Sermon: Psalm 105 and The Cure of Memory

I had the opportunity to proclaim the Gospel at the Church of the Nazarene College Hill this last Sunday. The congregation was quite warm and welcoming. I thank them for the opportunity and hope to be back with them in August. For certain, my daughter will again partake of their VBS.

The sermon is titled the "Cure of Memory" and is taken from Psalms 105-106. As always, some differences appear between my text below and the actual given sermon.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This weekend, every year, we celebrate Memorial Day, a day to remember the men and women who have lost their lives in military combat. However, even though I have veterans in my family tree, we rarely celebrated with that intent. To do so would require a certain somberness, a solemnity, towards those men and woman. What did we do (and I don’t think my family was alone in this)? Barbeque, party, and the like. The same with the Fourth of July as well, although then we added fireworks. For many Americans, Memorial Day is the day that pools open and the vacation season starts, to be ended with that other great national holiday, Labor Day. These sorts of seasons, just like the Christmas Shopping season that starts around Halloween nowadays, are formative in our cultural and national consciousness: they help to define, implicitly to us and explicitly to foreigners looking in, what it means to be American. Since these seasons are grouped around holidays honoring military service, industrious productivity, and the birth of Jesus Christ, you’d think we were patriotic, hard-working, and intensely religious people. And that may be true. But more than that, we celebrate these days without memory of what they are for. Rather, we commemorate the start of our vacations and our splurges of consumerism. We have forgotten what the days were for, even though, on an intellectual level, we know their true meaning.

This forgetfulness, though, is not an exclusively American problem. It is, rather, a human problem, inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve. Reading Genesis 2 and 3, we can get the picture that they had short memories even before the Fall: Adam apparently never told Eve about the command of God, nor did he remember to stop her while in the midst of temptation. Adam and Eve forgot that communion with the God in whose “image and likeness” they were made was better than forcing a likeness based on illicit knowledge. Cain quickly forgot that animal sacrifice was better than vegetal, just as animal skins were a better covering than fig leaves. And so it goes.

But how do we turn this around? The Scriptures are full of calls to us to ‘remember’; but what shall we remember? How shall we make sure that our faulty memories have what they need to overcome, in the Spirit, this inherited proclivity? Psalm 105 begins to answer this question for us in the first 6 verses:

Oh, give thanks to the Lord; call upon His Name;
Make known His deeds among the peoples!
Sing to him, sing praises to Him;
tell of all His wondrous works!
Glory in His holy Name;
let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!
Seek the Lord and His strength;
seek His presence continually!
Remember the wondrous works that He has done,
His miracles, and the judgments He uttered,
O offspring of Abraham, His servant,
children of Jacob, His chosen ones!

To engage in remembrance is to worship, to call on His Name, to sing praises to Him, to tell of all His wondrous works, and – most importantly – to seek His presence continually. Psalm 105 and 106, working as one psalm in two parts, proceed to do just this: to tell the story of God’s gracious and longsuffering dealings with the “offspring of Abraham” throughout their tumultuous history all the way from the Patriarchs to the end of the period of the Judges. Why include this retelling of Israel’s history in the Psalms? Don’t we already have an account of this in Exodus through Judges? Yes, but here is a condensed version, easily memorized through the chanting or singing of it. Here is a musical way to always keep the remembrance of God in your heart, in your mind, and on your lips. St. Paul encourages us to “address one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Eph. 5:19) as a way of being “filled with the Spirit” so that we might produce His fruits of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). This recitation of history in the context of corporate worship is a spiritual pedagogy, a discipline towards becoming what we are predestined to be, that is, “conformed to the image of [the] Son,” our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we might “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).

This pedagogy of Christlikeness gives meaning to the rest of these two Psalms. Why ‘call to mind’ Old Testament history? St. Paul again comes to our aid, telling us in 1Corinthians 10 that “these things [he is speaking of the wilderness wandering period of the Exodus] took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.’ We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as types, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (6-13). All things are given to us, we who have been joined to Christ by faith and baptism, as Paul says here. The events are interesting as history, but they are more than just a mere recording of events in the past for antiquarian interests. Rather, they are the stories that form us in Christ, giving us tools to fall back in our fight against sin, corruption, and the Devil. Since we are in Christ and have the Spirit, though, the difference between us and the types is that where they failed, we have the chance to succeed or escape without failing.

This reminds us, then, of the true purposes of worship. How easily we forget that our God is “the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, [who] does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24-25)! Our worship is not for God’s sake, as if He were lacking in glory or honor, since He is the very Creator of all things! Nor is it to placate Him, as if He had thunderbolts at the ready: such is an image of Zeus, not the true God who rules the storm and the sea and the earth, who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, [who] is good to all, and His mercy is over all that He has made” (Ps. 145:8-9). Rather, worship – the proper giving of thanks and honor to the God whom it is due – is for our sakes to reorient us back to the God who made us and who redeemed us by taking on human nature in Christ Jesus. To worship God is to become truly and properly human, to become more like Jesus Christ, the One who through entering into our corrupted existence has fully conquered all the forces that have set themselves towards our destruction.

Let us note this further by returning to Psalm 105. The Psalmist instructs us right away, as the first part of our memory work, to “give thanks to the Lord.” What happens to us when we forget to do this? “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, rather they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom. 1:21-23). At this point, we can see that this is more than just a human lapse in memory, to ‘forget’ in the Scriptures has a more forceful connotation, it is an active neglect and a conscious turning away from God. Forgetting, in this sense, makes us less human, since it leads to “envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness…gossip, slander, God-hating, insolence, haughtiness, boastfulness, evil-invention, parental disobedience, foolishness, faithlessness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness” (1:29-32, slightly modified for rhetorical purposes). Instead of being filled with the Holy Spirit who is God’s Life, we become filled with “all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice” (1:29). Giving thanks acts as an antidote to the corruption in the world.

St. Peter puts it this way: “[Jesus our Lord’s] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you for being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pt. 1:3-8). “Giving thanks,” that is, turning to God in worship, is participating in the ‘divine nature’ by becoming like Christ, the one who is faithful and virtuous, knowledgeable of God and self-controlled, steadfast and godly, brotherly affectionate and Love in Himself. It is the exercise of becoming truly human by being joined to Christ Himself. No wonder the Lord’s Supper is called the Eucharist, which roughly translated means “the Thanksgiving.” In our thanksgiving, we join to Christ and our nourished and strengthened to become more and more like Him.

At this point, we must bring in the last piece of the puzzle for the healing of our memories. If we are to become like Christ by ‘calling Him to mind’ in worship, we cannot go it alone. Psalm 105 gives its rich commands to the “offspring of Abraham” and the “children of Jacob” (v. 6). As a community, bonded together through the covenantal promises given to their righteous forefather, they were to gather and accomplish this great and holy task. We, as the inheritors of Abraham’s promises through Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:9), have the same command: “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24-25). In this assembly, in this place, you have a holy purpose. As you glorify God, giving praise and thanks, remembering His mighty works of redemption in Israel and, especially, through Christ, you are “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same Image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). Together you are becoming more like Christ, shining the glory that man “falls short of” (Rom. 3:23) out to the world as a City set on a hill, letting “your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16), that is so that they may be turned from the way of destruction and brought into Christ’s light and love which He gives for the salvation of the whole world. Amen.

On Judging

"Judge not, that you be not judged." (Matthew 7:1 -- NKJV)

"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the Law and judges the Law. But if you judge the Law, you are not a doer of the Law, but a judge. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, He who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?" (James 4:11-12 -- ESV, slightly modified)

"I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people -- not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler -- not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the Church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you." (1 Corinthians 5:9-13)

"Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!" (1 Corinthians 6:2-3)

"Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand." (Romans 14:4)

"Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment" (John 7:24)

It should be clear, I hope, that the question of whether or not Christians are to be judges of the character, actions, or eternal destiny of others -- whether inside or outside the Church -- is filled with tension.

The reason I list these passages (and there are, of course, more) is due to the recent spat on various social media platforms about the Supreme Court, DOMA, and the possibility of legalizing homosexual marriage. I've seen accusations, counter-accusations, counter-counter-accusations, and so on. "You're being judgmental!" And, as seems to be true in the Christian world online these days, there is the inevitable descent to name-calling, ad hominems, red herrings, and general snarky "well-I'm-right-and-if-you-don't-agree-with-me..." on either side of the issue. Not only is there no agreement on the issue, or on the validity of judgment over the issue, there is not an ounce of civility to be had. Part of this, I think, is that civil dialogue has been replaced, culturally, by a sort of weak-spined relativistic pluralism, especially evident amongst evangelicals of a younger sort.

What I'm encouraging, and hope to find time to write on in the near future, is a return ad fontes, to the source, to the Scriptures and the historical witness of the Church, as the starting-point for understanding what is going on and how we, the Church, might address it properly. The texts above stand as a initial salvo. Exegetical work needs to be done.

A few notes, though, from my own point of view, that might be important in setting out terms for debate. (Note, please, that I'm treating this in my normal fashion as an intra-Church debate. Theoretically, we share the same presuppositions, but don't necessarily do so with those "outside". I'm not interested, at this point, of debating with those outside of the Church community. Not that such debate isn't important or necessary, but I don't think the Church is quite ready for that...yet).

1) Christendom is over. We don't have the political clout of yesteryear. No emperors (or presidents or supreme courts) are out to protect our interests.

