegation visiting Father Bert, I was sitting under the trees with fighters from the Muslim secessionist movement, the MILF. I was with a group investigating breeches of the ceasefire between the MILF and the government. The MILF commander of the 105th unit and four field commanders were taking our questions. They quite freely stated that they “wanted peace” and indicated that they wouldn’t make any provocation because “It’s our people who get hurt when there is a skirmish.” “This is our land, our back yard,” declared the commander while sweeping his hand toward the beautiful rice fields, coconut groves, and bush land around us. “Why would we want war?” he asked. Good question, I thought later.

The Mindanao conflict, while looking religious, has its roots in land grabbing, resource stealing, and unjust treatment of the original inhabitants. Differences in religion are convenient places for the powerful to hang their prejudice while they exploit the conflict for their own ends. Part of any longterm solution to the conflict is education about the real cause of conflict.

Southern Christian College: Global Education for Service

Southern Christian College (SCC) in Midsayap is a United Church of the Philippines (UCCP) college committed to providing a global education to its students. As one of the larger denominations of Protestants, who make up nine percent of the population, its creative and visionary leadership have come from Dr. Erlinda Senturias. After having lived for years in Geneva working for the World Council of Churches, she returned to contribute toward development in Mindanao. Her commitment to nonviolent solutions for conflict includes helping to shape students’ worldviews in ways that include inter-faith awareness and interaction.

Students attending SCC are required to do some cross-cultural education through interaction with the tri-peoples[6] in Mindanao: Lumad (indigenous), Muslims, and Christian settlers. Other SCC programs include an annual Summer Institute for Peace and Sustainable Development Motivators (SIPDM), which was going on as we visited. This program brings ten youth from each of the tri-peoples together for education in peace, history, and peace building. Interacting for a month, these young people forge friendships that transcend their diverse backgrounds and the prejudice inherent to this diversity.

Our Mennonite delegation had several occasions to interact with SCC students, faculty, and the SIPDM youth. It is impressive how SCC has taken the dynamic context of its location and used it for a learning laboratory, one that engages local problems and challenges from a global perspective.

SIPDM participants used “a Culture of Peace” (COP) as the paradigm for their dialogue framework. When quizzed about what constitutes a COP, respondents varied in their answers. Some said that it is the “absence of colonization and oppression (neo-colonization from Manila) or a respect for others, dialogue, justice, and pursuing diplomatic solutions to conflict.” Some recognized that a COP is inner peace. “You have peace when you don’t respond back to injustice with aggression.” When asked “How do Maguindanaoan Muslims forgive as a community?,” the response was that in Islam, adherents follow the leader; if the leader forgives, the whole group will. “Allah says, ‘I love people who forgive,’” we were told.

For Muslims, though, a simple acknowledgment of wrongs, such as land grabbing by the Manila elite during the Marcos years, would go a long way. “We are not asking for all our lands back,” said one Muslim youth leader. However, a Lumad community leader reminded the group that “one reason we lost our lands was from forgiveness and hospitality. Forgiveness is a tangible/concrete expression [of a] restored relationship.” His meaning was that their graciousness had been taken advantage of.

Our Mennonite group was probing topics rarely raised by foreigners involved in the peace process, forgiveness and reconciliation. Correspondence long after this trip from someone in our discussions who personally experienced loss from war affirmed probing these aspects:

It was nice having your group during my summer class for a round table dialogue. I won’t forget the inspiring thoughts shared that “every time we have sufferings and pains, let’s ask Jesus to remove that spear in our backs,” and I asked, “How many times shall we ask Jesus to remove the spear, given the dynamics of conflicts here in Mindanao?” It was a very emotional environment of dialogue that we had. I treasure that encounter in my heart.[7]

Muslim-Christian Friendship Produces Fruits of Peace

One fruitful inter-faith friendship that began during this Mennonite trip was between Dann Pantoja and Ustadz A.M. who works full time as director for a Mindanao university in its Muslim-Christian relations initiative. As Dann wrote later,[8] “Our friendship began when the delegation met [Ustadz A. M., who is like a reverend among Muslims because he confidently quotes the Qur’an in Arabic whenever we exchange theological ideas].

