R252: Why can't we all have the simple Gospel of Jesus?

One reads the lament: "I'm tired of all of this theological stuff. Why can't we all have the simple gospel of Jesus? Too much head and not enough heart, that's the problem with Christianity today."

    1. It ignores the paradigm problem (see HERE). Most people who speak of "the simple Gospel" fail to remember that there is no THE simple Gospel; there are almost as many "simple Gospels" as there are sects. Each person reads in the many things in the Bible the meanings what one's paradigm dictates and selects for emphasis what one's paradigm indicates is to be emphasized. Where passages seem to conflict, a paradigm will show why, however opposed they may be, they mean the same thing. The ethelothreskeia ("self-invented piety, self-invented worship") in Col. 2:23 never means what it says for the individualist. One can always find a "spiritual," virtual, or metaphorical meaning for verses one doesn't like (e.g. John 6:53-54, though the entire passage containing these verses makes the literal sense very clear).
    2. If you look at an edition of the Greek New Testament with the variants of each verse found in the manuscript tradition--the ancients didn't have Xeroxes; they often enough made errors, some due to the preceding point--you will see that knowing what the words of the Gospel are is sometimes hardly the "simple" matter that one may thing. Far worse however, are the translations; they reflect the penchants of the translators. Does you Bible call the Creator (in the opening verses of John's Gospel) a "Word"? (The Greek calls the Creator the REASON of God here; St. Paul calls Him the WISDOM of God, where wisdom is practical reason.) Does it reveal the 26 instances of energy terminology in St. Paul? Does it say that worshipers become new "ceatures" rather than new "creatings" (in accordance with the Greek)? Does it say "image and assimilation" in Gen. 1:26? If not, it is biased against what the Greek original actually says. So beware of translators if you want the original. Translators' assumptions about reality and religion distort the result just as much as a reader can distort a translation because of the reader's own biases (paradigm).
    3. The urge to be simple fails to see that a belief or slogan not buttressed by reason is simply a superstition. Belief is not the end but the foundation of Worship and other piety. Adherents of every religion belief their religion is true. There can be too much head and not enough heart; and there can be too little head--in fact this is oftener the case. The banishing of reason leads to the self-invented religion (ethelothreskía) condemned by St. Paul in Col. 2:23. Is that part of "the simple Gospel"? But conflicting beliefs cannot be true, unless your definition of logic includes trashing reason and logic--and the Creator, who is the Reason and Wisdom of God, according to St. John and St. Paul, respectively . . . from which it follows that the cosmos is logikós "rational." Even your hardened would-be literalist will decline to obey St. Peter's admonition (1 Pet. 3:15) to be ever ready for a rational reply to everyone asking us for the reason of the hope in us.
    4. To slight reason is to slight one of the two dynámeis of the Icon of God--human Essence--namely, the reason and freewill that distinguish humans from the beasts. Isn't that a high price to pay for simplism (or simple-mindedness or whatever)? Is that part of "the simple Gospel"?

Spiritual maturity requires, at a minimum, balancing the various sides of truth and recognizing how one's premises influence one. A Gnostic will disallow any role of materiality (e.g. sacraments) in religion--or perhaps only Incarnation but not Resurrection. Combining a critical attitude with a childlike embrace of Christ's love has characterized the Fathers and Mothers of the Orthodox Church but few leaders on the religious scene, especially the academic and sectarian today.

Most deep questions are simple in one respect and complex in another. See HERE for more on this. Thus, the doctrine of the Trinity--that God is one in a given respect (Essence) and three in another respect (Hypostáseis) is simple to state, but far from simple to think out. And so it is with other doctrines. Most deep questions have two sides; the trick is to balance them in a proper manner. Some matters, like Christ's Presence in the Eucharist, are so deep that they just have to be accepted or rejected, scarcely analysed. The simplicitizer ignores the complexity of a simple formula; s/he will have reality simple. Even those who know that in their given specialties (atomic science, accounting, whatever) simplicity won't cut it, make an exception for religion, in which a few simple (undefined, unanalsed, and ultimately therefore meaningless superstitions) are made to constitute the entire edifice. Even a would-be literatalist can reject 1 Pet. 3:15, which admonishes the reader to be ever ready for a logical defence to anyone asking for the reason for the hope in one.
The other side of the coin is the scholastic impetus to make everything as fine-tuned as possible, distinguishing each item into endless subdistinctions (some overlapping); e.g. the Western Scholastic twelve kinds of Grace.