theGreenHouse

Survey Results

2013-03-04T15:02:00.002-05:00

--Stats in BOLD represent strongest response.

Are you a Christian?

Yes / 289 - 95%
No / 12 - 4%

Are you currently a practicing member of a local church?

Yes / 241 - 80%
No / 62 - 20%

Male or Female?

Male / 118 - 39%
Female / 183 - 60%

What is your age?

20 and under / 6 - 2%
21-29 / 84 - 28%
30-39 / 89 - 29%
40-49 / 59 - 19%
50-59 / 31 - 10%
60 and over / 34 - 11%

"Members of other religions who do not acknowledge Jesus as Savior are likely going to hell."

Strongly Agree / 104 - 34%
Somewhat Agree / 65 - 21%
Somewhat Disagree / 49 - 16%
Strongly Disagree / 84 - 28%

"The Bible is 100% accurate--factually, historically, and theologically--and therefore completely trustworthy."

Strongly Agree / 108 - 36%

Somewhat Agree / 59 - 19%

Somewhat Disagree / 55 - 18%

Strongly Disagree / 80 - 26%

"The Bible is the only source of truth."

Strongly Agree / 72 - 24%

Somewhat Agree / 53 - 17%

Somewhat Disagree / 71 - 23%

Strongly Disagree / 106 - 35%

"Salvation requires having the right beliefs."

Strongly Agree / 52 - 17%

Somewhat Agree / 78 - 26%

Somewhat Disagree / 73 - 24%

Strongly Disagree / 100 - 33%

"Evangelism is fundamentally about striving to live a particular way, rather than striving to convince others to believe a particular way."

Strongly Agree / 107 - 35%

Somewhat Agree / 105 - 35%

Somewhat Disagree / 51 - 17%

Strongly Disagree / 39 - 13%

Also, if you have any comments you may make them anonymously here.

What Would You Ask?

2013-03-04T14:46:00.002-05:00

Survey Closed

2013-03-03T12:30:00.003-05:00

Badiou's Ontology: A Lecture On the Void

2012-07-14T12:35:00.000-04:00

"Being and Event": A Review by Michael Kim

2012-07-06T12:02:00.001-04:00

Alain Badiou: Being and Event

Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou (ƒcole Normale SupŽrieure et College International de Philosophie, Paris) published this text in French nearly 20 years ago. Despite the time lapse, American readers-including those who keep abreast of Continental philosophy only in translation-will encounter concepts they have rarely come across elsewhere. Maintaining that "mathematics is ontology" and that "ontology is a situation," Badiou offers 37 meditations (in the Cartesian sense), which are themselves one of three types: conceptual, textual, or metaontological. His syntax, which the translator has consciously maintained, elaborates on the ideas it carries by its formal and complex structure. Badiou's references to and use of his predecessors and contemporaries-including Plato, Cantor, Spinoza, Heidegger, Lacan, and a dozen other ancients, moderns, and postmoderns-are compelling in the instant but require much more protracted discussion in order for his project to enter an accessible stream of current intellectual discourse. A variety of scholars, including philosophers, mathematicians, and intellectual historians, would do well to examine this volume and seek in it threads that warrant continued examination in an era of nanotechnology and political terrorism.

-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley.

Those who have read Badiou's Deleuze will have some idea of what occupies "Being and Event". The title recalls, of course, Heidegger's "Being and Time", and Badiou explicitly agrees with Heidegger that philosophy can only be done on the basis of the ontological question. In Deleuze, Badiou argues that that great thinker was at bottom a thinker of the One and, as Keith Ansell-Pearson points out, the real quarrel between Badiou and Deleuze is over who can speak of being as pure multiplicity. For Deleuze, the concepts are those found in Bergson and the differential calculus; for Badiou one must look to post-Cantorian set theory. In both cases, one cannot approach ontology without a firm understanding of mathematics (anyone who does not have a working grasp of set theory will not be prepared for Being and Event).

The ontological question cuts a diagonal through various trajectories. Although Badiou accepts the gauntlet Heidegger threw down to philosophy, like Deleuze he thinks that ontology has to be done post-phenomenologically. Badiou even rejects the later Heidegger's notion of "forgetting". Badiou's answer to the ontological question involves a second project in "Being and Event": the articulation of a post-Cartesian (and even a post-Lacanian) subject. If, Badiou says, mathematics is ontology (that is, only mathematics can write being as it is, even if there is no intra-mathematical sense to this writing), the question is no longer the Kantian "how is mathematics possible?" but, rather, if mathematics is the science of being, how is a subject* possible? In accord with his notion that there are four (and only four) "truth procedures", there are only artistic, scientific, political, and amorous subjects. It is on this idea that Badiou's other works on ethics, politics, art ("inaesthetic"), and so forth, are predicated. In a sense, none of Badiou's other translated works make much sense without the doctrine of the subject laid out in Being and Event.

(This project of a post-Cartesian subject is announced by the book itself in that it is written as a series of "meditations" that could not be more dissimilar in method to the meditations of either Descartes or Husserl. My own hunch is that any successful engagement and/or refutation of Badiou's work will have to be done on the question of method - viz., Badiou's axiomatic procedure.)

These theses on ontology and subjectivity cross the so-called analytic-continential divide in philosophy. Badiou offers readings of major thinkers throughout the history of philosophy and his readers are asked to have a similarly encyclopedic knowledge of both the post-Kantian analytic and continental traditions. This book is most certainly neither for laypersons, amateurs, or beginning students of philosophy. Throughout the introduction Badiou expresses consternation over the fact that his readers must not only be professional philosophers, but also well-trained in mathematics. One is usually well-trained in one or the other. Analytic philosophy tends to do better at this than Continental (indeed, one of Badiou's goals is to provide a way out of the aporias of the Vienna Circle), but Badiou equally draws from the continental tradition (by way of figures like Hegel, Heidegger, and Lacan) and continental readings of the history of philosophy. (And, until "Being and Event", one couldn't really find much after Quine on the philosophy of set theory except something like Mary Tiles' work from 1989.)

The ontological argument, premised on what Badiou has to say about the One and the presentation of multiplicity (i.e., the question that preoccupied the presocratics) hinges on this: "maintain the position that nothing is delivered by the law of the Ideas, but make this nothing be through the assumption of a proper name. In other words: verify, via the excedentary choice of a proper name, the unpresentable alone as existent; on its basis the Ideas will subsequently cause all admissible forms of presentation to proceed. ... It is because the one is not that the void is unique ... [which is equivalent] to saying that its mark is a proper name". This is how Badiou interprets the axiom of the null (or void) set and distills the question of the One and Many from Being and change (see, e.g., the history and development of the concepts of the calculus). The question is not simply "how does one think non-being?" but also (and Parmenides also recognized this) "how does one name non-being?" The proper name, as Badiou points out in a passage immediately following the above, is not the transcendent God or the promise of the One or presence but the "un-presentation and the un-being of the one" (cf. Derrida's comments on the possibility of a negative theology).

The payoff for working through Badiou's text is nothing less than a revitalization of philosophy (particularly for anyone who thinks philosophy in America has been boring since the waning of Rortyian pragmatism). The ontological debates surrounding Deleuze/Badiou have tended to be conducted in the margins of philosophical discourse in the US (with both thinkers more popular in circles of theory than philosophy and in the pages of journals on culture and politics than Nous or Mind), but the publication of "Being and Event" itself is precisely what Badiou means when he writes of an "event": something that disrupts the current situation. ("Event" and "situation" are, of course, technical terms for Badiou. The most succinct statement of these terms is probably "The Event as Trans-Being" in the Theoretical Writings.) Like his compatriot Ranciere (who too found his own voice after breaking with a youthful Marxism), Badiou is concerned with how it is possible that something new can be seen. "Being and Event" is compulsory for anyone who thinks ontology has been boring since Heidegger (even Millan-Puelles' ambitious "Theory of the Pure Object" fails to satisfy); and for those who weren't convinced by Deleuze that alternative ways to do ontology (viz. Bergson) were dead-ends, "Being and Event" the place to turn. (Whether one ultimately agrees with Deleuze or Badiou, however, is an open question. The basic difference is this: for Badiou, multiplicities are rigorously determined; Deleuze, obviously, denies this. In both cases being is pure multiplicity, nondenumerable, etc)

And for those who may be interested by Deleuze but are wedded to more traditionally analytic ways of writing: Badiou's writing is often praised for its clarity and in many ways it mimes the economy of analytic philosophy, avoiding the obscurity (while preserving the density) of many of his French contemporaries. Badiou has often been compared to Sartre (both being novelists and playwrights in addition to philosophers), but not only does Badiou in many ways stand apart from the French traditions of Sartre and Hyppolite, "Being and Event" is eminently more readable than "Being and Nothingness". Even if Badiou's writing lacks the brilliance of Derrida or Deleuze, this may be because he explicitly tells us that the poetic is subordinate; indeed, Badiou's writing itself is probably best described as "mathematical". While he is not immune to some amount of obscurity in some others of his writings, "Being and Event" certainly cannot be so faulted. At worst one might fault the author for demanding too much of his reader; but if this be a fault it is an admirable one to have, since it is a rare author indeed who can make such a demand.

-Michael Kim, Colorado Springs.
-Featured on lacan.com

How Does History Influence [Christian] Theology?

2012-05-25T14:25:00.001-04:00

-Joshua W.C. Stafford

Such a question has no easy answer. In some sense, it could be said that history has nothing to do with theology, being that theology acts only in the present as an appropriation of meaning and significance to the divine. And yet, one might also postulate with the weight of sound argument that history has everything to do with theology, being that theology is the recapitulation of an event in the present (namely, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ). Moreover, it may be more appropriate to examine in what way theology has influenced history. That is, history itself recounts the tarnished image of Christianity as a violent and oppressive force fueled by the science of the divine—theology. Being that so much ambiguity exists in the potential answer to such a question, one must be precise as to what is meant by history and theology.

History is, as the greek word ἱστορία implies, an inquiry; or rather, the compilation of knowledge acquired through investigation. Thus, history seeks to discover, organize, and present data about past events. Generally speaking, then, history is the formation of a narrative which attempts to make sense of events in either a linear, circular, or random fashion. Historians, however, are aware of the limitations of their discipline—that most events are surrounded by an asymmetrical collection of data which may be lacking in interpretative homogeneity. There are other problems outside of limited primary source data which the last two-three centuries of thinkers have articulated repetitively. One such problem comes in the form of the postmodern critique of history as a social science, wherein it is argued that objectivity is an illusion and thus applying the scientific method to historical events is fruitless and ultimately impossible. But, this is a problem of philosophy and epistemology, and it must be noted that many historians operate without the concern for the nature of knowledge that philosophy demands. Furthermore, this critique is not unique to postmodernism, but rather can be traced back to Plato. A second problem emerges from what is known as the Marxist critique. Essentially, the Marxist will assert that social class and economic limitations determine the outcome of history. Therefore, history is moving in a deterministic direction; namely, toward a classless human society. Postmodern and Marxist critiques emerge to posit a fascinating question which one may never be able to fully answer: is history determined or dialectical? Are there objective or subjective factors in creating historical outcomes? Nevertheless, these critiques both assume—to varying degrees—that history has something to do with events.

Theology is as Richard Hooker articulated the science of all things divine. But distinctly in the world of Christian theology, theology is more than mere reflective and formalized systems (the product of applying the scientific method to belief structures—in a “sterilized” environment). Christian theology exists within the realm of praxis. That is, theology is not merely reflective, experiential, or teleological—it is all these things at once. Christian theology will never be able to exist outside of the church of God—the universal community of God’s people. If theology is done outside of the church of God it is theology general—or mere theology. Therefore, Christian theology is the ongoing discipline/art of providing frames of reference for understanding the reflective, experiential, and teleological existence of the church of God so that post-evental meaning or truth may endure (namely, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ).

It is at this point one returns to the question posited at the beginning of this inquiry: how does history influence [Christian] theology? According to the distinct definitions of history and theology proposed above, the answer is simply that history has everything to do with theology. Or rather, it is impossible to do theology without history; or, without history’s influence. Theology requires a type of, as Chesterton suggested in his The Everlasting Man, backward thinking. That is, Christian theology requires the imagination to wonder what might have been—how history could have been different—as it projects truth in the anticipatory moment. Thus, the activity of the Christian theologian is to ponder what fatal decisions or blind accidents in the ever expanding account of events describe what is—in the most familial construction—home. How did we get here—as we are—in this fleeting anticipatory moment? Such awareness is essential if one is to be constructive (a conduit from the past to the future) among the unfolding church of God.

A Creator And A Cripple.

2012-05-25T09:20:00.000-04:00

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of mere growth of this one. He has an unfair advantage and an unfair disadvantage. He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandgages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture. His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself. Alone among the animals he feels the need of averting his thought from the root realities of his own bodily being; of hiding them as in the presence of some higher possibility which creates the mystery of shame. Whether we praise these things as natural to man or abuse them as artificial in nature, they remain in the same sense unique. - G.K. Chesterton

Christianity, Politics, and Love

2012-05-11T18:29:00.000-04:00

By Joshua W.C. Stafford

In this season of political rebirth (election), it is wise for Christians to re-examine what role their theology/philosophy plays in the drama of national and local politics. That is, what precisely are Christians trying to make manifest in this world? Certainly, it is not as simple as identifying with a right party or right political platform. For what is found within the two-party system (democrat and republican) in the United States is a relentless struggle for power. Power is god. Power is that which justifies the ridiculous extents candidates are willing to go to mislead, obscure, and manipulate (even with honorable intentions). Power justifies the deceit. But if St. Paul is right, then ekklesia or congregation of God, as founded by Christ, names the only polity sufficient to encompass the journey of the Christian: to love. The ekklesia replaces the political animal with the Spirit led body of Christ. It would be an error to understand this as a type of utopian political program, since Paul himself had no desire to abolish the political order of the Roman Empire (see Rom. 13:1). Rather, Paul’s interest was in clarifying the distinction between the new life in the Spirit and that which was born out of the Torah (law); thus, between the spiritual and the religious. Consider his words to the Romans in chapter seven,

5 While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit. 7 What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived 10 and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. (NRSV)

Paul seems to be suggesting that in fact sin is a product of the law (religiousness), for how are we to know sin if there was not a "law" to call it such. Later Paul clarifies what it means to be “discharged” from the law. He instructs the Romans that “The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:9-10). That is, no wrong can be done in love.

In his first correspondence to the Corinthians Paul reiterates this theme, “And now faith, hope, and love abide…and the greatest of these is love” (13: 13). But what exactly is love or agape? It is easy to appropriate our modern conceptions/misconceptions about love to this first century context. But for Paul, love had little to do with the egoistic, emotional, and sexual overtones prevalent in contemporary love dialect. The contemporary Christian reader will be tempted to deceive himself, to posit that love is merely being nice, paying ones taxes, sacrificing for others, and/or being morally upright. One might ask, “What more could it be?” For Paul, however, love is essentially a political term (relates to the community of all citizens). That is, love is seen as the ultimate communitarian risk. But this still, tells us little of the actual nature of love. One must look more intently. Consider Paul’s words in I Cor. 13:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends.

As it becomes evident from the text, Paul seems to be suggesting that love has little to do with what we do…but rather the place or posture from which we do it—the Spirit by which it emerges. Yes, for Paul love resides in the most bizarre of paradoxes: in life there is death, in death there is life. “For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh” (II Cor. 4:11). Is this not the great narrative of Christianity, most brutally and beautifully told in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ; a liturgical reminder of the primal and operative nature of the psyche to vacillate between fixations of life and death.

