I prefer to write rather than quote in my blogs, but I just happened upon this from Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict:
"For the Christian, the Old Testament represents, in its totality, an advance towards Christ; only when it attains to him does its real meaning, which was gradually hinted at, become clear. Thus every individual part derives its meaning from the whole, and the whole derives its meaning from its end--from Christ. Hence we only interpret an individual text correctly (as the fathers of the Church recognized and as the faith of the Church in every age has recognized) when we see it as a way that is leading us ever forward, when we see in the text where this way is tending and what its inner direction is." ~ J. Ratzinger, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 9-10.
In other words, the OT derives its meaning from its end -- goal, purpose, God-designed destination -- Christ. Therefore readers of the OT have to be careful to interpret with Christ-as-the-full-revelation-of-God in mind.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Looking At and Looking With
I believe that Malcolm Muggeridge first alerted me to the distinction between looking at and looking with. Was it in his fine End of Christendom (1980), in which St. Mugg reflected on William Blake's "seeing with" not "through" the eye? I cannot recall, but I have come across the useful distinction in CS Lewis's writings.
Looking at is the approach of analysis, the poking and prodding, even dissecting, of a thing to discover its parts, its mechanisms, etc. Looking at also signifies the steps taken to uncover the processes by which a thing came to be -- philosophically a much more difficult form of reasoning since historical processes cannot be verified.
Looking with signifies meaning making: first, seeing what a thing sees; secondly, the process of understanding and valuing.
I am not sure how far I would press this, but it seems looking at reflects the approach of science, whereas looking with is identified with philosophy, theology and the arts.
Looking at the human person, then, might signify biochemical or psychological analysis. I struggled with biology in college, but I can at least recall that it was intended to identify the way in which the body functions. (Chemistry made more sense because of the molecule kits.) Two decades ago the biochemical worth of the human person was under $20. Perhaps certain body parts are of more economic value, some detached from the body of a person (e.g., heart, liver) and some not (i.e., sexually receptive parts). Demand impacts worth here, in the realm of looking at.
But is this the value of the human person? Looking with the person reveals the sense of being more than the sum of one's parts or more than the value in trade. I understand that I am worth X dollars biochemically or economically, but this material worth does not reflect my sense that I am, as CS Lewis noted, a fish-out-of-water, a person who is aware that he has a longing for something higher, something beyond the mere appearances, the mere material aspects of human existence.
Scientific looking at cannot uncover the awareness of freedom (for example) that the human person expresses. There is no centrifuge to separate human rights from animal drives. One must look with art, poetry, music, philosophy, and -- yes -- theology to discover the value of human life.
Human persons express a something more in their art and music, a looking with. The negativity projected in modern art and music unveils the person's experience of disappointment and despair. Looking with this negativity might suggest that the person is hopeless, fated for desperation and futility, but it also signifies the awareness of the something more, the longing for one's true home, a higher calling. [8.23.08]Sunday, August 10, 2008
Dis-ordered
In a previous entry I quoted St. Thomas Aquinas on "disordered affections." I like to word "dis-order" because it suggests misusing or undoing one's divine design rather than simply breaking the rules of Another (autonomy vs. heteronomy). But it seems as though one cannot use the term without explaining: understandably, people do not like themselves or their behavior being called "disordered."
The Creator orders; the creature dis-orders. God designs, plans, programs all things for a good end or purpose (Greek telos). Human freedom is one of those things that God has ordered to a good end: "freedom exists to serve love," wrote John Paul the Great. This means that God ordered or designed freedom to make possible the human choice to love God. Without freedom to choose the Other there is no real love.
The dis-ordering of freedom, then, is the using of it for other ends -- to serve individual pleasure, for example. God has ordered freedom to serve love (of God or other persons), so its use to attain a personal end at the expense of another is dis-ordered. Hence the Christian (especially Catholic) grammar of dis-ordered sexual acts: a person uses freedom to attain personal pleasure at the expense of the other person's God-designed good.
The concept is related to the distinction between first and second things: God has ordered the person to first things. The pleasures of second things are ordered to first things; they are not an end in themselves (this goes against the Catholic idea of secondary ends, I believe). Practically this means that the pleasures a person experiences in a second thing are meant to point one to the first thing -- consider the sacramental value of marriage!
Saturday, August 9, 2008
On Confirmation
(Note: I composed the following piece in 2003 for a Catholic Bishop’s diocesan sacramental guidelines.)
Our word “confirm” is derived from a Latin term for “strengthen.” Along with Baptism and first Eucharist, Confirmation is a sacrament of initiation. The Catholic Church understands Confirmation as the “completion of the baptismal grace” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1285). It is also a strengthening of the baptized Christian in the Holy Spirit.
Confirmation in the New Testament. Although an explicit Confirmation rite does not appear in the New Testament, its roots are in the vocabulary and practices of the New Testament church. We can begin as the public life of Jesus does, with the preaching of John the Baptist. According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus and his disciples continued John’s practice of water baptism (John 3:22, 4:1-2). Thus Christians have practiced water Baptism as a sacrament of initiation from the beginning. Yet it appears that the early followers of Jesus confess something more, connected with baptism, yet uniquely identified with the gift of the Holy Spirit. This something more is anticipated by the Baptist:
“I may baptize you with water for repentance, but there is one coming after me who is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” (Matthew 3:11; see also Luke 3:16)
The water-plus-Spirit pattern is also found in the Fourth Gospel, which tells of Jesus’ conversation with the Jewish leader Nicodemus. Jesus instructs him that one must be born anew, baptized in both water and the Spirit (John 3:5).
The connection between baptism and the reception of the Spirit is seen even more clearly in the Acts of the Apostles. Although it was not intended as a history book, Acts is the most important source for determining the early church’s practices. It tells a story of the expansion of the Jesus-movement from the ascension of Jesus to Paul’s trial in Rome, from about 30 to 62 AD. It includes the initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the growth of the Gospel outside of the Holy Land, the call and missionary travels of Paul, and the conversion of many gentiles. The group who witnessed the miraculous Pentecost event and heard Peter’s initial speech proclaiming Jesus as Messiah and Lord, asked what they should do in response. Peter replied,
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)
According to this speech, baptism for forgiveness of sins is inherently linked with the reception of the Holy Spirit. In another passage from Acts, it is clear that baptism was followed by the laying on of hands and reception of the Holy Spirit:
“When those apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who came and prayed for the Samarian believers, that they might receive the Holy Spirit — for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus! Then Peter and John laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 8:14-17)
Here Baptism and the Confirmation-like experience were separated in time. It was the apostles Peter and John who might be thought of as completing the Samarians’ Baptism, which is very much like Bishops today completing in Confirmation the initiation of those who were baptized.