He told me that his job and his mission used to put him and his family in a very fragile situation in the midst of his Muslim community. But he believes in peace, so he risked his life and the safety of his family. He regularly brings Muslim youth leaders on the university campus to talk with Christian and Lumad youth leaders. The people in his region saw positive changes in the lives of their young people. Now, his Muslim community trusts and supports him, and protects him and his family. This developing Muslim-Christian friendship “exemplifies the divinely-arranged trust preparation among the hearts and minds of many Muslim religious leaders in Mindanao,” commented Dann.

The Mennonite delegation was invited to visit the community where Dann had been doing his immersion live-in during the previous months. The group paid a courtesy call to the mayor, Datu M., who, through a position of strength, has kept the peace in his town all through the last ten violent years. After walking the gauntlet of machine-gun-wielding military security forces bristling with grenade launchers, we were welcomed us into his office.

Dann Pantoja gave an example of Datu M.’s wisdom in strength by telling the story of how Datu M. ended a brewing rido (an inter-clan revenge feud) right in his office. Two families had come to him because family B had killed someone from family A. The mayor asked if familyAwas going to kill someone from family B in revenge. They answered an enthusiastic “yes.” Then the mayor asked family B, “If family A kills one of yours, will you kill one of theirs?” “Of course,” family B responded. The mayor said, “Each of you choose one to be killed, right here and now, so that this ends.” The families came to their senses and realized the futility of revenge. However, “It was only in the presence of the mayor’s overwhelming firepower that this kind of settlement could take place,” said Dann. “The mayor told me there would be lots of killing when I die,” as his overwhelming firepower that keeps rido in check will no longer be a deterrent to violence.

In the midst of this kind of political and social reality, a simple prayer opened up space that all the force at the disposal of the mayor could not open. Ustadz A.M. from SCC was invited into the meeting with Datu M. After the introduction formalities, both David Shenk and Ustadz A.M. prayed for Datu M. Because of that prayer, Dann said he

Felt the respect of Datu M. and his support [for] my involvement with the Muslim youth group of his town. He kept mentioning me and that prayer event before his fellow municipal leaders. Because of that,myrelationship with the town folks grew deeper. You see, I planned and carefully tried to build trust between me and the Muslims, and it worked quite okay. But what happened through this unplanned prayer of David Shenk and [Datu A.M.] is something beyond what I could have imagined – a DEEPER TRUST from a Transcendent Source began! Thus, I expect more unplanned, divinely-provided trust-building events for me and the peace building teams who would come after me.[9]

“Is there something hidden in your presence here among Muslims?” Haron Al Rasheed asked us point blank. Datu B. chimed in: “A sword in one hand and Bible in another is what destroyed [the community] in Maguindanao. When we see white people, the first thing that pops into our minds is religious imperialism,” since this has been so much of their history with Christians. From those sour encounters “we [Bangsamoro] are looked upon as bandits and robbers by Filipino historians.” “As a Christian, there are three big mistakes to keep in mind,” said Ibrahim Bolono. “Betrayal to your purpose to God, betrayal to yourself, betrayal to neighbors.” These honest words were a gift from friends to challenge us to transparency and integrity in our intentions and actions.

Evangelicals Reaching Out to Religious Neighbors

With regard to their religious neighbors, evangelicals often resort to one of two extremes. As in many parts of the world, some of the Philippine evangelical community uses cloaked language and aliases to move into Muslim areas for covert evangelism. They take on “tent making” roles with the clandestine motivation of converting Muslims to Christianity. So, while some evangelicals are in the undercover conversion business, many who live as religious minorities develop a “circle the wagon” mentality.

