For Stringfellow the foundational gift is "discerning the spirits."
According to Stringfellow "discerning the signs and spirits" is learning
to read the world biblically, which means apocalyptically and eschatologically.
Two fancy words there. For Stringfellow, reading the world
apocalyptically means discerning truth from lies in the dehumanizing
forces facing us in the world. Apocalypse means "unveiling." Discerning the spirits is lifting the veil of lies to see the forces of death at
work in the background, the forces we cannot see because of the babel
produced by the principalities and powers. For Stringfellow, reading the
world eschatologically is placing those dehumanizing forces under
judgment and living in hope.
Stringfellow describing the gift of discernment:Discerning signs has to do with comprehending the remarkable in common happenings, with perceiving the saga of salvation within the era of the Fall. It has to do with the ability to interpret ordinary events in both apocalyptic and eschatological connotations, to see portents of death where others find progress or success but, simultaneously, to beholdThis is one of my most favorite Stringfellow passages. What is the gift
tokens of the reality of Resurrection or hope where others are consigned to confusion or despair. Discerning the signs does not seek spectacular proofs or await the miraculous, but, rather, it means sensitivity to the Word of God indwelling in all Creation and transfiguring common history, while remaining radically realistic about death's vitality inall that happens.
of discernment? It is discerning the remarkable in common happenings.
Perceiving the saga of Salvation all around us. Interpreting ordinary
events in biblical ways. Seeing portents of death where others find
progress and success. And finding tokens of resurrection where there is
confusion and despair.
In summarizing the gift of discernment Stringfellow says, "In the midst of babel, speak the truth."
Truth telling--reading the world biblically--is a charismatic gift that
allows us to find and care for our humanity in the midst of the Fall.
Stringfellow goes on to describe three other gifts--speaking in tongues,
healing and exorcism. In each case Stringfellow is less concerned with
the personal and "miraculous" experience of these gifts than with the
political character of the charismatic gifts:It spares Christians, and others, the pitfalls of vain, exotic,Speaking in tongues at Pentecost expressed "the emancipation of human beings from the bonds of nation, culture, race, language, ethnicity." Speaking in tongues recognizes a universal humanity--of which the church is a sign--stripped of the false divisions created and maintained by the principalities and powers.
individualistic, and exclusive views of the charismatic gifts to treat them, as the Bible does, politically...
Each and every charismatic gift is concerned with the restoration and renewal of human life in society. All have to do with how, concretely,human beings are enabled to cope with the multiple and variegated claims of death. The charismatic gifts furnish the only powers to which humans have access against the aggressions of the principalities. The gifts dispel idolatry and free human beings to celebrate Creation, which is,
biblically speaking, integral to the worship of God. The gifts equippersons to live humanly in the midst of the Fall. The exercise of these gifts constitutes the essential tactics of resistance to the power of death.
More, speaking in tongues represents the ability of the church to speak
freely and spontaneously in the midst of babel. Speaking in tongues
represents the church speaking in her own voice and language.
Life-giving words that cannot be co-opted, controlled or censored by the
powers.
Healing is less about physical healing than a declaration that the
threat of death--a threat made by the powers--holds no fear for the
confessing community. Consequently, a community freed from the threat of death falls outside systems of control as death is the means of
coercion wielded by the powers, the state especially. As Stringfellow
says,To so surpass death is utterly threatening politically, it shakes andshatters the very foundation of political reality because death is, as has been said, the only moral and political sanction of theState...[Resurrection exemplifies] life transcending the moral power of death in this world and this world's strongholds and kingdoms.Finally, exorcism is casting out the spirituality of death. Exorcism,
thus, sits at the heart of the Christian resistance to death. As
Stringfellow points out, the Lord's Prayer is itself "a form of
exorcism." In invoking God and asking for protection from "evil" and
"the evil one" the Lord's Prayer is a "act of exorcism."
Stringfellow goes on to describe how exorcism can be expressed as
"sacramental protest" against the forces of death. For example, he
describes the actions of the Catonsvile Nine, who burned Vietnam draft cards with homemade napalm while saying the Lord's Prayer, as a "liturgy of exorcism."
Such are the practices, according to Stringfellow, which humanize life during the Fall.
Again, Christian worship in its fulness should include and harmonize all the various phases of our human experience. It has room for the extremes of awestruck adoration and penitent love, humble demand and inward assurance. All levels of life and action are relevant to it; for they are covered and sanctified by the principle of incarnation. It can therefore weave every detail of the daily routine into the devotional life. It is thoroughly sacramental; and shows its true quality, not by an increasing abstraction and other-worldliness, but by an ever-deepening recognition of the sacredness and inexhaustible meaning of homely things. Especially a deep realism as regards human imperfection and sin, and also human suffering and struggle, is at the very heart of the Christian response to God; which if it is to tally with the Christian revelation of disinterested love as summed up in the Cross, must include the element of hardness, cost, and willing pain. It is this sacrificial suffering, this deliberate endurance of hardship for the sake of the Unseen, which gives nobility and depth to worship. The costly renunciations and total self-stripping of the consecrated life contribute something to the Church's oblation, without which her reasonable and holy sacrifice would not be complete. The "altar of the Cross" is no idle phrase; but reminds us that Christianity is a sacrificial religion, and that Christian worship is unintelligible if we eliminate the tension which is inherent in it, and the unconditioned self-offering by which it is crowned.