It was not unique to find a group who had heard the gospel and been baptized, but had not yet received the Holy Spirit. In his travels, the apostle Paul encountered a group of baptized believers who were unaware of the Spirit:
“Paul ... came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. He asked them, ‘did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ They replied, ‘no, we have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’ Paul said, ‘into what were you baptized?’ They said, ‘into John’s baptism.’ And Paul said, ‘John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.’ On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.” (Acts 19:1-6)
Here it is clear that the laying on of the apostle’s hands and reception of the Holy Spirit followed Baptism. We might also conclude that the power to baptize was not considered the same power as the power of conferring the Holy Spirit.
The letters of Paul expand upon our ideas of the nature of the church and the role of the Holy Spirit in empowering each Christian to contribute to the growth of the body of Christ. In his first letter to the Corinthian Christians, Paul confronts an elitist clique of Christians who thought only they were gifted by the Holy Spirit. This is the context of Paul’s introduction of the image of the church as the body of Christ, in which each Christian is a body-part: heart, finger, toe and spleen! The gifting of each Christian by the Holy Spirit to serve is an essential element of Paul’s idea of the church, and it is foundational to the sacrament of Confirmation. Paul also formulated the fruits of the Spirit concept, that is, the idea that the presence of the Spirit will be observable in a Christian’s life (Galatians 5:22-26). Paul’s influence is even more direct, as the following text from his second letter to the Corinthians exhibits.
“The one who confirms us with you in Christ and who anointed us is God, who has also sealed us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge” (2 Corinthians 1:21-22)
Because modern English translations usually translate bebaiôn (“confirms” above) as “establishes,” the significance of Paul’s words have been obscured, whereas the early church saw here a clear description of Confirmation. From the later Pauline tradition we also read about being “sealed with the Holy Spirit,” which is a essential symbol of Confirmation: “sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13); “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30).
Each of these Pauline metaphors has significantly influenced the Catholic theology of Confirmation: the Holy Spirit’s gifting or empowering, its fruit or production, and sealing or completion.
Confirmation in Church History. Although it seems clear in the New Testament that the early church practiced a Confirmation-like rite, we wait until the fourth century for an explicit mention of “Confirmation.” Earlier writers recognize the laying on of hands and anointing as elements of Christian initiation (Tertullian, d. 220 AD), and refer to two Sacraments of initiation, one for regeneration (Baptism) and a second for the Holy Spirit — Confirmation (St. Cyprian, d. 258 AD). From the fourth century onward, there can be no question that Church theologians recognize a sacrament of Baptism and a second one that, with the laying on of hands and anointing with chrism, confers the Holy Spirit: for example, the fourth century Syrian, St. Ephrem, wrote of an “oil also for a most sweet balm, with which those already initiated by baptism are sealed, and put on the armor of the Holy Spirit.” The second sacrament is what we know today as Confirmation. By the middle ages there is no question about the validity of the sacrament of Confirmation.
The Eastern Orthodox-Greek tradition celebrates Baptism, Confirmation and first Eucharist at the same time. Thus infants who are baptized also receive Confirmation and Eucharist. In the Roman Catholic West, the separation of Baptism and Confirmation into two distinct (but interrelated) rites was both a theological and a practical development. The development of the idea of original sin went hand-in-hand with Baptism as purification, even for infants. As infant baptisms increased throughout the year, it became difficult for the Bishop to confirm each infant when they were baptized, yet the Western Catholic church has, at least since St. Augustine, considered it the Bishop’s role to complete Baptism. Local priests were allowed to baptize, but it was seen as the Bishops’ role to “confirm” the earlier Baptism by the “laying on of hands.”
The Western Catholic tradition also assigned Confirmation to an age of reason, a developmental stage in which children became able to choose for themselves, and will to follow Christ. Confirmation was never intended to cease the growth of the Christian into Christ’s likeness; each Christian has the obligation to grow in faith and knowledge.
The Modern Catholic Church. The Confirmation of maturing Christians resembles the rites of passage practiced by many cultures and various conceptions of the stages of personal development. But Confirmation is a theological entity rather than an anthropological or psychology phenomenon. Its effects are real rather than customary: a full outpouring of the Holy Spirit that manifests itself in gifts and service. Its additional effects will reveal themselves in the spiritual growth of the Christian and building-up of the body of Christ: an increase in the grace of baptism that roots one more deeply in family of God, and even allows one to authentically call God Abba; unites to Christ more firmly; increases the gifts of the Spirit; perfects the connection to the church; imparts new strength to confess Christ, evangelize and defend the church (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1303). In other words, Confirmed Catholics are enabled to “put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). Moreover, like Baptism, Confirmation “imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark, the ‘character,’ which is the sign that Jesus Christ has marked a Christian with the seal of his Spirit.”Symbols of Confirmation
Our word “confirm” is derived from a Latin term for “strengthen.” Along with Baptism and first Eucharist, Confirmation is a sacrament of initiation. The Catholic Church understands Confirmation as the “completion of the baptismal grace” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1285). It is also a strengthening of the baptized Christian in the Holy Spirit.
Confirmation in the New Testament. Although an explicit Confirmation rite does not appear in the New Testament, its roots are in the vocabulary and practices of the New Testament church. We can begin as the public life of Jesus does, with the preaching of John the Baptist. According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus and his disciples continued John’s practice of water baptism (John 3:22, 4:1-2). Thus Christians have practiced water Baptism as a sacrament of initiation from the beginning. Yet it appears that the early followers of Jesus confess something more, connected with baptism, yet uniquely identified with the gift of the Holy Spirit. This something more is anticipated by the Baptist:
“I may baptize you with water for repentance, but there is one coming after me who is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” (Matthew 3:11; see also Luke 3:16)
The water-plus-Spirit pattern is also found in the Fourth Gospel, which tells of Jesus’ conversation with the Jewish leader Nicodemus. Jesus instructs him that one must be born anew, baptized in both water and the Spirit (John 3:5).
