Fatherly Advice

"God does not delight in numbers! You count your tens of thousands, but God counts those who will be saved; you the immeasurable grains of sand, but I the vessels of election. Nothing is so magnificent in God's sight as a purified reason and a soul made perfect by the doctrines of truth. One cannot offer anything to God that is worthy of the one who created all things, from whom are all things and to whom are all things." Gregory of Nazianzus Oration 42.8

I've never been a "numbers guy." You know, the guy that sits in the vision-casting meeting and sets specific goals for numerical growth. I've known many of them (numbers guys), and as much as the need for numbers annoys me, I'm not totally immune to its seductive lure. This is the time of year when registrations start rolling in and I start sweating over whether or not we'll have enough campers this summer--a valid concern when the result of too few means we'd have to shut the dorrs on the few who come (not going to be the case this year). Gregory was given the awesome task of preaching the full deity of Jesus Christ in a city that was dominated by the opinion that while He was "divine," he was not of the "same nature" as the Father. That's a gross over-simplfication of perhaps the most significant theological debate in the Church's history. At the end of his time in Constantinople the tide had turned in his favor, and yet those who would agree with Gregory concerning the Son would not follow him down the biblical/logical path that considered the Spirit, too, as "of the same nature" as the Father. He was still in the minority. It is from this vantage point that Gregory looks back in confidence that the significance of his work in that (at one time) little congregation called Anastasia (Resurrection) was not determined by her size, nor would his work in the Council of Constantinople 381 be descredited even if the majority was against him. Perhaps confidence isn't the word for whatever it was Gregory felt at the time (he basically fled the scene...again). And yet no one in the bounds of orthodox Christianity reads the Creed ratified by that Council (Nicaea 381) to say anything other than that the Holy Spirit is of the same nature as the Father. Which it doesn't literally say...(But it does say it.) Score another one for the little guy.