2) The "Religious Right" and "Moral Majority" are over. See #1. The moral bankruptcy of both major political parties in the USA is well known. We religious folk have been played as suckers by those in power. And we will continue to be suckers as long as we suck at the teet of those in power. If you want to fight homosexuality as a political issue, that is fine, but don't pretend that Republicanism or conservativism are just the political expression of Christianity. They aren't and they never were. Neither, though, is Democratism or liberalism. All of them are indebted to an Enlightenment rejection of the authority of the Church over any but the most private matters (if you don't believe me, read Locke's "Letter[s] Concerning Toleration" -- thanks to Caleb for the correction). Politically, the name of the game is the fact-value division: any attempt to overcome it is, frankly, treasonous. And it is treated as such by both parties.

3) Don't assume people "outside" care about your opinion, no matter how Biblically based it is. We've lost our moral voice (the Catholic sex-scandal, Ted Haggard, etc.), which will take generations of hard, humble work to reestablish. When we say something is Biblical, people automatically see hypocrisy. We cannot blame that on them, either. Judgment starts in the House of God, I've read somewhere.

4) Don't assume people "inside" care about your opinion, no matter how Biblically based it is. See #3. Same reasons apply.

5) Civility is important. Learn it. Being arrogant, brusque, or hasty does not equal a good argument.

6) Proper authority is important. Here is one I think we especially need to attend to. What constitutes "proper" authority in God's Church? Just because you are a college professor of Bible does not make you an authority. Authority is derived from the holy Spirit through a life of holiness, compassion, mercy, justice, compassion, long-suffering, humility, holiness, and compassion.

That should get us started.

Emasculated Evangelism

Tonight, while going through the argument of St. Paul to the Romans, my students and I stumbled across something that I don't think I've ever fully grasped before.

We started off by talking about how the oikonomia, or pattern, of salvation in Paul's writings doesn't end with either justification or the saying of a Sinner's Prayer. Rather, it starts with God's calling, proceeds to the justification/vindication of the Cross (I am passionately against those who argue that justification happens at the moment of individual belief: it happened at the Cross and in the Resurrection -- Jesus' vindication/justification, of which we take part in through faith and baptism), leads to sanctification (being made into Temples of the holy Spirit), and, finally, glorification -- that is, sharing in God's glory, which was always His intent. Man originally (and Paul seems to mean Adam as a sort of Everyman) "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things" (1:23)which has caused all to "fall short of the glory of God" (3:23). However, since we have died to Death in Christ's death (appropriated through baptism), we are raised in newness of life to "seek for glory and honor and immortality" through "patience in well-doing" (2:7). This means that any sufferings, whether they are persecutions or the last grasps of Death at dominion over us through sin, are "not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us" (8:18 -- the ESV has "to us" at the end of this verse, which seems to me to miss the point: St. Paul seems to have Mt. Tabor in mind here). This "glory" is none other than the glory we originally spurned and fell short of: the glory of God. That is, man's chief end is to participate in God's glory, which Jesus Himself prayed for in the Gospel of John: "The glory that You have given Me I have given them" (17:22), which was "the glory that I had with You before the world existed" (17:5). Theosis, in other words, is man's telos or goal.

Here's where it gets interesting (as if it wasn't already interesting enough):

St. Paul concludes this section, after talking about how the whole of Creation is waiting to be released into the hands of the glorified "sons" [that is, inheritors, both male and female] of God, by saying that this will be accomplished when we have "the redemption of our bodies" (Rom. 8:23). The resurrection, our ultimate vindication/justification as "sons of God", just as it was Jesus' ultimate vindication ("with power") as Son of God (1:4), is the moment of glorification. "For in this hope we were saved..." Wait, what? What hope? The hope of glorification through resurrection. The hope of the liberation of all Creation through that resurrection, when God will be "all in all" (1 Cor. 15: 28).

How many evangelistic moments include this? I asked my students for a show of hands. None were raised. Mine certainly was not. I was "saved" because I wanted to go to Heaven when I died. I believed Jesus could accomplish that for me (or rather, that He already had). While this is true, in its own way, it isn't the hope that St. Paul is talking about here in Romans 8. Rather, he is talking about something much greater: the death of Death. He is talking about the original purpose of God, not to be clothed in animal skins (Gen. 3:21), but to be clothed in Christ ("put on" Col. 3 and elsewhere), in the "house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. 5:1 -- possibly Paul's only reference to the virginal conception of Christ). The hope of the Gospel is, in Paul's trenchant phrase, "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).

We need to change our evangelism. This is the hope in which we are saved: that God will gather all things in heaven and on earth under one Head, even Christ, and fill them with His glory. Hallelujah!

On Detachment from the World

For a long time, some of which is cataloged on this blog, I was averse (to put it mildly) to any sort of asceticism or "world-denying" practice. Put simply, in the terms of one of my collegiate teachers (and now colleagues) that was dualism. And dualism is bad. How can one deny the world that God had created (Gen. 1), that He so loved (John 3), and that He is going to recreate (Rev. 21 & 22)? That and, of course, asceticism was somehow thoroughly Platonic and therefore a corruption of the purely Hebraic Christian inheritance (I knew this because I was told so; I hadn't read a lick of Plato). So, whenever I would encounter language in the Fathers or the early Christians that spoke in terms of world renunciation, I would discount it: sometimes I would discount the Father or saint who spoke it as well. They were deluded by philosophy (Col. 2:8), I said, and since I didn't want to be contaminated by such things (for, of course, I was free of such philosophical influences), I must reject them.

This led, as I've spoken about before, to my statement that "either the Holy Spirit has abandoned the Church since the days of the Apostles, or He has abandoned me."

What I didn't understand, though, was the purpose behind denying the world. What I didn't understand, though, was the necessity of denying the world. What I didn't understand, though, was that to love the world, as Christ loves the world (John 3:16), required that I follow the path of Christ to crucifixion. One can only inherit the world, can only be meek, if one "daily takes up the cross, denies himself, and follows [Jesus]". But, why?

Part of my problem was that I thought sin was the problem: sin understood as the breaking of God's divine Law, codified in the Torah, for which I stood condemned. While this certainly is a problem, it isn't the problem. Sin can be taken care of through repentance. All the Scriptures assume this, even Leviticus, which is arguably the most concerned with the effects of sin in the context of blood sacrifice. Repentance, of course, is a good and necessary thing (as I've argued here before). But, there is something more than moral rebellion happening in the world. How do we account for the "righteous pagan"? The person who, even if they outwardly hate Christ, act more like Christ than many Christians (especially oneself), especially in light of Matthew 25 (note that the "sheep" don't know they served the Master)? There is something more that I had missed. To deny the world because sin was the main problem would be to say, ultimately, that the world was inextricably tied to sin. The whole creation would be totally depraved, to use some old Calvinist terminology. This would lead straight to dualistic Gnosticism.

What I had missed, though, was the fundamentally ontological problem that man is faced with: he is dying. Sin is a problem, but the broken moral relationship between God and man can be healed through repentance (assuming, of course, God's mercy at the outset); yet we still die. "For dust you are and to dust you shall return." Since Adam was the "federal head" of the world, all the world inherited death. Adam was the mediator of Life to the world, his original task was incarnational in a way. His communion with God, at the Tree of Life, was not only Life for him, but Life for the world. He failed at that task, bringing death into the world and corrupting everything with possible non-existence, a detachment from the source of Life. Biology isn't a closed system: it depends on connection to a Life that is not bound by finite necessity. All things fall apart because they are finite, but that does not mean they were created to fall apart. They, all things (Eph. 1:10), were created to partake in God's Life. All things, instead, share in death. Our communion with them, even though necessary to sustain bodily existence (food, drink, shelter, sex, work, rest), is either a communion with non-existence or a communion with God through Christ.

Why deny the world then? Because we are carriers of death in a world that is dying without Christ. We deny the world, we fast, we abstain, we "mortify" because we know -- from the sacramental example of Christ -- that Life for the world only can come when this creation dies. Christ, the Life of the world, had to die -- to take on the penalty of Adam's choice -- so that it could be defeated. For how could death hold onto Life Himself and whatever He had united Himself to? This is how Christ defeated death by death. We participate in that victory by following the same path: we are baptized into His death so that we might walk now in the newness of Life that is communion with Him. But that means we cannot hold tightly to the world as it now is, but instead look forward to the end goal when all things are gathered up in Christ's Life (Eph. 1:10) and God is "all in all" (1 Cor. 15). To hold tightly to the things of this world now means we desire to keep our communion with death. We recognize our current need of them to stay biologically alive, but we cannot let them become (or remain!) our masters, for they are being used by a malevolent power that seeks only death for all things (it even went so far as to crucify the Lord of Glory). We will inherit the earth, the earth filled to the brim with God's Life, as we let go of it in its present state. Let no thing be your master but God. Love the world so much that you will die to it.