The connection between baptism and the reception of the Spirit is seen even more clearly in the Acts of the Apostles. Although it was not intended as a history book, Acts is the most important source for determining the early church’s practices. It tells a story of the expansion of the Jesus-movement from the ascension of Jesus to Paul’s trial in Rome, from about 30 to 62 AD. It includes the initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the growth of the Gospel outside of the Holy Land, the call and missionary travels of Paul, and the conversion of many gentiles. The group who witnessed the miraculous Pentecost event and heard Peter’s initial speech proclaiming Jesus as Messiah and Lord, asked what they should do in response. Peter replied,
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)
According to this speech, baptism for forgiveness of sins is inherently linked with the reception of the Holy Spirit. In another passage from Acts, it is clear that baptism was followed by the laying on of hands and reception of the Holy Spirit:
“When those apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who came and prayed for the Samarian believers, that they might receive the Holy Spirit — for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus! Then Peter and John laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 8:14-17)
Here Baptism and the Confirmation-like experience were separated in time. It was the apostles Peter and John who might be thought of as completing the Samarians’ Baptism, which is very much like Bishops today completing in Confirmation the initiation of those who were baptized.
It was not unique to find a group who had heard the gospel and been baptized, but had not yet received the Holy Spirit. In his travels, the apostle Paul encountered a group of baptized believers who were unaware of the Spirit:
“Paul ... came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. He asked them, ‘did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ They replied, ‘no, we have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’ Paul said, ‘into what were you baptized?’ They said, ‘into John’s baptism.’ And Paul said, ‘John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.’ On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.” (Acts 19:1-6)
Here it is clear that the laying on of the apostle’s hands and reception of the Holy Spirit followed Baptism. We might also conclude that the power to baptize was not considered the same power as the power of conferring the Holy Spirit.
The letters of Paul expand upon our ideas of the nature of the church and the role of the Holy Spirit in empowering each Christian to contribute to the growth of the body of Christ. In his first letter to the Corinthian Christians, Paul confronts an elitist clique of Christians who thought only they were gifted by the Holy Spirit. This is the context of Paul’s introduction of the image of the church as the body of Christ, in which each Christian is a body-part: heart, finger, toe and spleen! The gifting of each Christian by the Holy Spirit to serve is an essential element of Paul’s idea of the church, and it is foundational to the sacrament of Confirmation. Paul also formulated the fruits of the Spirit concept, that is, the idea that the presence of the Spirit will be observable in a Christian’s life (Galatians 5:22-26). Paul’s influence is even more direct, as the following text from his second letter to the Corinthians exhibits.
“The one who confirms us with you in Christ and who anointed us is God, who has also sealed us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge” (2 Corinthians 1:21-22)
Because modern English translations usually translate bebaiôn (“confirms” above) as “establishes,” the significance of Paul’s words have been obscured, whereas the early church saw here a clear description of Confirmation. From the later Pauline tradition we also read about being “sealed with the Holy Spirit,” which is a essential symbol of Confirmation: “sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13); “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30).
Each of these Pauline metaphors has significantly influenced the Catholic theology of Confirmation: the Holy Spirit’s gifting or empowering, its fruit or production, and sealing or completion.
Confirmation in Church History. Although it seems clear in the New Testament that the early church practiced a Confirmation-like rite, we wait until the fourth century for an explicit mention of “Confirmation.” Earlier writers recognize the laying on of hands and anointing as elements of Christian initiation (Tertullian, d. 220 AD), and refer to two Sacraments of initiation, one for regeneration (Baptism) and a second for the Holy Spirit — Confirmation (St. Cyprian, d. 258 AD). From the fourth century onward, there can be no question that Church theologians recognize a sacrament of Baptism and a second one that, with the laying on of hands and anointing with chrism, confers the Holy Spirit: for example, the fourth century Syrian, St. Ephrem, wrote of an “oil also for a most sweet balm, with which those already initiated by baptism are sealed, and put on the armor of the Holy Spirit.” The second sacrament is what we know today as Confirmation. By the middle ages there is no question about the validity of the sacrament of Confirmation.
The Eastern Orthodox-Greek tradition celebrates Baptism, Confirmation and first Eucharist at the same time. Thus infants who are baptized also receive Confirmation and Eucharist. In the Roman Catholic West, the separation of Baptism and Confirmation into two distinct (but interrelated) rites was both a theological and a practical development. The development of the idea of original sin went hand-in-hand with Baptism as purification, even for infants. As infant baptisms increased throughout the year, it became difficult for the Bishop to confirm each infant when they were baptized, yet the Western Catholic church has, at least since St. Augustine, considered it the Bishop’s role to complete Baptism. Local priests were allowed to baptize, but it was seen as the Bishops’ role to “confirm” the earlier Baptism by the “laying on of hands.”
The Western Catholic tradition also assigned Confirmation to an age of reason, a developmental stage in which children became able to choose for themselves, and will to follow Christ. Confirmation was never intended to cease the growth of the Christian into Christ’s likeness; each Christian has the obligation to grow in faith and knowledge.
The Modern Catholic Church. The Confirmation of maturing Christians resembles the rites of passage practiced by many cultures and various conceptions of the stages of personal development. But Confirmation is a theological entity rather than an anthropological or psychology phenomenon. Its effects are real rather than customary: a full outpouring of the Holy Spirit that manifests itself in gifts and service. Its additional effects will reveal themselves in the spiritual growth of the Christian and building-up of the body of Christ: an increase in the grace of baptism that roots one more deeply in family of God, and even allows one to authentically call God Abba; unites to Christ more firmly; increases the gifts of the Spirit; perfects the connection to the church; imparts new strength to confess Christ, evangelize and defend the church (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1303). In other words, Confirmed Catholics are enabled to “put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). Moreover, like Baptism, Confirmation “imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark, the ‘character,’ which is the sign that Jesus Christ has marked a Christian with the seal of his Spirit.”Symbols of Confirmation
- laying on of hands
- anointing with chrism (oil)
- signing with the cross
- giving the sign of peace
“Preparation for Confirmation should aim at leading the Christian toward a more intimate union with Christ and a more lively familiarity with the Holy Spirit — his actions, his gifts, and his biddings — in order to be more capable of assuming the apostolic responsibilities of Christian life. To this end catechesis for Confirmation should strive to awaken a sense of belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ, the universal Church as well as the parish community. The latter bears special responsibility for the preparation of confirmands.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1309)
Monday, August 4, 2008
Xian Fragments
Quotes on faith, love, story by JP the Great, Tolkien, Lewis, Balthasar and other notable Christian writers
"We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his son." ~ John Paul the Great (WYD Homily Toronto, July 28, 2002)
"There is much in Christianity which can be subjected to exact analysis. But the ultimate things are shrouded in the silent mysteries of God." ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar
"Genuine faith: it is absolute dedication to things which are not seen, but which are capable of filling and ennobling a whole life." ~ John Paul the Great
"Faith is the ability to go beyond our own human, intramundane and personal truth and apprehend the absolute truth of the God who unveils and offers himself to us, acknowledging it to be the greater truth, allowing it to be the decisive factor in our lives" (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer [trans. G. Harrison; San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986] 33).