When the church develops a myopic, survival-oriented, inward focus, it becomes oblivious and unconcerned about the welfare of religious majority around them, as if it’s waiting to be recognized or validated before reaching out to its religious neighbors.[10] A “don’t care,” or worse, “they had it coming” attitude during times of strife communicates a distorted picture of the Gospel message.

In the coastal city of Cotabato, our delegation met with the staff of Al Hayat,[11] a Christian NGO seeking a third way between covert evangelism and outrightly ignoring their religious neighbors. Of Cotabato City’s 200,000 population, only an estimated one percent is evangelical Christian. Most churches are small and stagnant in growth, and make very minimal effort in reaching out to their Muslim neighbors. In this environment, Al Hayat staff feel very lonely in their work and unsupported by evangelical church hierarchy. One of their programs is a Three-Year Peace and Development Project, in which they partner with five of the estimated forty protestant/ evangelical churches in the city to do ministries of compassion. They offer community organizing, development strategies, and peace building in five barangays[12] in Cotabato.

It wasn’t easy for Al Hayat community organizers at the start to gain acceptance in the barangays, since the communities feared being the object of conversion efforts.As the communities learned to trust Al Hayat staff, and gained from their training in leadership and transformation, Christian acts of service gave these people new and creative tools for addressing inter-clan feuds, among other situations. When asked about the spiritual foundations of their quest for peacemaking, an Al Hayat program staff member answered, “We show love.”

A pastor, a partner in the peace program, sees the role of the church as “bringing Jesus to the community, not the people to the church.” He continued, “God has the power to transform. We share the Gospel through deeds.” In going to Muslim communities that make up part of Cotabato City, the pastor has been continually “surprised by hospitality” and says “we have tasted the goodness of what the communities have to offer.” He himself is a product of an exposure trip organized by Al Hayat in attempt to dismantle the prejudice of pastors toward these communities, and to give them a firsthand look at the communities where they have church volunteers.

I met with N.C., an evangelical church leader, late one night at a coffee shop. He lamented to me that the Philippine evangelical leadership and mission community had received a series of threats by a zealous Muslim. He had heard about the Christian Peacemaker Team approach of working interfaith in Iraq, and sought out MCC for resources to help him deal with this kind of conflict. He had a desire to seek out ways to redemptively address this situation. I sent him a stack of peace building materials, especially the Mennonite Conciliation Handbook, which contains a significant section on the Christian theological basis for conciliation. He later thanked me and indicated that the materials were helpful as he was being called to mediate a contentious conflict situation.

Likewise, I was approached by a Muslim religious leader who expressed a desire for any materials in Arabic that would validate his working at peace. “My ideas for peace will gain much more respect if the materials I use and disseminate are in Arabic.” I supplied him with a copy of an Arabic Conflict Resolution Manual that MCC Jordan sponsored for translation.

Our Mennonite delegation visited Alim M.[13] in a restaurant in downtown Marawi City to hear a truly inspirational story of how he tries to promote peace building among his fellow Muslims. “Shifting from violence to nonviolence is difficult, because any little deviation from armed struggle is seen as a betrayal of the cause which many Maranaos[14] have died for in the decades of struggle [against colonial powers]. Many believe the only solution is war.”

As an Islamic scholar, Alim M. garners respect within his Islamic community. But his stand on peace has put that esteem in jeopardy. “I was banned in many mosques when I started this thing (peace building among Muslims). I need your (Mennonite) support. The Muslim peace movement needs Mennonite encouragement.” MCC sponsored him to Eastern Mennonite University’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

Through being a member of the Bishop Ulama Conference (BUC), AlimM.is part of a movement of Mindanao religious leaders and intellectuals who are reshaping religiously prejudicial attitudes. The BUC started as a forum in 1996 to discuss wide-ranging issues from theology to the security of Muslims and Christians in each other’s areas.