Why I'm No Longer an Evangelical

Christianity Today recently tweeted about their sticking to the word "evangelical" as a self-identifying descriptor. I tweeted back that the problem with the word "evangelical" is that it lacks any objective content. Too many groups use it that have vastly divergent theologies (I'm thinking conservative Reformed groups and Rob Bell-types here) for it to actually be a meaningful descriptor. Certainly, it is not necessarily meant to be an exclusive modifier, but using it for "Christians in every tradition and communion who seek to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength" is the same as saying "evangelical = Christian." In that case, why not just say "Christian"? They might (and I'm guessing here, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting either author of the piece, although Mr. Galli did speak at my recent seminary graduation) say that "Christian" is too broad of a label itself, including anyone within the liberal-conservative orbit, whereas "evangelical" comprises those more centrist (how else will we fit in the Sojourners with the Moral Majority?). What, in the end, it reduces Christianity to, since it is such a broad, all-encompassing label, is a movement, whereas Jesus came to found a Church. There is, as they note implicitly in the quote above, no institutional unity to be found among evangelicals. In fact, you can be evangelical whilst not recognizing the baptisms of those in other groups of ostensible evangelicals. It is, then, a superficial and overly rationalistic (since it is based on some form of doctrinal communality -- but not unity) movement that will be more destructive of institutional unity (Christ came, we must insist, to found One Church, not many, often warring branches, denominations, or sects) than healing.

This was brought to my attention somewhat obliquely a couple of weeks ago by a colleague at Geneva College when I griped on Facebook about the lack of engagement and interest evangelical students brought to the study of the Scriptures (after all, if sola Scriptura is true, then oughtn't we to be fully engaged in learning what those infallible Scriptures say?). He said that he was uncomfortable with the term, preferring to qualify it with "non-confessional" and "confessional" evangelicals (if I remember the proposed nomenclature correctly). If we need that sort of definitional differentiation, though, it seems more fitting to abandon the label altogether. That was confirmed by the CT article: it just doesn't work anymore.

So, I propose we either adequately qualify the label so that it doesn't mean all things to everyone, or we drop it all together. Really, in the end, it seems to mean just Christian anyway, with a decidedly weak ecumenical bent ("oh, you're a Catholic Pentecostal Reformed Evangelical...me too, even though I'm also a Calvinist Orthodox Organic Church Emergent!") that glosses over the tough issues we are supposed to be hammering out.

I'm not an evangelical, then. I'm a Christian. Often confused and rarely right.

On Theological Authenticity

NB: Strong language.

One aspect of modern Christian life that I know far too well is the experience of disconnect between what is promised in the Scriptures and what is experienced in daily life. I notice this in my students when I talk about our glorification like Christ's on Mt. Tabor. When has this happened to them? Or anyone they know? When have they been so filled with the Holy Spirit as to be legitimately called a "temple" (1 Cor. 6). In my own experience this has usually been explained as something that just "is" without any discernible change or benefit to the individual believer (or the church community). It is, in other words, an unverifiable assumption. To those that, for whatever reason, have been burned in their experience with the church this rings especially hollow: can a "temple of the Holy Spirit" be a pedophile, an arrogant prick, an adulterer, or a hate-monger? Is it possible for the Holy Spirit and Belial to actually live together and partake of one another, or is it impossible as Paul says? (In other words, Paul is writing to the Corinthians that they are in grave danger of losing their experience of the Spirit -- a dire warning as we learn from Hebrews 6. It also assumes that not everyone who was joined to the Corinthian community had had such an experience: note the sexually immoral brother. This is not to say that not everyone has a share in the Spirit, either; but we can quench His work. I hope you can see the gymnastics I'm engaging in just to avoid suspicion of heresy, since our words are so easily misconstrued).

An unverifiable assumption in the realm of theology is dangerous. It is saying that a certain state holds when no evidence, except one's assumed right interpretation of the Scriptures, can be marshaled otherwise. Now, theology is not a hypothesis-verification sort of science, but that doesn't mean anything goes. There are criteria that should be met. What I am seeing my students, and I think it quite astute, is that they are noticing that criteria are not being met. As Dr. Horrible puts it, "The status is not quo."

And so I have seen in the last couple of years, in a variety of ways, many folks either turn their backs on Christ and the Church completely, or cease to pay meaningful attention to what is happening in the life therein. And this is often placed on their backs in the form of passive-aggressive guilt: "They didn't really believe," "Don't they know that we aren't perfect, we're just forgiven," and other platitudes that these disaffected rightly discern as bullshit.

So what do we (I) need to do? Be silent.

We are using words that we have no right to use. We are not "pure of heart," so we have not seen God. The vision of God, however one understands it (and I think the Mt. Tabor Transfiguration experience is probably the best), is reserved for those that have made their hearts ready for inhabiting by the Holy Spirit. If we read Leviticus, or the Prophets, we should note that God takes the purity of His Temple very seriously. I'm not talking, either, about whether you sing the right songs or whether you wear the right clothes. I'm talking about, at a baseline, forgiveness. Jesus says, repeatedly, that if we don't forgive those who have trespassed against us, we won't be forgiven by God (Matthew 6, the parable of the Unjust Steward, etc.). If we don't forgive, we cannot come anywhere close to asserting our right to speak about God, about Christ, about the Christian life in a meaningful way. Maybe it is right for our leaders, every once in awhile, to say that they won't preach a sermon that week, since they have not been able to forgive their spouse, neighbor, friend, enemy, whatever. It is right always, and at all times, for us who are not in formal leadership positions to be concerned with the silent work of logging our eyes, rather than vacuuming those of others.

It is strange, now that I think about it, that the best way to evangelize the world might be to say nothing at all. But it is also strange that God saves the world through the crucifixion of His Son. Strangeness isn't a stranger to Christianity. Forgiveness is the strangest thing in the world, but Christ and His Church tell us -- through the common Life they share -- that it is upon such strangeness that the world is founded.

Holiness as Participation

"I do not pray for these alone [the apostles], but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me." (John 17:20-23)

"In Him [Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound in us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth -- in Him." (Eph. 1:7-10)

"Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure." (I John 3:2-3)

This post, like many lately, is predicated on my questions concerning theological authority. Specifically, the question of "holiness" in Biblical interpretation. Kenneth Bailey, an excellent Anglican author, puts early interpretive authority in this way (Paul through Mediterranean Eyes, 123):

The ancient Eastern churches did not have scholars or theologians, but rather 'Fathers of the church.' The assumption behind that language is: Only when we see the authenticity of your piety, and your commitment to the church, will we take your scholarship seriously.

Those who were holy had the interpretive keys passed to them (there were exceptions, of course, which the Church is still learning to deal with).

What, though, is holiness? Is it moral purity? Is it "keeping the Law" (whatever that phrase actually means)? I'm inclined to say "yes...but..." Why? Listen to St. Paul:

If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the Law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; concerning the righteousness which is in the Law, blameless. (Philippians 3:4-6)

(It is important here to note that some modern translations, like the NIV, translate the "righteousness" in the last verse as "legalistic righteousness," which is a blatant skewing of what Paul said and is trying to say). Paul here, in his argument, is saying that he had it all right (not sinless, mind you, but blameless -- an honor-shame dynamic is being proffered here, not a legal one): he kept the Law! And what did it mean for him? Holiness? No, but rather persecution of the Church and, therefore, alienation from the Life of Christ. He had a righteousness, a "being-set-right-ness," but it wasn't the right kind. Rather, in Christ (that is, being in union with Him through faith and baptism), "I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead." (vs. 8-11) Being in Christ, participating in His death and resurrection, is the key to righteousness: not what we have done, but what He has done. Holiness isn't our moral efforts, but rather participation in Christ. However, this is not a passive thing, but rather is all our life: note Paul's language that this righteousness is towards knowledge (which means a participatory knowledge, not mere rational assent), towards fellowship in suffering, towards conformity to death. This is an active process that is brought to birth in us through ascesis, through entering and remaining in the Life of Christ at all times and in all places. "Pray without ceasing" he says elsewhere.

Holiness, to get to the point, is not moral action in the traditional sense. In fact, that can lead us the wrong way (either towards believing that we must be moral to gain God's approval or towards thinking that moral behavior is the sin qua non of Christianity). Rather, it is first a participation in Christ, which is manifested in new way of existence that is "righteous," that is, it is set right to God's will for the world: glorification of all things through Christ (Eph. 1:10). To be holy is to be in communion with Christ at what the Fathers called the "noetic" level, that part of human nature that is deeper than rationality, where we can ceaselessly commune with God (I have not yet attained to this level, but I earnestly desire to). The only way to do so, though, is through prayer and forgiveness, not being right all the time, although that is a strong temptation for all engaged in theological studies.

The Essence of the Faith

Last night with my Bible class we delve into the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5-7 and various parables of Christ found throughout the Gospels. One theme that is strikingly consistent is that of forgiveness. If we want our sins forgiven by the Father, we must forgive our brothers, in fact we vow this when we pray the Lord's Prayer. "Forgive us our debts/transgressions...as we forgive our debtors/trangessors". The parable about the unmerciful servant is the same way. St. Peter asks, "How many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?" Christ answers "70 times 7." (Now, it should be asked, why didn't He just say "490 times"? Possibly He was making a connection to Dan. 9, where 70 sevens appears in context of God's forgiveness.)

The essence of Christianity, then, seems to be a concrete action: forgiveness. We can be forgiven by God for not understanding the hypostatic union, or for messing up predestination, or whatever. What cannot be forgiven, though, is our own unforgivingness. This is not because God is unable, far from it, but to not forgive is to consciously turn away from the likeness of God, who sends rain upon the just and the unjust. As C.S. Lewis puts it, "The gates of Hell are locked on the inside."

Forgive everyone for everything.

