A Truer Ecumenical Movement — Who is a Christian?

Ryan Self, the publicist for Abilene Christian University Press, kindly sent me a pdf file containing the manuscript for Radical Ecumenicity: Pursuing Unity and Continuity after John Howard Yoder, a work dedicated to exploring the ecumenical thoughts of John Howard Yoder, a “celebrated Mennonite theologian” as Mr. Self properly described him in the email sent out to a some WWW bloggers drawn, I gather, from those who’ve shown some interest in the work of Professor Yoder. I’ll be writing from a Catholic viewpoint, fully accepting the items in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed and the claims of Rome that Christian churches should be united with the Pontiff of the Catholic Church, who happens as a matter of historical accident to be the Bishop of Rome, but I don’t think modern Catholics, or other modern Christians, have coherent ways to think and speak about human beings and the world we inhabit. We’ve lost contact with Creation and, hence, with the Creator.

Before going further, I’ll give three of my reasons for wanting to write some blog entries about this book and about the general subject of ecumenicism:

1. I was baptized in a Congregationalist church as an infant and later was re-baptized in a Campbell-Stone church in Atlanta in the mid-1980s. About five years later, I entered the Catholic Church. I wasn’t happy with the Catholic Church as a human institution and I’m still not happy with it as a human institution. I’m far from being a Catholic Triumphalist though I strongly believe that the Catholic Church is the core of the pilgrim Church on Earth. My reasons for becoming a Catholic are complex and form a novel rather than a sentence and I’ll not write the novel here. In any case, I wish to better understand and communicate my reasons for decisions made in my ongoing spiritual journey. I believe that God sent me on this journey for my own good but also to teach what I learn to others.

2. I respect the moral integrity of John Howard Yoder and many others from the peace churches. Professor Yoder in particular has shown the courage to witness to his belief in a radical and self-risking non-resistance. Though I support the concept of just-war, I think Yoder was right in When War is Unjust in claiming that just wars are not possible in our age.

3. I also have a great respect for those Christians who make a serious effort to study the Bible, including Mennonites and the members of the Campbell-Stone churches. All Christians, including Catholics, should work to develop the intelligence and honesty to read the Bible as a source of ever-fresh understandings of God’s own Creation and of the story of human salvation set within that Creation. At the same time, I think that Mennonites and many others too easily dismiss the revelations present in the Apostolic traditions which were developing even while Saul was still persecuting Christians and the Gospels were still being transmitted mouth to ear. I’ll also claim that Christians, as Christians, should be learning from God’s Creation. It’s not just a neutral setting, not the pagan world co-eternal with the God of Plato, but rather a very particular work which reflects some freely made decisions of the God of Jesus Christ. I would conjecture that Creation itself carries a lot of truths God wishes us to learn, not just that we might build better power-plants but that we might learn to think a little bit more like our Maker.

Since the number ’3′ is holy to Christians, I’ll also list three issues which we must honestly discuss if we’re to play our proper role in forming the Body of Christ.

Who is a Christian?

John Howard Yoder misstates the teaching of the Catholic Church in the essay reprinted as the ninth chapter of Radical Ecumenicity, The Ecumenical Movement and the Faithful Church:

Roman Catholics have no difficulty with such [ecumenical] questions, for they believe, consistently and in line with the doctrines of the church, that it is possible to be a Christian only within their own organization.

There are many Roman Catholics who think they’re the only true Christians, but that’s not the teaching of the Catholic Church. This is what the college of Catholic Bishops had to say when they gathered for the Vatican II Council:

The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but who do not however profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter. [Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, Section 15 of Chapter II: "The People of God"]

The name of “Christian” honors all who have received a Trinitarian baptism — “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” using water. It is, in fact, a sacrilege for a Catholic to knowingly re-baptize someone who has received such a baptism. In cases of doubt, priests will perform what is called a conditional baptism. (“If you are not baptized, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”) So long as water — as little as a drop of spit if necessary — and the Trinitarian formula is used and the intent is proper, the baptism holds, even without faith on the part of the recipient though the graces of baptism won’t flow into the recipient until he has faith. In other words, baptism, like any Sacrament, is an objective act done for God and under His instructions and with His participation. It’s not primarily a human act of ritual convention though it necessarily becomes that as a secondary matter.

What is meant by “the Catholic faith in its entirety”?

There is the Catholic faith in its entirety which is professed by the members of the 20+ Catholic churches and also by the Orthodox churches and by a few independent Eastern churches. In the modern age, the Catholic Church has, in fact, re-established relationships, sometimes full communion, with some ancient churches in Asia and Africa. The entirety of the “Catholic faith” centers around the fullness of the Eucharistic Rite where a priesthood in the line of succession of the Apostles can consecrate the bread and wine produced by men so that it becomes the Body and Blood of Christ. Those priests are acting under the delegated authority of the one true Priest, Jesus Christ who gave us this commandment:

So, Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” [John 6:53(b)-54]

These are hard words? What would you expect from the incarnate Son of God? Did He come to confirm the common sense of that age or ours? Or did He come to teach us that truth is richer than any human body of common sense and we have to respond to God’s Word, to His words, and to His Creation, that we might move towards that greater truth? To move towards that greater truth is to move towards God and towards the world of the resurrected where we might share the life of God, true life.