"In the study of creatures one should not exercise a vain and perishing curiosity, but ascend toward what is immortal and everlasting." ~ St. Augustine
“Seek the reason why God created, for that is true wisdom.” ~ St. Maximus the Confessor
"The less perfect is ordered to the more perfect as toward its end." ~ Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
"Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom -- it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of the other. Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love. If freedom is not, is not taken advantage by love it becomes a negative thing and gives human beings a feeling of emptiness and unfulfilment. Love commits freedom and imbues it with that to which the will is naturally attracted -- goodness." ~ Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 135.
"Nothing is inexorable but love. ... For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected -- not in itself, but in the object. ... Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire. ... Can it be any comfort to them to be told that God loves them so that He will burn them clean? ... They do not want to be clean, and they cannot bear to be tortured. ... When we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. ... The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear. ... For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed. It is the law of Nature -- that is, the law of God --that all that is destructible shall be destroyed." ~ George MacDonald
"For He regards men not as they are merely, but as they shall be; not as they shall be merely, but as they are now growing, or capable of growing, toward that image after which He made them that they might grow to it. Therefore a thousand stages, each in itself all but valueless, are of inestimable worth as the necessary and connected gradations of an infinite progress. A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint." ~ George MacDonald
"What the Christian is obliged to bring about is granted him by Christ as already effected, without however removing the necessity for striving after perfection...His death and resurrection, as an accomplished fact, was the grace communicated to them, and this primary grace of Christ became the ethical ideal they were called to realize subsequently." ~ Balthasar
"For the Son is not just any word, but the Word breathing love." ~ St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2.
"Faith presupposes reason and perfects it; and reason, illuminated by faith, finds the power to elevate itself to an awareness of God and of Spiritual realities." ~ Pope Benedict XVI, "Angelus"
"For each, God has a different response. With every man He has a secret—the secret of a new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter." ~ George MacDonald
"Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good; Love alone lightens every burden, and makes the rough places smooth. It bears every hardship as thought it were nothing, and renders all bitterness sweet and acceptable. The love of Jesus is noble, and inspires us to great deeds; it moves us always to desire perfection." ~ Thomas a Kempis
"Take for your motto: Love has conquered me, it alone shall possess my heart." ~ St. Margaret Mary
"A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence, but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things." ~ St. John of the Cross
"A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works; indeed, he certainly won't know how it works until he's accepted it." ~ C. S. Lewis
"Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance." ~ C. S. Lewis, "Heaven"
"Man is the perfection of the Universe. The spirit is the perfection of man. Love is the perfection of the spirit, and charity that of love. Therefore, the love of God is the end, the perfection of the Universe." ~ St. Francis de Sales
"One who prays truly will be a theologian, one who is a theologian will pray truly." ~ Evagrius Pontus
"When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o'clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a 'law,' for we do not understand its general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen. ...The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched." ~ G.K. Chesterton, "The Ethics of Elfland"
"I decline to show any respect for those who first of all clip the wings and cage the squirrel, rivet the chains and refuse the freedom, close all the doors of the cosmic prison on us with a clang of eternal iron, tell us that our emancipation is a dream and our dungeon a necessity; and then calmly turn round and tell us they have a freer thought and a more liberal theology." ~ G.K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man, "Escape from Paganism" 2.5. In the same context Chesterton responds to "intelligent sceptics" who say that our "dogma" is "too good to be true" and "too liberal to be likely": "We say not lightly but very literally, that the truth has made us free. They say that it makes us so free that it cannot be the truth." ~ G.K. Chesterton
"It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated." ~ George MacDonald
"No man who will not forgive his neighbor, can believe that God is willing, yea wanting, to forgive him. ... If God said, 'I forgive you' to a man who hated his brother, and if (as impossible) that voice of forgiveness should reach the man, what would it mean to him? How much would the man interpret it? Would it not mean to him 'You may go on hating. I do not mind it. You have had great provocation and are justified in your hate'? No doubt God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is, into the account: but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be urged for the hate, the more reason, if possible, that the hater should be delivered from the hell of his hate. ... Every sin meets with its due fate -- inexorable expulsion from the paradise of God's Humanity. He loves the sinner so much that He cannot forgive him in any other way than by banishing from his bosom the demon that possesses him." ~ George MacDonald
"The longer I looked into it the more I came to suspect that I was perceiving a universal law. ... The woman who makes a dog the centre her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication....Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made.
Apparently the world is made that way. If Esau really got the pottage in return for his birthright, then Esau was a lucky exception. You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first. From which it would follow that the question, What things are first? is of concern not only to philosophers but to everyone....What is the first thing? The only reply I can offer here is that if we do not know, then the first and only truly practical thing is to set about finding out." ~ C.S. Lewis
Tolkien on the Gospel's Truth
"The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essences of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels — peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfilment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. The story begins and ends in joy. It has preeminently the 'inner consistency of reality.' There is no tale ever that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.…To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.
It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be primarily true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythological or allegorical significance that it had possessed.…The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the 'happy ending.'"
J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories,” reprinted in The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine, 1966) 71–73.
Lewis on Myth in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
"The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by "the veil of familiarity". The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him‚ by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly. I do not think he could have done it in any other way."
Happiness, by Malcolm Muggeridge
"The pursuit of happiness, in any case, soon resolves itself into the pursuit of pleasure, something quite different—a mirage of happiness, a false vision of shade and refreshment seen across parched sand.