From all this it follows that the demand for a purely spiritual cultus is one that can never be made by Christianity; commmited by its very nature to a belief in the visible as vehicle of the invisible - to history, personality, sacraments, and sensible signs, as channels of God's communion with man, and body as well as soul as part of man's offering to God
It’s true that we can do nothing to merit the Grace of God; it’s true that we don’t deserve it, and that we can’t earn it. And sometimes it appears to me that the Evangelical thing is a worry that somehow we’re going to lose God’s love by “improving”! In other words, unless we acknowledge at all times that we are bad, bad, bad – and that nothing we do can change that fact – God will abandon us. Because that is the basis of the relationship! But of course, that is – as they say in A.A. – “pride in reverse.” It still leaves us at the center of the universe; we’re still focused on ourselves! The point, really, is to let go of all that, and become “channels” or “instruments” of God’s will.But this did not get at the heart of the problem, as McKnight's analysis does; the "what Jesus did for me" idea keeps people stuck thinking about themselves; this shows up, though, apparently, all the way through Evangelical theology. The whole point of the thing, though, is to stop thinking about ourselves! That is the sine qua non of all spiritual endeavor, and the heart of Christianity, too. (I've always had a bit of difficulty with the "what Jesus did for me/justification by faith" idea anyway; it's always seemed to me way too much like a kind of quid pro quo - a bizarre kind of "Salvation Equation" - and one that, tragically, ignores the story itself! Because the story itself is where all the power is. McKnight talks about this in Part 2.)
When Brian McLaren calls and says, “Tripp you gotta record this & share it. I think James is gonna be gold.” then you do it. This episode is a conversation between James Alison & Brian McLaren. It took place as part of a Raven Foundation event that explored how the work of René Girard could transform our understanding of the Christian story, atonement, violence, politics and more.Brian McLaren is podcast regular, activist, author, and emerging church pioneer. James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest, and author who identifies as gay who developed Jesus the Forgiving Victim, a program of induction into the Christian faith for adults, following on from the insight into desire associated with René Girard.
[for an introductory conversation about mimetic thought and Girard read this]
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1. Christ the Second Adam. A major theme most powerfully developed by Irenaeus in his account of recapitulation. Christ restarts the human race from the beginning and sets it on a course towards life. Christ replaces Adam as the new life-giving head of the human family. (Main scriptural source: Romans 5.)
2. Christ the Sacrifice. This is an important background theme that becomes explicit mainly in liturgical texts. Melito of Sardis' On Pascha provides the most vivid elaboration of sacrificial imagery, artfully interwoven with a plethora of other Old Testament themes and images. (Main scriptural source: the Pentateuch and the Gospel of John.)
3. Christ the Teacher. A characteristic theme of the Alexandrian tradition. Christ is the divine pedagogue who, by a slow and patient process, leads human souls up into the presence of divine wisdom. In some accounts this process extends into the afterlife. Clement of Alexandria developed this theme explicitly. The same theme supplies the basic architecture of Origen's thought. Many accounts of deification are really just elaborations of the end result of this educational process: life is a school, and deification is the graduation prize. (Main scriptural source: the four Gospels.)
4. Christ the Brother. The adoption theme is prevalent in early Christian writing. Christ becomes our brother. Through him we become members of God's family. What he is by nature, we become by grace. It is often in this context that language of deification is used: Christ is God by nature, and as his brothers and sisters we become gods by grace. Adoption language is especially pervasive in Origen. By the fourth and fifth centuries the emphasis tends to fall more on deification, but the deification theme should still be understood as a subset of either the adoption theme or the education theme (#3 above). (Main scriptural source: Romans 8.)
5. Christ the Life-giver. One finds this theme everywhere in early Christian liturgical and theological texts. It is developed with an impressive systematic rigour in the work of Athanasius. The divine Logos had to become incarnate in order to become capable of dying; by entering into death, he absorbs death into the divine life, thus draining away death's power; and by rising again, he transforms corruptible human nature into a glorious incorruptible nature. Here Christ's death and resurrection are equally emphasised as the two poles of the saving event. (Main scriptural source: 1 Corinthians 15.)
6. Christ the Healer. My impression is that this theme recurs more than any other soteriological theme in patristic writing, even though it is seldom developed in much detail. Very frequently Christ is described as a physician who cures our illness. Often he is also described as medicine. Gregory of Nazianzus speaks of the incarnation as a healing of human nature. Augustine is particularly fond of the healing theme, and it is a constant refrain in his sermons. He speaks of Adam as infecting the human race with the disease of pride, and of Christ's humility as the medicine that cures us. (Main scriptural source: the four Gospels.)
Comments: (a) Even from these summaries, one can see that these themes are normally found not as separate ideas but as closely interwoven motifs. (b) Note the pronounced tendency to speak of salvation in corporate terms. Christ achieves salvation not for individuals but for human nature, for humanity as a whole. Only in the third theme (teaching) is there a more individual emphasis, but even here patristic authors believe that the whole of humanity is enrolled in Christ's school. Saints and martyrs are in the PhD program; the wicked are in kindergarten. (c) Only in the second category (sacrifice) is there any exclusive fixation on Christ's death as a saving event. Much more characteristic of early Christian writing is a broad vision of Christ's life, death, descent into hell, and resurrection as the one great drama of salvation. Even the sacrificial imagery that dominated early Christian interpretations of the passover (e.g. Melito's On Pascha) was qualified when Origen (in his own On Pascha) argued that the passover is not a type of Christ's sacrificial death, but a type of the whole movement whereby Christ's death, descent, and resurrection leads the human race in exodus from death to life. (d) While scholars like N. T. Wright routinely criticise orthodox christology as a flattening out of the Gospel witness, with no serious attention given to Jesus' earthly ministry, one can see above that two of these major soteriological themes (#3 and #6) were primarily adapted from the Gospel accounts of Jesus' ministry. Very prominent in all four Gospels is the portrayal of Jesus as Teacher and Healer. Through a spiritual interpretation of the Gospels, these features of Jesus' life and ministry became fundamental patterns for describing Christ's saving work.