Christian love (without which we are nothing according to Paul) is a polity (concerning all citizens) which seeks the location and posture of death. For this to make any sense to our contemporary Christian expression we must ask ourselves, “Where does one find death?” For according to this great paradox of Christianity, this is where life emerges. If there is one reducible factor to the experience of being privy to the “moment” of someone’s physical death, it is with death there is a void. What was—is not. What could have been—cannot be. And what will be—will be without.

Therefore, to pursue death is to pursue the void. It may be helpful to return to that most intimate of life’s questions: from what or from whom does life emerge? And according to the Christian creation story and modern scientific evolutionary theory, the many and the multiple are a derivative of the one. And to this great truth of our existence Paul proclaims “through [Christ] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20). The great task, therefore, of the ekklesia or congregation of God is to pursue the void for the sake of reconciliation of all things. This is the task of love.

For the purpose of addressing the question which prompted this study, it may be beneficial to draw from a recent religious/political issue which has unfolded in the great state of North Carolina. As most will be aware, North Carolina approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman, becoming the thirtieth state to effectively shut the door on same-sex marriages. Likewise, a vicious right wing conservative Christian rhetoric emerged to rally the vote which passed with a 61% majority. This is not to say there were not many others (without the vicious rhetoric) that simply voted their conscience. The thing which is most perplexing about the narrative of this decision process, is that it illustrates that Christians have surrendered the polity of love which is entailed in the Christian life, to the polity of the democratic process. Democracy, by its very nature, is dependent on the pursuit of self-interest; and this is precisely what is expected from citizens at the polls—to vote with your own interest in mind. In fact, it is essential to actualizing a nation which is “of the people.” And, likewise it would be naïve and “undemocratic” to simply think, as Christians, we should abstain from all things political. Thus—a great conundrum is implicit in our contextual reality. We are members of both the State and the Church—two opposing operative and prescriptive systems. But for Christians, the body of Christ—the congregation of God—and the polity of love marks the eternal citizenship and constitution one has in God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, though one may have voted to marginalize same-sex partners within the realm of the State—and exercised their democratic duty to pursue self-interest—there is another duty which supersedes all others. And according to St. Paul, this involves seeking communion and reconciliation with those who are now marginalized (in this case, by one’s own democratic footprint); to stand in the void, in those places that evidence death (the evidence of the many and the multiple—our divisions), so that life and love may emerge. Is not the subject of this amendment in North Carolina evidence of the misappropriated priority argued herein? For marriage, in all its sacredness for Christians, is not recognized by the State, but by God. Thus to try and legislate what is by nature sacred to the Christian, is reducing it to merely an act of citizenship. In conclusion, the polity of love suggested by Paul operates outside of democracy, striving to keep together that which democracy and capitalism have continued to objectify and stigmatize—in hopes that the many may become one.

Kenosis. Emptying of Transcendence.

2012-05-07T17:59:00.000-04:00

"...the God of absolute transcendence (God the Father in the Trinity) decides on the basis of love to empty himself into the world (in his son, Christ) without any reserve whatsoever. God thus commits an absolute risk--a certain suicide, if you will, because he abandons the very thing that keeps him from the material world (and so he remains stuck in his bubble of the total protection of transcendence). But the other side of this risk is decisive. By emptying himself of all content--of his total self-contained transcendence--God abandons all contingent plans to back up his existence. In this decision to risk everything for the sake of the world, the almighty God suddenly becomes as vulnerable as a fragile newborn baby, which in due course will be crucified on a Roman cross....for love to work on this cosmic level, God gives up the preservation of God's own life in order to save the life of the world. In this fashion, then, the very appearance of God in the world is itself the appearing of this risk as such--the risk that goes all the way to the absolute limit: a humiliating death on the cross of empire. This is why Christ's death as the complete exposure of total risk and love is so difficult to comprehend in all its brutal perversity--it is literally too much to bear. But in the process of this absolute self-emptying, God leaves his own fate entirely in human hands. God's survival is thus wholly dependent on the memory of the church and its actions, and the church's language and action make sense only in light of this cosmic perversion. Humanity must now live into its truth. Humanity has now become God."

- Creston Davis, Paul's New Moment, 117.

-excerpt reflect's Davis interpreting Zizek interpreting Hegel.

"Two Ways of Seeing a River" by Mark Twain

2012-04-27T00:15:00.000-04:00

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, in this fashion: "This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark?"

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?

(1883)

"The Superstition of School" by G.K. Chesterton

2012-04-26T23:48:00.000-04:00

G.K. Chesterton

It is an error to suppose that advancing years bring retrogressing opinions. In other words, it is not true that men growing old must be growing reactionary. Some of the difficulties of recent times have been due to the obstinate optimism of the old revolutionary. Magnificent old men like Kropotkin and Whitman and William Morris went to their graves expecting Utopia if they did not expect Heaven. But the falsehood, like so many falsehoods, is a false version of a half-truth. The truth, or half-truth, is not that men must learn by experience to be reactionaries; but that they must learn by experience to expect reactions. And when I say reactions I mean reactions; I must apologize, in the world of current culture, for using the word in its correct sense.

If a boy fires off a gun, whether at a fox, a landlord or a reigning sovereign, he will be rebuked according to the relative value of these objects. But if he fires off a gun for the first time it is very likely that he will not expect the recoil, or know what a heavy knock it can give him. He may go blazing away through life at these and similar objects in the landscape; but he will be less and less surprised by the recoil; that is, by the reaction. He may even dissuade his little sister of six from firing off one of the heavy rifles designed for the destruction of elephants; and will thus have the appearance of being himself a reactionary. Very much the same principle applies to firing off the big guns of revolution. It is not a man's ideals that change; it is not his Utopia that is altered; the cynic who says, "You will forget all that moonshine of idealism when you are older," says the exact opposite of the truth. The doubts that come with age are not about the ideal, but about the real. And one of the things that are undoubtedly real is reaction: that is, the practical probability of some reversal of direction, and of our partially succeeding in doing the opposite of what we mean to do. What experience does teach us is this: that there is something in the make-up and mechanism of mankind, whereby the result of action upon it is often unexpected, and almost always more complicated than we expect.

These are the snags of sociology; and one of them is concerned with Education. If you ask me whether I think the populace, especially the poor, should be recognized as citizens who can rule the state, I answer in a voice of thunder, "Yes." If you ask me whether I think they ought to have education, in the sense of a wide culture and familiarity with the classics of history, I again answer, "Yes." But there is, in the achievement of this purpose, a sort of snag or recoil that can only be discovered by experience and does not appear in print at all. It is not allowed for on paper, even so much as is the recoil of a gun. Yet it is at this moment an exceedingly practical part of practical politics; and, while it has been a political problem for a very long time past, it is a little more marked (if I may stain these serene and impartial pages with so political a suggestion) under recent conditions that have brought so many highly respectable Socialists and widely respected Trade Union officials to the front.

The snag in it is this: that the self-educated think far too much of education. I might add that the half-educated always think everything of education. That is not a fact that appears on the surface of the social plan or ideal; it is the sort of thing that can only be discovered by experience. When I said that I wanted the popular feeling to find political expression, I meant the actual and autochthonous popular feeling as it can be found in third-class carriages and bean-feasts and bank-holiday crowds; and especially, of course (for the earnest social seeker after truth), in public-houses. I thought, and I still think, that these people are right on a vast number of things on which the fashionable leaders are wrong. The snag is that when one of these people begins to "improve himself" it is exactly at that moment that I begin to doubt whether it is an improvement. He seems to me to collect with remarkable rapidity a number of superstitions, of which the most blind and benighted is what may be called the Superstition of School. He regards School, not as a normal social institution to be fitted in to other social institutions, like Home and Church and State; but as some sort of entirely supernormal and miraculous moral factory, in which perfect men and women are made by magic. To this idolatry of School he is ready to sacrifice Home and History and Humanity, with all its instincts and possibilities, at a moment's notice. To this idol he will make any sacrifice, especially human sacrifice. And at the back of the mind, especially of the best men of this sort, there is almost always one of two variants of the same concentrated conception: either "If I had not been to School I should not be the great man I am now," or else "If I had been to school I should be even greater than I am." Let none say that I am scoffing at uneducated people; it is not their uneducation but their education that I scoff at. Let none mistake this for a sneer at the half-educated; what I dislike is the educated half. But I dislike it, not because I dislike education, but because, given the modern philosophy or absence of philosophy, education is turned against itself, destroying that very sense of variety and proportion which it is the object of education to give.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education; no man who sacrifices everything to education is even educated. I need not mention here the many recent examples of this monomania, rapidly turning into mad persecution, such as the ludicrous persecution of the families who live on barges. What is wrong is a neglect of principle; and the principle is that without a gentle contempt for education, no gentleman's education is complete.

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

I use the casual phrase casually; for I do not concern myself with the gentleman but with the citizen. Nevertheless, there is this historic half-truth in the case for aristocracy; that it is sometimes a little easier for the aristocrat, at his best, to have this last touch of culture which is a superiority to culture. Nevertheless, the truth of which I speak has nothing to do with any special culture of any special class. It has belonged to any number of peasants, especially when they were poets; it is this which gives a sort of natural distinction to Robert Burns and the peasant poets of Scotland. The power which produces it more effectively than any blood or breed is religion; for religion may be defined as that which puts the first things first. Robert Burns was justifiably impatient with the religion he inherited from Scottish Calvinism; but he owed something to his inheritance. His instinctive consideration of men as men came from an ancestry which still cared more for religion than education. The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion they begin to care more for ambition than for education. It is no longer a world in which the souls of all are equal before heaven, but a world in which the mind of each is bent on achieving unequal advantage over the other. There begins to be a mere vanity in being educated whether it be self-educated or merely state-educated. Education ought to be a searchlight given to a man to explore everything, but very specially the things most distant from himself. Education tends to be a spotlight; which is centered entirely on himself. Some improvement may be made by turning equally vivid and perhaps vulgar spotlights upon a large number of other people as well. But the only final cure is to turn off the limelight and let him realize the stars.

(1923)

The Life of Salvation

2012-04-25T14:39:00.001-04:00

By Joshua W.C. Stafford

Introductory Comments

It is the essential charge of this paper to examine the schema of the life of salvation and sanctification as presented by Dr. Gilbert W. Stafford (1938-2008). This examination will include his arguments as presented in The Life of Salvation (1978) and Theology for Disciples (1996). Stafford’s schema will firstly be identified in relationship to the historical context of the theological discussion. Secondly, this paper will explore what Stafford’s schema says about the human condition, that is, about sin and faith specifically. Thirdly, this paper will examine the redemptive work of salvation as here understood by the reception of grace, the acting in faith, the attitude of repentance, and the participation in water baptism. Fourthly, this paper will examine the ongoing work of the Spirit which is sanctifying believers toward completion. And fifthly, to respond and react to the schema here presented.

Historical Context[1]

Any exposition of a contemporary theologian or theology must first be identified in relationship to the historical and theological narrative of which it is a part. In regards to the current examination of salvation and sanctification, one soon discovers that the discussion primarily revolves around the nature of sin. In that, sin is the object of the saving and sanctifying process, sin is that human predicament which must be overcome. It stands to reason that varying notions of sin would produce parallel notions of salvation and sanctification. Thus to understand rightly Stafford’s Wesleyan/Arminian view on salvation and sanctification, one must first understand the historical development of those Wesleyan/Arminian views in light of their Augustinian/Calvinistic counterparts.

Augustine of Hippo

The earliest theological discussions about the nature of sin can be traced to the 2^nd and 3^rd century.[2] However, the writers of the 4^th and 5^th centuries dominate the majority of the historical theological discussion. Bishop Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and the British monk Pelagius (ca. 360-ca. 420) gave major attention to the subject of sin, in fact, each working out their respective views in opposition and response to the other. The essential differences were clear. Pelagius argued that humankind was essentially good and possessed the ability to refrain from sin, that is, to be obedient to God. Sin is thus a social disease of sorts, transmitted by sinful influence in the world. Augustine, concerned that this view would proliferate, argued that humankind is unable not to sin (non posse non peccare[3]). The debate raged on into the early 5^th century with the western Augustinian line of thinking gaining dominance. Pelagius’ theology was condemned multiple times but lastly in 431 at the Council of Ephesus. In retrospect, one will note that the Augustine/Pelagius debates are fundamentally about differing emphases. Pelagius was concerned with emphasizing the human initiative in salvation while Augustine emphasized the divine initiative in salvation. The primary historical theological context is here set.

Pelagius

What developed in the millennia after the Council of Ephesus 431 is a series of positions which revert back toward Pelagius’ emphasis on human initiative and away from Augustinian total depravity and predestination. In the immediate shadow of the controversy grew Semi-Pelagianism, which was a hybrid view of both Augustinian and Pelagian thought, but it was later condemned at the Council of Orange in 529. The most significant developments within this period can be attributed to the Medieval Scholastics. The most recognized of which, is certainly Thomas Aquinas. The emphasis of the Scholastics in regards to sin was that sin was a perversion of our innate ability to do and choose good. In both cases, Semi-Pelagianism and Scholasticism, the human initiative is stressed, but in approximate balance to the work of grace in the divine initiative.

The reformers of the 15^th and 16^th centuries sought to revive Augustinian thought, that is, to emphasize that the work of salvation is all about God. Reformers such as John Calvin (1509-1564), Martin Luther (1483-1546), and Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) all stressed total depravity. Moreover, that every choice, thought, or action is evil in relation to God. Salvation is for the Reformers, as it was for Augustine, a complete and utter act of God.

But again, just as it had over a thousand years prior, as Augustinian thought again prevailed; it ushered in a new Semi-Pelagian response, namely in the works of Jacob Arminius and John Wesley. The essential views of this Arminian/Wesleyan line of thinking can be found in the five points of the Arminian Remonstrance: “…namely, election that is conditional on human response, the universal offer of redemption, the capability of willfully accepting or rejecting God’s offer of salvation, the resistibility of grace, and the possibility of apostasy.”[4] It is not that they believed the human initiative was sufficient unto salvation, but that because of the divine gift of grace in Christ, the human initiative could bring one unto salvation, because it was so willed by God.

It is the context of this Semi-Pelagian/Arminian/Wesleyan heritage that we encounter Stafford’s particular views on the life of salvation and the process of sanctification. Stafford, in his definitive work Theology for Disciples writes,

Pelagianism picks up on the biblical theme of human responsibility but fails to do justice to the corporate nature of humanity and the profundity of God’s grace. Augustinianism picks up on the biblical theme of the corporate nature of humanity and the profundity of grace, but marginalizes the equally biblical emphasis on human responsibility. Only the Wesleyan line of thought takes into account all emphases in the biblical material and gives all themes full weight without marginalizing any of them. Such an approach may not result in the most airtight logical systems (as is the case with the other two), but it does reflect the realistic dynamism of the Bible.[5]

Sin and Faith: The Human Condition

Stafford constructs his position on salvation and sanctification in light of his examination of the human condition: namely, the biblical accounting of sin and faith. The strength of this foundation is that it accounts for both the depravity of the human condition (in sin) and the capacity to elevate above it (in faith). In fact, Stafford concludes, “The opposite of sin is faith. God through Christ has redeemed us from the life of sin and introduced us to the life of faith.”[6] We will here examine what Stafford meant specifically by sin and faith.