Alim M. cites three practical outcomes of the BUC over the years. First, people realize religion has little to do with Mindanao’s problems. Second, the BUC is a venue where issues are vented so as to present government with a unified voice for influencing its decisions. “We can urge the government not to use force to solve security problems like kidnapping,” Alim M. comments. Third, the youth can be brought into similar assemblies. He warns, “We cannot rely on the government to sustain our attitude of good relations. We have to devise many NGOs to bring this to a lower level of the common people all over Mindanao and the Philippines.”

Reflecting on his peacebuilding strategy, Alim M. says that “we are telling government what we want to tell them without violence. Our friends in the jungle are speaking with arms. Conflict is part of nature, but we can resolve problems peacefully without using arms.” Gradually, he says, “people are recognizing that even through an individual Muslim and Christian have a fight, it’s not between their respective Muslim and Christian communities.”

I gained a new revelation on this sojourn that I had made the idea of Christian community too complex. Our delegation of five had evening debriefings from the interactions of the day. As we traveled, discussed, worshiped, and prayed together, our group of five became a community for the ten days we were together. Christ’s assertion in Matthew 18:20, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them,” became scripture incarnate for us. We were living on the cutting edge of faith during this trip, trusting God and our friends for discernment at each step. This kind of temporary, task-oriented community can be transformational, I discovered, when set in the rich context of inter-faith discussions.

Silsilah: Inter-faith Conversations as Personal Transformation

On the extreme western tip of the mainland of Mindanao Island is a town called Zamboanga, the site of recent large US/Filipino joint military operations in the war on terror. By contrast, this city is also host to a quiet calling for peaceful inter-faith conversations through the work of Father Sebastiano D’Ambra, PIME [Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions], who started the Silsilah dialogue movement. Silsilah, literally “chain” or “link” in Arabic, aims to foster a dialogue of life where Muslims and Christians live among each other, respecting and caring for each other in community.

What this means is that Silsilah is not simply an NGO but an agent of transformation of lives from the inside out. A spiritual foundation is essential, as evidenced by a Silsilah motto, “Dialogue starts from God and brings people back to God.” So the movement uses the imagery of journey: “A journey becomes a pilgrimage when we feel God is accompanying us and we move to a holy place.”

Harmony Village is Silsilah’s idyllic retreat center where this vision takes practical shape.Amidst a beautiful piece of land overlooking the ocean, Father Sebastiano related to our Mennonite delegation how the property was a former camp for armed Muslim resistance in the area. Now the land is nurturing the vision of harmony, not only in the Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao but in the whole of the Philippines. This tranquil fourteen-hectare campus has a clinic for herbal remedies, a preschool, a farm center, a House of Peace conference center, administrative offices, a mosque, and chapel.

We arrived just in time for the graduating ceremonies of the nineteenth summer basic course on dialogue. Eight Muslims, and 24 Christians of all stripes (diocesan and religious Catholic seminarians, one sister, seven lay leaders, and one evangelical) spent three weeks exploring the spirituality of inter-faith dialogue. Participants in the summer seminar are hosted by families who adopt them and take them in for weekend stays. Christian participants are adopted by Muslim families, and vice versa. Silsilah has more than 200 alumni throughout the country and is working to replicate this dialogical/learning/spirituality model throughout Mindanao and Luzon.

We Mennonites celebrated mass with the Silsilah community in the tranquility of the evening. It was clear that the quiet strength of the sacrament gives the Silsilah community renewal to continue their journey. They know suffering first hand. The martyrdom of one of their priests in 1974, and family members lost to inter-religious fighting, made the suffering Christ image on the chapel wall all the more poignant.

The four heavily-armed soldiers aboard the fast craft from Zamboanga to Basilan Island looked bored. I had some anxiety about traveling to the small island of Basilan, a half-hour boat trip from Zamboanga City. Basilan was where missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham and Filipina Ediborah Yap were held hostage for more than a year by the Muslim separatist group Abu Sayyaf in 2001 and 2002. As I learned later, I needn’t have worried. Since the Abu Sayyaf was chased off the island, there has not been much tension and danger of firefights.

