As I write, we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension. As Christians we take one day a year to focus on Christ’s Ascent into Heaven as an essential chapter in the story of our salvation. Unfortunately, for the other 364 days in the year, modern Christianity seems to be more interested in assent than ascent — we fixate on belief as the standard of what marks us as Christian. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the Resurrection of the body? Do you believe Scripture to contain all things necessary to our salvation? While these are essential questions, they are hardly the whole of what it means to follow Jesus. Contrary to what we’re told, the faith which is reckoned to us as righteousness, is more than just acknowledging the truth of a phrase on a t-shirt or a status update.
The pagan, Roman philosopherVictorinus was one of the biggest public intellectuals of his day. He served as the official rhetor of the city of Rome, translated Aristotle into Latin, and while he was still living, a statue of him was put up in the Roman forum. He was like Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and Thomas Friedman all rolled into one — he was kind of a big deal. Augustine, in the Confessions, recounts a story about the philosopher, as told to him by the aged Christian Simplicianus.
Simplicianus and Victorinus were great friends, despite Simplicianus being a Christian. One day Victorinus texted (via wax tablet) Simplicianus to say, “we gotta get together, I’ve got big news (smily emoji, church emoji, sparkle emoji).” As I remember Augustin telling it, the two old men met-up halfway between Milan and Rome, at a Starbucks just off the A1 highway, where, because it was almost Lupinalia (the October festival of wolves), pumpkin spiced lattes were back!
“Ok” said Victorinus, “here goes… My brother Simplicianus, I’m a Christian now.” After a double take accompanied by spewing a mouth full of latte all over the inlaid mosaic floor, Simplicianus, replied, “WHAAAAT?! I’m so happy for you! Where are you going to church?” “Church?” replied Victorinus, “I’m afraid, I don’t have the luxury of being so public with my faith. I have a new book coming out, I’m doing a series of op-ed’s on Homer for the Times of Londinium, and if I were to be recognized as a Christian, they’d drop me like a hot potato — a root vegetable of which I’m predicting the discovery, circa 1500.”
“Oh, well then,” replied Simplicianus, “you’re not a Christian after all.” “Not a Christian?!” cried Victorinus, “I read the Gospels daily! I truly believe that Christ was God incarnate, taught perfect wisdom, lived perfect love, died on Calvary for our sins, defeated Death for all time in his glorious resurrection and ascended into Heaven. I await the day of His coming in great glory and pray to God daily for His most perfect salvation! My brother, I am as truly Christian as they come!”
“But you don’t go to church.” Said Simplicianus, “therefore you cannot be a Christian.” He continued, “I will not believe it, nor will I rank you among the Christians unless I see you in the Church of Christ.” “Do the walls of a church make a Christian?,” asked Victorinus, and Simplicianus replied that, in a sense they do: one cannot be a Christian outside of Christian community, outside the mystical Body of Christ. The two carried on this dialogue for years until one day, the old philosopher was convinced. He asked Simplicianus to accompany him to Church where he joined the life of the community, received instruction, and was eventually baptized into the Body of Christ.
For the Early Church, for the Medieval Church, for the Church of the Reformation in Geneva, Wittenberg, and Canterbury, and for generally everybody right up until the time of the Enlightenment, to be a Christian was not simply to believe in the reality of God; to be a Christian was not merely acknowledging the Biblical narratives to be true. To be a Christian was not to grant assent, logical or otherwise, to a series of propositions. This kind of belief was a precursor, a baby step towards beginning the Christian life, not the end goal.
Now, strangely, the belief part seems to have subsumed the church part. Being a Christian is all about assenting to the proposition that there is a God (somewhere) and that Jesus did, or at least taught, something important — and if you can’t assent to these, it’s hypocritical for you to even visit a church.
If I were to meet with a couple preparing for marriage, lets call them Larry and Wilma, and ask why they want to get married, it would be reasonable for Wilma to say something like, “we’ve been together for a couple of years and we’re ready to deepen our commitment.” Even if she said, “we barely know each other, but in our home country our marriage was arranged, and we believe that with perseverance and God’s blessing, we will work it out,” I’d call them unusual but brave, but if instead she were to say, “I fully acknowledge the existence of Larry, and he feels sure that the reports of my own history are factually based, so we’re pretty much ready to get hitched,” I would think they were totally nuts.
Wilma’s belief in the existence of Larry is a baby step on the road to a life of selfless commitment, but it is emphatically not the whole of married life. In the same way, one who believes in God, even if she has memorized a couple of Biblical quotations, and prays during times of extreme inflight turbulence, is not in Augustine’s sense, a Christian. Even one who has not a single doubt about the veracity of every word in Scripture, even one who listens to Christian radio, reads Anne Lamott, and prays the rosary, but is not part of a Christian community, is not a Christian according to Augustine’s usage of the term.
To be a Christian is to enter within the walls of the Church, it is to become a part of the Body of Christ. It is to hear the Gospel proclaimed, to hear the Word of God preached, to pray with the People of God and to receive God’s grace in the sacraments. We need to get better at teaching and showing people that belief, whether you’ve got it or you don’t, is not the end all be all. Real faith in God is not to believe in His existence, nor is it to grant assent to the veracity of claims made about His Son. To believe in God, to embrace real faith, is to enter into the walls of the Church, to fall down before His altar, and to give your life, body and soul, over to His love.
If the world now teaches us to think that Christianity is nothing more than a sense of certainty regarding a set of propositions, and that those who lack this certainty aren’t welcome within the Church, can we reclaim an Augustinian Christianity in which beliefs about the Church are secondary to life within the Church?
The Rev. Bertie Pearson serves as Vicar of San Francisco de Asís, Austin’s only monolingual Spanish Episcopal church, and as chaplain of El Buen Samaritano outreach ministry. Before moving back to his hometown of Austin, Bertie served as priest in charge of Holy Innocents and St. John the Evangelist churches in San Francisco, California. Prior to his ordination, Bertie played drums in punk bands, produced electronic music and DJ’ed in dance clubs, all of which he pursued as a plan B, just in case the priest-thing didn’t work out. Bertie, his wife Rahel, daughter Helena and faithful dog Ida, live in East Austin. He is serving as an adjunct faculty member in the seminary’s Hispanic Church Studies program this semester.