The Infinity of Theology

As my study of the Church Fathers grows deeper, I have come to wonder about the propriety of theological discourse. Can (should!) anything new be said? In one sense no, in another sense yes.

The point of academic theology is twofold: to pass along what has gone before (the Tradition) and to use that to speak afresh to our times and places. So, if we are just in the business of the first aspect, then, no, theology cannot say anything new. It is bounded by Jesus Christ's person and work. We speak of Him and no other. However, language changes, situations change, challenges come up, and we must speak of Him somewhat differently at times (the homoousias controversy seems to speak to this -- how do we confess what the Church confesses and safeguard that from Arian misunderstanding?): however the bulwark by which our theological language is judged is not the culture or the history or the place, but Jesus Christ Himself. Even in our re-expression we must avoid theological novelty.

Does this mean, though, that theology is complete? By no means.

The subject of theology, the One whom we long to know (and I don't mean knowledge in a purely "rational" sense here), is, by nature, infinite. So our knowing of Him progresses truly, but slowly as we are drawn deeper into His Life (the Holy Spirit) in His Body (the Church). Theology itself, then, is the infinite study of the Infinite One. We will never (thank God!) be able to say, "Well, now we know all there is to know." Nor will we be able to fully express it. All the other subjects, because they are being joined to Christ (Eph. 1:10ff.) are the same way: we may see (for example) an atom in various equations, or models, or super-collider experiments, but we still cannot comprehend -- have exhaustive knowledge of -- an atom. Nor shall we ever. We have true knowledge, but only partial. We look into a mirror darkly.

It is interesting, in this regard, that both Sts. John and Paul, at different points, basically say that someday, eschatologically, we will fully participate in this infinity, "knowing even as we are known."

On Man's Two Natures

A thought-piece:

In (at least) pop-Calvinism, there is a tendency to view man as essentially sinful, that is, down to the very structural core of his being, man is inherently and inescapably controlled by sin. Man, in other words, cannot do anything to please God, whether towards earning salvation (understood as monergistic justification) nor towards maintaining or advancing the relationship (a sort of monergistic sanctification). While I haven't found this understanding to necessarily be the orthodox and official interpretation of the Calvinist system, it holds a lot of traction at the "lay" level and amongst certain types of preachers and pastors. I cannot tell, statistically speaking, whether or not this is a majority opinion, but I hear it often enough from a variety of sources that I think it should be taken seriously.

However, I think this understanding (which, at least superficially, sounds similar to Luther's in Bondage of the Will and Calvin in On the Secret Providence of God) is fatally flawed because it misunderstands the necessity of distinguishing between two distinct definitions of the word "nature." The first definition of nature I'd like to term "essential nature." This understanding of nature is that it is what man is created to be on the structural level by God: it is what makes mankind mankind, as opposed to any sort of created reality. It is what all humans share that makes them describable as such. The common theological understanding of this is the imago Dei, or Image of God. We all share (or participate) in God's Image (which the New Testament reveals to us as Jesus Christ) to some degree or another. What this means, though, is hard to define precisely: does it mean our rationality? our responsibility and tendency towards rule? our community one with another? All of these are theories that have been held throughout Church history (with St. Augustine, Richard Middleton, and Karl Barth being respective representatives). Whether or not our essential nature can be reduced to any one theory is debatable: our Image-bearing reflects the Image Himself, who is the Icon of the Invisible and Infinite God. Our bearing, then, is capable of the same infinity (here is the basis of the Patristic doctrine of theosis). This nature is fundamentally, by decree of God, "good" as proclaimed in Genesis 1. There is no language, that I can find at least, that describes this Image-bearing, or essential nature, as distorted, cracked, destroyed, mangled, or any other such perjorative term: even with the ravages of corruption and sin, we remain essentially human, bearers to a greater or lesser degreee, of God's Image. God's statement to Noah that man is still in the Image of God, immediately after the judgment of the Deluge, goes a long way towards showing this. This is also the basis of our redemption as well, since this Image God does not desire to see destroyed. (Questions about how our structural integrity before God, regardless of our directional infidelity, and the "eternal decree" of double predestination will have to wait until a different time; questions there are, but my ability to adequately answer them is another question altogether).

In the essential sense, then, it is incorrect, and quite possibly blasphemous, to say that mankind has a "sinful nature." God did not create man's nature to be sinful, nor can we so attribute power to sin and death that they are able to thwart the primal command of God's Word to structure human reality. Sin and death are more powerful than man outside of God's grace, but not ever more powerful than the Creator and Redeemer of the cosmos.

The second definition, however, allows for an understanding of man having a "sinful nature" in a proper sense. This is term "energetic nature," that is, a description of the actions (or energies) of man, which include the tendency of the will towards evil and sin and death. In other words, man often acts and thinks and speaks in sinful ways. A man can be an Image-bearer and yet be the worst cur on the face of all Creation. The effects of Adam's corruption on mankind have made such "modes of action" seem normal or, to use the term at issue, natural. This sort of corruption of our energies can seem to effect what we consider structural elements of mankind (our biological makeup, our sexuality, our personalities), however these things are distorted activities that can be healed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in conjunction with our own ascesis. We are in the environment of death, of being separated through Adam's rebellion from the Life of God, so our actions tend towards that way, even if our essential nature is proclamed "good" by God Himself. This is also what makes sin so sinful, as St. Paul might say: mankind, which is supposed to be oriented towards God and partaking of His Life (the Holy Spirit), has instead turned towards the nothingness of sin and death. This is why Christ came to "condemn sin in the flesh" not to condemn humanity. Man has become, through his federal head of Adam, a slave to sin, death, and the devil; he acts as a servant of such, even though his original intent is towards the freedom of Life in and with God. These energies need to be redeemed, which is why it is necessary for Christ, in the Incarnation, to take on a full human nature (essential good, yet subject to corruption), including these energies, so that we might wholly and fully be redeemed in Him.

To use a Biblical expression, we might term this the "likeness of God." The Image we bear whether we will or no, the likeness, however, is not mentioned after the Fall. Our likeness to God, promised at the Creation, was thwarted by Adam's desire to be "like God" (Gen. 3:5) on his (or the serpent's) own terms, rather than God's. Christ restores us to a place where we can, again, be like God -- as He says in the Sermon on the Mount ("Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect").

What, then, of total depravity? Our energies, our actions, our tendencies are, by virtue of their participation in the corruption of Adam, oriented away from God, rendering us inable to participate in God's Life. In this sense, yes, we are totally depraved: our environment and our energetic natures are estranged from God, even when we seek -- outside of God's grace -- to do good, we do it corruptly: one only has to look at the corrupting effects of nationally-instituted charity to see this. However, in Christ, although we still often fail, we can do good, that is, we can share the Life of God, through our actions in the Spirit. This does not mean, however, that we "earn" God's favor or love, the Scriptures never use this sort of language. Instead, we do what we were created to do as God's Image-bearers, as icons of Christ, when we do good. We are most fully human when we participate in God's Life and share that Life with the rest of the Creation, both human and non-human.

Athanasius on Theological Training

Years ago, I read St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation of the Word of God and was less than impressed. In fact, I hated it. Sure, there were some neat things in it, but I couldn't find myself agreeing with his soteriology (where was the eternal predestinating decree? the justification by faith alone? the penal substitution?) or his Christology (these were, after all, my unitarian days). Mostly, though, I was upset by what I conceived of as his sloppy use of language in speaking about Christ. That was six years ago (approximately). Then, I revisited his thought for a couple of classes at Trinity School for Ministry, in which I realized that his use of philosophical language was actually quite keen: by utilizing some of the terminology and concepts of Platonism he effectively burst the whole system open ("there are more things in heaven and earth, Arius, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"). It follows, now that I've reread his masterwork, that I should take some of the things back which I have said. Often when rereading what I've wrote in the past my reaction has lately been, "Fair enough, but have you thought about..." Possibly my thought is maturing, or at least that is what I hope.

I decided to revisit the work in the last week. Mostly this was for the excellent introduction done by C.S. Lewis, which I wanted to share with some of my colleagues at Geneva College. However, I couldn't resist reading the actual work, especially given some information I had gathered about his famous "He assumed humanity that we might become God" (this was the earlier crux of my displeasure with the work: "Greek philosophy!" I said. I have since moderated this view.). At the end of the book Athanasius gives some stunning recommendations about the studying of Scripture, which I think every student of theology -- especially those considering a "career" in the field -- needs to closely heed:

But for the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life. Anyone who wants to look at sunlight naturally wipes his eye clear first, in order to make, at any rate, some approximation to the purity of that on which he looks; and a person wishing to see a city or country goes to the place in order to do so. Similarly, anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds. Thus united to them in the fellowship of life, he will both understand the things revealed to them by God and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the judgment, will receive that which is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven.

Understanding of the Scriptures is not contingent on seminary training (and, as is true of all education, such training can either be helpful -- it was in my case -- or quite detrimental), but rather a life seeking after holiness in Christ. There is an ascetical bent to the reading and interpreting of the Scriptures that is not commonly taught to theological students. But it is vital. My own life is witness to that.

Why Rome?