A General Committed to Peacebuilding on a Troubled Island

Brigadier General R.F., a devout Catholic and newly-promoted army officer, is in charge of 1,500 army troops and 2,400 CAFGUS (citizen members of paramilitary groups).[15] One of the army corporals on the fast ferry thought that General R.F. is “strict,” as the General does not allow any gambling, drinking, or involvement in illegal logging, a source of tension on the island. General R.F. sees his soldiers as peace keepers. As he says, “my troops are to be protectors of civilians, not part of the local problem of peace and order,” a documented concern. In the past the Philippine military has been co-opted by one side or the other in this conflict, and has thus become part of the problem.

General R.F. has trained all his soldiers in the Culture of Peace program that gives them skills at seeing past simplistic religious labels to becoming a constructive force in society. When asked if he met resistance in his peace efforts, he replied that “some officers think that the Culture of Peace will make soldiers not want to fight, but it is really more of values formation.” Practical results of his reforms are as simple as courtesy at checkpoints. “Before, the predominantly Muslim residents of the island use to fear harassment at the checkpoints. Now, I insist that my men show courtesy and respect,” he said. This translates directly into good will, and eventually into trust that the military is not an enemy but an enforcer of the peace. General R.F.’s attitude is that order and peace cannot be attained apart from the NGO community and civil society. So he is working actively at promoting relationships and cooperation between the military and civilians where he is stationed.

Sporadic war, skirmishes, and feuding have left deep scars on the population of Basilan. Father Angel Calvo, a Claretian priest who grew up in Basilan and has worked in the area most of his life, led our Mennonite group on a tour of the lovely countryside. Along the way, he pointed out the sites of ambushes, skirmishes, and battles. “The sadness of this place is that every corner has a history of tragic loss,” he said. “There is so much brokenness, yet the area is so rich and beautiful.”

Through the efforts of Miriam “Dedette” Suacito, a war trash project collects artifacts of war, such as bullet and artillery shell casings, and turns them into artworks. This project is particularly innovative, as it has a trauma healing component built into it. Communities, Christian or Muslim, are approached to see if they are ready to give up old shell casings from small arms and artillery pieces – a symbolic release of the pain communities have held from the fighting they experienced. For some residents, the trash may be all they have left of a firefight that took a loved one, so turning it over is particularly difficult. The brass and steel are used to make candle holders and other artifacts to symbolize the turning of swords to plowshares. By working at trauma healing, the scars of past hurts are less likely to precipitate inter-communal violence in the future.

Synthesis

I hopped into a motorcycle trike, a common mode of transport in Mindanao, and headed for the bus station on my way home. Amidst all the colorful decorations on this three-wheeled jalopy were slogans, some rather raunchy but some inspiring. In my trike was the poignant command, “Exercise your faith walk . . . .” I was amazed at God’s little confirmation of the right path on this sojourn, for that is exactly what happened on the trip. I had the satisfaction of living at the edge of my faith in the spirit of a long line of MCCers, both in the Philippines and around the world, who moved, sometimes boldly and sometimes haltingly, toward the tension spots even though they put themselves in uncomfortable, sometimes dangerous positions vis-à-vis current geopolitics.

I named this article “Dialogue of the Feet,” since our conversations are practical. It is not a heady and academic work left to the theologians but a kind of action-oriented lifestyle that finds, in the daily, commonplace exchanges in our life, opportunities to build and cross bridges over the chasms that separate a broken humanity. In order to do so, we have cultivated values that orient the attitudes of the program, as noted below.

Relational Capital

On our sojourn we found that US Embassy and US State Department personnel had been to many of the places in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao just days before our Mennonite contingent got there. Since the US Embassy still has a travel warning for American citizens traveling to Mindanao, we were aware that American envoys had been accompanied by heavily armed escorts of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. 