Gilbert W. Stafford (1938-2008)

Stafford proposes “the following schema regarding primordial sin, systemic sin, individualized sin, and devilish sin.”[7] Primordial sin is the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Stafford notes that the instruction in the early Genesis creation accounts given directly to Adam and Eve was to have dominion over the created order.[8] Unfortunately, “instead of fulfilling this mission to have dominion over the created order, Adam and Eve allowed the created order—in the form of the serpent—to have dominion over them.”[9] As a result of this volitional choice, Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, forever to exist outside the garden. This primordial sin thusly sets the stage for the unfolding of human history, that is, the history outside the garden. Moreover, it sets the stage for understanding Stafford’s notions of systemic, individualized, and devilish sin.

Systemic sin is a reality of life outside the garden. Stafford notes that only Biblical accounting of this notion is found in the works of Paul, namely the letter to the Romans.[10] “To live outside of Eden is to exist apart from the perfect environment. It is to live where the original will, purpose, and mission of God for the human family are not immediately known; it is to live where the accomplishment of the divine will, purpose, and mission is not augmented by a created order that is in perfect harmony with such work.”[11] Stafford goes on to offer a parable which illustrates his position:

A parable that may help has to do with a family’s expulsion from Planet A to Planet B. Because they had transgressed so radically the way of life on Planet A they were taken to Planet B with no means of returning to Planet A. The progeny born in this alien environment are still creatures of Planet A, and in that sense they have an indelible relationship with it. Being the progeny of those who had rejected the ways of Planet A, they inevitably transgress the ways of Planet A, not because they have a genetic flaw but because they are the progeny of those living apart from Planet A. They do not know the ways of Planet A except through the distorted view given to them by their exiled forebears. Measured by the ways of Planet A, then, they fall short of living accordingly; their falling short is the result of being the progeny of those in exile. Systemic sin, then, as in this parable, really is our sin, in the sense that we function as volitional creatures who are the progeny of those expelled from Eden.[12]

Whereas systemic sin is corporate, individualized sin is a breach of the law which is written on the heart of each and every individual. Rom. 2:15, reads, for “what the law requires is written on their hearts.” At this point in his schema, one is aware that his notion of individualized sin is tied directly to his understanding of the “universal work of the Spirit.”[13] In fact, that much of his theology sits atop this notion. Namely, that God has at all times direct access to each and every individual in the human family. Individualized sin is then a rebellion against the Holy Spirit which is at work in one’s heart. He concludes, “For all persons—regardless of whether they have been confronted with the gospel—systemic sin is life outside of Eden, and individualized sin is rebellion against the revelation God gives outside of Eden.”[14]

What Stafford terms devilish sin, is a total commitment to the “antithesis of the will, purpose and mission of God.”[15] This is the gravest of sin, for it is a sin against the Holy Spirit, moreover, an active attack on the Spirit. The work of Christ is thusly understood to: 1) cast out devilish sin, 2) forgive us of individualized sin and to redeem us from it, 3) to take away systemic sin, and lastly, 4) to reverse primordial sin.[16]

It is here appropriate to turn our attention to the antithesis of sin, that is, faith. Stafford observes that the notion of faith in the Biblical text is characterized by four distinct dynamics: faith in, faith about, faith that, and the faith. Faith is here constructed as the means by which sin is overcome.

Faith in is the notion of trust, as in a personal relationship. This is the foundation of the human response in salvation. Faith in Christ, moreover trust in the saving work of Christ, is where the journey of salvation and sanctification in the individual begins.

Faith about is implied in the notion of faith in. That is, that trusting in the person and work of Christ, entails belief in his teachings. Furthermore, Stafford warns that the very teaching which is the object of the individuals devotion, is the essential reason for Jesus’ crucifixion and the subsequent persecution of His church. Moreover, that faith about, in its earliest manifestations of proclaiming Jesus as the Christ, led to the establishment of the church.

Faith that, is an assurance or promise of something in particular occurring. Exampled in Heb. 11:1 which reads, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” In the gospel of Matthew the disciples ask Jesus why they had been unable to heal the epileptic boy and Jesus replies, “Because of your little faith.”[17] Faith that explores the dynamic of living with anticipation and confidence.

The faith is the “tradition of belief and practice handed down from one generation to another.”[18] Its basic manifestation is the church. And the church, envisioned in Stafford, is commissioned to build faith in, faith about, and faith that.

Being that the New Testament church, and in fact, the church throughout history, has struggled to find balance with these four dynamics of understanding Stafford calls for a “full orbed faith.”[19] Stafford envisions each dynamic in balance and harmony with the others. He warns of the following tendencies in the church:

Faith primarily as personal trust, with only secondary attention given to other emphases, often leads to subjective experientialism….[20] Faith primarily as the making of right confessions, with only secondary attention given to the other emphases, often leads to argumentative intellectualism….[21] Faith primarily as the intensity of confidence that the Lord is going to do something miraculous, with only secondary attention given to the other emphases, often leads to prideful spiritualism….[22] Faith primarily as the sacred tradition, with only secondary attention given to other emphases, often leads to constrictive institutionalism[23].[24]

The problem of sin is thusly conquered in the life of full orbed faith. “Or again, to be in faith is to be related to Christ Jesus in salvation, to be informed by the Christian scriptures in understanding, to be committed to Christian service in life and work, and to be empowered by the Spirit in worship and witness.”[25] Stafford’s full orbed faith is the context from which we will turn our attention to the particularities of the life of salvation and the process of sanctification.

Salvation: “The Gift of New Identity”[26]

It is right to note that Stafford’s schema for understanding the human condition in terms of sin (the predicament) and faith (the means by which we escape our predicament), is at this point here incomplete. That is, the most sincere application of a full orbed faith is still merely a response to a divine initiative in the world, namely, the offering of grace. Thus “grace is the source of our new identity; faith is the means of receiving it; repentance is the attitude for experiencing it; the Lord designated water baptism its declaration” (emphasis mine).[27] Such is Stafford’s salvation schema.

In his 1978 work The Life of Salvation Stafford defines grace as “God’s yes action to transform humanity’s no” (emphasis mine).”[28] In fact, God’s grace is a manifestation of God’s decision prior to the created order, that humankind’s true destiny is to live in conformity to Christ.[29] He further articulates:

…in order for that faith to be created in us, we must say an original yes to the call of God. It is a yes that belongs to no one else. It is originally ours. That original yes is the occasion for the divine creation of faith in us. This yes is devoid of self-confidence, self-trust, and self-sufficiency. It is the yes of human insufficiency. It is a yes that is sure of having heard the call of God. It is a yes which God in his great mercy evokes from us without ever transgressing that capacity which he has granted us to say an original yes or no. When we say yes, it is because it has been divinely evoked from us, yet it is not God’s yes, but our own trusting yes. [30]

Grace acts firstly then in reversing that which Stafford termed primordial sin, or, in congruence with the passage above, the original no. Stafford’s salvation schema is always in juxtaposition to the fall accounts of Genesis. This is most evident in his recurring use of the genesis imagery. One such example is that the new identity as imparted by grace has moved the individual from a member of Adam’s fallen race to a member of Christ’s body.[31] From a state of primordial sin to a grace initiated acquittal.

As we examine this line of thinking, one notices the Semi-Pelagian/Arminian/ Wesleyan heritage which was articulated previously. Stafford works hard at synthesizing both the divine initiative (grace) and human volitional response (faith) thought to be at odds in the 4^th and 5^th centuries. Furthermore, Stafford suggests that in fact grace and faith cannot be intrinsically at odds because faith is a product of grace, “in that it depends fully on God’s work….”[32] Grace is God’s work from before the created order to the end of days. And all human initiative, moral triumph, or blessed assurance is at all times made possible by grace. Grace reaches its culmination, not in this life, but in glorification.[33]

If one were to conclude the examination of Stafford’s schema at this point, one would summarize that humanity is born into a sin predicament. God’s narrative in human history is the imparting and offering of grace. To receive this grace requires an act of faith, which should be properly understood as individual volitional action. And that there is a fundamental attitude adjustment which accompanies the salvation experience, namely, that of a repentant spirit. For many, this would be an adequate understanding of what is at work in the life of salvation. However, Stafford adds to this summary the imperative for water baptism, to which our attention now turns.

Stafford’s accounting of the Biblical instruction on water baptism incorporate the dominical account (i.e. the words of the Lord in Matt. 28:19), the ecclesial (i.e., the practices of the early churches recorded in Acts), and finally problematic passages of the Pauline account.[34] Once again, Stafford sets out to synergize the Biblical account, his task, to “theologize on the basis of the revealed will of God, leaving all special cases in God’s hands, realizing that God is bound neither to our theology nor to the regular plan of salvation as we know it.”[35]

In regards to the dominical account, Matt. 8:29, or the Great Commission as it is known, implore the disciples to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Further support is found in the ecclesiastical accounting of Acts. However, no specific instruction is to be found. Only, that Acts simply “contains a description of the identifying mark of Christian baptism, namely, belief in Jesus as the Messiah, whereas Matt. 28:19 gives the dominical formula for it.”[36]

Despite the instruction in the Gospel account. Despite the assumption present in the Acts of the Apostles. There exists some problematic Pauline accounts which stand as an obstacle for Stafford’s theological construct. Nevertheless, he argues these problematic passages still ultimately report the significance of water baptism in the life of the early church. One particular passage in question is I Cor. 1:10-17. Stafford suggests this passage:

…deals with the pride of allegiance to different baptismal parties. Paul appears to be overly zealous about distancing himself from such parties, so much so that it is only with reluctance that he even allows himself to remember those whom he has baptized in Corinth. In his strong reaction to baptism partyism, he stresses the all-important priority of the proclamation of the gospel. It is the gospel that is at the center of the Christian mission, and not allegieance to baptismal parties.[37]

Thus Stafford’s interpretation is essentially that baptism rightly follows the proclamation of Christ, as so suggested by Paul. Paul insists that he came to preach not to baptize in this passage, and Stafford does not disagree. Baptism follows in relation to the proclamation of Christ, and our essential instruction is to proclaim Christ, and proclamation is the only means by which the church baptizes. Stafford concludes, “…what Paul says should be understood as a pastoral caution against allowing the liturgical act in and of itself to replace the spiritual substance of the relationship of which water baptism speaks.”[38]

"Baptism of Christ" by Joachim Patenier 1520

Baptism, in Stafford’s schema, is not treated as optional. This is because the synthesis of the Biblical account implores to baptize as a part of the salvation experience. Of course, he is aware that there are theological concerns surrounding an outward requirement as part of his salvation schema. Primarily, the question arises as to the status of one who dies before being baptized. But such cautionary questions are but anomalies to the Biblical paradigm in Stafford’s estimation. “It is important to keep in mind the difference between God’s regular plan of salvation which we are obligated to teach and practice, on the one hand, and God’s gracious prerogative, on the other.”[39] Stafford thusly concludes,

Water baptism is a part of God’s plan for salvation. To reject it is to reject God’s plan. The assent of believers to the God-ordained way provides evidence of trust in Jesus Christ. It is in that sense that I Peter 3:21 speaks of baptism saving us “not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience.” Water baptism is the basic external testimony of the internal testimony of the Spirit (Rom. 8:16) that we are children of God. For one to refuse to follow the Lord in baptism must be viewed as a spiritual crisis of major proportions.[40]

Baptism in and of itself does not save but assenting to God’s whole plan of salvation does.[41]

Sanctification: The Ongoing Life of Salvation

As it was noted in the section on Sin and Faith, much of Stafford’s theology is built upon his understanding of the universal work of the Spirit. Perhaps, it is nowhere so clear, as here in his theology on the process of sanctification; or, as he phrases it, “The Experience of a New Spirit.”[42] The Spirit is at work in salvation from beginning to end. Furthermore, the very same Spirit is doing a new work in the believer. That is, the Spirit is sanctifying, making holy, that believer who has come to the Father in faith. Stafford offers six dynamics for understanding the work of sanctification: foundational sanctification, edifying sanctification, effusive sanctification, developmental sanctification, anticipatory sanctification, and entire sanctification.[43] It is wise to examine each individually.

Foundational sanctification is the Spirit’s work in salvation which reverses primordial sin. Believers are given a new identity; they are transformed from “Adam-people (i.e., sinners, aliens to God)” to “Christ-people (believers, children of God).”[44] Stafford writes,

Christians are no longer aliens to God, but friends; no longer sinners in need of salvation, but believers in need of perfection; no longer outsiders to the divine mission in the world, but participants in it; no longer strangers and enemies to the household of faith, but members of it. Their unique status in the divine economy is that they are “the sanctified in Christ Jesus” (see also Acts 20:32 and Heb. 10:10, 14).[45]

It is significant to note that the experience of salvation, or the experience of foundational sanctification, is not simply a gift from God but is the persistent advocacy of the Spirit.

Edifying sanctification is the product of that same Spirit indwelling the new identity of the believer. This indwelling Spirit is to “build up both individual believers and the church as a whole.”[46] According to Stafford the benefits of the indwelling spirit for edification are numerous. Firstly, the indwelling Spirit gives believers assurance that they are children of God. Secondly, the indwelling Spirit inspires Christ-centered worship. Thirdly, the indwelling Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit. Fourthly, the indwelling Spirit “is manifested in the charismata at work in and through us for the edification of the church; these are manifestations of the Spirit for the common good (see 1 Cor. 12: 4-11).”[47] And fifthly, the indwelling Spirit gives us “a foretaste of future glory when our bodies will be redeemed.”[48] The Spirit is thus, always at work, drawing sinners into salvation and believers into fullness of life.

Effusive sanctification is a work of the Spirit not entailed in the act of salvation. Its biblical manifestation is in Acts 2 where the Spirit is poured out onto all that are present. On the day of Pentecost the disciples “experienced the bursting forth of their potential for worldwide mission and service.”[49] This work of the Spirit transformed the Pentecost disciples from a “discipleship church” to an “apostolic church.”[50] And the church henceforth, increased in number and quality of life.

Developmental sanctification is the re-ordering of one’s life to bring glory unto God. A re-ordering made possible by grace and the persistent work of the Spirit. However, despite God’s work “The onus of responsibility is on believers to abstain from certain practices, to cleanse themselves from certain ways of living, to lay aside that which keeps them from serving God well, in order more fittingly to glorify God.”[51]

Anticipatory sanctification is a work of the Spirit which is a foretaste of the glorification to come. Glorification is here understood as the complete transformation into the image of Christ. The fullness of which will not be realized until the Lord’s return. Glorification is a product of seeing Christ, or rather, coming face to face with Christ; and merging with his identity. Stafford notes that there are ordained provisions which will aid in this glorification process. Firstly, the believer is given the provision of meditative study of the gospels; secondly, the provision of regular communion at the Lord’s Table; thirdly, provision of the fellowship of the church; and fourthly, provision of serving others.[52]

Entire sanctification is the ongoing work of the Spirit to bring about its completeness in the believer. The word here, translated “entirely” in 1 Thess. 5:23-24, is a derivation of the Greek words holos (meaning whole or complete) and telos (meaning end goal). Its theological rendering then is that the Spirit is at work bringing “all the parts of the whole…together to fulfill their ultimate purpose.”[53] And the implication of this Thessalonian passage is that Christians will be sanctified entirely at some actual point in the future. Stafford argues the understanding of the “holy” in the scriptural record is exclusively for the purpose of God’s work in history. “There is no compelling reason to hold, therefore, that Paul in 1 Thess. 5:23 thinks otherwise than that sanctification is for the purpose of accomplishing the divine mission during the historical life of God’s people.”