After Jesus spoke such hard words, many of His followers went away, most certainly not because He claimed that He gave bread to symbolize His own flesh and wine to symbolize His own blood, but because He taught that His followers must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Those who wish to understand the importance of this issue can read John 6:52-71 and note the story about those who had trouble believing the words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood includes a discussion of Judas Iscariot. Christ Jesus spoke some hard words indeed.

The Catholic Church doesn’t teach that all those who refuse to accept these words as a true commandment are traitors as was Judas Iscariot. Yet, that refusal creates a difference that can’t be ignored by those churches which believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine. Even those baptized properly and honored with the name of Christian cannot share communion with Catholics or Orthodox or members of a few other Eastern Churches, churches which have maintained a priesthood which can celebrate a true Eucharistic Rite, because they would be eating unworthily. The word ‘unworthily’ in this context doesn’t refer to any moral problems but rather to a lack of faith that Jesus Christ is truly present in that consecrated bread and wine. You should have faith that Christ is truly present before consuming the Precious Body and drinking the Precious Blood of Christ. Or better, you should wish to have faith that Christ might provide that faith. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

Why is unity so important and how can it be sought?

The Body of Christ is one and yet it is composed of many human individuals who remain fully individual just as the one God is three divine Persons, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. The Son is the link between God and man, being one of the three Persons of God in His divine nature and divine Person as He is the head of the Body of Christ in His human nature and divine Person. The Body of Christ is a multitude of individuals who are one in a real sense, as Father and Son and Holy Spirit remain individuals though united as truly one God.

We mortal men can’t simply unite ourselves to Christ the way we might join the YMCA. We can’t even realize the necessary degree of unity by gathering together for prayer services nor by consecrating ourselves to God by an effort of our human wills. The Almighty Himself has to act to bring this about and the churches which believe in the Real Presence teach that the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is the material agent of God’s act of forming us into the Body of Christ though it will be fully realized only in the world of the resurrected.

Moving On

Before we can understand promises of salvation, we need to have some shared way of talking about empirical reality that we might understand what is being saved and how it is that a mortal and finite creature might be able to even tolerate, let alone enjoy, some sort of life without end. Otherwise, whether a Christian talks to a fellow Christian from whom he’s separated by historical or doctrinal problems or whether a Christian tries to evangelize a nonbeliever, he’s merely babbling. Even if they don’t understand the intellectual issues, the children who drift away from Christianity and the nonbelievers who think us deluded, sense this hollowness and dishonesty in modern Christian claims to speak ultimate truths. We can’t even speak about men in a way that makes sense in light of modern biological and medical knowledge and yet claim to be able to speak of the nature and possible salvation of this disordered creature. We retain a pre-modern view of time and space and yet claim to be able to speak about eternity.

Any readers interested in my efforts to provide a shared Christian view of empirical reality can download a book I’ve made available for free for personal use: Four Kinds of Knowledge. My general viewpoint is a Thomistic existentialism updated to consider modern empirical knowledge about Creation. St. Thomas Aquinas, seemingly an outmoded Scholastic, has been rediscovered by some modern scientists because his way of thought deals so well with empirical reality. You can find one of the best explanations of Thomistic theories of human moral nature in How Brains Make Up Their Minds by the neuroscientist and philosopher Walter J. Freeman.

I’ll end with two interesting quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on 1 Corinthians. [This commentary and many other writings by St. Thomas are freely available from Ave Maria University. Google for the download site if you are interested.]

[J]ust as a disciple reaches an understanding of the teacher’s wisdom by the words he hears from him, so man can reach an understanding of God’s wisdom by examining the creatures He made… [Page 17]

[T]he wisdom which attains to God through the things of this world is not the wisdom of this world [in the sense used by St. Paul in his dismissal of worldly wisdom] but the wisdom of God… [Page 51]

Pro-life Stupidity in Massachusetts

The latest cause of the pro-lifers, at least those who are Catholic, in Massachusetts is to help elect Scott Brown to fill the spot left vacant by the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. Brown has this statement on his website:

Abortion

While this decision should ultimately be made by the woman in consultation with her doctor, I believe we need to reduce the number of abortions in America. I believe government has the responsibility to regulate in this area and I support parental consent and notification requirements and I oppose partial birth abortion. I also believe there are people of good will on both sides of the issue and we ought to work together to support and promote adoption as an alternative to abortion.

Is this pro-life? “I think killing babies is kind of yuckie but the decision to kill babies or not should be made by the women and their doctors and only in accord with government regulations.” No wonder the enemies of Christianity don’t even bother to respect us.

With apologies to George Bernard Shaw, here’s the joke:

Brown: Will you vote for me if I support a woman’s right to abortion but hint I’ll to try to cut down on the number of abortions and to pay respect to parental authority?

Christian the pro-lifer: Well, yeah, I guess I would because there don’t seem to be any better candidates.

Campaign life goes on for several weeks…

Brown: Will you vote for me if I support a woman’s unlimited right to abortion with no restrictions, generous government funding, and a Planned Parenthood counselor in every hospital?

Christian the pro-lifer: What kind of a defender of innocent life do you think I am?

Brown: We’ve already established that. Now we’re just negotiating the details.

For those who are interested, this is alleged to be the original dialogue as found here (go down the page to Anecdotal Dialogue):

* GBS: Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?

* Actress: My goodness, Well, I’d certainly think about it

* GBS: Would you sleep with me for a pound?

* Actress: Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!

* GBS: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

(This dialogue is also attributed to Winston Churchill).