Where, then, does happiness lie ? In forgetfulness, not indulgence, of the self. In escape from sensual appetites, not in their satisfaction. We live in a dark, self-enclosed prison which is all we see or know if our glance is fixed ever downwards. To lift it upwards, becoming aware of the wide, luminous universe outside—this alone is happiness. At its highest level such happiness is the ecstasy which mystics have inadequately described. At more humdrum levels it is human love; the delights and beauties of our dear earth, its colours and shapes and sounds; the enchantment of understanding and laughing, and all other exercise of such faculties as we possess; the marvel of the meaning of everything, fitfully glimpsed, inadequately expounded, but ever-present.
Such is happiness—not compressible into a pill; not translatable into a sensation; lost to whoever would grasp it to himself alone, not to be gorged out of a trough, or torn out of another's body, or paid into a bank, or driven along a motorway, or fired in gun-salutes, or discovered in the stratosphere. Existing, intangible, in every true response to life, and absent in every false one. Propounded through the centuries in every noteworthy word and thought and deed. Expressed in art and literature and music; in vast cathedrals and tiny melodies; in everything that is harmonious, and in the unending heroism of imperfect men reaching after perfection.
When Pastor Bonhoeffer was taken off by his Nazi guards to be executed, as I have read, his face was shining with happiness, to the point that even those poor clowns noted it. In that place of darkest evil, he was the happiest man—he, the executed. I find this an image of supreme happiness."
[BBC broadcast, 10.5.1965; source]
Finding Faith, according to Malcolm Muggeridge
"...[F]or me, at any rate, doubt has been an integral part of coming to have faith; nor has there been, as I've said, any dramatic moment, any time when there it was, like has happened, for instance, to Pascal -- people like that -- or to Augustine. It's a process which I am quite sure will certainly continue until I depart from this life, which I shall fairly soon, and which maybe goes on into the next life for all I know; but an integral part of belief is to doubt. Now, why did this longing for faith assail me? Insofar as I can point to anything it is to do with this profession which both you and I followed of observing what's going on in the world and attempting to report and comment thereon, because that particular occupation gives one a very heightened sense of the sheer fantasy of human affairs -- the sheer fantasy of power and of the structures that men construct out of power -- and therefore gives one an intense, overwhelming longing to be in contact with reality. And so you look for reality and you try this and try that, and ultimately you arrive at the conclusion -- great oversimplification -- that reality is a mystery. The heart of reality is a mystery."
Mugg's interviewer, William F. Buckley, asked him "why should that mystery lead you to Christian belief?" Mugg's reply:
"Because it leads you to God. The mystery - and I think the best expression for it I've ever read is in a book I'm very fond of and I'm sure you know, called The Cloud of Unknowing, and it's when you are aware of the cloud of unknowing that you begin to know, and what you know - to simplify and put it very simply, is God. That's the beginning of faith for me."
[Firing Line interview; 9.6.1980]
***
“Child, if you will, it is mythology. It is but truth, not fact: an image, not the very real. But then it is My mythology. The words of Wisdom are also myth and metaphor: but since they do not know themselves for what they are, in them the hidden myth is master, where it should be servant: and it is but of man’s inventing. But this is My inventing, this is the veil under which I have chosen to appear even from the first until now. For this end I made your senses and for this end your imagination, that you might see my face and live. What would you have? Have you not heard among the Pagans the story of Semele? Or was there any age in any land when men did not know that corn and wine were the blood and body of a dying and yet living God?” (Pilgrim's Regress IX, v)First and Second Things
I have often pooh-poohed the Christian appropriation of the first commandment: to have no other God, to refrain from making idols. This command was given to ancient Israel, for whom polytheism and idolatry were real options. But today polytheism and idolatry are hardly temptations. Judeo-Christian monotheism has won the battle with paganism (see DB Hart's, "Christ and Nothing"). In place of Ba'al and Serapis, moderns have substituted a new-agey pantheism and a relativistic nothing-ism.
Christians have converted idolatry to a metaphor-of-sorts, in that it no longer signifies the making of images of a god. I do not know when this shift first emerged, but the principle behind it is suggested by St. Paul, who noted that human beings "worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (Romans 1:25).
I have come around. I now recognize that serving and worshiping the creature rather than the Creator is THE idolatrous temptation of the modern Christian. What influenced me first was John Paul the Great's moral-philosophical method based on Jesus' command to love God and neighbor in Love and Responsibility (1960). More recently I have found meaningful CS Lewis's simple distinction between first and second things: "You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first." (Walter Hooper argues that this theme permeates Lewis's work; I think I agree.)
Christians believe that the human person was designed to find completion only in God; one hungers for God because unification with God is the goal of human life. God is therefore the person's first thing. Everything else, even another person, is a second thing at best.
Thus, for Christians idolatry is the subordination (a placing beneath in importance) of one's first thing, God, to a second thing. The human person may attempt to fill that longing for God with second things, but this results in the loss of the second thing too. For Lewis, seeking God first, and subordinating all other things to this -- our primary good -- results in finding the joy that God intended in created things.
Obviously Jesus's words echo here: "seek first the kingdom of God...and all these things will be added to you" (Matthew 6:33). And what can go wrong with the person was identified by St. Thomas Aquinas: "Men were led to idolatry first by disordered affections, inasmuch as they bestowed divine honors upon someone whom they loved or venerated beyond measure." [8.4.08]Bear One Another's Burdens
Another one of my friends has been afflicted with cancer, so I am thinking today of CS Lewis' experience of suffering with his cancer-stricken wife. From his friend Charles Williams, Lewis learned of "co-inherence": through the Holy Spirit Christians could "dwell fully with each other and in another's lives" (Alan Jacobs, The Narnian, 284). The stimulus for the idea was St. Paul's words: "bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2); "rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15).
For Williams, it was the Christian's duty to die "each other's life," live "each other's death." Thus Lewis prayed that Joy's suffering be transfered to him. For a time, it appeared that his request was granted, as Joy's condition improved dramatically and Lewis began to suffer physically. Lewis thus happily experienced the "way of exchange" that Williams envisioned, receiving "in his body her pain" (Jacobs, 285).
Other than the mystical inter-connectedness of those "in Christ," what strikes me about Williams's idea and Lewis's experience is that the Christian imagination can see so much in the words of our Lord and his Apostle. Because he has been crucified since the foundation of the world, Christ reveals the truth about us and our world, the "hidden and secret wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:7) that has been obscured with our loss of the Paradise made for us. Those who take Christ's words seriously see the supernatural world and can tap into the power of the slain lamb (Revelation 5:6).