And so one may be compelled to ask, “What is the difference between glorification and entire sanctification?” Stafford answers,

While entire sanctification is inextricably bound up with glorification, it is not identical with it. Entire sanctification has to do with the complete oneness of the total self with Christ for the purpose of fulfilling his mission on earth whereas glorification has to do with the complete oneness of the total self with Christ for the purpose of unbroken and eternal communion (see Rev. 4 and 5). The culmination of glorification takes place only at the end of historical time when the Lord returns; the culmination of sanctification, on the other hand, takes place prior to the end of time as believers yield wholeheartedly to their Lord. Each is a distinctive dimension of God’s salvation plan.[54]

Stafford offers Stephen as a central example of entire sanctification. That is, that Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit and focused on God’s ultimate goal, met his death entirely sanctified. “It is not death that entirely sanctified him; instead, it was entire sanctification that prepared him for death as a martyr.”[55]

Entire sanctification as conceived in 1 Thess. 5 is God’s work. Nevertheless, Stafford asks if we are to have any role to play in entire sanctification at all. The answer, accordingly, is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans where believers are implored to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”[56] Essentially, Stafford distinguishes between the individual’s responsibility to give oneself to the telos or purpose of God, and subsequently, God’s work in making us holy for that telos.

Lastly, there is yet another distinction which is of utmost importance in our examination of Stafford’s salvation schema, and it arises from the theological discussions surrounding this notion of entire sanctification. Stafford concedes that the problem which so many have is that when they look around within their communities of faith, they cannot find such “entirely sanctified” people. But it is because they make,

…No distinction between behavior, which is flawless and love which is perfect. That is, love which, though it may have flawed behavior, is, nevertheless, focused in single-hearted devotion to the God of our salvation—a devotion which only the “God of peace himself” is able to evoke from us….Since God does the work, the knowledge of the extent of all that work is known conclusively only by God. We do well to leave the bookkeeping there. Our responsibility is to consecrate ourselves wholeheartedly to the Lord; the Lord will take care of the work of sanctifying entirely. Ours is a trustworthy God: “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”[57]

Stafford here concludes his general schema on the life of salvation.

Concluding Comments

It was accurate to place Stafford in the historical line of the Semi-Pelagian/Arminian/Wesleyan understandings. Stafford’s primary theological endeavor is to illustrate equally the divine initiative and the human volitional responsibility. Salvation and sanctification is the work of God, but it is also the work of human volitional action. The two cannot be separated. This schema is to be commended for its emphasis on the human responsibility associated with the receiving of grace. Salvation is rightly characterized not as a moment in time, or as an event, but as the Spirit’s persistent advocacy toward the telos of our existence. It is a process of saving and sanctifying, and in light of Stafford’s acceptance of the possibility of apostasy, it is of utmost importance to remain volitionally in a “full orbed faith” dynamic.

The most peculiar aspect of Stafford’s thought is the inclusion of water baptism in the salvific formula. It is peculiar not because it is uniquely here set in the salvific formula; nor, because it is unique to his own tradition. Its peculiarity is exampled in the juxtaposition of this outward expression of faith (water baptism) with Stafford’s central theological framework of the indwelling Spirit which is at work universally in the world. It would seem here, more consistent to speak of the act of water baptism as a normative expression of faith.

At the very least, Stafford’s schema is a healthy theological corrective to the tendency to create a disconnect between the work of God and what is possible for the individual in God. Likewise, his recurring emphasis on the universal work of the Spirit and the exclusivity of God as the spiritual accountant or judge is another timely observation. The focus of the believer is singular; it is to become like Christ through the persistent instruction of the Spirit which indwells. One might observe, then, that salvation and sanctification in Stafford are inextricably connected. They are in fact the same work, administered by the same Spirit. That is the life of salvation.

Bibliography

McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An Introduction. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994.

Stafford, Gilbert W. Theology for Disciples. Anderson: Warner Press, 1996.

__________. The Life of Salvation. Anderson: Warner Press, 1978.

[1] Thematic information verified in Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994).

[2] The Eastern expression was transmitted most significantly by Origen (ca. 185-ca. 254) and Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 330-ca. 394). The western expression found in Tertullian of Carthage (ca. 160-ca. 220).

[3] Or inversely, impotentia ben agenda, that is, the inability to do good.

[4] Gilbert W. Stafford, Theology for Disciples (Anderson: Warner Press, 1996) 401.

[5] Stafford, Theology, 403-04.

[6] Ibid. 418.

[7] Ibid. 404.

[8] See Gen. 1:26 and 2:15.

[9] Stafford, Theology, 405.

[10] See Rom. 5:18-19. Again in Rom. 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

[11] Stafford, Theology, 406.

[12] Ibid. 407-08.

[13] Ibid. 158.

[14] Ibid. 410.

[15] Ibid. 411.

[16] Ibid. 412.

[17] Matt. 17:20.

[18] Stafford, Theology, 424.

[19] Ibid. 433.

[20] Consider the tendencies of Pietism and Revivalism.

[21] Consider the tendencies of Lutheran orthodoxy and fundamentalism.

[22] Consider the tendencies of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement.

[23] Consider the tendencies of Eastern orthodoxy and Catholicism.

[24] Stafford, Theology, 433-34.

[25] Ibid. 435.

[26] Ibid. 442.

[27] Ibid. 448.

[28] Gilbert W. Stafford, The Life of Salvation (Anderson: Warner Press, 1978) 12.

[29] See Rom. 8:29.

[30] Stafford, Salvation, 19.

[31] Stafford, Theology, 447-48.

[32] Ibid. 449.

[33] See Rom. 8:30.

[34] Stafford, Theology, 455.

[35] Ibid. 457.

[36] Ibid. 452.

[37] Ibid. 453-54.

[38] Ibid. 455.

[39] Ibid. 456.

[40] Ibid. 456.

[41] Stafford, Salvation, 50.

[42] Stafford, Theology, 468.

[43] Ibid. 458-509.

[44] Ibid. 458.

[45] Ibid. 460.

[46] Ibid. 469.

[47] Ibid. 471.

[48] Ibid. 471.

[49] Ibid. 473.

[50] Ibid. 473.

[51] Ibid. 476.

[52] Ibid. 493-94.

[53] Ibid. 496.

[54] Ibid. 498-99.

[55] Ibid. 500.

[56] See Rom 12: 1-2.

[57] Stafford, Theology, 505.

Introduction to the Book of Job by G.K. Chesterton

2012-04-19T02:03:00.000-04:00

"Man is most comforted by paradoxes."

by G.K. Chesterton

THE Book of Job is among the other Old Testament Books both a philosophical riddle and a historical riddle. It is the philosophical riddle that concerns us in such an introduction as this; so we may dismiss first the few words of general explanation or warning which should be said about the historical aspect. Controversy has long raged about which parts of this epic belong to its original scheme and which are interpolations of considerably later date. The doctors disagree, as it is the business of doctors to do; but upon the whole the trend of investigation has always been in the direction of maintaining that the parts interpolated, if any, were the prose prologue and epilogue and possibly the speech of the young man who comes in with an apology at the end. I do not profess to be competent to decide such questions. But whatever decision the reader may come to concerning them, there is a general truth to be remembered in this connection. When you deal with any ancient artistic creation do not suppose that it is anything against it that it grew gradually. The Book of Job may have grown gradually just as Westminster Abbey grew gradually. But the people who made the old folk poetry, like the people who made Westminster Abbey, did not attach that importance to the actual date and the actual author, that importance which is entirely the creation of the almost insane individualism of modern times. We may put aside the case of Job, as one complicated with religious difficulties, and take any other, say the case of the Iliad. Many people have maintained the characteristic formula of modern scepticism, that Homer was not written by Homer, but by another person of the same name. Just in the same way many have maintained that Moses was not Moses but another person called Moses. But the thing really to be remembered in the matter of the Iliad is that if other people did interpolate the passages, the thing did not create the same sense of shock as would be created by such proceedings in these individualistic times. The creation of the tribal epic was to some extent regarded as a tribal work, like the building of the tribal temple. Believe then, if you will, that the prologue of Job and the epilogue and the speech of Elihu are things inserted after the original work was composed. But do not suppose that such insertions have that obvious and spurious character which would belong to any insertions in a modern individualistic book. Do not regard the insertions as you would regard a chapter in George Meredith which you afterwards found had not been written by George Meredith, or half a scene in Ibsen which you found had been cunningly sneaked in by Mr. William Archer. Remember that this old world which made these old poems like the Iliad and Job, always kept the tradition of what it was making. A man could almost leave a poem to his son to be finished as he would have finished it, just as a man could leave a field to his son, to be reaped as he would have reaped it. What is called Homeric unity may be a fact or not. The Iliad may have been written by one man. It may have been written by a hundred men. But let us remember that there was more unity in those times in a hundred men than there is unity now in one man. Then a city was like one man. Now one man is like a city in civil war.

Without going, therefore, into questions of unity as understood by the scholars, we may say of the scholarly riddle that the book has unity in the sense that all great traditional creations have unity; in the sense that Canterbury Cathedral has unity. And the same is broadly true of what I have called the philosophical riddle. There is a real sense in which the Book of Job stands apart from most of the books included in the canon of the Old Testament. But here again those are wrong who insist on the entire absence of unity.

Those are wrong who maintain that the Old Testament is a mere loose library; that it has no consistency or aim. Whether the result was achieved by some supernal spiritual truth, or by a steady national tradition, or merely by an ingenious selection in after times, the books of the Old Testament have a quite perceptible unity. To attempt to understand the Old Testament without realizing this main idea is as absurd as it would be to study one of Shakespeare's plays without realizing that the author of them had any philosophical object at all. It is as if a man were to read the history of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, thinking all the time that he was reading what really purported to be the history of an old Danish pirate prince. Such a reader would not realize at all that Hamlet's procrastination was on the part of the poet intentional. He would merely say, "How long Shakespeare's hero does take to kill his enemy." So speak the Bible smashers, who are unfortunately always at bottom Bible worshippers. They do not understand the special tone and intention of the Old Testament; they do not understand its main idea, which is the idea of all men being merely the instruments of a higher power.

Those, for instance, who complain of the atrocities and treacheries of the judges and prophets of Israel have really got a notion in their head that has nothing to do with the subject. They are too Christian. They are reading back into the pre-Christian scriptures a purely Christian idea the idea of saints, the idea that the chief instruments of God are very particularly good men. This is a deeper, a more daring, and a more interesting idea than the old Jewish one. It is the idea that innocence has about it something terrible which in the long run makes and re-makes empires and the world. But the Old Testament idea was much more what may be called the common-sense idea, that strength is strength, that cunning is cunning, that worldly success is worldly success, and that Jehovah uses these things for His own ultimate purpose, just as He uses natural forces or physical elements. He uses the strength of a hero as He uses that of a Mammoth without any particular respect for the Mammoth. I cannot comprehend how it is that so many simple-minded sceptics have read such stories as the fraud of Jacob and supposed that the man who wrote it (whoever he was) did not know that Jacob was a sneak just as well as we do. The primeval human sense of honour does not change so much as that. But these simple-minded sceptics are, like the majority of modern sceptics, Christians. They fancy that the patriarchs must be meant for patterns; they fancy that Jacob was being set up as some kind of saint; and in that case I do not wonder that they are a little startled. That is not the atmosphere of the Old Testament at all. The heroes of the Old Testament are not the sons of God, but the slaves of God, gigantic and terrible slaves, like the genii, who were the slaves of Aladdin.

The central idea of the great part of the Old Testament may be called the idea of the loneliness of God. God is not the only chief character of the Old Testament; God is properly the only character in the Old Testament. Compared with His clearness of purpose all the other wills are heavy and automatic, like those of animals; compared with His actuality all the sons of flesh are shadows. Again and again the note is struck, "With whom hath he taken counsel?" "I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the peoples there was no man with me." All the patriarchs and prophets are merely His tools or weapons; for the Lord is a man of war. He uses Joshua like an axe or Moses like a measuring-rod. For Him Samson is only a sword and Isaiah a trumpet. The saints of Christianity are supposed to be like God, to be, as it were, little statuettes of Him. The Old Testament hero is no more supposed to be of the same nature as God than a saw or a hammer is supposed to be of the same shape as the carpenter.

This is the main key and characteristic of the Hebrew scriptures as a whole. There are, indeed, in those scriptures innumerable instances of the sort of rugged humour, keen emotion, and powerful individuality which is never wanting in great primitive prose and poetry. Nevertheless the main characteristic remains; the sense not merely that God is stronger than man, not merely that God is more secret than man, but that He means more, that He knows better what He is doing, that compared with Him we have something of the vagueness, the unreason, and the vagrancy of the beasts that perish. "It is he that sitteth above the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers." We might almost put it thus. The book is so intent upon asserting the personality of God that it almost asserts the impersonality of man. Unless this gigantic cosmic brain has conceived a thing, that thing is insecure and void; man has not enough tenacity to ensure its continuance. "Except the Lord build the house their labour is but lost that build it. Except the Lord keep the city the watchman watcheth but in vain."

Everywhere else, then, the Old Testament positively rejoices in the obliteration of man in comparison with the divine purpose. The Book of Job stands definitely alone because the Book of Job definitely asks, "But what is the purpose of God? Is it worth the sacrifice even of our miserable humanity? Of course it is easy enough to wipe out our own paltry wills for the sake of a will that is grander and kinder? But is it grander and kinder? Let God use His tools; let God break His tools. But what is He doing and what are they being broken for?" It is because of this question that we have to attack as a philosophical riddle the riddle of the Book of Job.

Seghers "Job"

The present importance of the Book of Job cannot be expressed adequately even by saying that it is the most interesting of ancient books. We may almost say of the Book of Job that it is the most interesting of modern books. In truth, of course, neither of the two phrases covers the matter, because fundamental human religion and fundamental human irreligion are both at once old and new; philosophy is either eternal or it is not philosophy. The modern habit of saying, "This is my opinion, but I may be wrong," is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and its suits me"; the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon. The first of the intellectual beauties of the Book of Job is that it is all concerned with this desire to know the actuality; the desire toknow what is, and not merely what seems. If moderns were writing the book we should probably find that Job and his comforters got on quite well together by the simple operation of referring their differences to what is called the temperament, saying that the comforters were by nature "optimists" and Job by nature a "pessimist." And they would be quite comfortable, as people can often be, for some time at least, by agreeing to say what is obviously untrue. For if the word "pessimist" means anything at all, then emphatically Job is not a pessimist. His case alone is sufficient to refute the modern absurdity of referring everything to physical temperament. Job does not in any sense look at life in a gloomy way. If wishing to be happy and being quite ready to be happy constitute an optimist, Job is an optimist. He is a perplexed optimist; he is an exasperated optimist; he is an outraged and insulted optimist. He wishes the universe to justify itself, not because he wishes it to be caught out, but because he really wishes it to be justified. He demands an explanation from God, but he does not do it at all in the spirit in which Hampden might demand an explanation from Charles I. He does it in the spirit in which a wife might demand an explanation from her husband whom she really respected. He remonstrates with his Maker because he is proud of his Maker. He even speaks of the Almighty as his enemy, but he never doubts, at the back of his mind, that his enemy has some kind of a case which he does not understand. In a fine and famous blasphemy he says, "Oh, that mine adversary had written a book!" It never really occurs to him that it could possibly be a bad book. He is anxious to be convinced, that is, he thinks that God could convince him. In short, we may say again that if the word optimist means any thing (which I doubt) Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak. In the same way we may speak of the official optimists, the Comforters of Job. Again, if the word pessimist means anything (which I doubt) the comforters of Job may be called pessimists rather than optimists. All that they really believe is not that God is good but that God is so strong that it is much more judicious to call Him good. It would be the exaggeration of censure to call them evolutionists; but they have something of the vital error of the evolutionary optimist. They will keep on saying that everything in the universe fits into everything else: as if there were anything comforting about a number of nasty things all fitting into each other. We shall see later how God in the great climax of the poem turns this particular argument altogether upside down.