Descartes said cogito ergo sum (‘I think therefore I am”) but Augustine anticipated the thought by a millenia or so with his own version of the cogito. Augustine’s version really says amo ergo sum–we love therefore we are.We resemble the divine Trinity in that we exist; we know that we exist, and we are glad of this existence and this knowledge. In those three things there is no plausible deception to trouble us. For we do not apprehend those truths by the bodily senses by which we are in contact with the world outside us – perceiving colour by sight, sound by hearing, odour by the sense of smell, flavours by the taste, hardness and softness by touch. We can also summon up in thought the immaterial images which closely resemble those material things apprehended by sense; we retain them in our memory; and through those images we are aroused to desire the things they represent. But the certainty that I exist, that I know it, and that I am glad of it, is independent of any imaginary and deceptive fantasies.In respect of those truths I have no fear of the arguments of the Academics. They say, ‘Suppose you are mistaken?’ I reply, ‘If I am mistaken, I exist.’ A non-existent being cannot be mistaken; therefore I must exist, if I am mistaken. Then since my being mistaken proves that I exist, how can I be mistaken in thinking that I exist, seeing that my mistake establishes my existence? Since therefore I must exist in order to be mistaken, then even if I am mistaken, there can be no doubt that I am not mistaken in my knowledge that I exist. It follows that I am not mistaken in knowing that I know. For just as I know that I exist, I also know that I know.And when I am glad of those two facts, I can add the fact of that gladness to the things I know, as a fact of equal worth. For I am not mistaken about the fact of my gladness, since I am not mistaken about the things which I love. Even if they were illusory, it would still be a fact that I love the illusions. For how could I be rightly blamed and forbidden to love illusions, if it were an illusion that I loved them? But since in fact their truth is established, who can doubt that, when they are loved, that love is an established truth? Moreover, it is as certain that no one would wish himself not to exist as it is that no one would wish himself not to be happy. For existence is a necessary condition for happiness.Augustine, City of God, XI.26
Finally, we need to distinguish an Aristotelian conception of mind and human nature from either a materialist conception or a Cartesian one. From an Aristotelian point of view, the other two conceptions involve a fallacious tendency to reify abstractions and/or to attribute to parts of a human being what can properly be attributed only to the whole. The Aristotelian regards a human being as a single, irreducible substance that takes in nutrients, grows, reproduces itself, moves itself about, senses the world around it, has various appetites, thinks, and wills. Aristotelians regard thinking and willing as incorporeal activities and the other activities as corporeal ones, but it is the one substance that carries out both, and even those Aristotelians who think that the intellect survives the death of the body (such as Thomists) do not think that the separated intellect constitutes a complete substance in its own right, but rather the human being in a radically diminished state. To use an analogy I’ve made use of before, just as a sentence is a single entity with both physically definable properties (such as the chemistry of the ink in which it is written) and properties not so definable (such as its semantic content) so too is a human being a single thing despite its radically different aspects. (The difference being that a sentence is a kind of artifact and a human being is not.)From an Aristotelian point of view, the Cartesian conception of human nature grotesquely distorts it in several ways. First, it abstracts from matter its mathematically definable features -- ignoring aspects that are not so definable, such as substantial form, immanent teleology, and secondary qualities-- and then reifies this abstraction, redefining “matter” as that kind of stuff which has these mathematically definable features, and only those features. Second, the Cartesian abstracts from human nature its mental aspects and then reifies them, resulting in the notion of a “thinking substance.” Third, whereas the Aristotelian sees what is distinctive about our minds as their intellectual capacities, such as their capacity for grasping universally shared concepts, the Cartesian tends to focus on conscious awareness, understood as something private, directly knowable only via introspection. Fourth, the Cartesian then slaps together his desiccated notion of matter and his reification of introspected conscious thought and calls the resulting aggregate a “human being.” For the Aristotelian, this is a little like squeezing every last drop of juice out a certain piece of fruit, peeling off the skin, drying it out and throwing away the pulp -- then putting the dried out skin next to a glass of the juice and saying “An orange is what you get when you put this dried skin next to the glass.”The materialist, meanwhile, lops off the one abstraction (the thinking substance), keeps the other (the mathematicized redefinition of matter), and insists that only what is reducible to the latter is real. He is like the man who says “No, no, an orange is just the dried out skin by itself,” considers this a great advance in understanding (backed by Ockham’s razor, no less), and accuses those who disagree with him of holding that an orange is an unwieldy composite of dried skin and glass of juice. The right view, of course, is that an orange is what you had before the juice and pulp were squeezed out, and for the Aristotelian what a human being is (and indeed what natural substances in general are) are what we had before Cartesians and materialists got hold of them. (Contemporary property dualism is essentially a middle ground position between materialism and Cartesianism, accepting their desiccated view of matter, and tacking on to it the “juice” but without the “glass.”)
The Shelter Island Retreat which took place on April 3, 2004 at St Mary's Episcopal Church on Shelter Island, Robert's home parish. This is the first of three teachings on "Genesis: The Movie."
Even if we do no more than confine ourselves to chapter 13 of Matthew, its string of shortish parables of the kingdom develops mightily the mysterious themes sketched in the Sower. If we toss in the parables of grace as well, we find the mystery of the kingdom more and more closely identified with Jesus himself (the parable of the Watchful Servants in Luke 12:35-48). If we include the parables of judgement, we find him saying that the final constitution of the kingdom rests entirely on relationship with him - and on that relationship as operative in the mystery of his catholic presence in all human beings (the parable of the Great Judgement, Matt. 25:31-46). And finally, if we take in the rest of his words and deeds, we find him claiming at the Last Supper that the cup is the New Covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20). In short, we find him asserting that in himself - in his death, resurrection, and ascension - whatever is necessary for the fullness of the kingdom has been accomplished purely and simply by what he has done.
The idea of the catholicity of the kingdom - the insistence that it is at work everywhere, always, and for all, rather than in some places, at some times, and for some people - is an integral part of Jesus' teachings from start to finish....Not only does he resort, as in the parable of the Leaven (Matt. 13_33), to the occasional illustration that quite literally uses the word "whole" (the holon in Catholic); far more often, he sets up his parables in such a way that by their very terms they cover nothing less than the whole world....