By the way, this "tapping into" is a gift, a "fruit of Christ's paschal mystery" (Catechism). It is also essential to sacramental theology. [7.19.08]The Story and the Sacraments
The Christian Sacraments were instituted by Christ in the New Testament: "Go and make disciples, baptizing them..."; and, "do this in remembrance of me." Of course, most people already know this.
But the Sacraments are otherwise fully grounded in the biblical story, the drama of salvation. According to our story, the human person (ha-'adam) was made for Paradise, to dwell with God, to wear garments of God's glory, to drink from living water, eat from the tree of life, and to be united with a spouse. The pain, toil, death and disordered relationships that persons experience are not the Paradise that God created for them. Our story portrays the person -- represented by Adam and Eve -- losing access to Paradise. According to St. Paul, their story is the common human story: "all have sinned and lack the glory of God....Because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man" (Rom 3:23, 5:17). Each person participates in Adam-and-Eve, and has thereby received the consequences of their disobedience. Their plight is the common human plight.
The person lost access to Eden in Adam-and-Eve, but regains it through Christ's death and resurrection. The Catholic Catechism labels the Sacraments as the "fruits of Christ's Paschal mystery." This reminds me of St. Ephrem the Syrian's (4th century) understanding of the impact of Christ's death and resurrection: it re-opened Paradise (Eden). The Sacraments are those elements of the present fallen world that allow the person-in-Christ to experience Paradise -- as a foretaste.
In the Gospels, Christ authorized and empowered the 12 Apostles to administer these gifts of re-opened Paradise (e.g., freedom from spiritual oppression and broken bodies) to the world. Thus, the Sacraments of the 12 Apostles are grace, the gift of God. Moreover, Paul wrote that the person-in-Christ can participate (koinonia) in Christ's death and resurrection through Baptism and the Holy Meal. The Pauline tradition also contributed the idea that the spousal relationship signifies the love of God and the Church.
The Sacraments are therefore a more than, a manifestation of Supernature, a glimpse of the enchanted world that was created for the person. For example, the chrism oil is the balm of the tree of life, for the healing of the human person. These Sacraments may look to the natural eye like the religious rituals of humanity, just as Christ's sacrifice in the heavenly sanctuary looked liked a socio-political execution in the bone yard. Seen with the eye of Christ-faith, these sacred mysteries are the real real, supernatural gifts (grace) that allow the person-in-Christ mystically to sniff the Eden created for her. They are also glimpses of heaven, therefore. [7.11.08]
Lewis, Paul and Orthodoxy
In the '90s, +Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia published two articles that explored C.S. Lewis as an "anonymous Orthodox." Kallistos identified a few "points of convergence" in Lewis's thought and the Orthodox tradition (e.g., the "sacramental character of creation"). I think theosis, that is, progressive divinization of the Christian person, is the most important biblical emphasis of Orthodoxy. And it is here that Lewis and Orthodoxy are most closely aligned.
But Lewis's depiction of the Christian's transformation into the image of Christ is not reliant on Orthodox theology. Rather, both Lewis and Orthodoxy find their stimulus in St. Paul. Paul's imagery is at the root of a Christ mysticism, expressed in Orthodox theosis and Lewis's many images in "Beyond Personality." Lewis was an excellent interpreter of St. Paul, especially in book four of his Mere Christianity.
For St. Paul, the Christian life begins with one's "yes" to God: God offers (grace) and the person accepts (faith). This simple exchange begins the process of transforming the person from within. The person "in Christ" (St. Paul's term) receives God's Spirit within, and God recreates and empowers (charisma) her. "Fruits of the Spirit" (Gal 5:22f.) and/or "good works" (Eph 2:10) are the positive outcomes of the inner regeneration, new life that has begun and is slowly "conforming" the person in Christ into the "image of the Son" (Rom 8:39). And the change within the person includes a remarkable change in the Christ-communities, a unity that destroys the ethnic, class, and gender boundaries that haunt human life together (Gal 3:28). As a group the Christ-people are his "body," transformed by baptism into his death (1 Cor 12:12) and the sharing of his blood and body (1 Cor 10:16-17), equipped by the Spirit to teach and serve each other and the world (1 Cor 12:4-7).
St. Paul's scheme is well reflected in Lewis's Mere Christianity, especailly book four, "Beyond Personality":
“The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God.”
“And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.”
“Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kmd of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call ‘good infection.’ Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”
“In the last chapter we were considering the Christian idea of ‘putting on Christ,’ or first ‘dressing up’ as a son of God in order that you may finally become a real son. What I want to make clear is that this is not one among many jobs a Christian has to do; and it is not a sort of special exercise for the top class. It is the whole of Christianity. Christianity offers nothing else at all.”
“When He said, ‘Be perfect,’ He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder—in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. ¶ This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else.… the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”
“What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ—can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father—that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature win begin to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be morning.”
My point is, then, that although +Kallistos is justified in looking at Lewis as an "anonymous Orthodox," the most meaningful similarity that one finds between Lewis and Orthodoxy is actually a family likeness of those who have looked with St. Paul at the reality and purpose of Christ-likeness. There are many Christian traditions that claim St. Paul as their own, but have significantly missed his vision of life in Christ. Lewis and the Orthodox tradition have not. [7.4.08]
Love and Money
A local Catholic parish is using a popular evangelical money management program. The program's author is also a radio personality, so I have heard his financial philosophy in my car many times. From a practical perspective the program makes sense as a way to attack the plague of credit debt, but it disturbs me that it is described as "biblically-based." This description certainly attracts the many churches that subscribe to the program, but is it biblical enough for a Catholic parish?
I do not think so. From what I have heard, the program cites, as divine justification, texts from the OT that one would not find in official Catholic socio-economic theological reflection. Catholic theology does not start from the book of Proverbs, for example.
The Catholic principle "agapéic love is the telos of human relationships" signifies the biblical starting point. Agapéic love reflects the the Greek term agapé, used in the NT for God's love for the world, Jesus' self-giving love that he exemplified and enjoined to his disciples: "agapé one another as I have agapéd you." Agapéic love is the starting point because Jesus said that it was: in answer to the question what is the first thing, the most important (prōté in Mk 12:28) value, Jesus replied "love God" and "love neighbor." From Jesus' explicit teaching comes the principle "agapéic love is the telos of human relationships." It means, whenever human beings interact -- even in the bedroom -- agapéic love must be the goal of that relationship. Finance is a human relationship, therefore ....