The United States came with a show of strength through large deployment of troops and even helicopter gunships. Our Mennonite delegation went, unarmed, with trust in the relationships developed over the years MCC has worked in Mindanao. This tremendous relational capital gave far greater security in the volatile areas we visited, as we depended at each step of the journey on friendships and partnerships that had cultivated a deep level of trust. Mennonites saw their journey in Mindanao primarily within the relational context of building bridges of understanding, compassion, and peace, not as acts of statecraft. To this end, our human relationships included an element of vulnerability and the reciprocation of trust.

Learning Posture

MCC began its second round of presence in the Philippines shortly after the United States lost the war in Vietnam. It was at a time when many North American churches had not been very prophetic about the war’s inherent evil. Former MCC Philippines Country Co-representative Earl Martin says that “Philippines taught us the church can be prophetic and working for justice.” During the Marcos dictator years, with a heavy US military presence, the Philippine church remained prophetic to oppressive powers and compassionate to the oppressed.

In order for the West to regain a prophetic stance to state power, a posture of learning needs to be adopted. North Americans so often have a “we know best” attitude coming from winning world wars, putting a man on the moon, and being the surviving empire from the cold war days. This impediment often blunts the ability to hear the soft voices of our colleagues who can see, much more clearly, the relevance of the Gospel to current communal, national, and global realities.

Service as Visible Expression of Christ

Recently I had a chance to do some election monitoring in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. I, a Christian, was seconded through a Muslim NGO to a Christian poll-watching body to monitor a Muslim election in a predominantly Christian country. MCCers have rendered service to civil society, whether the church or NGOs, that enlarges social space which resists the militarization of all things (relief, peacekeeping, law and order). Service, as Christians understand it, reaches out across the boundaries set by the state to those who may be considered enemies of the state. Works of compassion invoke the best of our own faith teachings, but may also urge the same from other faith groups we interact with. As a practical example, Filipino evangelical church leader N.C. has helped to organize and promote a “Bless the Muslim” day on September 11 in an effort to bridge the gulf between him and his religious neighbors.

Transparency and Transformation

Engaging in inter-faith conversation demands an air of transparency. Because of the dark history of Christianity riding on the coat-tails of western colonization, capitalistic greed, and nationalistic hegemony, Christians must be transparent with both themselves and others during inter-faith discussions. This transparency will demand an element of self-reflection. What are our motives? Why are we about inter-faith conversations? Is there something inherently transformational about the Gospel, for ourselves and the other, as we speak the message?

These kinds of questions, forced by the issue of transparency, move us into gray theological zones where the only way forward is more honesty with ourselves and others. Our answers to these questions will not come from our seminaries and theological think-tanks. They will come as we are honest with our uncertainties, take down our religious masks, and journey into our uncertainties. I have experienced a true seeing of the face of God as I walk with my religious neighbor.

Author’s note: Due to program prioritization, MCC closed the Philippines office in August 2005 and no longer has any direct programming in the Philippines.

Notes

[1] See Benjamin Baniaga and Helen Liechty Glick, eds., Where Will They Sit? The Life and Work of Mennonite Central Committee in the Philippines (Mennonite Central Committee, 2005).

[2] See http://www.peacebuilderscommunity.org for details of Dann’s involvement in Mindanao.

[3] http://www.nationmaster.com/country/rp/People

[4] See Hilario M. Gomez Jr., The Moro Rebellion and the Search For Peace: A Study of Christian-Muslim Relations in the Philippines (Zamboanga City, Philippines: Silsilah Publications, 2000).

[5] http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/rel_cat

[6] The tri-peoples of Mindanao refer to the first people (called Lumads), the Muslims who came later, and the Christians, usually settlers from Luzon and the Visayan Islands of the Philippines.

[7] Dr. S. Y. S-A, 27 October 2005 e-mail to author.

[8] E-mail of 21 October 2005: Response to questions in Gordon Janzen’s e-mail.

[9] Ibid.

[10] I have seen this phenomenon throughout Asia where the church is a minority, more specifically in Nepal, India, Myanmar, and the Philippines.