When, at the end of the poem, God enters (somewhat abruptly), is struck the sudden and splendid note which makes the thing as great as it is. All the human beings through the story, and Job especially, have been asking questions of God. A more trivial poet would have made God enter in some sense or other in order to answer the questions. By a touch truly to be called inspired, when God enters, it is to ask a number more questions on His own account. In this drama of scepticism God Himself takes up the role of sceptic. He does what all the great voices defending religion have always done. He does, for instance, what Socrates did. He turns rationalism against itself. He seems to say that if it comes to asking questions, He can ask some questions which will fling down and flatten out all conceivable human questioners. The poet by an exquisite intuition has made God ironically accept a kind of controversial equality with His accusers. He is willing to regard it as if it were a fair intellectual duel: "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me." The everlasting adopts an enormous and sardonic humility. He is quite willing to be prosecuted. He only asks for the right which every prosecuted person possesses; He asks to be allowed to cross-examine the witness for the prosecution. And He carries yet further the correctness of the legal parallel. For the first question, essentially speaking, which He asks of Job is the question that any criminal accused by Job would be most entitled to ask. He asks Job who he is. And Job, being a man of candid intellect, takes a little time to consider, and comes to the conclusion that he does not know.

This is the first great fact to notice about the speech of God, which is the culmination of the inquiry. It represents all human sceptics routed by a higher scepticism. It is this method, used sometimes by supreme and sometimes by mediocre minds, that has ever since been the logical weapon of the true mystic. Socrates, as I have said, used it when he showed that if you only allowed him enough sophistry he could destroy all the sophists. Jesus Christ used it when He reminded the Sadducees, who could not imagine the nature of marriage in heaven, that if it came to that they had not really imagined the nature of marriage at all. In the break up of Christian theology in the eighteenth century, Butler used it, when he pointed out that rationalistic arguments could be used as much against vague religion as against doctrinal religion, as much against rationalist ethics as against Christian ethics. It is the root and reason of the fact that men who have religious faith have also philosophic doubt, like Cardinal Newman, Mr. Balfour, or Mr. Mallock. These are the small streams of the delta; the Book of Job is the first great cataract that creates the river. In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself. This, I say, is the first fact touching the speech; the fine inspiration by which God comes in at the end, not to answer riddles, but to propound them. The other great fact which, taken together with this one, makes the whole work religious instead of merely philosophical, is that other great surprise which makes Job suddenly satisfied with the mere presentation of something impenetrable. Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and more desolate than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. Thirdly, of course, it is one of the splendid strokes that God rebukes alike the man who accused, and the men who defended Him; that He knocks down pessimists and optimists with the same hammer. And it is in connection with the mechanical and supercilious comforters of Job that there occurs the still deeper and finer inversion of which I have spoken. The mechanical optimist endeavours to justify the universe avowedly upon the ground that it is a rational and consecutive pattern. He points out that the fine thing about the world is that it can all be explained. That is the one point, if I may put it so, on which God in return, is explicit to the point of violence. God says, in effect, that if there is one fine thing about the world, as far as men are concerned, it is that it cannot be explained. He insists on the inexplicableness of everything; "Hath the rain a father? . . . Out of whose womb came the ice?" He goes farther, and insists on the positive and palpable unreason of things; "Hast thou sent the rain upon the desert where no man is, and upon the wilderness wherein there is no man?" God will make man see things, if it is only against the black background of nonentity. God will make Job see a startling universe if He can only do it by making Job see an idiotic universe. To startle man God becomes for an instant a blasphemer; one might almost say that God becomes for an instant an atheist. He unrolls before Job a long panorama of created things, the horse, the eagle, the raven, the wild ass, the peacock, the ostrich, the crocodile. He so describes each of them that it sounds like a monster walking in the sun. The whole is a sort of psalm or rhapsody of the sense of wonder. The maker of all things is astonished at the things He has Himself made. This we may call the third point. Job puts forward a note of interrogation; God answers with a note of exclamation. Instead of proving to Job that it is an explicable world, He insists that it is a much stranger world than Job ever thought it was. Lastly, the poet has achieved in this speech, with that unconscious artistic accuracy found in so many of the simpler epics, another and much more delicate thing. Without once relaxing the rigid impenetrability of Jehovah in His deliberate declaration, he has contrived to let fall here and therein the metaphors, in the parenthetical imagery, sudden and splendid suggestions that the secret of God is a bright and not a sad one semi-accidental suggestions, like light seen for an instant through the cracks of a closed door. It would be difficult to praise too highly, in a purely poetical sense, the instinctive exactitude and ease with which these more optimistic insinuations are let fall in other connections, as if the Almighty Himself were scarcely aware that He was letting them out. For instance, there is that famous passage where Jehovah with devastating sarcasm, asks Job where he was when the foundations of the world were laid, and then (as if merely fixing a date) mentions the time when the sons of God shouted for joy. One cannot help feeling, even upon this meagre information, that they must have had something to shout about. Or again, when God is speaking of snow and hail in the mere catalogue of the physical cosmos, He speaks of them as a treasury that He has laid up against the day of battle--a hint of some huge Armageddon in which evil shall be at last overthrown.

William Blake's "Job's Evil Dreams"

Job's Evil Dreams Nothing could be better, artistically speaking, than this optimism breaking through agnosticism like fiery gold round the edges of a black cloud. Those who look superficially at the barbaric origin of the epic may think it fanciful to read so much artistic significance into its casual similes or accidental phrases. But no one who is well acquainted with great examples of semi-barbaric poetry, as in the Song of Roland or the old ballads, will fall into this mistake. No one who knows what primitive poetry is, can fail to realize that while its conscious form is simple some of its finer effects are subtle. The Iliad contrives to express the idea that Hector and Sarpedon have a certain tone or tint of sad and chivalrous resignation, not bitter enough to be called pessimism and not jovial enough to be called optimism; Homer could never have said this in elaborate words. But somehow he contrives to say it in simple words. The Song of Roland contrives to express the idea that Christianity imposes upon its heroes a paradox: a paradox of great humility in the matter of their sins combined with great ferocity in the matter of their ideas. Of course the Song of Roland could not say this; but it conveys this. In the same way the Book of Job must be credited with many subtle effects which were in the author's soul without being, perhaps, in the author's mind. And of these by far the most important remains even yet to be stated. I do not know, and I doubt whether even scholars know, if the Book of Job had a great effect or had any effect upon the after development of Jewish thought. But if it did have any effect it may have saved them from an enormous collapse and decay. Here in this Book the question is really asked whether God invariably punishes vice with terrestrial punishment and rewards virtue with terrestrial prosperity. If the Jews had answered that question wrongly they might have lost all their after influence in human history. They might have sunk even down to the level of modern well educated society. For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. Men will leave off the heavy task of making good men successful. They will adopt the easier task of making out successful men good. This, which has happened throughout modern commerce and journalism, is the ultimate Nemesis of the wicked optimism of the comforters of Job. If the Jews could be saved from it, the Book of Job saved them. The Book of Job is chiefly remarkable, as I have insisted throughout, for the fact that it does not end in a way that is conventionally satisfactory. Job is not told that his misfortunes were due to his sins or a part of any plan for his improvement.

But in the prologue we see Job tormented not because he was the worst of men, but because he was the best. It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes. Here is the very darkest and strangest of the paradoxes; and it is by all human testimony the most reassuring. I need not suggest what a high and strange history awaited this paradox of the best man in the worst fortune. I need not say that in the freest and most philosophical sense there is one Old Testament figure who is truly a type; or say what is prefigured in the wounds of Job.

Qoheleth.

2012-04-19T01:41:00.000-04:00

Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth.
"son of David, and king in Jerusalem,"
or Solomon, Wood engraving.
Author: Gustave Dor

(Ecclesiastes 1) The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 3 What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? 4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. 7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow. 8 All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. 9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"? It has already been, in the ages before us. 11 The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them. 12 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, 13 applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. 14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. 15 What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. 16 I said to myself, "I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge." 17 And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. 18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.

(Ecclesiastes 2) I said to myself, "Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself." But again, this also was vanity. 2 I said of laughter, "It is mad," and of pleasure, "What use is it?" 3 I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine--my mind still guiding me with wisdom--and how to lay hold on folly, until I might see what was good for mortals to do under heaven during the few days of their life. 4 I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. 9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. 10 Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. 12 So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly; for what can the one do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. 13 Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. 14 The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness. Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them. 15 Then I said to myself, "What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?" And I said to myself that this also is vanity. 16 For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How can the wise die just like fools? 17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind. 18 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me 19 --and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21 because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22 What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? 23 For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity. 24 There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and heaping, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.

(Ecclesiastes 3) For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; 7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. 9 What gain have the workers from their toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. 11 He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; 13 moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. 14 I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by. 16 Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well. 17 I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work. 18 I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. 19 For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. 21 Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth? 22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them?

(Ecclesiastes 4) Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed--with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power--with no one to comfort them. 2 And I thought the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; 3 but better than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. 4 Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from one person's envy of another. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind. 5 Fools fold their hands and consume their own flesh. 6 Better is a handful with quiet than two handfuls with toil, and a chasing after wind. 7 Again, I saw vanity under the sun: 8 the case of solitary individuals, without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to all their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. "For whom am I toiling," they ask, "and depriving myself of pleasure?" This also is vanity and an unhappy business. 9 Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. 10 For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. 11 Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? 12 And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. 13 Better is a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king, who will no longer take advice. 14 One can indeed come out of prison to reign, even though born poor in the kingdom. 15 I saw all the living who, moving about under the sun, follow that youth who replaced the king; 16 there was no end to all those people whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a chasing after wind.

(Ecclesiastes 5) Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than the sacrifice offered by fools; for they do not know how to keep from doing evil. 2 Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few. 3 For dreams come with many cares, and a fool's voice with many words. 4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay fulfilling it; for he has no pleasure in fools. Fulfill what you vow. 5 It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not fulfill it. 6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake; why should God be angry at your words, and destroy the work of your hands? 7 With many dreams come vanities and a multitude of words; but fear God. 8 If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and right, do not be amazed at the matter; for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them. 9 But all things considered, this is an advantage for a land: a king for a plowed field. 10 The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain. This also is vanity. 11 When goods increase, those who eat them increase; and what gain has their owner but to see them with his eyes? 12 Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much; but the surfeit of the rich will not let them sleep. 13 There is a grievous ill that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owners to their hurt, 14 and those riches were lost in a bad venture; though they are parents of children, they have nothing in their hands. 15 As they came from their mother's womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came; they shall take nothing for their toil, which they may carry away with their hands. 16 This also is a grievous ill: just as they came, so shall they go; and what gain do they have from toiling for the wind? 17 Besides, all their days they eat in darkness, in much vexation and sickness and resentment. 18 This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot. 19 Likewise all to whom God gives wealth and possessions and whom he enables to enjoy them, and to accept their lot and find enjoyment in their toil--this is the gift of God. 20 For they will scarcely brood over the days of their lives, because God keeps them occupied with the joy of their hearts.

(Ecclesiastes 6) There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy upon humankind: 2 those to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that they lack nothing of all that they desire, yet God does not enable them to enjoy these things, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous ill. 3 A man may beget a hundred children, and live many years; but however many are the days of his years, if he does not enjoy life's good things, or has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. 4 For it comes into vanity and goes into darkness, and in darkness its name is covered; 5 moreover it has not seen the sun or known anything; yet it finds rest rather than he. 6 Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good--do not all go to one place? 7 All human toil is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not satisfied. 8 For what advantage have the wise over fools? And what do the poor have who know how to conduct themselves before the living? 9 Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire; this also is vanity and a chasing after wind. 10 Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what human beings are, and that they are not able to dispute with those who are stronger. 11 The more words, the more vanity, so how is one the better? 12 For who knows what is good for mortals while they live the few days of their vain life, which they pass like a shadow? For who can tell them what will be after them under the sun?

(Ecclesiastes 7) A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death, than the day of birth. 2 It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; for this is the end of everyone, and the living will lay it to heart. 3 Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made glad. 4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. 5 It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. 6 For like the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools; this also is vanity. 7 Surely oppression makes the wise foolish, and a bribe corrupts the heart. 8 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning; the patient in spirit are better than the proud in spirit. 9 Do not be quick to anger, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools. 10 Do not say, "Why were the former days better than these?" For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. 11 Wisdom is as good as an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. 12 For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom gives life to the one who possesses it. 13 Consider the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked? 14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider; God has made the one as well as the other, so that mortals may not find out anything that will come after them. 15 In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing. 16 Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself? 17 Do not be too wicked, and do not be a fool; why should you die before your time? 18 It is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other; for the one who fears God shall succeed with both. 19 Wisdom gives strength to the wise more than ten rulers that are in a city. 20 Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning. 21 Do not give heed to everything that people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you; 22 your heart knows that many times you have yourself cursed others. 23 All this I have tested by wisdom; I said, "I will be wise," but it was far from me. 24 That which is, is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? 25 I turned my mind to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the sum of things, and to know that wickedness is folly and that foolishness is madness. 26 I found more bitter than death the woman who is a trap, whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are fetters; one who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. 27 See, this is what I found, says the Teacher, adding one thing to another to find the sum, 28 which my mind has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. 29 See, this alone I found, that God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes.

(Ecclesiastes 8) Who is like the wise man? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? Wisdom makes one's face shine, and the hardness of one's countenance is changed. 2 Keep the king's command because of your sacred oath. 3 Do not be terrified; go from his presence, do not delay when the matter is unpleasant, for he does whatever he pleases. 4 For the word of the king is powerful, and who can say to him, "What are you doing?" 5 Whoever obeys a command will meet no harm, and the wise mind will know the time and way. 6 For every matter has its time and way, although the troubles of mortals lie heavy upon them. 7 Indeed, they do not know what is to be, for who can tell them how it will be? 8 No one has power over the wind to restrain the wind, or power over the day of death; there is no discharge from the battle, nor does wickedness deliver those who practice it. 9 All this I observed, applying my mind to all that is done under the sun, while one person exercises authority over another to the other's hurt. 10 Then I saw the wicked buried; they used to go in and out of the holy place, and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. 11 Because sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the human heart is fully set to do evil. 12 Though sinners do evil a hundred times and prolong their lives, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they stand in fear before him, 13 but it will not be well with the wicked, neither will they prolong their days like a shadow, because they do not stand in fear before God. 14 There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. 15 So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil through the days of life that God gives them under the sun. 16 When I applied my mind to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how one's eyes see sleep neither day nor night, 17 then I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in seeking, they will not find it out; even though those who are wise claim to know, they cannot find it out.

(Ecclesiastes 9) All this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hate one does not know. Everything that confronts them 2 is vanity, since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice. As are the good, so are the sinners; those who swear are like those who shun an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone. Moreover, the hearts of all are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 4 But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. 6 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun. 7 Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. 8 Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. 9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. 11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. 12 For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them. 13 I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. 14 There was a little city with few people in it. A great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. 15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. 16 So I said, "Wisdom is better than might; yet the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heeded." 17 The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouting of a ruler among fools. 18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one bungler destroys much good.