Agapéic love is the only biblical basis of personal finance. Basis means foundation, root assumption, or starting point. Other biblical texts and principles must be subordinate to the explicit teaching of our Lord. To subordinate means to place beneath in importance, so no biblical financial philosophy can subordinate agapéic love to lesser values, even if these values appear in scripture.
Jesus himself rejected the subordination of higher values to lower values: when asked about divorce, his response indicated that the value of marriage as expressed in the creation story -- the two can become one flesh -- is a higher value than Moses' later allowance for divorce (Dt 24:1).
There is much more to explore here, but this is enough for now. [6.5.08]Redux
Is it not theologically significant how Jesus, Paul, and the other NT writers understood their Scripture, the OT? How did they read and value the creation story? -- this is my question, partially addressed below. For those who want to learn more about how the Ancients read their Bible, I heartily recommend James Kugel's books The Bible as It Was (I have used it as a textbook in various courses) and the recent How to Read the Bible, which contrasts the Ancient and modern critical approaches to the OT. [5.28.08]
Whither the Creation Story?
There is no greater theological separation between the ancient and the modern critical approach to biblical texts than in their valuation of the creation story in Genesis 1-3. Ancient Israel began its own particular story with two stories that connected Israel's story (from the election of Abraham to the fall of Judah) with the common origin -- and plight! -- of all people. In the days of Jesus and Paul, these stories were the primary sacred mysteries.
For this reason the author of the Fourth Gospel began the Jesus story with a re-writing of the first words of Genesis that portrayed the pre-Incarnate Christ as God, the Word, and the primordial Light that illuminated the cosmos before there were celestial lights; Paul believed Jesus the Christ was the second Adam who undid the problems introduced by the first couple in Genesis 3; and the Colossians Christ-hymn (1:15-20) appears to be a reflection on how Jesus filled up the first words of the Bible (be-reshit) with meaning: "by him were all things created...he is before all things...by him all things consist." Christ is the Head, the Summit, the Fullness -- each term a reflection of the Hebrew term reshit ("beginning" in our English versions of Gen 1:1).
The problem is that modern critical scholarship views these stories as two add-ons that were not part of Israel's core expression of faith. Therefore, in textbooks the creation stories are relegated to late chapters, far removed from the place that ancient Israel assigned them in the grand drama of scripture. For example, a 2006 OT textbook, published by St. Mary's Press and marketed to Catholic colleges, begins its analysis of the story with Genesis 12, the Abraham story, which is the beginning of the specific story of Israel; this is chapter two of the textbook. The creation stories are buried in chapter thirteen (well over 300 pages removed from the analysis of Genesis), following the theology of creation in Proverbs and Sirach!
I understand why biblical scholars do this: they re-arrange the biblical story according to the widely accepted critical reconstruction of the development of OT literature. Election and Exodus are primary expressions of ancient Israel's faith; creation, as it is narrated in Genesis 1-2 is not even secondary.
The primary problem is that this rearrangement results in bad theology: the NT was written in the light of a biblical story that began with the stories of creation; the NT storyworld -- i.e. what was possible and impossible -- was dependent on the creation story. Moreover, the problems of the person that required fixing -- by Christ -- were the consequences of Genesis 3.
The primary result is the separation of Jesus' story from its place in the biblical drama. Christ cannot fix what was not broken. This is not a happy result for Christian theology. Our sacred story is symmetrical, for the conflict that emerges in Genesis 3 is resolved only in the Apocalypse, with the descent of the new Edenic city of God.
Nor is the re-arrangement positive for ancient Israel's understanding of itself. It is as if Israel's story cannot stand on its own, but must be reconfigured according to later critical criteria. The irony is that in attempting to salvage Israel's story, scholars have judged that ancient Israel was wrong about its connection to all of humanity. Without Genesis 1-3, the biblical story is missing most elements of its storyworld. The story does not begin with the cosmos as a positive order created on purpose. Finally, there is no image of the human person created in the image of God and formed from the earth. [5.27.08]
The Danger of Light and Joy
My family saw Prince Caspian on its opening weekend, but it did not impress me enough to write a reflection. Rather, I have had the following excerpt from Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring laying about for over a year. This scene, from "Farewell To Lórien," was not included in the movie version, although it can be found on extended DVDs. As he and his new friend Legolas are paddling away from the Elf realm, Gimli the dwarf is overcome with what he is leaving behind: the beauty of Galadriel, the elf-queen (Cate Blanchett in the movie). Galadriel is "that which was fairest" in the excerpt:
"The travellers now turned their faces to the journey; the sun was before them, and their eyes were dazzled, for all were filled with tears. Gimli wept openly.
'I have looked the last upon that which was fairest,' he said to Legolas his companion. 'Henceforward I will call nothing fair, unless it be her gift.' He put his hand to his breast.
'I have looked the last upon that which was fairest,' he said to Legolas his companion. 'Henceforward I will call nothing fair, unless it be her gift.' He put his hand to his breast.
'Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this Quest? Little did I know where the chief peril lay! Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. Alas for Gimli son of Glóin!'
'Nay!' said Legolas. 'Alas for us all! And for all that walk the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed, Gimli son of Glóin: for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise. But you have not forsaken your companions, and the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlórien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale.'
'Maybe,' said Gimli; 'and I thank you for your words. True words doubtless; yet all such comfort is cold. Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror, be it clear as Kheled-zâram. Or so says the heart of Gimli the Dwarf. Elves may see things otherwise. Indeed I have heard that for them memory is more like to the waking world than to a dream. Not so for Dwarves.'"
'Nay!' said Legolas. 'Alas for us all! And for all that walk the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed, Gimli son of Glóin: for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise. But you have not forsaken your companions, and the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlórien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale.'
'Maybe,' said Gimli; 'and I thank you for your words. True words doubtless; yet all such comfort is cold. Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror, be it clear as Kheled-zâram. Or so says the heart of Gimli the Dwarf. Elves may see things otherwise. Indeed I have heard that for them memory is more like to the waking world than to a dream. Not so for Dwarves.'"
Once Gimli had experienced beauty itself, which Galadriel represents in Tolkien's epic, nothing else satisfies. The "danger of light and joy" means all other shadows of true Beauty only make him long for Beauty itself, which he now has only in unsatisfying memory. The elements of reality that he formerly found beautiful and satisfying now seem dull and dingy.