Consider some instances. In the Sower, the four kinds of ground listed clearly meant to cover all sorts and conditions of human beings; there no cracks between them into which odd cases might fall, and there is no ground beyond them to which his words do not apply. In the parable of the Weeds, he simply says that "the field is the world" (Matt 13:38). In the Net (Matt 13:47), he says the kingdom catches all kinds. And in his later parables, he develops this technique of including everybody into something close to an art form. Let me give you a handful of random examples. In the parable of the Forgiving Father (Luke 15:11-32), the whole human race's relationship to grace is neatly divided between the prodigal and the elder brother. Likewise, in the story of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18_9-14) there is no one in the world who can't be comprehended under one or the other character. And in the parable of the Feast for the King's Son's Wedding (Matt.22:1-14), there is not a single kind of response to grace that is left out: the characters in the parable - whether they are graciously invited or compelled to attend, whether they accept or reject the King's party - are plainly intended as stand-ins for the great, gray-green greasy catholic mass of humanity with which God insists on doing business.
In the case of the parable of the Sower, however, there is still another, if more subtle, indication of the note of catholicity. Jesus' parables, even when there were not spoken to anyone outside the small group of the disciples, were set forth, as I have said, in a context of highly parochial ideas about God's relationship with the world. If you have any feeling for the way narrow minds work, you will realize that the Sower, as told, would immediately strike such minds as reeking of the catholicity they had spent their entire religious lives deploring....
At the end of his interpretation of the Sower, Jesus adds a few remarks (Mark 4:21-25 and parallels). All of them, it strikes me, are rather edgy. He does not sound like a cool rabbi who has delivered an unexceptionably pious lesson; instead he sounds like someone who has just said something he knows is offensive but who is bound and determined to make it stick.
The first remark - "Does anyone ever bring in a lamp and put it under the bed?" - seems to me roughly equivalent to "What am I supposed to do, hide the truth just because people don't like it?" His second - "There is nothing hid, except to be made manifest" - has to have been offensive to those who believed that God has already disclosed, to them, everything really mattered. His third, - "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" - sounds like nothing so much as "I dare you think about all these implications that are terrifying you." His fourth - "Watch how you hear; the measure out judgment will be the way it's measured out to you, and even more severely" - practically makes my case all by itself. And his final remark, in which he repeats his preface to the interpretation of the Sower - "To him who has, more will be given; and from him who not, even what he has will be taken away" - is entirely too vague about the identity of the several "whos" to be of much comfort to anybody.
But the real clincher of the case the catholicity of the Sower is the collection of parables following in Matthew 13:24-52 (and parallels) that so clearly develops the catholicity of the kingdom. The synoptic writers plainly feel that all this material is of a piece: even if one or the other of the notes I have listed is merely adumbrated in the parable of the Sower, each of them, as the succeeding parables unfold, is given its turn at a full-dress exposition.
"Heaven is populated entirely by forgiven sinners" Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013) pic.twitter.com/AN0LYcUH7Z
— Robert Farrar Capon (@Robert_F_Capon) September 6, 2013
What role have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion.
Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle to the Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever finally succeed (see the Epistle to the Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade. The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace.
Christian education is not the communication of correct views about what the various works and words of Jesus might mean; rather it is the stocking of the imagination with the icons of those works and words themselves.
It is most successfully accomplished, therefore, not by catechisms that purport to produce understanding but by stories that hang the icons, understood or not, on the walls of the mind. We do not include the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, because we understand it, nor do we omit the parable of the Unjust Steward because we can't make head or tail of it. Rather, we commit both to the Christian memory because that's the way Jesus seems to want the inside of his believers' heads decorated. Indeed, the only really mischievous thing anyone can do with the Gospel is insist on hanging only the pictures he happens to like. That's what heresy really is: picking and choosing, on the basis of my interpretations, between the icons provided to me. Orthodoxy, if it's understood correctly, is simply the constant displaying of the entire collection.
“The cross is a sign of the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems.” -Robert CaponAnd:
“The church’s job in filling pulpits is to find derelict nobodies who are willing to admit that they’re sinners and mean it.” -Robert CaponAnd:
“We are in a war between dullness and astonishment. The most critical issue facing Christians is not abortion, pornography, the disintegration of the family, moral absolutes, MTV, drugs, racism, sexuality, or school prayer. The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment. The Good News is no longer good news, it is okay news. Christianity is no longer life changing, it is life enhancing. Jesus doesn’t change people into wild-eyed radicals anymore; He changes them into ‘nice people’.” -Robert Farrar Capon, The Astonished Heart, page 120And:
“Christianity is not a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however—the Good News of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over—period.” – Robert Capon, The Mystery of Christ…and Why We Don’t Get It, page 62
“Let me tell you how God redeemed the world. On the eve of the Big Bang, over single-malt scotch and cigars, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were making a final run-through of their plans for the event. The Son was enthusiastic. ‘I think we’ve nailed it,’ he said to the Father. ‘I’m going to speak everything into being as your Word, and the Spirit here is going to breathe life into it. Then the two of us toss it back to you, and the cosmic party dances itself right into our Trinitarian lap. Elegant! Tov meod! Kala lian! Valde bona, and all that!’
‘I have a problem, though,’ the Spirit says. ‘I’m the one responsible for the PR in all this, especially when it comes to the fail-safe gambit of the Incarnation we’ve planned to cover both creation and redemption. The Son really does make the world, right? But with the human race locked into time and space, it’s going to look as if we haven’t seriously tried to redeem the mess they’ve made until Jesus shows up late in history. The fact that we’ve had the Son in there tidying things up from the beginning is the last thing they’ll think of. How do I convince them that the Incarnation isn’t just an afterthought?’
‘Easy,’ says the Father. ‘Sure, it will look as if the Incarnation of my Word is simply a response to sin. But since all three of us will have been intimately present to everything from square one, all you have to do is give them images that show both creation and redemption going on full force from the start. From before the beginning, in fact, since we’re talking about it right now. What’s the problem with that?’