(Ecclesiastes 10) Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a foul odor; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. 2 The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of a fool to the left. 3 Even when fools walk on the road, they lack sense, and show to everyone that they are fools. 4 If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your post, for calmness will undo great offenses. 5 There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as great an error as if it proceeded from the ruler: 6 folly is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place. 7 I have seen slaves on horseback, and princes walking on foot like slaves. 8 Whoever digs a pit will fall into it; and whoever breaks through a wall will be bitten by a snake. 9 Whoever quarries stones will be hurt by them; and whoever splits logs will be endangered by them. 10 If the iron is blunt, and one does not whet the edge, then more strength must be exerted; but wisdom helps one to succeed. 11 If the snake bites before it is charmed, there is no advantage in a charmer. 12 Words spoken by the wise bring them favor, but the lips of fools consume them. 13 The words of their mouths begin in foolishness, and their talk ends in wicked madness; 14 yet fools talk on and on. No one knows what is to happen, and who can tell anyone what the future holds? 15 The toil of fools wears them out, for they do not even know the way to town. 16 Alas for you, O land, when your king is a servant, and your princes feast in the morning! 17 Happy are you, O land, when your king is a nobleman, and your princes feast at the proper time-- for strength, and not for drunkenness! 18 Through sloth the roof sinks in, and through indolence the house leaks. 19 Feasts are made for laughter; wine gladdens life, and money meets every need. 20 Do not curse the king, even in your thoughts, or curse the rich, even in your bedroom; for a bird of the air may carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter.

(Ecclesiastes 11) Send out your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will get it back. 2 Divide your means seven ways, or even eight, for you do not know what disaster may happen on earth. 3 When clouds are full, they empty rain on the earth; whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. 4 Whoever observes the wind will not sow; and whoever regards the clouds will not reap. 5 Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother's womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything. 6 In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hands be idle; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. 7 Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. 8 Even those who live many years should rejoice in them all; yet let them remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity. 9 Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. 10 Banish anxiety from your mind, and put away pain from your body; for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.

(Ecclesiastes 12) Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, "I have no pleasure in them"; 2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; 3 in the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; 4 when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; 5 when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; 6 before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, 7 and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. 8 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity. 9 Besides being wise, the Teacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs. 10 The Teacher sought to find pleasing words, and he wrote words of truth plainly. 11 The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings that are given by one shepherd. 12 Of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. 13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.

The Christ Hymn: Exegesis of Colossians 1:15-20

2012-04-17T13:41:00.001-04:00

By Joshua W.C. Stafford

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Introduction

The task of exploring Col. 1: 15-20 could lead one in a multitude of varying directions. It’s complexities of form and content compound the difficulties of the journey. It is significant, therefore, to narrow ones scope so as to hope to achieve a single ray of illumination. With this in mind, the study herein will examine four areas of textual intrigue: firstly, what is known about Colossae, and the Lycus Valley, which may lend perspective to the passage?; secondly, who is the author?; thirdly, what is the significance of the author’s connection between Christ and all things?; and fourthly, does the insight from the first, second, and third question provide any understanding into nature of the Colossian “philosophy” which is the occasion of the letter.

I. Literary Criticism

It is appropriate to begin with the one literary category which has been relatively unopposed by contemporary scholarship; namely, the audience as the “saints and faithful” [1] in Colossae. Such a dialogical starting point renders, at minimum, two questions significant: firstly, “What is known about Colossae?” and secondly, “What is known about the saints in Colossae?”

Site of Colassae in Lycus Valley

Colossae, situated in the fertile Lycus Valley, is in the southern part of the Roman province of Asia, what is modern day Turkey. The valley is nourished by the Lycus River which is a tributary of the Meander. Colossae should be understood in relation to two other cities of the Lycus valley: Hierapolis and Laodicea. For many hundred years before the New Testament period Colossae thrived as a result of a strong wool industry and a central location on the main road between Ephesus and Sardis.[2] But in the early years of the Roman Empire, which is the concern herein, the prominence and significance of Colossae was significantly diminished. There are two evidenced reasons for Colossae’s diminishment. Firstly, Laodicea saw significant growth as the administrative and financial center of the region under Roman rule. And Secondly, Hierapolis, which was established by the Romans in the first century BCE, attracted many visitors and travelers in large part to the hot mineral springs. But despite the fluctuation of population, wealth, and power within the region, these three cities share many similarities. And what can be said of one, in many cases, can be said of the other two congruently (being that these three cities exist within a ten mile radius of each other). What makes Colossae unique (in respect to its Lycus Valley counterparts) is that it has never been excavated. Thus, much of what has been deduced is either in conjunction with historical material or comparative archeological investigations in Laodicea and Hierapolis which have influenced the understanding of Colossae. So, what then, can be said about Colossae? Dunn suggests, “A significant feature of the Lycus valley cities, including presumably Colossae, was the presence of a substantial Jewish minority.”[3] According to Josephus, Antiochus the Great settled two thousand Jewish families in the region for stability after “a sedition [emerged] in Lydia and Phrygia.”[4] Josephus reporting a letter from King Antiochus to Zeuxis writes, “For I am persuaded that they [the two thousand Jewish families] will be well-disposed guardians of our possessions, because of their piety towards God.”[5] Therefore, the region that was once Lydia and Phrygia—later to become the Roman province of Asia—provided an environment which allowed the Jewish people to flourish in number and affluence. However, the letter in question suggests that a man named Epaphras, a Gentile from the region[6], founded the church in Colossae.[7] The “saints and faithful” in Colossae appear to be a small, Gentile led, Jesus community in the midst of a growing and affluent Jewish population.

The Lycus Valley provided one of the two natural routes from Galatia to Ephesus.[8] Paul used Ephesus as his center of operations for two years and positioned the ministry to evangelize the “whole of Asia.”[9] This, of course, is despite Paul’s presumed imprisonment in Ephesus concurrently.[10] “It was natural that it should be Epaphras who assumed the responsibility for spreading the gospel among his own people, that is, presumably with Paul’s full support and commissioning.”[11] In regards to the scope of these churches in the Lycus Valley, “we have to envisage the Christians in the Lycus valley meeting in or as at least four small (house) churches.”[12] Consequently, as being understood as an extension of Paul’s work from Ephesus, the Colossian church would have been planted in the early 50’s CE.

The dating of the letter to the Colossian church is less precise and corresponds to which particular theory of authorship one ascribes. Authorship of the Colossian letter is highly disputed. There are three pertinent theories of authorship: 1) non-Pauline authorship long after Paul’s death, 2) Pauline authorship during Paul’s imprisonment, and 3) non-Pauline authorship while Paul was still living or soon after his death. It will be wise to examine the assertions of each theory. Before moving forward, however, a brief word must be said about the occasion of the letter to the Colossians [see below for full comment on occasion], for this will illuminate the framework of the authorship discussion. According to Col. 2: 8 the writer’s task is to “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.” Essentially, there is a Colossian “philosophy” that endangers the vitality of the community in Colossae. Thus, what is offered is a Christological letter asserting the place of Jesus the Christ in the world—and cosmos. And though the authorship debate oscillates around issues of form, grammar, and language; its most compelling particularity is its Christological assertions. In fact, the letter’s Christological tone has dominated the arguments in regards to authorship. Therefore, Colossians is compared with the undisputed Pauline letters (most notably Philem.; but also, I Thess., I and II Cor., Gal., Phil., and Rom.) and the accepted deutero-Pauline letters (most notably Eph.; but also, II Thess., I and II Tim., and Tit.). Hence, proponents of theory of authorship (2) find Christological similarity between Colossians and the undisputed letters, while proponents of theory of authorship (1) and (3) find degrees of dissimilarity. Being that the investigation herein is in regards to a distinctive Christological passage, navigating the debate of authorship through a Christological lens is most appropriate.

The first theory, claiming authorship by someone other than Paul (perhaps many years after Paul’s death), is presented in the work of Margaret Y. MacDonald. MacDonald is influenced by Max Webber who has pointed “to a crisis caused by the death of the charismatic leader and the subsequent efforts of the ‘staff’ of the leader to secure the survival of the group.”[13] The effort of the pseudepigrapher is notable in that “the cosmological significance assigned to the Christ event (Col. 1:15-20) exceeds what is found in the undisputed letters….”[14] However, for MacDonald, the use of a household code in Col. 3:18-4:1 is “the strongest evidence of the need to exert authority in community life in a new way.” Interestingly, no such code exists in any of the undisputed Pauline letters. Furthermore, a comparison of Colossians to Ephesians has led many, including the scholar in question, to suggest a dependency of Ephesians on Colossians. Inferring, that the Christological thought in Colossians was an infant version of what is expounded upon in the letter to the Ephesians. Consequently, MacDonald dates Colossians after the death of Paul but before the Ephesian letter (generally before 80 CE).[15]

The second theory, ascribing to Pauline authorship, is best articulated by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor [JMO] in his work Paul: A Critical Life. Herein, JMO argues that the proponent’s conclusions in theory (1) and (3) “are not always as well founded as the force with which they are articulated would appear to indicate.”[16] In JMO’s reconstruction of the writing of the letter, Paul is imprisoned in Ephesus and writes the letter to the Colossians only because Epaphras, having come to Ephesus seeking counsel, is imprisoned alongside Paul. Thus, Colossians is unique because it is the only Ephesian letter written to a church Paul did not found. “Paul’s lack of personal involvement with the Christians in Colossae and his sense of the autonomy of the local church explains the universalism of the texts…”[17] This is the foundation from which JMO interprets the letter’s Christological thought, and in fact, its similarity to the undisputed letters. In regards to this supposed lofty Christology, JMO suggests, via the scholarship of C.K. Barret, that “the concern of Colossians is not to lift its readers into the cosmic sphere, but to ensure that they do not lose contact with the mundane. The Savior must stand on terra firma. His disciples must not retreat into ascetic isolation.”[18] According to JMO, the letter to the Colossians is dated to the “summer of 53” CE, written by Paul from an Ephesian prison.[19]

The third theory, which is most compelling, emerges from the scholarship of James Dunn. Dunn’s thesis accepts both the intrinsic familiarity of Colossians with the undisputed Pauline letter to Philemon, and with the commonly accepted post-Pauline letter to the Ephesians. Thus, Dunn imagines Colossians as a “bridge” between Pauline and post-Pauline letters. Whether the letter was dictated by Paul late in his life or emerged from one of his disciples soon after his death, the letter indicates the trajectory of Pauline thought. For Dunn, the most plausible scenario is that Colossians was written by Timothy on Paul’s behalf, perhaps necessitated by Paul’s imprisonment. Dunn concludes:

If so, we should perhaps more accurately describe the theology of Colossians as the theology of Timothy, or, more accurately still, the theology of Paul as understood or interpreted by Timothy. On the other hand, if Timothy did indeed write for Paul at Paul’s behest, but also with Paul’s approval of what was in the event written (prior to adding 4:18), then we have to call the letter ‘Pauline’ in the full sense of the word, and the distinction between ‘Pauline’ and ‘post-Pauline’ as applied to Colossians becomes relatively unimportant.[20]

Dunn is inclined to favor the letter being written during Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, not Ephesus, near the end of his life. This would date the letter to the Colossians in the early to middle 60’s CE.

The choice between the theories of authorship herein is a choice between plausibilities. “Each linked with sets of impluasibilities.”[21] What is most compelling about theory (3) is that it articulates the sentiment: “not much hangs on it.” Conservatively, this is an authentic Pauline letter written either from Ephesus (53 CE) or Rome (early to mid-60’s CE). Or more liberally, the letter is an expression of one of Paul’s immediate disciples who were illustrating the trajectory of Pauline thought. Thus, at its most removed, it is a first generation expression of Pauline Christology which would have been presented as Paul’s. Not so as to issue a forgery, but to propel the mission in the same trajectory of the Apostle himself. Consequently, Paul will be referred to as the writer or author below, residing however, in the shadow of potential impluasibilities.

II. Form Criticism

Col. 1:15-20, often known as The Christ Hymn, is set in the opening chapter of the letter as a crescendo of reasons why the Colossians should be thankful to God. It is in the form of poetry, a hymn most likely, which would have served as an occasion to think or meditate on Christ. N.T. Wright, citing the influence of C.F. Burney, argues that the poem deliberately “applies to Jesus everything that could be said of the figure ‘Wisdom’.”[22] Wright concludes:

…the Colossians, who had gratefully turned away from their pagan ‘gods’ in becoming Christians, will not be inclined to go back to them. Nor will they be tempted…to look back to Judaism for protection against the pagan ‘principalities and powers’. Having Christ, God’s true Wisdom, the Lord of the world, they possess all they need (cf. 1 Cor. 3:22-23). If Christ is God’s Wisdom, his Torah, then all that Judaism believed to be true of herself, and of her Torah, all that she hoped for because of her monotheism and election, has been achieved in Jesus Christ. He (not the Law) is the Father’s agent in the world. He (not an abstract divine ‘Wisdom’) is supreme over the nations and their ‘gods’. For him, not for Israel, all things were created. This is the fundamental emphasis of the poem within the letter as whole.[23]

The hymn remains the most prominent Christological passage within the letter. As Schweizer has noted, “In the hymn, the only subject of the verbs is ‘He’ (Christ), and the only object ‘all things’.”[24] Jesus is emerging, and perhaps for the first time most clearly in Pauline thought, as the cosmic Christ. Furthermore, the hymn will serve as an interesting case study in the investigation into the nature of the Colossian philosophy. However, as F.F. Bruce has maintained, “before [Paul] undertakes a refutation of the false teaching which was being urged on the Colossian Christians, he presents them with a positive statement of the truth which was being challenged by the false teaching.”[25] Thus, this passage in itself is not a refutation, but an apology of sorts.

In James Robinson’s article “A Formal Analysis of Colossians 1: 15-20” the gamut of early twentieth century scholarship is examined in full. Robinson examines the work of Earnst Kasemann, Pierre Benoit, Eduard Norden, Ernst Lohmeyer, Charles Mason, G. Schille, and Christian Maurer. “The conclusion of such formal analysis is to detect on the basis of liturgical style and coordinating lines the presence in Col. 1: 15-20 of two units…which have been partly conflated and supplemented….”[26] Interestingly, the most common contemporary rendering of the form and structure of the Christ Hymn is still into two strophes. Exampled in the construction of F.F. Bruce: First Strophe vv. 15-16, Second Strophe vv. 18b-20, separated by a transitional link (vv. 17-18a).

III. Textual Criticism

Papyrus 46 Segment

The earliest manuscript of the Christ Hymn is contained in portion (vv. 16-20) in Papyrus 46[27]—the earliest manuscript of Colossians—dated to approximately 175-225 CE.[28] Paul’s letter to the Colossians has a total of 1,582 Greek words in 95 verses. This is substantiated by The Greek New Testament (Aland et al. 4th revised edition), Papyrus 46 contains 79 of the 95 verses of the letter. Colossians has an estimated word-for-word accuracy of 97.8%, with 34 words in question.[29] Not one manuscript variation, however, exists in the Christ Hymn (in ref to vv. 16-20 available for analysis in P46). Rather, the text in question has remained relatively unchanged from the days of the earliest manuscripts. Though redaction of the Christ Hymn in Colossians seems unlikely over the past eighteen centuries, the quest to understand the hand of Paul in perhaps repurposing an existent liturgical hymn is ever more curious.