Part of my duties at Geneva is to teach the Humanities. I teach both the introductory course that deals with some of the perennial themes of human life (adventure, death, love & virtue, cultural change, and "calling") and the quick-and-dirty Western Civilization course (we cover from Homeric Greece to the Baroque period). It is because of the second course, in which my lecturing covers the early Church and Medieval periods, that I have been presented with a question that did not particularly bother me as an undergraduate, nor as a graduate student, but has begun to become somewhat of a gadfly in my adult life: why Rome?

Why is Rome so important? Why does the patrimony that has come down to us from them (and from the Greeks as well, although I'll argue that they are not as vital, culturally speaking, but that is for another time...) continue to affect us and our cultural longings and concrete expressions? Why does "Classicism" come so often into the discussions of Renaissance and Reformation works and thought? What is it about Rome, that Empire that doggedly persecuted the Christians and even put their founder to death, that Western civilization is so beholden to?

It isn't, as I've often heard, that they did this, or that, or the other thing well. While that is certainly true (I've been to the Pont du Gard and have experienced firsthand their matchless engineering and stochastic artistry), there is something else. Something that keeps pulling us back, especially Christians, to this strange Greco-Italian Empire. I don't quite know what that is, but I've got a hunch: it is us. It is our history, more than just dates and facts, but it is what connects us -- even disconnected, consumerist Americans -- to the world. History is important, not just for its lessons, nor for its cultural influence, but because it is part of what makes us human (note, for example, that the Old Testament is mostly history: God obviously thinks it important, important enough to shape all of history into a cruciform pattern).

In other words, the day Rome falls from our cultural conscience, the day we forget who we fundamentally are, is the day that the West really ends. I do not necessarily think that the West needs to encompass the world (colonialism and empirialism are unfortunate parts of our Roman heritage), but it does need a place in the world. It is worth preserving, even the nasty bits (we need to remember that the past was not "golden"), and -- more imperative -- it is worth defending: we are fighting for our own cultural identity in the midst of an encroaching colonialism of another kind, one just as insidious as own cultural history. We have made the mistakes, so culturally we should be able to meet this challenge with some modicum of maturity and tact, even as we continue to develop what it means to exist in this strange mixture of paganism, of Christianity, of reason, of the "virtues", and of history.

The Shame of the Cross

One thing I've heard, but cannot currently verify, is that the Fathers are not strong on why the death of the Messiah had to be a death on the Cross (although I think Irenaeus might have something to say about that Tree). Sitting in a Christmas Eve service this week, though, I was struck with a connection that I hadn't made before. It is this:

The reason the Christ must die on the Cross is not because it is the most torturous, but rather because it is the most shameful. Adam became shamed by his disobedience; through the shame of the Cross this is defeated and reversed. Clothing ourselves in the shamed Christ, who deserved no shame, is what brings us to glory.

Shame must be dealt with, not by a legal fiction of "forgetting," but by defeat at its own game. It is not enough to circumvent the weapons of the enemy (and what is shame but such a weapon -- I will expand on this in regards to the Law in the future); those tool must be rendered null and void. Salvation is from shame, from guilt, from death -- this is why ethics are so vital for the life of the Church, for death must have no place in the Body of Christ, the medicine and hospital of immortality.

More needs to be said, but I am typing this on an iPad, which is a bit cumbersome for me. Once the holidays are over, I'll expand on this.

For His glory and for the ending of Adam's shame. Amen.

Psalms for the Fast

While reading Lauren Winner's delightful little book Mudhouse Sabbath, I came across this gem:

...I rang up my rabbi [after failing a required fast]. I asked him how important these minor fasts were. I asked him if I would ever get any better at them. I asked him what the point was...Rabbi M. did not roll back thousands of years of rabbinic instruction and tell me eat a bowl of Chex on the morning of Yom Kippur. Instead, he said the hunger was part of the point. "When you are fasting," he said, "and you feel hungry, you are to remember that you are really hungry for God."

Our true hunger is for God.

This led me to think about the purpose of fasting, at least one aspect of it. We are creatures created with a wonderful plethora of emotions, of desires, of loves. However, due to the corrupting influence of death and sin, our loves, desires, and emotions (among other things) are disordered and misdirected, which leads to all sort of addictions, neuroses, and (what the Tradition calls) passions. Fasting, purposeful denial of food and drink for a set period of time, is intended to make us watchful and aware of these disordered things, so that we might pray and start to redirect (or, to use Paul's wonderful and participatory language, to "mortify") these things back towards their proper place: God. It is not a denial of our creatureliness, but rather a "setting right" of that which has gone crooked. It is a symbolic putting to death, hence mortification, of that which has been corrupted by Adam, so that it might rise anew in the resurrection of Christ. It is an affirmation of our creatureliness, both as it was before the Fall and how it will be after the Resurrection.

Fasting, as a liturgical practice, also helps to make sense of some of the Psalms. I remember when I first encountered Psalm 73 in worship. David says there:

Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I couldn't fathom what that meant, especially as my fiancee (now wife) stood next to me. It was hard to sing, since liturgical singing is a form of vowing or "covenanting" (as my denomination calls it): I desired her (in many ways, not just as a young man desires a young woman), so how could I sing that "there is none upon earth that I desire besides You"?

Part of that issue has now been clarified by fasting (I've been married now for almost a decade, so I've lived with this question for quite some time): any desire/appetite we have, no matter how strong, is a desire to be unified with God. However, this shouldn't be understood as a pseudo-mystical anti-creational thing. Rather, my desire for my wife is not to be one of possession, of lust, of selfishness, but rather my desire is to be one of thankfulness to God; this allows the desire to be one that unifies both my wife and I with God in the mystery/sacrament of marriage (Eph. 5). Note that the height of Christian worship, the Eucharist, literally means "thankfulness" that is participation (koinonia) with Christ and with one another. Our gratitude is the way that our true desire partakes of both God's creation and of God Himself in a proper way. By denying ourselves some part of the created world, we can rediscover that. It is easy to slip into either an incipient materialism that says the creation is good in itself or an incipient spiritualism that says no part of creation should be involved in our worship (I find both options in Reformed worship, swinging like a pendulum; it should be noted that these are the two poles of ancient Gnosticism). Rather, we enjoy God through our use of the creation (as Augustine might put it). Fasting clarifies this and redirects it.

The Psalms, then, reveal the spirituality of a faster. David (and others) constantly speak of these redirections. I'm endeavoring to memorize these so that I might remember, in the throes of a fast, where my desire truly is; and how, if we seek that which we truly desire, "all these things shall be added to you." If we have God, we have everything. If we gain the whole world, but have not Christ, we lose all, including our life.

Psalm 73: "Whom have I in heaven but You? There is none on earth I desire beside You. My flesh and heart may fail; God is the strength of my heart and my portion forevermore"

Psalm 42: "As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?"

Psalm 34: "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!"

There are, of course, more. I will post more as I come across them. Once again, it seems that an understanding of the life of the Church as the proper interpretive context of the Scriptures (in this case, regular fasting) reveals many important aspects of those Scriptures.

More on Repentance

Recently I wrote a short entry on Living a Life of Repentance. More can, and must, be said on that topic.

As I find myself (all too rarely and all too late) repenting of whatever sin, I wonder what the proper actions of repentance look like. Surely, if Christian tradition is to be believed, then there is a salutary spiritual effect from penance. Obviously, penance done wrong or without knowledge of how it is a healing practice is dangerous and destructive; but just because a doctor may give us meds that don't cure our physical disease (and sometimes make them worse) doesn't (normally) cause us to give up the whole practice of taking medicine, or seeing physicians, for our ills and aches and pains. What might be a proper penance, then?

First, it might be beneficial, for me at least, to look at the practical effects my own sin has on me: often I get irascibly angry at myself and take that anger out on those closest to me -- my wife, my kids, my employees, my students. For some reason, once I have sinned, I find it extremely difficult to overlook or sympathize with their sins or weaknesses. That reminds me of a parable:

Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, 'Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.' Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, 'Pay me what you owe!' So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.' And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?' And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses." (Matthew 18:21-35)

The teaching, as practical as it gets, that our lives -- repentant lives -- are to be lives characterized by forgiveness, is one of the most prominent teachings of Jesus, found in all four Gospels. However, we often make this void by talking about the "free offer of the Gospel," turning the true Good News (not only that we are saved from our sins, but are in the process of being made more and more like God Himself -- theosis) into some sort of cheap grace, which produces embittered, arrogant, and hateful people who can easily hide behind a powerful (and powerfully demonic) Christian veneer. Lord, forgive me for doing this, help me to forgive others -- are we not of the same flesh from Adam?

What is penance? It is forgiving our friends, our brothers and sisters, our enemies. The salutary effect is our own forgiveness, but much more than that: it is the restoration of all things. Forgiveness is the ending of Adam's animosity towards Eve, it is the ending of our long rebellion against God and those made in His Image, it is the beginning of the new humanity in Christ. A Church without forgiveness is no Church. As Orthodox presbyter Stephen Freeman puts it, "Forgive everyone for everything." There is the Church Catholic, there is the Spirit, there is Life and Light and the overcoming of death, the trampling underfoot of the old Serpent who knows not what forgiveness is (Rom. 16:20). All our externals mean nothing if we have not forgiveness. Indeed, even Christ tells us that any true rituals we may possess from the Apostles are without effect without forgiveness (Matt. 5:23-24).