Brown is at best abortion-advocate-lite and there are signs announcing enthusiastic support for Brown to be found on the yards of devout Catholics and in the windows of cars parked in front of Catholic churches. Maybe we should just complete our sell-out of Christ and hang placards from the feet of the crucifixes over altars.

Brown shows his moral integrity in his stance of so-called Obamacare. Heck, he’s bragged about helping to write and enact Mitt Romney’s pioneer version of governmental we-now-own-your-body health care expansion and now he solemnly proclaims his opposition to Obamacare. How else would he have suckered the Tea Party crowd into supporting him? The pro-lifers were easier. He only had to promise not to be as enthusiastic about killing babies as the average Massachusetts Democrat, and Martha Coakley is certainly average.

The pro-lifers will claim he’s the best they can get and we’ll have to support him and hope for the best. We’ve heard similar claims over the past few decades as Christian leaders have negotiated away their moral integrity, and that of American Christianity, step by step. Maybe Brown will be different? Maybe he won’t betray us as did the Supreme Court appointees of those alleged moral conservatives, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan? Maybe he won’t betray us as did the Bushes and Dole and nearly every Republican who so strongly supports morally conservative stances. So long as they’re out of power. In power, they at least maintain the status quo on abortion, big-government, the coming of the-government-owns-your-body healthcare, and other issues. In power, they often advance the agenda to which they claim to be opposed.

This is Einstein’s definition of insanity as found here:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

There was a man beheaded in Austria during World War II because he refused to serve in the Austrian Army once the Nazis had taken over Austria. He wasn’t a pacifist nor a coward. He’d gone on maneuvers as a reservist a few years earlier but he wouldn’t put on his uniform so long the Austrian Army served the evil purposes of the Nazis, even though he had some young daughters who would be orphaned and a young wife who’d face a tougher life without him.

His name was Franz Jaggerstatter. He was recently beatified by the Catholic Church, a major step in being declared a saint. I’m pretty sure I know where Jaggerstatter went after he was beheaded. I have fears about the destinations of those who collaborated with the Nazis because it seemed to be the less evil of choices at the time. I have suspicions about the destination of the bishop who advised him to serve in the Nazi-Austrian army for the sake of his young daughters. I have trouble imagining that Blessed Franz would have voted for Scott Brown even if a still more evil politician would have been elected. Christians don’t support great evil even when still greater evil is the other possibility. When those sorts of choices confront Christians, we have no choice but to to refuse to support either the great or the greater evil and to leave the matter in God’s hands. Admittedly, God’s solutions sometimes involve decades or even centuries of suffering and hard work to rebuild what we have allowed to decay, but He is the boss.

We’ve long passed the time when we Christians have to say the political entities of this age aren’t ours and we can only withdraw to build Christian communities and prepare for a future which will be better only if we put Christ and His commandments at the center of our thoughts rather than illusions that we’re clever enough to win something by negotiating with those who don’t share our moral committments and who have betrayed us consistently (Republicans in particular but establishment politicians in general). In the political realm, we Christians aren’t clever. The record indicates that we’re very stupid, at least that our leaders, including those in pro-life groups, are very stupid.

But cleverness was never the point. Moral integrity was the point. When you trim your principles, when you attempt to beat an immoral political system by using their own means, you’re compromising only one thing — your own moral character. If pro-lifers, moral conservatives in general, wish to do something, then boycott the system in a very public way. Let the world know the American political system has become an evil joke. Don’t enter the evil joke yourself and pretend you can turn it into an edifying tale. And, most of all, don’t try to drag Christ and the Body of Christ along with you as you travel some gradual road to Hell along side of the likes of Brown and Bush and whomever.

2008-2009 Christian Liturgical Year: Nativity of the Lord

Readings for Vigil Mass: [Isaiah 62:1-5; Acts 13:16-17, 22-25; Matthew 1:1-25 or 1:18-25]

Readings for Midnight Mass: [Isaiah 9:1-6; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14]

Readings for Mass at Dawn: [Isaiah 62:11-12; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:15-20]

Readings for Mass During the Day: [Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18]

In the Gospel reading for the Vigil Mass, we learn of a seemingly irrelevant genealogy, that of Joseph, the husband of Mary and legal father of Jesus but he’s never referred to as the biological father of Jesus.

In the Gospel reading for Midnight Mass, we learn that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to fulfill a call to enroll in a census (which has left no historical evidence though the Romans were nothing if not good bureaucrats and documenters). Moreover, shepherds in a field were told to go to the city of David (Bethlehem) where they will find a savior in the form of an infant in a manger.

In the Gospel reading for the dawn of Christmas day, we learn the shepherds did find Joseph, Mary, and the infant. All were amazed by the shepherds’ story of the angels and Mary begins to wonder (didn’t she already supposedly know)? The shepherds go away, glorifying and praising God.

In the Gospel reading for Christmas during the day, we learn of the Word of God, quite personal, with God in the beginning. The Word was God.

Few there are who will follow such a trail of words through the readings of four different Christmas Masses. Perhaps there are even fewer who can follow the trail through the Gospels or the New Testament or the entire Bible if they embark upon a more general reading program.

There are dangers here, some dangers for those who are careful and skeptical readers and some dangers for those who just believe what they are told and happily read the Bible in the same way they once read their books of fairy-tales.

