Balance of Time

Holt’s hourglass framework in his book Thirsty for God provides a good way to understand the divergences of the reformation and the ways we can learn from each other.

It is surprising how fast the narrowing started. I’ve read that in the first centuries the Christian Jewish churches were cut off from their Gentile counterparts, which quickly lead to attitudes toward Jews espoused by Chrysostom. Then as Holt showed in the previous chapters the hourglass narrowed further with the euro-centric church.

With the reformation we see the hourglass widen in terms of the diversity of the Church world wide, but each expression has its own narrowing of understanding and tradition. The great joy of our time, Holt alludes to in his introduction, is that those streams are once again flowing together and enjoying our common tradition.

Holt has suggested that the early Christian theologians have too dim a view of the natural world just as Webber suggested that the medieval Mystics had too strong an emphasis on Eros. I have liked the balance Chesterton has brought to the excrescences of the faith. In Saint Francis he suggests that the dark ages, with its otherworldliness and extreme asceticism was needed to cleanse the world of pagan naturalism, so that a true respect for creation and Creator could be attained. In Orthodoxy he asserts that the excrescences balance themselves across Christendom.