One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic

All who are part of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ are stirred by the solemn description of the Bride of Christ penned long ago at the early Councils of the Church.

 



 

ONE - the mocker may, with some apparent justification, scorn this idea yet it remains in all our hearts a conviction that there will not be two, three or 3003 churches that meet their Lord on the Day - just ONE.  We struggle to express this very often and we do not agree who is in and out but the Oneness is not a question.

 

HOLY - here the mocking observer points to any number of ecclesiastical political evils throughout history, to glaring inequalities, to cultures of abuse and who knows what else.  The mocking observer ought to pause however for without God there is no holiness and none of those 'sins of the Church' are sins at all.  The holiness of the Church is a gift from above, variously grasped and expressed in too lesser a degree but never absent and firmly destined for the Bridal Day.

 

CATHOLIC - at which the Protestant mumbles worriedly yet should not.  The church is not a race or a tribe, a nation or a structure - it is catholic, global, entire, planetary, multi-communal, multi-era, uniquely inclusive.

 

APOSTOLIC - the Church is not simply Jehovah's Witness (to quote Isaiah), or Red Letter Christians (to quote the equally-well-meaning Tony Campolo) but is derived from the teaching of the Apostles and the full appreciation of the meaning of incarnation, substitution, resurrection, ascension and finality of the Messiah.

 

Wow.  In just four words - so much!!! 

 

But not enough.

 

When Professor Whitley lectured at Oxford a century ago he was brave enough to point out that in this crucial formulary the early Fathers forgot something.  It was not a minor omission.  As we all know, omissions are harder to spot that mistakes.  But this omission was a very big mistake because it is the omission of what is, arguably, the Founder of the Church's only commission.

 

We believe in one, holy, catholic, apostolic, MISSIONARY Church . . .

 

As my previous blog sadly implies (and as has been my experience and perpetration as a leader), conciliar meetings of varying branches of this Church continue to damn the missing word with faint praise, never denying it while never promoting it to a place where it is held tenaciously as the essence to which other tenets must often bow. 

Chu Chu Church

I imagine myself on a railway station.  This particular railway is only one of several that link the our region with the Destination City.

The railway that I travel on (my kind of ticket is not accepted on the other lines) has introduced a new way of operating from next summer.  The track systems  manager and the operations manager will lose their jobs and a new manager will look after everything (if she/he can).  Sometimes the thirteen trains a day will be reduced to six because there will probably be less drivers.  There will certainly be less maintenance engineers.  We are assured, however, that the railway will in fact be far more efficient at moving people to the Destination City.  I wonder how assured I am by this assurance.

Then there is the Big Railway down the road.  With its 42 trains a day (admittedly using some very old and varied but decorative rolling stock)  there is really no competition in this region.  It does have problems with the public however as it forbids women train drivers (though they can sit in the cab). 

Meanwhile, in the Destination City, the railways' purchaser, owner, inventor and builder looks at the diminishing passenger numbers from this particular region - which is his great concern.

 

 

The 14 Billion Question

Fine.  So the world is 14 billion years old possibly - and no-one really cares (Novenber 8th).  After all it is SUCH a big number.

 

Such a big number.

 

In fact, it is such a big number that it is the number of bullets produced in the world each year (approximately, but probably a safer statistic than the age of the universe one).

 

Such a big number.

 

So big, in fact, that it is twice the number of human beings on the planet.  So, in case you or I thought there was a bullet with my name on it . . .

 

 

. . . the bad news is that every year there are two.

The 18 Billion Question

It was just another Quiz question. Daytime TV is full of them as best I can see (which is not very much)

 

'How Long ago was the Big Bang?'  Was it

 

a) 14 Billion Years

b) 32 Billion Years

c) 191 Billion Years

 

I have increasingly felt that quiz masters will need to move away from questions about the Bible.  Such is the common ignorance that a question like, Who in the Bible was put in a Lion's Den? is liable to get any answer - The Pope,Nelson Mandella, Robinson Crusoe.

 

In this brave new world of scriptural ignorance what better substitute than the Big Bang?  An absolutely verifiable, without doubt certainty that materialist science has given us.  And the answer is . . .

 

 

Well I knew the answer was 14 billion - perhaps because I am very sceptical that 14 billion really is the answer.  The man questioned was doing very well to this point.  He looked perplexed.  He guessed the middle one (a method for all multiple choice questions).  He was wrong.  He shrugged his shoulders at the answer - '"No idea" - and moved on to the lead singer of Bananarama or whatever.

 

This was interesting.  Not because he didn't know, but because he didn't care.  His answer was crazily wrong, the other answer bogglingly wrong but it made no difference.

 

You see, once you attribute the world to the god of Longevity it does not make any difference how many billions of years, trillions of years, you estimate it as.  However long ago the supposed Big Bang was, and whatever happened before it, the only question that gives Beginning any meaning is,

 

"Who was speaking at the time?"