Here's the strange thing, though, and maybe the thing I've been musing on most: forgiveness is hard. Yet we expect it to come easy. I want my wife and children to forgive me quickly when I've spoken a word too harshly, or been selfish, or been absent (even if bodily present). Yet, if they sin against me, I want to see contrition, I want to see, maybe not groveling, but some self-abnegation, in other words, I want them to feel at my mercy -- being in the position to forgive or not is an incredible position of power: consider what it means for the Apostles to be given the keys to the kingdom: no wonder debates about what "Apostolic Succession" really is have raged! Yet, the parable teaches the exact opposite of what my experience is: giving forgiveness is to be easy, not used as a tool of power, but rather as a tool of reconciliation. All penance, in the end, is an exercise of reconciliation, of reuniting that which has been sundered.

Lord, give us strength to forgive as we have been forgiven.

Sermon: Mark 10:35-45

Posted below is a rough approximation of the sermon I presented at First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Beaver Falls. As before, I was warmly welcomed and received, even with my current follicular situation. May God bless them in their work in this place. The Gospel text for the day was Mark 10:35-45.
_____________________________________________________

In Mark 1:14-15, it says: “Now after John [the Baptist] was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the gospel.” For us, the words ‘repent and believe the gospel’ mean some sort of religious conversion: believe that Jesus died for our sins and has a special plan for our lives. While that is certainly part of the Gospel as presented in the Scriptures, it doesn’t make a lot of sense of this early passage in Mark, nor the question of James and John in today’s Gospel reading. It is clear in Mark’s Gospel, and in the others, that Jesus did not regularly talk publically about his own death or its purpose. He did share this with his disciples, as evidenced in his saying that he would “give his life as a ransom for many,” but it does not make up a large part of his public proclamation. Rather, what we see in Mark 1 is Jesus proclaiming the ‘kingdom,’ or reign, of God. Whatever that might mean, it was near ‘at hand’ and seemed to be coming to pass in the very proclamation and actions of Jesus Himself. We see this clearly a couple of verses later in chapter 1, “And he was preaching in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and casting out demons.” Part and parcel of this proclamation was the exorcism of the unclean spirits that held people in physical, spiritual, and psychological captivity.

Many of these actions, which included healings and resurrections and the multiplication of loaves, would have served in the eyes of his first-century audience as confirmations of his divine calling as a prophet and his legitimacy as the Davidic king. If He was the ‘king to come,’ the one to exercise God’s rule as the ‘highest of the kings of the earth’ (Psalm 89:27), the one whom the nations would have to kiss to avert His wrath (Psalm 2:12), then James and John’s request to sit at his right and left hands in glory makes much sense. Here is the warrior-king, prophesied over and over again in the Old Testament, who would overthrow the evil powers and establish Mt. Zion as the ‘top of the mountains and…exalted above the hills’ (Micah 4:1). Before this could happen, though, before the great prophecies of Israel becoming the greatest kingdom in the world could come to pass, the Promised Land would have to be reconquered. Before David must come Joshua. However, this time it is not the Canaanites who are squatting in God’s land, but the Roman occupiers. Many Judeans at the time of Christ held forth hope that God’s anointed would rout these filthy pagan overlords and reestablish Israel’s rightful claim to their ancestral land, just as Joshua did. If Jesus was that Messiah, James and John want to be in on the action, to be the men at his right and left hand, ready and willing and able to do the Master’s work of glorious conquest. Yet Jesus will have none of it; he does not outright deny them such a place, but rather says it is not for him to choose. They will share in his cup and his baptism, but he cannot guarantee them pride of place in this kingdom. Rather, as we see in his response to all the disciples, this is a very different kingdom than they, and their contemporaries, had imagined.

Let us look again at the actions that accompanied the proclamation of the ‘kingdom of God.’ “And he was preaching in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and casting out demons.” In Deuteronomy 7:1, God promises to “cast out” many nations from the land, so that the Israelites might inhabit it. Joshua fulfills this through his own proclamation of God’s Kingdom, that is, of the God who overthrew Egypt and was now coming to finally make good on the promise that Israel would inherit this land. That meant the squatters had to go. As we saw, there is a short leap from Canaanite to Roman squatters. However, in Mark, as Jesus is making the proclamation of the kingdom, he does not throw out the Romans, but rather casts out the demons. The real squatters, the real malevolent occupiers, are not the physical army of Rome, but rather the invisible army of Satan, which has enslaved not merely the Italian pagans, but the Jews as well – they are the cause behind the sicknesses and the possessions Jesus heals. While James and John may be expecting an earthly battle, Jesus makes clear through his actions that the kingdom’s arrival concerns a much more important battle, one which cannot be prosecuted with weapons made of steel. Rather, the weapons that this Messiah uses, over and over again, are stronger than any swords or bombs or drone-strikes. These weapons burst the bonds that hold the captive in his chains, whether those chains are physical, spiritual, or psychological. These are the weapons of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.

It is here that we are often tempted, in our own way, to misunderstand the mission of Jesus. We see him proclaiming love and peace and reconciliation and we suppose that the Jewish expectations of a warrior-king are wrong altogether. This is Jesus, meek and mild, with a little lamby on his shoulder. We moderns, for our own historical and cultural reasons, do not want a warrior-king, or at least we don’t want Jesus to be one (we must admit that we often ask our earthly political leaders to fill in the vacuum left by our ‘casting out’ of Jesus from this place; Lord, forgive us): Jesus the tame Messiah is a Messiah that cannot truly marshal us to a war that, like all wars, may require our death. Let us pause for one moment, though, and see if this might be wrong after all. First off, we have the exorcisms and the healings: times where Jesus asserts, in very vigorous terms, his authority as rightful king over all God has created. The claims that Death and Satan have exerted over the human race since Adam are shown up for what they are: illusions of grandeur that God Himself has come to disabused them of. Secondly, the cost of discipleship is our own daily death: Jesus says in Mark 8 “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it” (vs. 34-35). Jesus is the prophesied warrior-king, but James and John, and, alas, we ourselves, have envisioned the wrong battle and the wrong enemy, and therefore the wrong weapons for the waging of this cosmic war.

The weapons, as the Apostle Paul tells us, are not ‘carnal,’ but are “mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). These are the strong weapons of compassion, of mercy, and of forgiveness that we see Christ wielding against the demons’ arsenal of arrogance, of hate, and of disunity. We are the devil’s captives when we do not forgive our brother, or even our enemy; rather, since he or she is a human just as we are, we must have compassion on them and forgive even if they do not seek it. As Jesus says in Mark 11, “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespassed. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses” (vs. 25-26). Forgiveness demolishes strongholds of the enemy in a way no amount of siege warfare ever could. This art of war, though, would require a new way to imagine and implement the chain of command.

Just like Joshua sent the twelve tribes into Israel to cast out the Canaanites, Jesus sends the twelve apostles. In Mark 6 we read: “He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them power over unclean spirits. He commanded them to take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bag, no bread, no copper in money belts – but to wear sandals, and not to put on two tunics…So they went out and preached that people should repent. And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them” (6:8-9, 12-13). Here we see that they have the same mission as Jesus, war against the demonic oppressors, but they do not go girded as warriors, but rather as those needing hospitality: no food, slight clothing, and no money. These commandoes are not what we, nor what Jesus’ contemporaries, expect. Rather than rough-and-tumble Marines, these are beggars. They would not have been considered to be anything more than the lowest of slaves. This is exactly what Jesus intended, as we see in our Gospel passage today. They already know by experience, even if it hasn’t yet set in cognitively, that the war will be waged in a different manner, with different weapons and different tactics. However, it seems to come as a complete surprise that the upshot of this is that those who would be greatest, the four-star generals, must be the slaves of all. There is no haughty and comfortable command post: rather those in the top ranks must be willing to sacrifice everything for Christ and for the sake of the salvation of the world. Jesus Himself, and this must have been shocking and distressing for the disciples, will take on this role, giving his life “as a ransom for many.”

A very old translation of Psalm 96:10 says, “Say among the nations, ‘The Lord reigns from the tree.’” Justin Martyr and Augustine both understood this to mean that the locus of Jesus’ kingship, where the kingdom of God breaks into the world to judge it and heal it, is the Cross of Jesus Christ. Paul says much the same thing when he says concerning this wisdom of God revealed on the Cross, “none of the rulers of this rulers knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). The chief act of war, by which Christ brings the whole world into judgment so that it might be saved, is the Cross. For the world of Jesus’ day, and indeed ours, this is ultimate foolishness. The Cross is a defeat: Rome and Judea conspired, under the inspiration of the Serpent, to destroy this One who had released so many from oppression. As the mockers said at the crucifixion, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe” (Mark 15:31-32). Those ways, though, are the ways of the world, the ways of spiritual blindness, the ways that needed judgment, so that Light and Life could break out into the world through the Resurrection. Those are the ways of “those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles” who “lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.”

“Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.” Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen One, calls us to “take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him.” We share His throne by sharing His Cross. We do this by confounding the wisdom of our day, which is the same as it was in Jesus’ day, since it springs from the same demonic source that asked our first mother, “Did God really say…?” That wisdom is of individualism, of exceptionalism, of materialism, of hating our neighbor because they are “the 47%” or “the rich” or the “welfare queens” or the “elite.” Rather, Jesus Christ calls us, this day, to follow Him to the Cross, to deny ourselves, to take up the “full armor of God” (Eph. 6), to tear down “every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God,” by showing compassion to all the oppressed, whether they are Jew or Roman, rich or poor, black or white, male or female, gay or straight, for all share the human nature of Jesus Christ, whose body is broken, whose blood is shed, so that we might live: for He is the Life of the World.

