Abstract
W. H. Vanstone apparently likened the Church ‘to a swimming pool in which all the noise comes from the shallow end’ and we need to look for our beliefs ‘from the deep end’. This book is not from the shallows.
A detailed study of Latin grammatical nuance, focusing on sermons of Augustine of Hippo, post-City of God, opens up a lively investigation into what Natalya Cherry calls the credere crescendo. The theological importance in understanding the difference between credere eum/Christum, credere ei/Christo and credere in eum/in Christum – to believe God/Christ, belief in God/Christ, and believing into God/Christ – opens up a journey not primarily about semantics but crucially about what the Church is, or is supposed to be, in relation to God/Christ, relating to itself and to the world.
‘Believing into’ feels grammatically clumsy, yet it enables a refreshed understanding of the dynamic, relational reality that God in Christ calls us into. The ‘glue’, as Cherry puts it, is the Holy Spirit that energizes and enables relational faith and human flourishing. ‘Believing into’ is about far more than the existence of God or facts about Christ. This book challenges a transactional approach to belief/salvation and repositions the centrality of a relational understanding that believing into Christ asserts.
The journey takes us back to sermons of Augustine that had a certain style and imagery that Cherry suggests was rhetorical, not only to keep the listeners engaged, but crucially to reinforce the dynamic, loving, cherishing heart of faith in God and incorporation into Christ which credere eum, believing into, emphasizes.
The journey continues with a study of the development of this thinking found in the works of St Bede, who was far more than just a historian, Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. Cherry traces changes in translation and interpretation that she suggests led to the distinctive importance of why believing into Christ/God disappeared from biblical and theological work from Aquinas onwards.
This book is far more than an examination of a grammatical detail that has been lost, ignored or forgotten. For rediscovering what ‘believing into’ means for faith, the sacraments, the business of being church and witnessing in the world is far too important to be of interest only in the academy.
It is timely to revisit what believing into does to our relationships that are shaped by cherishing and love, incorporation into Christ and interdependence. There are some of us who believe that, for churches to be healthy and flourishing, to be fit for purpose, there needs to be an intentional focus on building a more relational culture. Flourishing church communities, believing into Christ, cherishing God and each other will become light and salt in an often dark and tasteless world.
This important book is not only a journey of rediscovery; it also opens up a future journey of exploration – challenging and encouraging the Church to face the ways in which we exclude, oppress, marginalize or ignore people. This is a book that gives a refreshing and challenging theological underpinning to the Church to be a beacon, an icon, a flourishing and relational body, intimately connected with the living God, by believing into Christ, enabled by the glue.
Well worth venturing into the deep end.