‘The problem,’ the Spirit explains, ‘is precisely with the images. However many mysterious, right-brain images of the Word’s age-long presence I give them, they’re going to dream up transactional, left-brain ones and view him as something you inserted late in the day. Think of the damage they can do to your reputation as the Father who creates or even to the Son’s, as the one who redeems if they decide to think of you as the coach in a football game and the Son as the quarterback. Since you’re not going to reveal the Word’s Incarnation until some two-thirds of history has gone by, how do I stop them from thinking you kept him in the locker room until the fourth quarter? We three may know he’s been in there right from the first possession, but no one else will. Even your biggest fans are going to be hard put to sell that as brilliant management.’
‘Listen,’ the Father says. ‘I decide what’s brilliant management, not the fans. And as for my reputation, that’s your department, not mine. Besides, haven’t we talked about this practically forever? You know the drill. All through the process of revealing my Son in history, you keep slipping them images of the hiddenness of his Incarnation – of the mystery of the Word’s activity in the world even before you arrange for him to be born of Mary. You’re going to hang images like the Paschal Lamb and the Rock in the Wilderness in their minds. After that, all you’ll have to do is get somebody like Paul to say that those things were presences of Christ before Christ – that the Lamb and the Rock are in fact my Incarnate Word anticipating himself. What’s so hard about that?’
‘Plenty,’ the Spirit answers. ‘I’ve been doing simulations of human thought in my mind. I think we’ve underestimated the effects of cooping people up in four dimensions. Look at it from my point of view. You plunk Jesus into the world at one spot in history, and then you expect me to convince them he’s present as your Word in all of history – before, during, and after Jesus?’
The Son interrupts him. ‘But I really am going to be present. Or to put it their way, I really will have been all along. So I don’t see…’
The Spirit’s patience is wearing thin. ‘Give me a break! Since I’m the one who has to take everything that’s yours and get it across to them, I’m trying to solve your problems here too. Just think about what they’ll do with a Jesus who stays in history for only thirty-three years. Even if I get John to say that he’s the Word who made everything from the beginning, they’ll probably imagine him as a pot of holy soup we delivered too late for a good many of our customers. And after they’ve jumped to the conclusion that the Word wasn’t present to anyone who lived before Jesus, they’ll leap to the even more dreadful notion that nobody who lived after him can have his benefits until their assorted churches get him canned, marketed, and distributed to them.’
The Father tries to break in. ‘But what about the Pentecost party we’ve planned to get the church going? Won’t that…?’
‘I’m sorry,’ the Spirit insists, ‘but I’m afraid Pentecost will be just one more thing for them to misread. Don’t get me wrong: I’m totally on board with both of you. But suppose I do give you the rushing mighty wind and the party hats made out of fire. Even suppose I throw in the mystery of speaking in different languages in order to get the universality of the Son’s work into the picture. They’re still going to think the church is in the world to sell clam chowder to customers who never had it before. I mean, think of the possibilities for ecclesiastical arrogance. Jesus takes away the sins of the world, right? In him, everyone who ever lived gets free forgiveness for whatever went wrong in full, in advance, and all in one cosmic shot, no strings attached. I’m even going to get the church to include ‘one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins’ in the Nicene Creed so they’ll see that the Baptism of Jesus himself does the whole job, even if no one else ever gets baptized. But do you know what they’re going to do with that? They’re going to paint themselves into a corner and say that the unbaptized go to hell or even that sins after Baptism make forgiveness flake off like a bad paint job, and that unless Christians go to confession for a second coat before they die, they’ll go to hell too. Oh, sure. We’ve also agreed on this Reformation business where I convince them that nobody has to do anything to be forgiven except trust the grace that Jesus has already given everybody. But give them a hundred years after that and they’ll manage to turn faith itself into a requirement for grace: no faith, no forgiveness. Out the window again goes the free gift we’ve given them once and for all; and back in comes forgiveness as a deal that’s good only as long as they behave themselves.’
‘But why on earth,’ the Son wonders, ‘would they balk at getting something for nothing like that? Free grace and dying love isn’t enough for them? Would they rather we dealt with them on the basis of accountability?’
The Spirit just keeps pressing his point. ‘I don’t understand it any better than you do; all I know is what my simulations tell me. Human beings aren’t afraid of accountability; they’re crazy about it. If they can’t get credit for themselves or dish out blame to others, they cry “Unfair!” That’s why I pleaded with you to let me include something less subtle in the revelation. Remember? I suggested an image of the Son hiding a box of chocolates in every person’s house: the gift would be there whether they know it or not, like it or not, believe it or not. Maybe then they’d see that their faith doesn’t do anything to get them the chocolates of forgiveness; it simply enables them to enjoy what they already have. If they don’t trust the gift, of course, it won’t mean a thing to them. But the chocolates will always be there. I was even willing to make them miraculous, just to keep the element of mystery in the mix: no matter how many pieces anyone ate, the box would always be full. I still think it would have been a good idea.’
Finally, though, the Father has had enough. ‘I understand your difficulties,’ he says; ‘but after all, somebody’s got to be in charge here. In my mind, we’ve come up with a revelation that does the work of your chocolates without making us look like candy-pushers. The Son and I have every confidence in you. If you want to inspire the odd Christian apologist here or there to come up with images like that, be our guest. As I said, it’s your department. But we’re coming down to the wire here, so let’s call this a wrap. We have a big day tomorrow’.” –Robert Capon, The Fingerprints of God: Tracking the Divine Suspect through a History of Images, pages 1-4]
First reading and psalm: Jer. 1:4-10 • Ps. 71: 1-6
Alternate: Isa. 58:9b-14 • Ps. 103:1-8 • Heb. 12:18-29 • Luke 13:10-17
Formed in the womb, elected for words to the nations, the preacher is not a man of his own word. He, a mere boy, is the bearer of celestial speech put into his mouth and seared upon his lips. Whether he roars or whispers, he is either pulling down or raising up. Plucking, pulling, destroying, overthrowing, he unsettles by his well-timed truths (Jer. 1:4-10). He names the oppressive yoke, the pointing of the finger, evil speech, a trampled Sabbath, all of which the hearers, though troubled, acknowledge as the truth (Isa. 58:9b-14). His accusations are a “just word” (Walter Burghardt, SJ), a summons to the proper ordering of communal life and shared responsibility, and thus they carry seeds of new life. Speaking, the preacher is building and planting.