[11] Meaning “the Light” in Arabic.

[12] A barangay is the smallest unit of local government in the Philippines. It is equivalent to a village.

[13] An “Alim” is a learned scholar in Islam.

[14] The dominant clan in the Lanao area of Mindanao, who take pride in never being subjugated by foreign powers.

[15] Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGUs), paramilitary units made up of local citizens but under the command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), are trained as soldiers and stationed near their homes to “protect” their communities.

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Jon Rudy is MCC Asia Peace Resource Volunteer.

Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos. Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.

Making Wise the Simple calls Christians to “engage the entire Bible” as a “rich source for Christian faith and practice” (xix). This is the appropriate response to the Holocaust and centuries of anti-Semitism among Christians, who have often supported their prejudice by (mis)reading the Bible (xviiixix).

In the introduction, the author expresses many of her own perspectives on the interpretation of the Bible. Her reclamation of the Torah (the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses) by Christian readers articulates the approach of feminist biblical criticism within a “confessional arena” (xix). In order to provide a context for interpretation, VanWijk-Bos contends that we contemporary readers must “establish and evaluate the distance between us and the text, between our world and their world,” which manifests itself in terms of “cultural, social, and economic aspects as well as [the Bible’s] religious practices” (xx). Thus she states her belief that the Bible is not “without error” but that “a redemptive word from God [can] be found here” (xxi). She writes for those who share her conviction and have “[the] courage to ask disturbing questions of the text” (xxi). The book is divided into five main parts: The Torah in Bible and Tradition, The World of the Torah, The Making of a World (Genesis 1:1- 11:32), The Making of a People (Genesis 12:1-Deuteronomy 34:12), and Living with Torah.

Part 1 presents Jewish and Christian understandings of “Torah” and the people of God as articulated by the related texts of Exodus 19:3-6 and 1 Peter 2:9-10. The author concludes this part with an introduction to the treatment of strangers in the Old Testament.

Part 2 discusses the historical and cultural background to the interpretation of the Torah in its ancient context, although it mainly focuses on the final form of the text stemming from the postexilic period. This is both a strength and a weakness; the author attends very well to the concerns of these texts as they were being read and used at this later time, but she does not consider many of the implications for her readings if the texts originate from an earlier time. For example, she relegates the violence of many narratives to the postexilic period, which she terms a “time [which manifested] a need for identity, a desire for order, and a perspective on the world as ‘filled with violence’” (118). As a result, she can dismiss them as later additions or inferior reflections. But can these beliefs be found only in the postexilic period? Certainly not; they appear throughout the material preserved in the Old Testament, from the earliest times to the latest.

This dismissal of “inferior” passages or concepts appears at several points. For example,VanWijk-Bos rejects the relevance of the interpretation of Adam and Eve in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 rather quickly – in less than one paragraph (125). Similarly, in the context of discussing the stipulations for sexual relations in Leviticus, she advocates the validity of same-sex partnerships in a few short sentences without explaining her reasoning (227). Parts 3 and 4 address the narrative story contained in the Pentateuch and the major themes of the covenant made by God at Sinai. Part 5 discusses the characteristics of God (Who Regrets, Who Appears, Who Accompanies, Who is Prejudiced, Who is Passionate), and finally the move to the New Testament, especially in terms of Jesus and Paul on the interpretation of the Torah.

While the author raises serious questions about the way Christians have used or ignored the Old Testament, she presents an uneven treatment of the issues, narratives, and stipulations of the Pentateuch. Her point that the concern for the stranger in the OT must be brought more fully into conversation with the ethics of the NT is valid and necessary (300- 305). However, her presentation often fails to convince as a result of her inconsistencies and lack of arguments.

The book will certainly assist readers in delving into the Pentateuch, but they should view it as a place to begin the process of thinking about these issues and to find additional resources (many listed in the fine bibliography) for further reflection.

Steven J. Schweitzer, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, IN