The historian Carroll Quigley once summarized the philosophical teachings of traditional Christianity in these words:

The truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

The Gospels can be read, along with the letters of St. Paul, in such a way that we can see the Good News unfolding in the hearts and minds of a monotheistic people just beginning to understand the Trinity of Persons who live as one God. The idea that God could be embodied in human flesh, while perhaps hinted at in the Old Testament, was shocking to the Jews including those who first followed Christ. In some ways, it would have been still more shocking to the more intellectually inclined pagans who were horrified by the misbehaving and lusty gods of Homer. However well-behaved Jesus was, a higher pagan wouldn’t have been so accepting of a God who needed a mother to change His diapers, a father to teach Him how to live in the world that baby supposedly created.

We know that Jesus of Nazareth entered a public mission which is usually described as three years long though it might have been a bit longer. We know that He scandalized the Jews by claiming that loyalty to Jesus of Nazareth was more important than loyalty to even father and mother. He even told one disciple to leave his father to be buried by others because the primary duty of men is to follow Jesus. [Matthew 8:21-22] Are we not bidden by God to honor father and mother? Can any but God override that commandment?

Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life…” [The entire story is told in John 6:35-65.] No wonder the pagans thought Christians to be cannibals.

Before His mission years, Jesus of Nazareth was said to have lived in obscurity. Mark tells us that this man who supposedly was announced as the Savior at His birth was not even acknowledged as having any authority by His neighbors. “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country and among his own kin, and in his own house.” [See Mark 6:1-6 for the more complete story.]

He multiplied loaves and fishes, using small amounts of fish and bread to feed thousands of those who’d followed Him to listen to Him preach. [Mark 6:31-44.]

He healed the sick. [Luke 4:38-39.]

He forgave sins. [Luke 8: 36-56.]

He exercised control over storms. [Luke 22-25.]

He turned water into wine. [John 2:1-11.]

Of all these, the forgiveness of sins is the most remarkable, but surely, we should be shocked by the power to overrule the commandments God gave to Moses.

The truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

As the early Christian preachers and teachers came to understand more clearly that Jesus Christ, Son of God, was true man and true God, they struggled to communicate that great truth. It doesn’t seem all that hard to identify the parts of the Gospels which are history, stylized only in the Gospel of St. John. In the other three Gospels, most of the narrative is gritty and broken up and generally inconsistent. It has the smell of stories told by simple men who were there. Those parts give us no reason to believe the Savior was glorified at His birth. There is no reason to believe, and not a shred of historical evidence, that Herod or other powerful men knew something had happened to endanger their positions. The Gospels aren’t even consistent about Mary’s understanding of her son, until she stood at the foot of His cross, or maybe not until the Holy Spirit came upon her once again at the Pentecost. This much we know:

God became man that man might share the life of God.

The early Christians saw this truth unfold in time, within their communities. It was a process that involved deep thinkers, preachers, social organizers, and charitable workers. It was a process that would extend over time, reaching the clear statements in the creeds promulgated by the Church Fathers at Nicea, Chalcedon, and other conferences. Those clear statements were not finalized until more than three centuries after the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the matter has not ended there.

Matthew and Luke saw the truth unfold and felt compelled to speak of a Kingly birth and of visits from great men acknowledging the Kingship of the son of Mary, though there is no evidence that even the miracles or shocking words of Christ were sufficient to convince many to seriously contemplate His divine royalty. John saw the truth unfold and produced the most wonderful poetry in the history of theology:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

This was something new, not Greek as some have falsely claimed. It was something beyond the reach of the human imagination. If it hadn’t happened, we could have never guessed at the possibility.

The truth continues to unfold. In the modern world, we have been particularly successful at learning truths of God’s Creation, starting with the physical universe but going deeply into more abstract truths. Even the more mundane truths of Creation lie beyond the reach of human efforts at schematic knowledge and we sin greatly in presuming that the origins of the human race or the nature of time and space will correspond to the thoughts of our minds untutored by proper responses to the Creator and His works. If not for those bones in the sands of Africa or the openness of the likes of Einstein to unfolding truths, we’d not have known about the evolution of the human race or the existence of black-holes.

We know much about the history of the human race before Abraham, much that is disturbing to those who would accept the story of Adam and Eve as literalistic truth. Still more disturbing is what our new knowledge of human nature tells us of the sheer wonder of God becoming man.

We know enough about space and time to know they’re one creature and not two absolute truths. What does that tell us about the journey of the Son of God as He entered Creation to embody Himself as one of His own creatures? What does it say about the possibilities of Heaven or the nature of our Creator?

The Lord of Creation will lie in a manger before the sun rises. He will need to suckle at the breasts of Mary. He will need to be fed and clothed and taught the skills of carpentry by His legal father, Joseph.

It is time to glorify and praise Him and time to open our hearts and minds that the truth might unfold.

[Biblical quotations from RSV, Catholic Edition as printed by Thomas Nelson Publishers for Ignatius Press.]

2008-2009 Christian Liturgical Year: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

The Church has told us that the Blessed Virgin Mary was born sinless, though I think it better to say she was born in a state of grace. The major reason is that grace is of primary importance in our relationship to our Savior. A second reason, important also, is that we’re at a time in history when we don’t have a rational understanding of sin. Indeed, we have a compromised understanding of Creation since we’ve not yet made peace with modern empirical knowledge and many of our ways of speaking of God’s revealed truths are drawn from pre-modern understandings of living creatures and of stars, understandings now known to be wrong. In particular, there’s some serious divergence between the man who is the subject of Christian theological and philosophical discussions and the man who is being revealed by modern scientists, historians, and other explorers of the empirical realm. If our ideas of man, in fact, our ideas of life and of Creation as a whole, are being revised, what chance is there that our ideas of sin remain valid? What chance is there that our beliefs provide a coherent description of God’s Creation?