A more excellent way is open to the hearer. Offer your food to the hungry, satisfy the needs of the afflicted, honor the Sabbath. Do not neglect the holy day in the name of “your own interests” (Isa. 58:13). The key is this. The happiness and strength of the community is linked irrevocably to the two great commandments. Sabbath rest underscores the claim of divinity upon every earthly and human detail. God calls, says our Morning Prayer Jubilate, “omnis terra,” the whole earth. The whole earth, on this holy day, rests before the creating God. From this rest come grace and power and virtue, such that the disciple is awakened to feed the hungry and help the afflicted. And it is never simply a question of the privileged giving to the disadvantaged because God so orders the community that each is a gift to the other. A blessed dependency prevails; cords of love and affection, responsibility and service, trial and joy, all work together to create one body.
The preacher is sometimes difficult. “See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking,” he says in his long introduction, trying to awaken deaf ears (Heb. 12:25). When he speaks, the world seems to shift and shake until the only things remaining are those strong enough to withstand the mighty word of God. A kingdom which cannot be removed sits secure (Heb. 12:28). The preacher speaks of God, humanity, the world. He looks, and waves his hands, looks deeply with his eyes, laughs at human folly, always opening the inscrutable mystery of the God who creates, redeems, sustains, sanctifies, and glorifies. Though the preacher is demanding, he leaves the hearer with that strange sense, an emotional reverberation deeper than fleeting thought. The hearer thinks — no, feels — that God has breathed new life over dry bones.
Jesus heard the preacher. A mere boy, he went to the synagogue again and again with his observant family. He knew the call to observe the sacred day. Love and holy fear fixed his heart to his heavenly father. Rising from the dead on the first day of the week, Jesus gave his followers reason to shift their weekly gathering to Sunday. He did not, it must be said, suffer and die and rise again to release his followers from following the sacred rite of a Sunday morning. On Sunday, the Lord’s Day, we Christians enter into a mystery which passes show. For the procession, lessons, gospel, preaching, creed, prayers, peace, bread of heaven, and wine of joy all proclaim, invoke, and exhibit the Living God. Sunday shakes the world, and a living church will ever be amazed at the wonderful things he has done (Luke 13:17).
Look It Up
Read Ps. 103:2. Do not forget.
Think About It
The preacher could say, “I am only a girl.” And God could say, “You are Fleming Rutledge, and you will go to all to whom I send you, saying what I say with your burning lips.”
Plantinga writes:Then Feser goes on to say (my bolding here):
As for life, God himself is living, and in one way or another has created the biological life to be found on Earth… As for the diversity of life: God has brought that about, whether through a guided process of evolution or in some other way. As for consciousness, again theism has no problem: according to theism the fundamental and basic reality is God, who is conscious...
And so forth. Moreland’s approach is more detailed (since he is writing for an academic journal) but very similar. He speaks of making a “cumulative case for God” on the basis of the same “evidence” that Nagel tries to explain in non-theistic terms, and says that “the theistic argument can be understood as an inference to the best explanation.” Continuing in this vein he writes:
[T]he alleged limits of appealing to theistic intentions are, in fact, what characterize an appeal to any unobservable, theoretical entity (for example, a quark) -- we attribute to that entity what and only what is needed to explain the data. This alleged limitation is also characteristic of personal explanation. We attribute to a person those and only those intentions needed to explain his behavior. Moreover, in the case of God, we have other factors -- for example, religious experience, revelation, other arguments in natural theology -- that allow us to fill out God’s intentions for bringing our cosmos and us into existence. (p. 432)
Now the way all this strikes me, and I think the way it would strike any atheist reader, is as follows. There are, Plantinga and Moreland seem to be arguing, several phenomena which might at least in principle be given a non-theistic explanation but for which theism is in fact a better explanation. And “theism” is understood as a hypothesis postulating an unobservable theoretical entity which instantiates such properties as the property of being a person, the property of being alive, the property of being conscious, etc. But it instantiates them in a way that is different from the way that natural things do, making it a member of the class of “supernatural beings.” But it is not just any old member of this class, but the “premier” member. The way this is supposed to explain the evidence in question is as follows. Since God, like us, instantiates properties like being alive and being conscious, he could plausibly be what imparted those properties to us if he had the intention of doing so. That he did have such intentions is something Christian revelation and the like tells us. And so on.
Now I am not certain that Plantinga and Moreland would accept this summary without qualification. Perhaps there are aspects of it that they would rephrase. And obviously they would add a great deal in the way of argumentation for theism so construed. But as I say, this is what strikes me as a natural reading, and how I think it would strike the typical atheist reader. And with all due respect to Plantinga and Moreland, I have to say that if this is what I thought theism and the “case” for theism really amounted to, I wouldn’t find theism any more philosophically interesting or challenging than Nagel and his critics do. (Indeed, it pretty much is what I thought theism amounted to in my atheist days.)
The main reason is not so much that I think Plantinga and Moreland fail to show that the existence of God, so understood, is sufficiently probable, though their remarks do smack of a “god of the gaps” approach. The main reason is that God so understood is in my view not terribly philosophically interesting, and in particular not terribly God-like. Certainly the approach just sketched has nothing to do with the way Augustine, Anselm, Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas, and classical theists more generally have historically approached these issues. For the classical theist, God is not “a person” or “a being” -- not because he is impersonal or lacking in being, but because he is not “an” anything. He is not an instance of any kind. He is not in any genus. He does not merely participate in or “have” mind, life, existence, or anything else, the way we do. In that sense he doesn’t “have properties.” Indeed, he has no parts of any sort, but is absolutely simple. If he were not, then he would be just one more piece of furniture in the universe among all the others, requiring an explanation of his own -- an explanation of why he instantiates the properties he does. Even if he instantiated them in every possible world, if he were a substance distinct from his properties, or had an essence or nature distinct from his existence, he would not have the absolute metaphysical ultimacythat, for classical theism, is definitive of God and that only what is absolutely simple can have. For the classical theist, God is unparticipated being or subsistent being itself, unparticipatedgoodness or goodness itself, and whatever else we can attribute to him can be attributed only in an unparticipated sense rather than as the instantiation of a property.