Let us, then, attend again to the words of God in Job and in Psalm 104: God is the high King over Creation, the One who ordered it and sets it right, in ways we can hardly comprehend. But it is not done as some raw show of power, nor is it done to “lord it over them” as the Gentile rulers do – the politicians and power-brokers of this world do not reveal the Father. Rather, the Son does, the Son who “gives his life as a ransom for many,” showing that truly, in the words of Psalm 145:8-9, “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” So, let us, who share in the throne of Christ, seated in the heavenly places, us who are the Body of Christ in the world, go forth in praise of God’s cruciform compassion, taking up our own crosses, denying ourselves, and following Him, so that the world might have life in the Name above all names, that of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has shattered the power of the enemy by His rule as a servant to all. Amen.

In Praise of Simplicity

I do not have a simple faith. My faith has, for as long as I can remember, been guided by philosophical and theological speculation and introspection. I have found it hard to merely believe, instead I must know. This has been quite hard on me, as it has led down many wrong roads and to serious doubt of myself, of God, and of what I am doing at any given point in time. It has led to discontentment, to depression, and to despair. Yet, I wouldn't trade it for the world: our Lord is preparing me for something that I cannot yet ascertain.

However, I have regularly envied those with a "simpler" faith. I don't mean by this "unthoughtful" or "naive" or even "unstudied," but rather intend to imply a genuineness and a level of trust that I cannot totally fathom. These are the folks who get it without having to unravel all the mysteries of the faith. How is the bread and wine at the same time the Body and Blood of our Lord? How is God one, yet three, yet one? How do the two natures of Christ interact and cohere without confusion or division? These are the things that vex me. But there are those that can recite the Creed, read the Scriptures, and pray knowing that these things are true and they are vouched by God Himself: that is enough.

What bliss!

I often wonder if the difference is that these have met God and so know without knowing, whereas I am still searching for Him.

Achieving Balance

I remember, back in high school, coming onto a realization that has had a great deal of sway in my life: the mental and the spiritual and the manual must all be held in balance. My own personal constitution often demands that I passionately follow one aspect of my being for a short time, burn out, and then passionately go after another. So one month I may be embroiled in theological debate and the next month despair of really ever knowing anything about God. While I'm despairing, I might throw myself into baking, until that wears me down, so that I retreat to a semi-quietist prayer focus. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, however the way I experience them is exhausting. I need to hold them in balance. This is the struggle of my adult life, especially with two full time jobs, two kids, and two businesses that I help with. But it is necessary.

And so, tonight, I bake, but not to the neglect of other things. And I look forward to the Sabbath, so that there might be rest from all labors.

"The Inscrutable Calvinist"

I'm not prone to linking things like this on my blog, but this was too good to pass up. Mind you, it is irreverent, but that might be a small price to pay for the gold within.

http://bigchieftablet.tumblr.com/post/32202597741/the-inscrutable-calvinist

On Authority

Lately, and for quite some time, my mind has been vexed with the question of authority, especially ecclesial authority. In our fractured experience of Christianity, I wonder who (that is, which communion) has the rightful authority to call itself the Church. This presupposes that there is one true Church. Maybe that is too much to assume, but if God is "not the author of confusion" (1 Cor. 14:33), then there must be one true interpretation and application of Scripture to the life of the believer. The Church is, as Paul asserts, the "pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15): can there be so many conflicting pillars? I may be looking at this the wrong way, but it seems that while there can be diversity in many things in the Christian life, there must be some sort of unity between the various bodies that comprise the one Body of Christ. Obviously, of course, that bond is the holy Spirit, but does that reality mean anything real and practical? That is, should there be some institutional unity amongst the Church? In many ways, this goes back to the previous post on authority. Hopefully, Lord willing, it is a step forward.

I present it as a dialogue between two people concerning the topic of Sola Scriptura.

Teacher: What should we believe and do so that we might be saved?

Catechumen: We must believe the Scriptures and do as they say, trusting in the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

T: Good. Whose interpretation of the Scriptures?

C: I don't follow. Scripture is self-interpreting. It's meaning is clear to all.

T: Then why are there so many differing interpretations? Should we have bishops or elders? Should we baptize via the process of immersion or sprinkling or pouring? Should we baptize children or only believing "adults"? Pre-mil? A-mil? Post-mil? I could go on, but hopefully you see the point.

C: I do, and it could drive me to despair.

T: Be glad, then, that we are not talking about the problematic presuppositions of textual criticism. The question, whether or not it is ultimately legitimate, often becomes whether or not there is a settled text at all (Dr. Bart Ehrman seems to have embraced this unfortunate train of thought).

C: So, there must be some ground that can guide us to a proper interpretation of the Scriptures, so that we might be saved.

T: Good. What is that "ground"?

C: The Spirit of God is the One who will "lead you into all Truth" (John 16:13).

T: Good. How do we know we have the Spirit, that is, that our interpretation is the proper interpretation of the Scriptures?

C: I do not know. This is something that has puzzled me for quite some time.

T: Let us do a little exercise, then. Who originally had the Spirit and the proper authority to rightly interpret the Scriptures?

C: That would be the Apostles of Christ, I suppose. It does say that the earliest Church grew because of its allegiance to Apostle's teaching, the breaking of bread, and the prayers (Acts 2:42).

T: Good. But what happens when the Apostles die?

C: Then their teaching must survive on in the Church. This, I suppose, is the origin of the New Testament?

T: Yes, but remember that Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, says that the churches are to follow his Tradition, whether through word -- that is, spoken to them in their presence -- or through epistle -- that is, what will become what we know as the New Testament.

C: Did they contain the same thing?

T: This is a common assumption, but we see no one in early Church history hold to it. There is a common life, what Acts 2 called "the prayers," that needed to be passed on, which is the meaning of the word "tradition."

C: So, there is an apostolic written tradition, the New Testament, and an oral tradition?

T: It would seem so, wouldn't it?

C: But we are still in a quandry: has the Tradition survived throughout all these centuries? Can we trust any group to have held it faithfully throughout all that time? Are not all men sinners?

T: Indeed, all men are sinners. However, we have been given the promise of the Spirit of Truth to guide us into all truth, yes?

C: Yes, we've already established that. But who continues on the Tradition, who has the Spirit?

T: What pattern do we see in the New Testament? Do the Apostles train up men to continue their work?

C: As we've seen in 2 Thessalonians, Paul, at least, passed this assignment onto the individual churches.

T: So now we see the necessity of conciliar unity, yes?

C: Yes, one of the guarantors of proper interpretation is that the ancient churches agreed with one another. If one church did not hold the Tradition faithfully, there were others that would correct them and lovingly restore them. At least theoretically.

T: We see this in Bishop Clement's letter to the Corinthians shortly after the Apostle Paul's death (know as 1 Clement in the Apostolic Fathers). The question, then, is: did the Apostles entrust certain people in the congregation to do the work of guarding the Tradition, passing it onto the next generation, and training others to do the same? Obviously, the Tradition was in the hands of the people, but the church had a leadership -- did they have a role?

C: Of course! The people needed to keep their regular jobs and lives, living out the life of Christ in all their walks. So the leadership would need to be focused on teaching, or on serving, just like it was in the time of the earliest Church (Acts 6). In fact, in his teaching on this to his co-worker Timothy, Paul talks about training up bishops and elders for the work of teaching (1 Tim 3).

T: Good, you are making much progress. So, the Tradition -- the Apostolic interpretation accompanied by the common life and the "prayers" -- was maintained by the individual churches working in concert with one another, but was guarded and passed on by its leadership, the bishops and the elders. In other words, when Paul says that the Church is the "pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15), he means it.

C: So, for the proper interpretation, we need conciliar agreement between the churches, a Tradition passed on through the leadership, and an agreement with the Scriptures themselves?

T: Yes, exactly! This is what Irenaeus and Ignatius, early bishops of the Church, argue in their various epistles. It is called "Apostolic Succession" in theological terms.

C: However, we know from Church history that "Apostolic Succession" isn't enough. Didn't Rome err in the middle ages, necessitating the Reformation? Didn't the Reformers see that the ancient Tradition had been irretrievably lost, necessitating the teaching Sola Scriptura?

T: Well, this depends on what we believe about the Great Schism of AD 1054. It is possible, and I only say possible as this is not the topic of discussion, that the Roman bishop left the apostolic succession when they separated over the question of the Quinisext Council and the Filioque. If that is the case (and, for sake of argument, let us assume that), then the Reformation would have been necessary to restore that communion -- and all the other communions under Rome's jurisdiction -- to unity with the Apostolic Church. If all the other ancient churches, though, had also fallen in the meantime -- that is, if Eastern Orthodoxy, or Coptic Orthodoxy, or Oriental Orthodoxy (I'll not argue which one is most faithful) had fallen away from the Tradition -- then the promise of the Spirit to guide us "into all Truth" and Christ's promise to be with us "even unto the end of the age" (Matt. 28:20) will have failed. So, one of those communions, or set of communions (remember conciliar agreement?), must preserve the Apostolic Tradition faithfully.

C: But this would deny the legitimacy of the Reformation! It is historically evident that the Reformers did not find union with the East, in any form.