But sin was never the main issue, nor was sinlessness. Grace was the main issue. “Hail Mary, full of grace.” “Hello Mary, how is it that you already share the life of God?” To emphasize sin or sinlessness is to return to the forms of Law rejected by Christ and, in greater detail, by St. Paul. Mary’s sinlessness followed from her fullness of grace. The grace didn’t come as a result of the sinlessness.

Mary was born full of grace. From her conception, she was in a special communion with God, a communion at least similar to that enjoyed by the resurrected if not exactly the same. The obsession with sin and the possibility or impossibility of sinlessness in our mortal lives can often hide God and His Creation from us rather than bringing us closer to Him. We should instead realize that we are bound to obey not only the moral laws which arise from our biological natures but also the more demanding versions of those laws given to us by Moses and by Jesus of Nazareth. We should also realize that perfect obedience of these laws doesn’t save us; it merely brings us to a more perfect state of humanity. Some Medieval Scholastics discussed limbo as a way of dealing with the supposed problem of the nature of life after death for ungodly but virtuous men. Perhaps this is an important problem but one that is a side-issue when we discuss salvation.

We are saved when God is truly with us. We speak truly when we speak along with God. We do God’s work when we act with God.

God wasn’t hidden to Mary. From conception, she had a relationship to her Creator more intimate than that enjoyed by others after a life devoted to learning the craft of sainthood. Mary gave her flesh to the Son of God and suckled Him at her breasts. She responded properly and without hesitation to God’s direct guidance in matters small or large. The rest of us often feel that guidance, or at least suspect it, but have trouble responding properly, trouble even discerning if that’s really God nudging us to eliminate a bad habit or even to explore the possibility of a religious vocation. Those who move freely with the will of God don’t have conversations with God to discuss the details nor do they get their instructions through angels. Those who wait for God to speak directly to them will waste their opportunities to serve God and His children.

Mary was already aware of the presence of Her Creator and was responsive to Her Creator without reserving any part of herself. From the moment of her otherwise normal conception, she was in that state, already saved but aware of her Lord’s presence and waiting for His guidance.

And now we should contemplate the meaning of this part of the story which the Church tells as we travel with Her through the liturgical year:

Mary bears the Son of God in her holy womb and God prepared her for this maternal task by forming her from conception to be fully aware of His presence and responsive without hesitation to His will.

2008-2009 Christian Liturgical Year: Second Sunday of Advent

The readings for this Second Sunday of Advent seem unfocused at first glance as do the readings for many Sundays. [See Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8.]

Isaiah speaks of better days to come. Since he’s prophesying truly and not making some prideful effort to predict the future, he leaves us in some confusion as to when hills and valleys will be brought to a level. More importantly, in light of the resurrection, we’re in some confusion as to whether these alleged improvements to the landscape will take place in this world or in some sort of world God will create for His children.

Peter tells us that God will not limit Himself to use of bulldozer and shovel, instead using fires which will make those of Hiroshima seem pretty limited. All will be melted down and the Lord God Almighty will build anew from the ashes and slag.

In light of this apocalyptic build-up, the Gospel reading is a bit anticlimactic. But it’s worse than anticlimactic. It’s as if the entire world had suddenly become a deflating balloon and all we hear is a meaningless hiss of air as we learn of some sort of eccentric who’s retreated from all that’s good in human life to wear animal hides (were they even tanned?) and to eat locusts and wild honey. A story which had at least as much potential as that of Luke and Princess Leia has gone off in a strange direction.

I speak somewhat tongue-in-cheek and not to cast doubt upon Holy Scripture nor to encourage any sort of impiety. I’m trying to set the stage for better and more insightful readings of Scripture in light of an enlarged human reason, a reason shaped both by God’s word and also by His world.

Let me speak in vague terms. God created stuff from which He shaped this universe and the things and living creatures which are part of this universe. This universe is both setting and itself a participant in a story which God is telling, the climax of which was the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet, we have to remember that the story as a whole pleases God and works to His purpose, from the formation of the first stars to the collapse or heat death of this universe. When we see the universe in this light and have even a faint understanding of God’s story, the universe itself and all the creatures and events which are part of it take on a unity and coherence and completeness which make of it what I call a world.

Still there is a greater setting, all of Creation. There is that fundamental stuff which God created from nothingness. I call that fundamental stuff the primordial universe. From that primordial universe, God can shape worlds which contain things and living creatures as we can imagine them. He has shaped this world and continues to shape it. God creates some sort of stuff from nothingness, He shaped the particular stuff of this universe, and then He tells a story. There is a four-part structure to created reality in this simple model:

1. The raw stuff or abstract stuff created by God from nothingness.

2. This universe which was shaped from that abstract stuff.

3. Thing-like entities, including living creatures, were shaped from the matter of this universe.

4. The story told by God, a story set in that universe and using the universe itself and all the entities which are part of it.

The readings for this Sunday point to God as a story-teller. Isaiah tells us that the story may involve hardships (valleys and mountains to travel) but all will be made well in the end. Peter tells us the story will be told in God’s time which may stretch out far beyond human imagination, certainly far beyond the life-span of a mortal man. Mark tells us the story begins with an eccentric man who has left respectable society to preach repentance and to offer baptism though that baptism doesn’t promise much or seem to mean much. So it is that Marks tells us that God will tell the story He chose to tell.