Furthermore, the main arguments for God’s existence in the classical theist tradition are not mere “arguments to the best explanation” or “cumulative case” arguments, and the reasons have to do precisely with what God is for classical theism. The Aristotelian approach to arguing for God’s existence holds that whatever is a mixture of potentiality and actuality -- and thus less than fully actual, and needing actualization -- can in principle be explained only by reference to that which is, already as it were, pure actuality and thus need not and could not have been actualized by anything else. The Neoplatonic approach holds that whatever is in any way composite -- and thus in need of some principle to account for the combination of its parts -- can in principle be explained only by reference to what is absolutely simple and thus need not and could not have any parts needing combination. The Thomistic approach holds that anything whose essence is distinct from its existence -- and which thus could have failed to exist and requires something to impart existence to it -- can in principle be explained only by reference to that which just is existence itself, and thus need not and could not have had existence imparted to it.
God is, in short, precisely that in which everything else participates for its actuality or being. To say that what is pure actuality or being itself is not the only possible explanation for the existence of other things but is still “the best explanation,” for which we might make a “cumulative case,” is a bit like saying of a certain triangle that its instantiating triangularity-as-such is not the only possible explanation for why it is a triangle, but is still the “best explanation,” for which we can make a “cumulative case.” This gets the nature of both the explanans and the explanandum just fundamentally wrong. The relationship between a particular triangle and triangularity-as-such is not a contingent one, and not something we know of via empirical hypothesis formation and the weighing of probabilities. And neither is the relationship between the world and God -- between that which has participated existence and that which just is subsistent or unparticipated being -- of that sort.
And this, of course, is part of the genius of monotheistic Judaism: the realisation that “one God” is much more like “no god at all” than like “one of the gods”. In other words that atheism, which is untrue, offers a much less inadequate picture of God than theism, which is true. For monotheistic Judaism, as for monotheistic Catholicism, which I take to be universal Judaism, the principal temptation is not atheism, but idolatry.
"So all day long until the sun went downthey spent in feasting, and the measured feastmatched well their hearts' desire.So did the flawless harp held by Apolloand heavenly songs in choiring antiphonthat all the Muses sang. [Heine is quoting the The Iliad here.]"Then suddenly a pale, bloodstained Jew came panting in, with a crown of thorns on his head and a great wooden cross over his shoulder; and he threw the cross on to the gods' high table, so that the golden goblets trembled, and the gods fell silent and turned pale, and became paler and paler, till at last they entirely dissolved into mist."... Anyone who sees his god suffering finds it easier to endure his own pain. The merry gods of the past, who felt no pain, did not know either how poor tortured human beings feel, and a poor person in desperation could have no real confidence in them. They were holiday gods; people danced around them merrily, and could only thank them. For this reason they never received whole-hearted love. To receive whole-hearted love one must suffer. Compassion is the last sacrament of love; it may be love itself. Therefore of all the gods who ever lived, Christ is the god who has been loved the most."
The question we ought to be asking is “What does the world need?” And the startling answer is that the world needs us in that commonness which bespeaks divinity. This is why God has preserved our little Anglo-Catholic family through tempest and storm. In the secret places of their hearts, modern men and women are seeking themselves. They sense, although they cannot believe it, that they have enduring value, that there is more to themselves than their employers, their accountants, their government, or even their families can possibly know. What the world craves is the assurance that there is “a splendor burning in the heart of things.” 32 Naked dogma cannot supply this need, nor can empty ritual. Only the Catholic vision will suffice. But if the world is to find that vision it must be found in us, clothed in living thought and embodied in holy lives.
How then do we nurture this dream of flesh and spirit? How do we share it with the Church and with the world? Here I find myself almost at a loss for words. The answer to these questions can come only from profound meditation, common prayer, and from fearlessly and carefully listening to one another and to the world outside our doors. What I can offer are suggestions—signposts if you will—for our journey into the future. The first is that we must be willing to entertain troubling questions even about our most sacred beliefs. History, philosophy, psychology, above all the daily business of being human, call into doubt the goodness of God, the immortality of the soul, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. If, like some of our conservative brethren, we try to exorcise these doubts, we will exorcise every honest man and woman out of the Church. And, as we have already seen, if we do not win back the mind of the age, we will never gain its heart. We must make it clear that orthodox Christianity is not a closed system which must be swallowed whole or rejected altogether. Rather, it is a matrix within which doubt and uncertainty can be expressed and even sanctified. Indeed, to question God can be a holy vocation. It is sometimes frightening to confront the unbelief of others, if only because it forces us to face our own. But there is reassurance in the knowledge that there would be no orthodoxy, perhaps not even the Church, if the Christians of the patristic age had not wrestled with the doubts of pagans and heretics.33
John Macquarrie on the doctrine of angels: it "directs our minds to the vastness and richness of creation."The concept of the angelic stands for the unity and order of the whole creation in the service of Being; not merely at the level of cosmic process, but at the level of conscious and free cooperation. God has 'ordained and constituted the services of angels and men in a wonderful order' (BCP Collect). Man is sometimes afflicted with a sense of loneliness on his little planet, the only 'existent' upon earth, perhaps just an accident in the cosmos. But if the Christian doctrine of creation is true, then man is no accident, and presumably he is not alone. He must be one of countless races of beings on which the Creator has conferred being, and some of these races must, like man himself, have risen to consciousness and freedom whereby they can gladly cooperate with God. Some must have moved further in the hierarchy of beings, so that they constitute higher orders of creaturely beings. The doctrine of the angels opens our eyes to this vast, unimaginable cooperative striving and service, as all things seek to be like God and to attain fullness of being in him. One may recall here the story of Elisha's servant whose courage was renewed by a vision of supporting angels.This incident is particularly relevant for understanding the significance of the angels in a contemporary formulation of the doctrine of creation. The doctrine of the angels directs our minds to the vastness and richness of the creation, and every advance of science opens up still more distant horizons. Any merely humanistic creed that makes man the measure of all things or regards him as the sole author of values is narrow and parochial. The panorama of creation must be far more breathtaking than we can guess in our corner of the cosmos, for there must be many higher orders of beings whose service is joined with ours under God.
