I take a fairly rigorously pro-scriptural approach to theological topics. I’m a Christian, because I know Jesus Christ was resurrected, and I think this validates his instruction. The best evidence of his instruction is the text of the 5 gospels, the 4 canonical, plus Thomas. Since Jesus clearly taught the sovereignty of God, I take the canon as providential, and elevate the former significantly above the latter, but I think Thomas can shed light on the intentions behind some of the more gnomic representations of the canon.

Since Jesus taught extensively using Torah and Tanakh, I regard these as validated, at least in their instructional utility. Since Jesus authorized and comissioned the work of the apostles and disciples, I regard their instruction as having delegated authority. Jesus was not, is not a British analytical epistemologist, was not, is not a scientific materialist. While I appreciate and am informed by the insights of many schools, I subordinate these to the clear points of direct general revelation.

I am fond of recalling the Logos theology of the original apostolate. The eternal Word of God is the truth, the way and the life. The living man Jesus Christ, an historical person, was the pivotal transcendental point of contact between God and human experience in the world, and the clearest, most profound expression of the Word of God, the Logos of John 1:1, usually translated in Chinese as the Dao (yes, the same Dao of Lao Zi’s Dao De Jing, the Way). The real person of God is behind the corporeal reality of the incarnation, underlies it, preceeds it. The word of God, the canon of scripture, is a subsidiary and derivative representation which is also part of God’s distinctive expression of himself as a transcendental being, the Creator above and apart from His creation.

Authority is an essential thread in Christology. Authority derives from God in unapproachable light. It emanates according to his authoritative will expressed in Logos, incarnate in Christ, described by scripture, and communicated, perpetuated horizontally between people, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit approaching the alienated human from two directions: The external contact through peer evangelism creating cognitive access to the Message, the Logos; and the internal contact of the direct transcendent Spirit of God doing His Sovereign Will in preparing the essential, eternal spirit of the alienated human to recieve the Logos.

Ritual is distraction. It fulfills a function, socially, psychologically, but I have no sufficiently compelling evidence of experience or reason from scriptural doctrine to support sacramental rituals, in the formulation of the concilliar churches of christendom, the formal socially embodied structures of churches taking the name and claiming the authority of Christ. The councils were without exception conducted in a corrupt and ungodly manner, and I can lend them no authority, except in as much as a broken clock is right twice a day.

Creeds are treasure troves of ideas, designed to distill the essence of an orthodoxy. I enjoy and admire them. But that pinnacle of credal elegance and perspicacity, the Athanasian creed, was produced in order to fulfill a malign end of anathematization for political gain. The truths are eternal, but I will not accept that spiritual force, so I do not take any creed as Authoritative.

Ultimately, I have to reject the claims of Authority by the institutional successors of the Apostolic Church, both Catholic and Orthodox. They have erected barriers to the love of God which refute their self-aggrandizing claims to mediate it, and elevated the traditions of man above the general revelation of God to humanity. While God can and will use them as He sees fit, I will purposefully abstain from placing myself under such a spurious authority.

I am responsible for my own decisions. I am responsible to submit to the Authority of God, which is the authority of essential truth, as it is made manifest to me. My discipline and pursuit is and must be to conform my self in essence and in all of the particulars of my facticity, to the Truth which is God.

All that is, is in God. Without God, no thing is. Thus all that is, is the expression, the emanation of God; His creative expression of His nature, is nature. God created me to be distinct and apart from Him, to return to Him, so that we could enjoy each other. All of my perception communicates God’s expression to me. All of my interpretive mechanisms which convert my perceptions into the transcendental apperceptive unity which is my self, are the expressions of God, as mediated by my self, which He created as a part of His expression.

The glint of light on a grain of sand, the smell of frying fish, and the touch of a lover are all expressions of God, and as I perceive them, they are God’s expression to me. At the level of self-conscious being, the level of the human soul, there are emergent channels of expression, which are enabled and transmitted via a complex causal stack, but transcend their causal reduction, to form the intellectual and emotional links between people. The content conveyed on these channels is part of the expression of God. When I relate to another person, that is God’s word, the Logos, coming to me. If my perception is untainted, is pure, and my understanding is in conformity to the Holy, then all that I construe of that expression is perfect Truth.

But in truth there is a shadow on my soul. It is because of this impurity that my perceptions are impure. My interpretations are imperfect. It is because of the sin in me that there is sin outside of me, for without that prior shadow, I could not interpret the perception of reality as anything but the pure truth which is at the root of real being. That shadow is deep in my nature. Perception and interpretation are extremes along a continuum, and interpenetrate at all levels of my awareness. Sensory data is never pure, but always incorporates an interpretive element. Ideation is interpretation, given its value and meaning by it’s interconnection with its own structures and with the interface structures of perception, but it never escapes the ground of perception. It is impossible to conduct logic, for example, with reference to the transcendetal forms of truth, without a prior reference to the ground of experience, because to do so would deprive the algebraic operations of their semantic value, and reduce the process from logic to mechanism.

Do my perceptions incorporate a shadow element? Without the ability to stand outside of the system of my self and observe my own structure and the structural relations between my self and the other, this is not a directly empirically knowable matter. What I can observe, phenomenologically, is that the source of defect is often outside of my apperceptive awareness. Thus, it seems to lie outside the bounds of my ego, in otherness. It might enter in the mechanisms that underly my consciousness, but be restricted to my realization, and not part of the other in that sense.

The Way of Christianity is the sole vehicle revealed to humanity by Christ, by God incarnate, the purest form of the Message, the Logos, of God to humanity as intended by God to convey Truth to us. It’s purpose is to remove the shadow. (”For this purpose was the Son of God manifest: To destroy the works of the evil one.”) I can hypothesize but cannot prove that the shadow is a necessary part of the process of divine self-differentiation in expression, in emanation, into otherness. This is the process that made me an transcendentally apperceptive unitary consciousness distinct and different from the original consciousness, the Logos. If that is the case, then a theodicy is implied: That there is no ultimate, eternal evil, but that the transitory sufferings of the real evil that is present are necessary to our being as beings which can relate to God.

Being so made in the image of God, we relate to each other as echoes of God’s expression to us, through us. Conforming my will to His fulfills the purpose of my existence, and allows me to be a more perfect expression of God to others. We pull each other up, in a bootstrapping process. This is often painful, and flawed, but it is the only process we have been given. Thus, the essentially social nature of the Christian Way.