For now, it’s best to contemplate this strange beginning to the Christian liturgical year. A proper human mind is shaped by proper responses to our environments or even to wider parts of God’s Creation, including His story seen as a story and not just a more or less meaningless stream of events. Sit quietly and let God’s story take hold in your mind. Let it shape your mind. It’s a story that will end in a just world of peace and plenty. It’s a story which will be told in God’s time. And it’s a story which has a special chapter beginning with a call to repentance by a humble but outspoken man who has sacrificed all to be the forerunner of a Lord and Savior who is coming soon.

Ask your very human self, “How will this story end? How will this great Lord establish His rule? How will He bring justice and peace and prosperity to those He chooses as His own? What concrete form will that justice and peace and prosperity take? When will the Lord conquer His enemies and bring about a better world?”

Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Constantine. Attila. Charles the Great. Genghis Khan. Frederick the Great. Napoleon.

Those were men who knew how to conquer, how to reduce their enemies, how to impose their will upon others. Surely, He who comes in the name of God, He who will bring justice to God’s people, will prove His power in such ways. To be sure, His justice will be true justice and not the false justice of human conquerors, but He will prove Himself the greatest of all conquerors.

Maybe not, at least not in human terms. The part of God’s story which deals with the coming Lord begins with that strange man who dresses in camel-hair and eats locusts and wild honey. That’s not promising from a human perspective. Those sorts of men were little more than pests to the likes of King David and his descendants.

But we’re characters in a story being told by God and the Lord’s ways are not our ways.

[Biblical quotations from RSV, Catholic Edition as printed by Thomas Nelson Publishers for Ignatius Press.]

2008-2009 Christian Liturgical Year: Preface

I’ll be doing my best to post a meditation each week throughout the 2008-2009 liturgical year. The meditations will be Bible-centered but also reflective of my understanding of modern empirical knowledge. This is to say that I’ll be explicitly viewing God’s revelations through the eyes of a modern man somewhat knowledgeable about modern empirical knowledge. I will be especially concerned with the revelation who was the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the purpose of these meditations — to try to start a turn towards a sane Christian worldview, one that recognizes both the revealed eternal truths and the best available empirical knowledge.

Those who wish to read the translation of a particular reading as used in the Catholic Mass can find it here. I’ll be mostly using the RSV, Catholic Edition as printed by Thomas Nelson Publishers for Ignatius Press.

2008-2009 Christian Liturgical Year: First Sunday of Advent

God doesn’t need a world in which to live, not even a heavenly world. Where God lives is God Himself because God is a pure act-of-being, His own Act-of-being. You might say that God (the one divine nature) is where Father and Son and Holy Spirit (the three divine Persons) live. Or you might say that God is His own World and His own house, or His own tent if you wish to speak in Biblical terms.

Why did God, who needs no place as we know it, create this universe? Why did the Son of God become man? Why did God create this kind of universe in which there is much joy, even of a purely natural sort, but also more than a bit of suffering? There is even evil in this world. How could God have created a world in which there is suffering and evil? Surely, God Himself is absolutely good.

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” [Romans 8:19-21]

Note that St. Paul doesn’t blame the disorder in creation upon Satan or some other force of evil. He tells us that it is part of the plan of the all-powerful God. As I would put it, it’s part of the story that God has chosen to tell, the all-powerful and all-knowing God who is telling a story in which there is suffering and evil. After all, modern science tells us that matter as we know it came to exist as the universe cooled down from states so hot and destructive that nothing could have existed. Any time matter tried to form in the early centuries after the universe began to expand, it would be torn apart to re-enter a state which would seem to human perception to be disordered. Yet, that hot and disordered stuff eventually cooled and developed into hydrogen and oxygen, into stars and galaxies, into mountains and dinosaurs. Modern science also tells us that man with his tendencies to violence and hatred evolved from a creature with the same tendencies. And that creature was ancestor also to chimpanzees, a sometimes nasty beast which embarrasses those who would see their ancestor as a special creation, Adam already an image of God. Empirical knowledge, what we know of reality, doesn’t give us any reason to believe that this world was ever in a state of blessedness nor that mankind was ever in a state of innocence and grace.

So what does this mean? Can we make sense of both the Bible stories and those told by those bones from the sands of Africa and by the patterns of radiation left from the time when the universe was little more than a hot ball of gas? Can we find moral goodness in a world so violent down to the most basic of physical processes?

The answer to the two latter questions is, “Yes.” We can speak of the incarnation of the Son of God and also of the salvation He has offered us in the context of this world of joy and misery, of goodness and evil, but we have to speak more sanely than Christians have spoken in recent centuries. We live in an age surrounded by mountains of empirical data, only some of which has been digested into a form where it can be called ‘knowledge’. We and our children are exposed directly and indirectly to scientific and technological wonders and those wonders conflict with the understanding of this universe which we have inherited, an understanding which we have intertwined with the most absolute of truths.

The answer to the question, “So what does this mean?” is likely to be one that will disappoint most listeners: the meaning is the story itself but it’s a story that includes not only the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ but also our individual stories which, we can hope, will continue in heaven, the world of the resurrected.