(from Principles of Christian Theology, X.40.xi-xii)
Crux sola est nostra theologia.
The cross is in the first instance God's attack on human sin. Of course in the second instance, and finally, it is also salvation from sin. But we miss the bite of it if we do not see that first off it is an attack on sin. Strange attack - to suffer and die at our hands! God's "alien work," Luther called it. As an attack it reveals that the real seat of sin is not in the flesh but in our spiritual aspirations, in our "theology of glory." The point is that what happens in the crossl is completely contradictory to our usual religious thinking. St. Paul knew this. In 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 he said,The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.Therefore the theology of the cross is an offensive theology. The offense consists in the fact that unlike other theologies it attacks what we usually consider the best in our religion. As we shall see, theologians of the cross do not worry so much about what is obviously bad in our religion, our bad works, as they do about the pretention that comes with our good works. So the theology of the cross can only be spoken of truthfully in contrast to all other types of theology. To express this, Luther made a fundamental distinction between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory. A theology of the cross does not, therefore, present itself as one option among many. In fact, in spite of what seems to be an endless variety of religions and theologies, it would be safe to say from this perspective that there are at the bottom only two types of theology, glory theology and cross theology. "The theology of glory" is a catchall for virtually all theologies and religions. The cross sets itself apart from and over against all of these.
1. The word "cross" here and in the entire treatise that follows is, of course, shorthand for the entire narrative of the crucified and risen Jesus. As such it includes the OT preparation (many of the foundational passages for the theology of the cross come from the OT!), the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and his exaltation. It is important to include resurrection and exaltation because there is considerable confusion abroad about their place in a theology of the cross. It is often claimed, for instance, that a theology of glory is a theology of resurrection while a theology of the cross is "only" concerned with crucifixion. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, a theology of the cross is impossible without resurrection. It is impossible to plumb the depths of the crucifixion without the resurrection.
A theologian of the cross, Luther says, looks at all things through suffering and the cross. It is also certainly true that in Christ God enters into our suffering and death. But in a theology of the cross it is soon apparent that we cannot ignore the fact that suffering comes about because we are at odds with God and are trying to rush headlong into some sort of cozy identification with him. God and his Christ, Luther will be concerned to point out, are the operators in the matter, not the ones operated upon (thesis 27, Heidelberg Disputation). In the gospel of John, Jesus is concerned to point out that no one takes his life from him but that he lays it down of his own accord (John 10:18). In the end, Jesus suffers and dies because nobody identified with him. The people cried, "Crucify him!" One of his disciples betrayed him, another denied him, the rest forsook him and fled. He died alone, forsaken even by God.
Now we in turn suffer the absolute and unconditional working of God upon us. It is a suffering because as old beings we cannot abide such working. We are rendered passive by the divine activity. "Passive," it should be remembered here, comes from the same root as "passion," which is, of course, "to suffer." And so we look on the world anew in the light of Christ's Passion, "through suffering and the cross" (thesis 20), as ones who suffer the sovereign working of God. A sentimentalized theology gives the impression that God in Christ comes to join us in our battle against some unknown enemy, is victimized, and suffers just like us. Like the daughters of Jerusalem we sympathize with him. A true theology of the cross places radical question marks over against sentimentality of that sort. "Weep not for me," Jesus said, "but for yourselves and for your children."
Today the CofI daily office lectionary NT reading for MP was the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is appropriate, therefore, to revisit Augustine's Christological reading of the Good Samaritan, reminding us that the parable - rather than being a moralistic addendum - coheres with and flows from the Church's proclamation of the Cross and Resurrection:
A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; Adam himself is meant; Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, from whose blessedness Adam fell; Jericho means the moon, and signifies our mortality, because it is born, waxes, wanes, an dies. Thieves are the devil and his angels. Who stripped him, namely; of his immortality; and beat him, by persuading him to sin; and left him half-dead, because in so far as man can understand and know God, he lives, but in so far as he is wasted and oppressed by sin, he is dead; he is therefore called half-dead. The priest and the Levite who saw him and passed by, signify the priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament which could profit nothing for salvation. Samaritan means Guardian, and therefore the Lord Himself is signified by this name. The binding of the wounds is the restraint of sin. Oil is the comfort of good hope; wine the exhortation to work with fervent spirit. The beast is the flesh in which He deigned to come to us. The being set upon the beast is belief in the incarnation of Christ. The inn is the Church, where travelers returning to their heavenly country are refreshed after pilgrimage. The morrow is after the resurrection of the Lord. The two pence are either the two precepts of love, or the promise of this life and of that which is to come.
The Sacraments (Catholic Church), according to dogmatic theology, both symbolize and confer grace. The two sacraments that are routinely encountered by the faithful are Eucharist and confession. Grace is a rather complicated subject; see References below. The Eucharist affords a real and transforming union with God; see for example Jn.[4] It is spiritual as well as real, and transformative. For a discussion of the spiritual implications of Eucharist, see historical roots of Catholic Eucharistic theology. Confession is purifying if the penitent is well-disposed, i.e. sorry for having offended God. It is considered essential to undertake this purifying act before receiving the Eucharist. As one progresses toward union with God, more and more problems within the soul become apparent. Habits that didn't seem sinful at first blush suddenly stand out as harmful to charity. Once confessed, new problems emerge. In this way the penitent embarks on a program of purgation, developing greater sensitivity as to what is most conducive to Christian love.