IV. Redaction Criticism

Similar to Bruce’s formation of the two strophes, JMO asserts that the four primary lines of each strophe make up the “original hymn” which may be read as:

v. 15a He is the image of the invisible God

v. 15b The firstborn of all creation

v. 16a For in him all things were created

v. 16f All things have been created through him and for him

v. 18b He is the beginning

v. 18c The firstborn from the dead

v. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell

v. 20a And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things

JMO argues that “the repetition of key terms in the same order in each strophe reinforces the structure. The first two lines of each strophe are affirmations which are subsequently justified in the last two lines. Such perfection of balance betrays a deliberate creative effort….The elements in the existent text which disturb the balance must have been added by a later hand, more concerned with content than form.”[30] Thus, Paul’s additions are constructed as:

v. 15a He is the image of the invisible God

v. 15b The firstborn of all creation

v. 16a For in him all things were created

Add v. 16b In heaven and on earth

Add v. 16c Visible and invisible

Add v. 16d Whether thrones or dominions

Add v. 16e Or rulers or powers

v. 16f All things have been created through him and for him

Add v. 17a He himself is before all things

Add v. 17b And in him all things hold together

Add v. 18a He is the head of the body, the church

v. 18b He is the beginning

v. 18c The firstborn from the dead

Add v. 18d So that he might come to have first place in everything

v. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell

v. 20a And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things

Add v. 20c Whether on earth or in heaven

Add v. 20b By making peace through the blood of his cross

These four sections of additions must be explored collectively to determine the rational for Paul’s additions. But first, one should ask: what generally can be deduced from these additions? Dunn suggests, “Paul and Timothy thought the preeminence of Christ, in terms both of creation and redemption, needed to be emphasized. But the absence of polemic suggests that Christ’s status and significance were being devalued rather than attacked, that an alternative religious system was being exalted….”[31] Further investigation will illuminate this point.

The first section of additions is evidently to clarify the statement for in him all things were created. The nuances of 16b-e seem to “restrict the meaning of ‘all things’ to angelic and human beings.”[32] Could it be that the Colossians were giving too much importance to “visions of the throne of God surrounded by adoring angels”?[33] The additions of 16b-e then, serve as a reminder of the primacy of Christ in the material world. As JMO notes, “Paul cleverly turned the tables on the teachers at Colossae, by using the creation dimension of their hymn to underline that, as the one responsible for the coming into being of the spirit powers, Christ was infinitely superior to them (Col. 2: 10).”[34] The addition of 20b implies that these spiritual powers are also in need of reconciliation. “The angelic world, therefore, cannot be viewed uncritically.”[35]

The second addition following all things have been created through him and for him includes vv. 17-18a which articulate a beautiful unity projected in Paul’s thought climaxing with, πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν. Or, In him unity is everywhere.[36] Though the NRSV translates πάντα as all things, the word πάντα suggests a vast spatial dimension that the precise construction of all things does not illuminate—it is more than the particulars of the world. Συνέστηκεν is a form of συνίστημι which is a term “employed in Platonic and Stoic philosophy to designate the unity of the cosmos.”[37] Thus, πάντα is used in a universal sense—or cosmic sense. The universe itself is centered in Christ, and so also is the ἐκκλησίας, the congregation (v. 18a). To reside in him results in the illusion of dis-chord being dissolved. The congregation is Christ’s body, the most fundamental manifestation of his unity with all things and the everywhere, a universal body of which Christ is the head, κεφαλὴ (v. 18a).

The third section of addition appears just after what has been determined herein to be the second line of the second strophe of the original hymn, the firstborn from the dead. The edit is simple but profound. Paul’s insertion of 18d, or ἵνα γένηται ἐν πᾶσιν αὐτὸς πρωτεύων, reveals “an awareness of a particular moment in history when Christ’s supremacy in relation to the church was revealed.”[38] Namely, the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

The fourth section of addition follows and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things. Paul’s addition is an explanation of how exactly such reconciliation is possible. The phrase εἰρηνοποιήσας διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ σταυροῦ αὐτοῦ (v. 20b); and more specifically, the verb εἰρηνοποιήσας, raises an interesting question which will need further examination. The verb εἰρηνοποιήσας is an aorist participle, which implies that one must look to the main verb of the verse to determine in which way it should be translated. The primary verb is ἀποκαταλλάξαι, to reconcile, is found in the aortist infinitive active voice. This is of significance in determining if the author is referring to a past event or present reality. More often than not, this denotes a past event in the Greek. Notice the theological difference in the translations making peace and having made peace. That is, is reconciliation automatically for all because of what Christ already achieved in full on the cross? Or, is reconciliation a process in which the fullness of reconciliation is realized only by those who are in Christ? This evokes a curious question about the Christ Hymn, what precisely does Paul mean by all things? But for this, we must look outside of the text in question to the undisputed Pauline corpus.

V. Source Criticism[39]

Since it has been shown to be the case that πάντα is used in a universal and cosmic sense within the Christ Hymn, from which one could envision Paul professing a universal reconciliation, the impetus is to examine a Pauline passage which potentially contradicts this interpretation. N.T. Wright has pointed to four such passages: Rom. 1:18-2:16; Rom. 14:10; II Cor. 5:10; II Thes. 1:5-10 which indicate that some persons at the last judgment, having rejected Christ’s offer of reconciliation, will likewise be rejected. It seems pertinent to examine one of said passages to see if there are any cracks in Wright’s assertion. Consider Rom. 14:10 For we will all stand before the judgment seat [of Christ].[40] The all here is πάντες, and is an adjective describing the noun παραστησόμεθα, or we will stand before. Thus, we is the contextual scope of the all. But who is we? Paul is writing to the church in Rome. Paul’s connection between the particularity of we and the universal of all appears to be designed to imply exactly what the church in Rome has is in common with the all: accountability for the way in which one exists in the world. Paul, in the following verse of Rom. 14 quotes Isaiah by professing at this judgment every knee bow and every tongue confess. In this case, πᾶν, or every, is an adjective describing material particulars—knees and tongues. But why is Paul connecting the we of this first century church in Rome with the all of the universal collective before Christ? And moreover, why is Paul reiterating that every knee should bow? The answer is found in the context of the passage: Paul is urging the brothers and sisters in Rome to avoid passing judgment on each other. Paul proclaims, “The one who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and has human approval. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual understanding.”[41] The pursuit of understanding God’s “judgment” only serves to level “judgment” against oneself. Paul is asking rhetorically, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother?”[42] The explanation of such bewilderment is found in his recitation in which he reminds the Romans that every person will be reconciled to Christ—and they will name his as Lord. Moreover, “Everything is indeed clean.”[43] In conclusion, Paul’s use of all in a limited sense is always in regards to a community issue which stands in analogy to the universal all. If it was the task of such an investigation to merely suggest a weakness in Wright’s assertion that reconciliation is only for those who are in Christ, then the examination of Rom. 14 provides ample evidence for rebuttal.

VI. Social & Historical Criticism

Here one returns to the question of the occasion of the letter to the Colossians. Why had Paul been so intentional about asserting Christ’s act in creation and reconciliation for all? The theories vacillate between degrees of syncretism—Jewish or Gnostic. However, given the evidence of the text and of what is known about the Lycus Valley, the plausibility of Jewish syncretism seems much higher. James Dunn has expounded upon this thesis:

In other words, the number of distinctively and definitively Jewish features are such that it is scarcely possible to envisage the Colossian ‘philosophy’ as a non-Jewish core that has attracted Jewish elements…The main proponents of the Colossian ‘philosophy,’ therefore, almost certainly have to be understood as belonging to one of the Colossian synagogues. If indeed there were Jews in Colossae confident in their religion…then we should not be surprised if they professed such claims in dialogue and debate with other Colossians. And if there then grew up in their midst a new version of their own teaching, proclaiming the Jewish Messiah and the fulfillment of ancient hopes…then, again, it would hardly surprise….What was being confronted was not a sustained attempt to undermine or further convert the Colossians, but a synagogue apologetic promoting itself as a credible philosophy more than capable of dealing with whatever heavenly powers might be thought to control or threaten human existence.

This is in agreement with the thesis of C.F. Burney (articulated above via N.T. Wright). Burney suggested that Paul was giving an elaborate midrashic exposition on the first word of Genesis—בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית, or, in the beginning,[44] suggesting that it had become connected with רֵאשִׁ֣ית, or the personified wisdom in Prov. 8:22.

An equally forceful argument exists for understanding Christ as the second Adam to the exclusion of the Wisdom connection. For this notion, one is in debt to Ridderbos’ Paul: An Outline of His Theology. In which Ridderbos argues that unlike other second Adam passages (I Cor. 15; Rom. 5), the Christ Hymn suggests the second Adam is antecedent to the first. What Ridderbos proposes is a double Adamitic significance to Christ, in which the redemptive significance of Christ as the second Adam is completed by recognition of Christ as the preexistent Son of God.[45] Where Ridderbos is lacking however, is in his inability to envision a scenario in which both Wisdom and second Adam categories are conflated into the text. L. Helyer has argued for such a convergence.[46]

The socio-religious dynamic at work in Colossae, in the form of being taken captive by teachings according to human tradition[47], makes evident again the connection with Jewish syncretism. The Colossian “philosophy” may only have been represented by a single synagogue or even small group within a single synagogue, or moreover, a single person within a single synagogue. But regardless, as was the custom of Paul, Christ is asserted as the means by which the architecture of the divine economy is re-imagined. The precision of Paul’s additions reiterate the significance of the mundane in regards to Christ’s reconciliation. And the twofold function of wisdom in accordance with Judaism, in the creative and the redemptive, has now been repurposed for Christ. Likewise, the motif of the second Adam, is equally at home within the conceptual framework of Judaism. The first motif, connecting Christ to personified wisdom, is a repurposing of Jewish thought. The second motif, Christ as the second Adam, is a re-imagining of Jewish thought.

VII. Praxis

But such a reconstruction of Paul’s thought is lacking if the wisdom and second Adam motifs are applied only to content, and not to form. That is, to reduce the Christ Hymn to a series of propositions makes impotent its power as a meditation—a hymn. It must be viewed holistically. To reduce the hymn to propositions of metaphysical realities denies the cosmic reconciliation Paul imagines in Christ—which is concrete. What has the appearance in the Christ Hymn of being lofty[48] Christological assertions, emerges as rhetoric more apt at assigning Christ his place within the world of the mundane—the particular. The dominion that the church shares in, in Christ, entails the congregants to be co-conspirators and co-dominators of all which has the appearance of other worldliness. Moreover, as the church, of which Christ is the head, the congregants are co-creators and co-reconcilers in the emerging fullness of Christ.

[1] Col. 1: 2 (New Revised Standard Version).

[2] James D.G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Group, 1996) 20.

[3] Dunn, Colossians and Philemon, 21.

[4] Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston, A.M., The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Lynn: Hendrickson Publishers, 1982) Antiq. XII, iii, 252.

[5] Ibid., 252.

[6] See Col. 4:11 “who is one of you.”

[7] See Col. 1: 6-7.

[8] See Acts 18:23; 19:1.

[9] See Acts 19:26.

[10] Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 237.

[11] Dunn, Colossians, 23.

[12] Dunn, Colossians, 23.

[13] Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2000) 7.

[14] MacDonald, Colossians, 7.

[15] MacDonald, Colossians, 9.

[16] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 237.

[17] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 238.

[18] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 240.

[19] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 237.

[20] Dunn, Colossians, 38.

[21] Dunn, Colossians, 41.

[22] N.T. Wright, The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and to Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989) 66-7.

[23] Wright, Epistles of Paul, 68.

[24] Eduard Schweizer, “Colossians 1:15-20,” Review & Expositor 87, no 1 (Winter 1990), 98.

[25] F.F. Bruce, “Colossian Problems, Pt. 2: The ‘Christ Hymn’ of Colossians 1:15-20,” Bibliotheca Sacra 141, no. 562 (1984): 99.

²⁵James M. Robinson, “A Formal Analysis of Colossians 1:15-20,” Journal of Biblical Literature 76, no. 4 D (1957), 284.

[27] Papyrus 46, or ⁴⁶is part of the Chester Beatty Papyri collection in Dublin, Ireland (with some of the collection at University of Michigan).

[28] Bible Query. “Early Manuscripts of Colossians,” http://www.biblequery.org/colMss.htm (accessed April 15, 2012).

[29] Ibid., (accessed April 15, 2012).

[30] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 240.

[31] Dunn, Colossians, 86.

[32] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 244.

[33] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 244.

[34] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 244.

[35] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 244.

[36] My translation of Col. 1: 17b from The Greek New Testament (4^th edition, Alain, et al).

[37] MacDonald, Colossians, 61.

[38] MacDonald, Colossians, 62.

[39] The most common comparison is to the Christ Hymn in Phil. 2. But for the sake of this investigation, it appears more prudent to examine what is most often considered Paul’s refutation of the universal reconciliation thesis herein.

[40] Greek reads τοῦ Χριστοῦ in many versions.

[41] Rom. 14: 18-9.

[42] Rom. 14:10a.

[43] Rom. 14:20b.

[44] C.F. Burney, “Christ as the APXH of Creation,” JTS 27 (1926) 160-177.

[45] H. Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1975) 78-85.

[46] L. Helyer, “Arius Revisited: The Firstborn over All Creation (Col 1:15),” JETS 31 (1988) 61.

[47] Col. 2: 8b

[48] Lofty as having to do primarily with dominion over the spirit world.

Bibliography

BibleQuery. “Early Manuscripts of Colossians,” www.biblequery.org.

Bruce, F. F. “Colossian Problems, Pt. 2: The ‘Christ Hymn of Colossians 1:15-20,” Biblioteca Sacra 141, no 562

(1984): 99-111.

Burney, C. F. “Christ as the APXH of Creation,” JTS 27 (1926): 160-177.

Dunn, James D. G. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996.

Harris, Murray J. Colossians & Philemon: Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans

Publishing Company, 1991.

Helyer, L. “Arius Revisited: The Firstborn over All Creation (Col 1:15),” JETS 31 (1988): 59-67.

Josephus, Flavius. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Translated by William Whiston.

Lynn: Hendrickson Publishers, 1982.

Kiley, Mark. Colossians as Pseudepigraphy. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986.

Lamp, Jeffrey S. “Wisdom in Col 1: 15-20: Contribution and Significance,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological

Society 41, no 1(March 1998): 45-53.

Lexicon: Abridged from Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), s.vv.

“ἀποκαταλλάξαι,” “εἰρηνοποιήσας,” “πᾶν,” “πάντα,” “παραστησόμεθα,” “συνέστηκεν,” “συνίστημι.”

MacDonald, Margaret Y. Colossians and Ephesians. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2000.

Martin, Ralph P. Colossians: The Church’s Lord and The Christian’s Liberty; An Expository Commentary with a

Present-Day Application. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1972.

Moule, H. C. G. Colossians and Philemon Studies: Lessons in Faith and Holiness. London: Pickering & Inglis Ltd,

1900.

Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. Paul: A Critical Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Ridderbos, H. Paul: An Outline of His Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1975.

Robinson, James M. “A Formal Analysis of Colossians 1: 15-20,” Journal of Biblical Literature 76, no 4 D (1957):

270-287.

Sappington, Thomas J. Revelation and Redemption at Colossae. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991.

Schweizer, Eduard. “Colossians 1: 15-20,” Review & Expositor 87, no 1 (Winter 1990): 97-104.

Wengert, Timothy J. Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philip Melancthon’s Exegetical Dispute with

Erasmus of Rotterdam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Wright, N.T. The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and to Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary. Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986.

The Authority of a Story

2012-03-29T07:55:00.000-04:00

By N.T. Wright

-Via the Biologos Forum

There are various ways in which stories might be thought to possess authority. Sometimes a story is told so that the actions of its characters may be imitated. It was because they had that impression that some early Fathers, embarrassed by the possibilities inherent in reading the Old Testament that way, insisted upon allegorical exegesis. More subtly, a story can be told with a view to creating a generalized ethos which may then be perpetuated this way or that. The problem with such models, popular in fact though they are within Christian reading of scripture, is that they are far too vague: they constitute a hermeneutical grab-bag or lucky dip. Rather, I suggest that stories in general, and certainly the biblical story, have a shape and a goal that must be observed and to which appropriate response must be made.