If a child of a Christian household in the 13th century were to ask, “Where’s heaven?” his parents could have pointed out into space and have spoken of regions on the other side of the clouds, on the other side of the moon if they were a little more sophisticated and knew a little about the teachings of the mainstream scientists and philosophers. If a child of a Christian household in the early 21st century were to ask his parents such a question, they would have no good answer for him because they, like that child, had watched movies from deep-space probes and from Hollywood’s animation studios which show a deep space empty of angels and heaven. We’ve learned enough to destroy our inherited understanding of God’s Creation and have not yet built up understandings appropriate to modern empirical knowledge.

We have no coherent understanding of heaven given our current knowledge of reality and thus, any talk of heaven becomes talk of a fairy-land and not a part of God’s real Creation. In truth, as flesh-and-blood creatures, we don’t believe in heaven but we do believe in a reality consisting of pro football games on Sunday afternoon and news of brutal wars in foreign regions. We believe in rock-and-roll and we believe in DNA and some have watched certain documentaries which have taught them to believe in the black-hole which is almost certainly at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

We believe in DNA and we believe in those bones dug out of the sands of Africa. We believe our ancestors were also the ancestors of chimpanzees and we believe we can be saved by valves from a pig’s heart being transplanted into our human bodies.

Do we believe that the Son of God was born a frail human child with a human brain and a human mind not yet developed? Do we believe that Jesus Christ, if born today, could have been saved in His later years by having the valves from a pig’s heart grafted onto His own heart?

We live in a universe well-described by Einstein and Darwin and their successors but we’ve not yet learned to think of heaven as being a part of the same Creation as this universe, nor do we have an understanding of important Biblical stories which make sense as part of the same universe as DNA and those bones from the sands of Africa. We have no coherent understanding of the stories of Adam and Eve, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of St. John the Baptist, of Jesus Christ who was true God and true man.

We try to understand the revelations of God by ancient pagan concepts. The ancient Greeks spoke of a Golden Age when men were like gods and the world a paradise in which food and all other needs could be had without effort. St. Augustine and other early Fathers of the Church thought this provided a way of understanding the story of Adam and Eve and so Eden became a story of such a Golden Age when man was in a state of grace and had not yet fallen.

The greatest of modern anti-Christian thinkers, Friedrich Nietzsche, proclaimed the death of God but he was really speaking of the murder of the God of Jesus Christ by Christians. We inhabit a land which we know to be well described by Einstein’s insights and manipulable by bulldozers and computing devices. We desire cures from the successors of Darwin. We’ve split God’s Creation and have left Christian beliefs in regions that aren’t part of reality. The greatest truths of Christianity have taken on the stink of superstition.

Can we do better? Can we begin to see Christ as having been incarnate in the universe of Einstein and Darwin? Can we truly act and speak as if God did create a universe which develops by often violent processes, processes which inflict suffering on living creatures and which bring about environments which encourage the evolution of evil behavior on the part of those creatures? Is our faith and our courage up to this task?

Few of us are called to the task of dealing directly with modern thought and modern empirical knowledge in order to make sense of this phase of God’s Creation but all who are Christians are called to contemplation of God’s world as it truly is. All Christians are called to pray for understanding. All Christians are called to have respect and some coherent understanding of God’s Creation and a still greater respect and a perhaps deeper understanding of God’s scriptures.

Let us begin on this First Sunday in Advent by listening to the Lord of History and of all Creation as He speaks in the Gospel reading:

But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray, for you do not know when the time will come. [Mark 13:33]

Of what time does the Lord Jesus Christ speak? His words in the Gospels about time and about apocalyptic issues are strange, some would say mystical. Now we know more about time and the way that it’s intertwined with space. It now seems likely that space and time, space-time, are fully creatures as much as matter. From this modern viewpoint, we must fear that Christ often speaks of events that aren’t within reach of traditional human thoughts, events — if that is a proper word — which lie outside of time and space or perhaps in a phase of Creation with a time and space which is separate from the time and space we know.

We literally don’t know the meaning of Christ’s words but our Christian ancestors had a coherent tentative understanding of those words, an understanding which may be a bit wrong but is certainly too limited. As our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has told us: we must broaden the horizon of human reason. We must do this if we’re to have some coherent understanding of God’s words in Holy Scripture and of God’s Creation as revealed in empirical knowledge.

We have not the means to such a broadening of our reason, at least not means as would be assumed in most of our educational institutions including Christian seminaries. That broadening of human reason must come from better understandings of Holy Scripture and of God’s Creation. We must open our minds and hearts to be shaped by our responses to God’s words and to God’s acts as Creator and as Savior. We must listen to God’s words, watch His Creation, and pray that He give us the wisdom to make some tentative sense of it all.

For now we know this: the Son of God has taken human form in the holy womb of Mary. We must quietly await His birth. Like His mother Mary, we must keep many things in our heart, not knowing what they truly mean and hoping He will reveal those meanings in His words and in His actions, including those acts of creation which shaped this universe. We must wait patiently for the Lord as He speaks and acts throughout this year and as He has acted throughout the past 15 billion years or so, since the so-called Big Bang. We must nurture our faith and our courage.

[Biblical quotations from RSV, Catholic Edition as printed by Thomas Nelson Publishers for Ignatius Press.]