It does not surprise me that this scene was left out of the theatrical release because it is impossible to portray the beauty of Galadriel --despite Blanchett's stunning features -- as it was perceived by Gimli. The audience may have mistaken Gimli's longing lament -- for the One -- for a baser human desire.
Perhaps this scene reflects the difficulty of expressing the experience of the source of Beauty. Human analogies and likenesses (e.g., a bush burning but not being consumed, a brightness no bleaching agent can achieve) do not convince those who have not experienced Beauty, whereas, for those who have had a glimpse, every likeness is pale, dreary, unsatisfying.
The human person is prone to choose lesser beauties over the source of all Beauty, but this choice becomes all the more difficult when one has experienced the Source. Not only does the likeness not satisfy, nothing satisfies but the One. That is Gimli's "danger of light and joy." [5.21.08]Heavens and the Sky
I have been thinking about the terms "heaven(s)" and "sky" because I am reading Michael Ward's Planet Narnia: the Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (2008). Lewis saw a meaning in the medieval (pre-Copernican) hierarchical cosmos that I have not, but the book also makes me wonder whether I am missing something, that I have demythologized the heavens/sky (in favor of space) and thereby lost something that must be recovered. I can only hint at what has been lost because I have not yet put my finger on it, but it may be reflected in the dialog between Eustace and an old star, Ramandu. In the story Eustace has been a symbol of the modern person who believes that a star is a "huge ball of flaming gas." Ramandu's response: "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of" (Voyage of the Dawn Treader).
In the biblical languages the same term signifies both heaven(s) and the sky: shamayim in Hebrew, ouranios in Greek. But I envision sky as space, and space in my modern worldview is empty of life and alienating -- even though I am a fan of science fiction. Heaven is sacred space, the enchanted realm of God. But heaven is not "up there"; sky/space is "up there." I may be wrong here, but my impression is that modern Christians share this view -- at least most of my students do, even if they point to heaven "up there."
The "up there" heaven is clearly an element of the biblical story, however: at the Baptism, in the revelation of the Holy Trinity, the Spirit descended and a voice came from the heavens (Mk 1:10); Jesus ascended (Acts 1:9), and will descend and his people meet him in the clouds (1Thes 4:16-17); the new Jerusalem descended (Rev 21:2). [Note: descend = "go down"; ascend = "go up."]
Root Assumptions of CST
Catholic Social Teaching is widely known in summary form by a list of themes; a themes handout is circulated in parishes. (See the US Bishops' six themes of CST.) The themes approach to CST gives the impression that the themes have equal weight and have no moral hierarchy; the themes handouts that I have seen do not identify the reasoning by which the themes emerge. I prefer to identify the root assumptions of CST: if people understand its starting points, then the conclusions found within the Church's social documents are clear. The following are my three root assumptions of CST.
- the transcendental value of the person: the person is a good which may not be subordinated to other goods; social structures must be ordered to, or at least not hinder movement toward, the true telos of the person.
- natural law: a universal moral standard to which all governments and leaders are accountable.
- love (agape) as the telos of all human relationships: a truth entrusted to the Church -- i.e., revelation -- to share with the world as a sign-post of where the person is ordered. (Agape is a Greek term that signifies the particularly Christian flavor of love; telos is a Greek word signifying in Catholic theology the God-designed goal or purpose.)
Re-SHALOM-ification
In the Pauline tradition, the concept of reconciliation signifies the beginning of the re-shalomification of the cosmos by the cross. The term itself is a bit of a gag, yet it was designed to reflect an important idea: because of OT messianic texts, ancient messianic Judaism rightfully expected the messiah to return the world to the state of shalom in the beginning (see Isa 11:1-9, 65:25) -- "swords into plowshares," the lion-and-lamb image, etc.
My point then is that Paul, who is the only NT author to use the concept "reconciliation," saw that the Christ-event inaugurated the process of returning the cosmos to shalom. The evidence of this, in his mind, is the relationship in the Pauline communities between people of different social classes, ethnicities, and gender roles, as well as the renewed relationship between God (the offended party) and the human person. The Pauline Jesus communities demonstrated that the process of re-shaloming had begun. [5.2.08]Apocalypse of Peace
This phrase reflects my approach to the biblical story, specifically Christ the non-retaliating victim ("slain lamb," Rev 5:6) conquering the powers of evil and the secret power of redemptive non-violence that has been in the cosmos from the beginning.
"Apocalypse" signifies an unveiling, the disclosure of what has formerly been hidden. The power of the cross has been hidden from the first, as Paul hints at in 1 Corinthians 2:7-8: "we speak of a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. The rulers of this age did not understand this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." His phrase "for [eis] our glory" means that this hidden wisdom is also the telos (or, end for which God has ordered the human person) of those who share in Christ's passion: "sumpaschomen hina kai sundoxasthōmen" (Romans 8:17) -- suffer with and then hope to be "lit up" (glorified) with. The glorification of those in Christ signifies they have "put on" the Lord of Glory.
Peace is the truth, then, but it has been been hidden in the cosmos until the Christ event revealed it ca. 30 AD. What has not been hidden is the Darwinian principle, "survival of the fittest." Although this principle seems to reflect the natural world, it obscures the "truth about us," the human person's telos, which is glorification in the slain lamb. Moreover, the violence by which the strong survive is, in a sense, a lie -- as JP2 noted: "violence is a lie."
The slogan "myth of redemptive violence" is widely used among peaceniks to reflect the belief that violence begets violence, not peace. Our culture accepts redemptive violence as a truth, however unfortunate; but redemptive violence is not consistent with Christ's law of non-retaliation, his Beatitudes ("the meek shall inherit the earth"), or his kenotic (self-emptying) example. If Christ reveals the truth, then the success through violence is ultimately a lie.
According to the biblical story as the Ancients read it, God created the world in a state of shalom, but creation was "flushed" when the human person allowed violence to overwhelm the created good (Gen 6:13). God has ordered the world to shalom; thus violence is a dis-ordering, and cannot be the truth about us.
The apocalypse of peace reflects the Endzeit/Urzeit typology of the Ancients: the apocalyptic end will reveal the reshith (beginning) shalom of the biblical God's order, but until then, the people of the Lamb can tap this hidden power by living non-violently on behalf of the Good and the True. [4.27.08; rev. 5.2.08]
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