T: Like I said, though, it depends on your view of the Great Schism. If Rome had only recently (that is, with indulgences, etc.) fallen into heresy, then the Reformation was a necessary corrective to an erring bishopric.

C: What about Luther's insistence on the conscious of the believer?

T: Ah, a very important question: does the interpretation of the individual trump the conciliar authority, the Apostolic succession, and the agreement of the Scripture with these?

C: Wait, what if the Scripture does not agree? What if, for example, a communion of churches, in conciliar agreement, decide that bishops are to be unmarried, where Paul explicitly commands that they are to be "husbands of one wife" and to have children (1 Tim 3)?

T: You are asking how the Church might be lawfully be reformed?

C: Yes, I suppose so. What happens when one link in the chain fails?

T: We must ask, first, whether one error constitutes a true break of the Tradition? Could the Tradition be flexible enough to allow some "wiggle-room"? No extant church, we might say, totally preserves the Tradition unchanged. This does not mean, however, that the Tradition has been lost, rather that portions -- and we might assume that the Spirit will keep these portions small -- have been developed, or changed, or evolved, without major damage to the whole.

C: While not thinking ill of the Spirit (God forbid it!), is this not a rather large assumption?

T: Maybe and maybe not. As the Gospel goes out into many different cultures, there is bound to be local needs that must be met, not with an ironclad Tradition, but rather one with flexibility. There are dogmas -- things that the Church, in her Spirit-given wisdom -- that must be held to, but there are other parts of the Tradition that must show some flexibility. What happens when bishops, for example, come under great persecution? Is it better to maintain their married status, or to "be like I am" as Paul says (1 Cor. 7), able to serve the Lord without family hindrance in times of distress?

C: There is wisdom in that, I suppose. One would need to have a good rapport with the other leaders to change that back after the persecution ceased, then.

T: Indeed. This is necessary. And part of the reason that, at least in the East, bishop celibacy is the norm, but not a dogma. They have greater battles to fight right now, however, then that one. Lord willing someday this will be addressed. Have you been praying for them?

C: Pardon me, I have not. Should we pray for other communions?

T: It is one of the greatest needs of any time.

C: We still have not addressed my question about the legitimacy of the Reformation.

T: Indeed, we have not. The great question of the Reformation is whether or not it has restored the Church to conciliar unity, with the same teaching passed on by the early Church, and all in line with Scripture. This is the "calling," as it were, of the Reformation churches. It could be her divine calling. Has she succeeded?

C: Historically, no. Rome still holds to the Tridentine councils, even though they have been modified somewhat by the Vatican councils. Does this mean that the Reformation has failed?

T: No, but her calling is in danger, as it will always be. The enemy of our Lord wants nothing more than to keep the churches from uniting in love and truth (and it must be both). The Reformed churches must be spurred on to greater historical study in doctrine, liturgy, and the common life. There are many assumptions that must be jettisoned, I'm sure, but that will require much greater study to ascertain. Despair not! God has not abandoned any who call on the name of Christ, even if, as of now, they disagree. His Spirit will continue to lead us into all Truth, into the full stature of Jesus Christ (Eph 4).

C: Then there is much work to be done.

T: Yes. God bless you.

On Theological Authority

This is not meant to be a diatribe, but rather a thought-piece. I welcome any and all comments and corrections, as I am working through these things and it is easy to be overcome by passion, rather than love. Forgive me, I ask of you, in advance.

As a part of the Reformed community of Christians, I often hear sermons that detail various interpretations of passages given by (for example) Wayne Grudem, John Piper, John Edwards, John Calvin, Martin Luther, maybe John Owens or some other Puritan, and probably either Mark Driscoll or Tim Keller making an appearance here or there. Since these men are "in" with us, I suppose this is natural. However, I am increasingly troubled by the lack of Patristic and Medieval theologians, saints, and fellow believers showing up in our sermons, in our pietistic literature, and in our daily lives. Why is it, for example, that Augustine only makes a rare appearance (that is, when various passages of his can support our understanding of predestination)? Where is John Chrysostom? Or John of Damascus? Or Athanasius? Or Basil of Caeserea?

Part of the problem, I think, is that we do not require much in the way of Church history or historical theology in seminary. This might, although I am not sure, be due to the tendency of the Reformation itself to separate Church history into two parts: pre-Reformation error and Reformation recovery of the gospel. If that is our theological philosophy of history, then it makes sense to ignore (for all intents and purposes) those that came before Luther. This is not, of course, the official story that Reformed denominations hold, but it seems to be the implicit one. However, the view of the work of the holy Spirit that this vision of history entails is ultimately problematic. Jesus promises that the Spirit would "lead you into all truth" (Jn. 16:13). Was that promise only for the Apostles, after which the truth would fall into disrepair, error, and idolatry for 1400 years? If so, did Luther have the Spirit? Or Calvin? Or are we still waiting for the Spirit of Truth to reform us and remake us after Christ's image?

The question that I am asking, apart from these overly emotional arguments, is one of relative authority: to whom should we give interpretive priority, the moderns or the fathers? Note that I am not trying to draw a dichotomy (true or false) between them -- both have their place; my question is "what is that place?" What happens when they disagree? Sometimes sharply? Should the Ecumenical councils (at least the first four, if not all seven) hold some interpretive authority over modern hermeneutics? Or, are we so far advanced over the old ways of thinking as to render them irrelevant and outmoded? If so, does the holy Spirit change over time? Or is it a case of theological infancy blossoming into modern maturity (or adolescence)? Add to this the question of the piety/holiness of the interpreters: is Mark Driscoll more holy than Augustine? Than Maximos the Confessor? Is John Calvin a better witness to Christ than John Cassian? Should the relative holiness of an individual come into judging the relative merits and authority of their theology? Is Evagrius of Pontus correct when he says, "If you are a theologian you will pray, if you pray you are a theologian"?

Part of the difficulty, I think, is that in the Fathers pneumatology (our understanding and experience of the holy Spirit) is inseparable connected to ecclesiology (our understanding and experience of the Church): many of them where hard-working ascetic bishops who believed that they weren't uncovering something that was lost (whether in the first or second or third century), but rather were passing on something unmolested that had been passed on to them by their successors in the episcopate going back to the Apostles (known as "Apostolic Succession," which is attested to by St. Ignatius of Antioch as early as the 90s or 100s AD -- he was the third bishop of Antioch after Peter the Apostle to the Jews). In our Reformation context, we often talk about uncovering, or rediscovering, what had been lost -- and it is often very different from what these Fathers had passed on (for example, I know of no modern Reformed teacher who proclaims either theopoiesis or theosis [except maybe T.F. Torrance], that we are becoming by grace what Christ is by nature and that this is the true "chief end of man", even though this theme shows up in Irenaeus, Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, etc. as a true "Patristic consensus"). This is troubling, especially as I read people who will claim that, for example, Gregory of Nyssa (one of the Cappadocian Fathers) had some bad parts of his theology because he doesn't line up with the Westminster Confession of Faith. Apart from the gross anachronism that this entails in the first place, it assumes that later theological expressions, in this case the WCF, have interpretive priority over earlier ones. Is this a valid assumption? If so, how is this different from Cardinal John Henry Newman's idea of "doctrinal development"? In his case, the development was rooted in the Roman Magisterium: where is it rooted in the Reformed world? Sola Scriptura? Whose interpretation of the Scriptures? Is it possible (taking this to one possible logical conclusion) that all interpretations of Scripture are wrong and we have yet to come to a correct one (and who would have the authority to claim that that one really was the correct one?), but we will because we are getting more and more theologically "mature"?

If we go with the Fathers, by contrast, does this lock us into their ecclesiology? Should Presbyterianism, then, cease to be? (A related question is where was Presbyterian church government before the Reformation? Ignatius of Antioch, as mentioned previously, argues for one bishop per city who loving rules over a collection of presbyters -- this is strikingly similar, albeit not quite the same, as modern Orthodox practice. While arguments can be made for the Biblical precedent for Presbyterianism, where was it in historical actuality? I confess my own ignorance at this point. It may be there and I've just not run into it. If you have sources, please pass them along).

And so, years later, the Postmodern Protestant Dilemma rages on. Lord, have mercy.

Sometimes...

I often feel pressure to post on this blog. It is, after all, a tool of professional and theological development for me. Hopefully, it is a repository of insights; realistically, it is a "height-chart" that will show me, years from now, how far I've come. In the end, the professional aspect will fade away: theology is not about how many accolades, or publications, or positions one holds. Rather, if theology is done according to its own nature (logoi in a Maximos-ian sense), then it is the record of a journey into the love and mercy of God. Theology is, at best, an attempt to tell others about a relationship of great and intense intimacy: sometimes, details are left better unsaid, but a solid, staid fidelity must be asserted and witnessed. But a theologian, at the same time, is not the recipient of this intimacy: rather, he (or she, of course) is the witness to the cosmic love that the Father holds for His kosmos, His adorned creation. The theologian is one small part of that cosmos, but he (or she) is in a relatively privileged place: the bard that sings of the love held between Lover and Beloved. The one who describes the dance (the perichoresis) that the Beloved has been brought into, and through the tremendous mystery of the hypostatic union, has always been a part of.

Sometimes words are needed to describe; sometimes all the bard can do is provide background music (nothing, and I mean nothing, is worse than when a theologian interjects into this divine dance); sometimes all they can do is point others and say "join."