Moving With the Grain of Universe: Becoming One With the Body of Christ

In this life, reality comes to us through the senses in such a way that we are distanced from that which is outside of us, our possessions and our parents as well as God Himself. Though God isn’t truly outside of us, He seems that way to us and allows us to be separate from Him in this way as we grow up. As St. John of the Cross once said: God distances Himself from us in the manner of a wise and loving mother who steps away from her child as he is learning to walk, letting that child fall occasionally. In the case of God, there is no true distancing as there is with a human mother, but He fosters an illusion of separation while we learn a proper sort of independence.

Even with our relationships with Creation, those with our tools and those with our loved ones, there also is no true separation. As Michael Polanyi, surgeon and scientist and philosopher, pointed out in various writings, including Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, our tools become extensions of our bodies as our brains adjust to treat them as such. You can see this in the fluid movements of surgeon or carpenter or cook. That scalpel or file or spatula is an extension of the human arm and their brain is aware of its possibilities and its dimensions in a way very similar to the brain’s awareness of that arm’s possibilities and dimensions.

Those who wish for friendship with Jesus Christ have an analogical relationship to the Body of Christ though we mortal men be more like the tool than the arm or the brain. Yet, each and every human being who willingly belongs to Christ is a living and self-aware extension of the Body of Christ. The resurrected can be more perfectly a part of the Body of Christ even as they are more perfectly human beings.

The relationship of a friend of Christ to the Body of Christ isn’t a matter of an over-excited religious imagination but rather a very real relationship as is the relationship that great mathematicians and metaphysicians have to abstract — but real — domains of truths. As is necessary in such a case, I speak analogically but it’s not wholly analogical. There’s a relationship that we can’t speak of directly in words or grammatical structures available to us and which won’t exist until we stretch and try to describe greater truths which seem so out of focus no matter how we squint the eyes of our minds. (See Abstract Mathematics and the Real Presence for a closely related discussion.)

A modern Christian has a strong tendency to shout out news of his personal salvation while talking as if the reality of salvation is but a dream with no connection to reality. My salvation is real when that claim helps me feel better but salvation is a pious illusion when that claim threatens to get in the way of my effectiveness in this real world which has no seeming connection to any real Heaven. (See A Thomistic Take on Madness and Modernism for a short discussion of the schizophrenic nature of much modern thought.)

As I’ve stated before, pre-modern Christians had a view of Heaven, of the next life, which was consistent with beliefs about the cosmos, the earth and all that encircled it. On the other side of the moon’s orbit lay ethereal stuff, pure stuff and not the dirt and flesh and blood of the earth. Hell, the place of damnation, lay below the surface of the earth. When modern empirical knowledge took this relatively simple view of the cosmos-universe from us, we Christians simply etherealized Heaven, giving up our ability to speak of Heaven or the resurrection or salvation in concrete terms. Heaven and the resurrection and salvation have become dream-like and unreal to many in the modern world, including many children raised as Christians.

In any case, we Christians need to pull ourselves together, to learn to think of Creation — all of Creation — as a unity though having different phases. We need to develop words and concepts to help us think of Heaven in concrete terms that make sense as speculations of a Creation in which this universe is but a phase. When we do so, then we can begin to see that the Body of Christ was first conceived in this universe and still grows in this universe even as that Body has reached a mature stage in Heaven, that is, the world of the resurrected. That Body is mature in Heaven but not yet complete Membership remains open to all who wish to share true life, the life of God Himself.

Moving with the Grain of the Universe: Freedom

In summarizing the political views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Professor William E. Connolly notes:

A person is free when he is the author of the principles he follows. For then the constraints he faces are self-imposed and his purposes are self-defined. [Political Theory & Modernity, Basil Blackwell, 1989]

Rousseau seems to have hit upon a great truth here, though he apparently went on to use this as the foundation of his view of civic society as a self-organizing totalitarian entity. So, I’ll take Rousseau’s insight and use it to point towards a truth.

We Christians believe that we are called to become Christ-like persons, but I’ll use instead an image of us learning to be like God in His freely chosen role as Creator. We’re children who pick up sticks and rocks to imitate our Father as He goes about His work of creating and shaping this universe. By understanding Creation and by helping to shape it in our lesser ways, we learn the skills of the Creator Himself, we learn to think along with Him. The truths which God is manifesting in Creation become ours and we think along with God, we speak with God, as He tells the stories of our lives and of all Creation.

We become free by sharing in the freedom of the Creator. We share in His work, He is the Author and we’re allowed to hold onto the pen as He moves it. If we think in too strict an analogy to human workers, this makes us seem to be quite insignificant but that isn’t the case. We gain more than can be measured by mortal standards when we are given even the smallest share of the freedom of the Creator, freedom limited only by His own promises.

Restricting God’s Thoughts to Freshman Mathematics

[This entry has also been posted to my other blog, Acts of Being.]

Those who belong to that school of thought labeled Intelligent Design typically describe themselves as Christian, sometimes Jewish, and sometimes there is only an impression of a vague Theism. In any case, most of these thinkers would likely claim to believe in a Creator who is an all-powerful and all-knowing God. Yet, they think to understand the Lord’s work and His thoughts using what can be readily learned in less than two years of modestly difficult college work — a little calculus and some probability and statistics, a little chemistry and some astronomy and physics.

Do these thinkers imagine God’s thoughts and the possibilities open to Him as a Creator to be so limited? Math is hard. Physics is hard. Philosophy and literary studies are hard. Understanding God’s acts of Creation is all of that plus one hell of a lot harder. Anyone who thinks the Creator’s thoughts and acts can be understood by simply applying a few equations from Probability Theory 101 is deluding himself and insulting God.