N.T. Wright

But what might this appropriate response look like? Let me offer you a possible model, which is not in fact simply an illustration but actually corresponds, as I shall argue, to some important features of the biblical story, which (as I have been suggesting) is that which God has given to his people as the means of his exercising his authority. Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate to actually write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form and commit Shakespeare, as it were, to being responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive, and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves.

Consider the result. The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand. That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution. This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again. It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, containing its own impetus and its own forward movement, demanding to be concluded in the proper manner. It would require of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.

This model could and perhaps should be adapted further; it offers in fact quite a range of possibilities. Among the detailed moves available within this model is the possibility of seeing the five acts as follows:

(1) Creation
(2) Fall
(3) Israel
(4) Jesus
(5) In Act 5, the New Testament would form Scene 1, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Car 15; parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end.

The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer something between an improvisation and an actual performance of the final act. Appeal could always be made to the inconsistency of what was being offered with a major theme or characterization in the earlier material. Such an appeal—and such an offering!—would of course require sensitivity of a high order to the whole nature of the story and to the ways in which it would be (of course) inappropriate simply to repeat verbatim passages from earlier sections. Such sensitivity (cashing out the model in terms of church life) is precisely what one would have expected to be required; did we ever imagine that the application of biblical authority ought to be something that could be done by a well-programmed computer?

-READ FULL ARTICLE ON BIOLOGOS

The Symbolic Ezekiel

2012-03-27T12:10:00.000-04:00

By Joshua W.C. Stafford

Introductory Comments

…the way we read a prophetic book should be determined by the way the prophet himself, his followers, and the community of the faithful recorded, preserved, and reshaped the text. The prophetic message is to be found in the received text, not in the biography of the prophet[1].

This is most certainly the case with the book of Ezekiel. Little is known about the man whose name means: God strengthens or toughens. According to the book of Ezekiel, one can deduce only particular biographical details in respect to the prophet. One is that the prophet was married; being that the death of his wife became an occasion to enact a prophecy in the twenty-fourth chapter.[2] Another, that Ezekiel was a priest, or of a priestly family.[3] This would certainly account for Ezekiel’s preoccupation with the Temple and its ordinances throughout the book. In respect to dating the prophetic work of the historical character Ezekiel there is marginal disagreement in the years 594 (or 593) to 574 (or 571) BCE.[4] What are the contextual/historical ramifications of this dating? The most obvious is that it correlates with the destruction of the “Judean remnant of Israel”[5] in 587 BCE at the hand of the Babylonians. “The Davidic royal house was toppled, and Solomon’s Temple reduced to ashes.”[6] Furthermore, these dates make Ezekiel a contemporary of the prophetic work of Jeremiah (626 to 580 BCE)[7].

Ezekiel, already in Babylonian exile by 597[8], is of special importance to the proclamation of judgment and hope for the remnant of Israel. It appears that for many in the “traumatized exilic audience,” the Yahwistic tradition is becoming meaningless.[9] It is easy to identify the basic physical necessities of a dislocated people, “but the need for meaning has an ambiguous dimension that often eludes diagnosis.”[10] It is into this world, Babylonian exile and crises of meaning, that Ezekiel is called and commissioned.

A further word must be said about the Book of Ezekiel as it relates to the historical figure Ezekiel. “The Ezekiel presented in the forty-eight chapters…is a symbolic figure.”[11] The prophet, and the school of thought who followed, shaped the message “in accord with their traditional background, their distinctive vocabulary, and the needs of the day as they perceived them. But only rarely did they identify specific words as Ezekiel’s subjective response to what had been revealed.”[12] It is not merely his enacted prophecies that earn the literary persona: symbolic. “Rather it is the fact that the person presented as Ezekiel in the book of Ezekiel is a real being who is continuous with and represents the historical Ezekiel who inspired followers and the subsequent tradition through his connection with an inexpressible Reality.” Paul Ricoeur suggests that the term “symbol” be limited to those expressions that are “plurivocal” in meaning.[13] That is, “there is an opacity or mystery to the signified that resists the designation proposed by the signifier. The ambiguity, ambivalence, or irony of an expression points to the surplus of meaning carried by a symbol.”[14]Symbols can expand reality. Thus, what exists symbolically in Ezekiel as a series of visions and enacted prophecies, interacts with the earthly realm, but remains heavenly—and by association is inexpressible by word or sign.[15] A sign, in contrast to a symbol, does not require the interpreter to “return to the signifier to puzzle over how it relates to the signified.”[16] But such puzzlement is precisely the task of our investigation. “The real Ezekiel is the symbolic Ezekiel, who is more than the historical Ezekiel.”[17]

The Text: Ezekiel 1:28b-3:3 (NRSV)[18]

It is plausible that the historical Ezekiel may have written down and edited some of his own visions. “His consumption of a scroll from the hand of YHWH [which is the study herein] makes the point that the written message will have a distinctive authority (3:3).”[19] It is also highly plausible, that Ezekiel did not write the whole Book of Ezekiel. But rather, its content was influenced by a school of editors. To what extent is a matter of controversy? “Some argue that this editorial activity was minimal and had been completed by about 540 BCE….Others argue that more extensive editorial work was performed…as late as the beginning of the third century CE.”[20] However, consensus opinion is the former, thus any additions or redactions could authentically be ascribed to Ezekiel “according to the ancient view of authorship: a view that embraces the symbolic character of the text.”[21]

1 ^28b…and I heard the voice of someone speaking.

2 ¹He said to me: O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you. ²And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me. ³He said to me, Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. ⁴The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord God.” ⁵Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them. ⁶And you, O Mortal, do not be afraid of them, and do not be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns surround you and you live among scorpions; do not be afraid of their words, do not be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. ⁷You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear; for they are a rebellious house. ⁸But you, O Mortal, hear what I say to you; do not be rebellious like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you. ⁹I looked, and a hand was stretched out to me, and a written scroll was in it. ¹⁰He spread it before me; it had writing on the front and on the back, and written on it were words of lamentation and mourning and woe.

3 ¹He said to me, O Mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go speak to the house of Israel. ²So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. ³He said to me, Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.

Literary & Theological Context

This text of commissioning follows a spectacular vision in chapter one. Together, they may be considered a majority portion of the theophany (or appearance of God) in the Book of Ezekiel. And interestingly, “Whenever the prophet has to speak of God’s appearance, he uses a qualifying phrase, ‘in the likeness of’ or ‘something like,’ so that he does not have to describe Yahweh in human terms.”[22] Similar to the other call stories,

…Ezekiel is confronted with a vision of God and is called to serve as a spokesperson. His task will not be an easy one, but unlike Isaiah and Jeremiah, he does not make a spoken demurral. Ezekiel’s reaction demonstrates rather his fear and respect for divine power (1:28). Instead of making excuses why he cannot serve, he obediently consumes the scroll presented to him (2:9-3:3)….Once Ezekiel has eaten the scroll, however, he remains mute for seven days before taking up his task. For this amount of time, he sits ‘stunned’ among the exiles (3:15). This, in itself, suggests the magnitude of the message and perhaps his reluctance to assume the prophetic mantel.[23]

What follows from the beginning theophany in Ezekiel is a series of enacted prophecies and visions which condemn Israel and the surrounding nations, before offering a vision of hope. Ezekiel was faced with an extremely difficult task. In a foreign land, among a foreign people, the displaced are to be condemned. Their lot is a reflection of being a “rebellious house.” It is important to not make the mistake of interpreting Ezekiel here, as if he proclaimed this message of condemnation from an ivory tower. Rather, Ezekiel too is displaced, lost and without symbol or meaning. Israel’s homeland pillaged and repopulated. Israel’s Temple reduced to rubble. Moreover, his prophecy may be of little benefit to the exiled people. And you, O Mortal, Do not be afraid of their words, and do not be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear….[24] “And yet…Ezekiel must speak, though his life has become a great non sequitor.”[25] The word given to Ezekiel is mercy, and it exists mercilessly. But the word is also a judgment on Israel, “a sign of contradiction, a wound and its healing.”[26] Such is the passion of the symbolic Ezekiel: “that in a fallen world, in which truth and justice are perennial strangers, the truth be spoken.”[27] Even though, in such a world, the word’s truth may only have a remnant audience. In Berrigan’s “diary of loss” he concludes beautifully,

The city fell; the proud were enslaved and exiled. It was the time of Ezekiel. His fate, the fate of his people, one. The past and its grandeurs were reduced to a nostalgic dream, blown about mercilessly by winds of mischance. The temple was no more. So with economic and military might, long gone. In those days of glory, ill-gotten, misspent, and long gone, only a few among the people, remnant-spirits like Ezekiel, conducted their lives differently, resisted the polluted winds, embraced a way of personal and social powerlessness. These were the skeptics, even deriders, of the conventional temple-religion. They yielded no dependence on the dominant system of economic and military might.[28]

To such a symbolic man, this study is concerned; more specifically, the event of his commissioning. That systematic call to “stand up,” to “speak,” and to “eat” the scroll of “mourning and woe.”

Order & Structure

The text in question is a majority part of a larger commissioning of Ezekiel which follows his inaugural vision. The greater commissioning text would include 1:28b-3:11. The text has a complex structure. Daniel I. Block offers a helpful outline, which will act as the guide for the commentary herein:

Following the opening preamble that describes Ezekiel’s preparation for the interaction to come (1:28b-2:2), the main body of the text breaks down into three parts; two divine commissioning speeches (2:3-7; 3:4-11), between which is sandwiched a brief vision account (2:8-3:3). The divine speeches may be further subdivided into the charges (2:3-5; 3:4-9) and exhortations to Ezekiel (2:6-7; 3:10-11).[29]

Accordingly, the investigation herein will include the preamble, the first commissioning speech, and the vision which gives the speech its authority. Considering the task at hand is to wrestle with the symbolism which is abundant in Ezekiel, limiting the investigation to just one of the commissioning speeches seems appropriate. It will be wise to keep a keen eye to the theological themes already suggested present: the ever present reality of strife and injustice, the paradox of YHWH’s mercy and judgment, passive rebellion, and the trajectory of hope. What follows is specific comment on the text.

Commentary on Ezekiel 1:28b-3:3

Verses 1:28b-2:2. Preamble. The commissioning text picks up exactly where the vision of chapter one had left off—Ezekiel is prostrate, his eyes to the ground. “To this point the lessons he has learned from the theophany have been essentially theological; and he has responded appropriately to those lessons with an instinctive gesture of homage to the divine King.”[30] From such a position, Ezekiel hears a voice which calls him to “stand up.” And as he heard the voice speaking the ר֗וּחַ (rūaḥ) or spirit entered Ezekiel. And he was set up on his feet. What is to be made of the ר֗וּחַ (rūaḥ)?[31] “The text notes that the raising of the prophet occurs simultaneously with the sound of the voice, which suggests that the rūaḥ may be the source of the word’s dynamic and energizing power.”[32] Or, what might be conceded for this study, the Spirit of YHWH.

But to whom is such a Spirit addressed? Ezekiel is not called by name, but rather “Mortal.” In the Hebrew this is בֶּן־ אָדָם֙ (ben ’āḏām), or “son of mankind,”[33] or “a mere human.” Such an expression is found almost exclusively in prophetic and poetic literature.[34] It suggests that there is nothing particularly unique about Ezekiel, he is a mere human. Until, of course, he is infused with ר֗וּחַ (rūaḥ). There is a causal relationship in the text between the rūaḥ and the standing of the ben ’āḏām. Or more literally, Ezekiel recorded being set on my feet. But into what type of world is this mere human being set? Ezekiel is commissioned into a world of rebels and rebelliousness, to judge the “engine of ruin,”[35] and with no promises as to the outcome.

Verses 2:3-5. The Charge. The Voice of v. 1 desired to speak with Ezekiel, which is fulfilled in vv. 3-7. Having been raised to his feet, Ezekiel is sent to the “nation of rebels” to “speak.” The form of the statement I am sending you “derives from official court diction,” and [שׁוֹלֵ֨חַ or šō·w·lê·aḥ], which occurs two times in the charge in question, “represents the key term in a call narrative.”[36] That is, it affirms the primary function of the prophet as a messenger of God, or rather in a legal sense, the messenger of a third party. “Accordingly, the most serious charge that could be leveled against a true prophet was ‘Yahweh has not sent you’ (cf. Jer. 43:2).”[37]

Three words or phrases are used to describe the people of Israel and require the attention of this study: “impudent,” “stubborn,” and “rebellious house.” What is translated as “impudent” in the NRSV could also be literally translated as insubordinate, stiff, or hard of face (קְשֵׁ֤י פָנִים֙ or qəšê p̄ānîm).[38] The implication is that of exterior stubbornness. This is the only occasion of this word in the Old Testament. The second term, “stubborn” (וְחִזְקֵי־ לֵ֔ב or ḥizqê lêḇ) is perhaps more literally “hard of heart/mind.”[39] The connotation here is that there is an internal stubbornness. The third phrase, “rebellious house” (בֵּ֥ית מְרִ֖י or bêṯ mərî) similarly translated house of insubordination / defiance “is another characteristically Ezekielian expression.”[40] This seems to suggest a theological paradigm, namely, that of Israel’s hardening toward YHWH. “The sarcasm involved in renaming of “the house of Israel” as “the house of insubordination” is equivalent to renaming Beth-el, “house of God,” as Beth-aven, “house of iniquity,” by the 8^th-century prophets (Amos 5:5; Hos. 4:15; 5:8; 10:5).”[41] Essentially, Israel’s “offense is political or, better, theopolitical: rebellion against their divine Lord and King.”[42] Rebellion which is external, internal, and theological.

V. 5 contains an interesting phrase, whether they hear or refuse to hear, which implies ignorance of outcome. Is it possible that the Voice with whom Ezekiel is conversing does not know the specific benefit of the prophecy to come? Conservative scholarship is strong in answer, “the one who knows everything before its happening is not ignorant of the future; hence blessed David also cries aloud to him, ‘You know my sitting and my rising’.”[43] But this is certainly imposed on the text, being from interpretation through biblical analogy. But for Ezekiel and the Voice, ignorance is precisely the paradigmatic conundrum in which they exist. The only thing guaranteed in the text is that the rebellious house will know there was a prophet among them. Beautifully, the text suggests that the promise (or the act of mercy in the giving of the word) is a present reality (embodied by Ezekiel).

Verses 2:6-7. The Exhortation. O Mortal, Do not be afraid; shifts the focus from the audience to the messenger. From Israel to symbolic Ezekiel (mere human). The charge is simply to proclaim to Israel, Thus says the Lord God . And more specifically to speak my words to them. Ezekiel is powerless to determine the audience or the message. “However, the expected promise of divine presence, which often accompanied this admonition not to fear, is missing in this account.”[44] Instead, the basis of Ezekiel’s security is that briers and thorns surround you and you live among scorpions. Protected with no assurance of glory.

Verses 2:8-3:3 The Vision. It is here we return, quite profoundly, to the attention of symbol in the book of Ezekiel. According to Ezekiel, YHWH unrolls a scroll and Ezekiel is able to decipher it. “The fact that it is written all over, both inside and out (lit. ‘front and back’), indicates the definitiveness of the message. There is no room for any modifying postscript to the gloomy message of the scroll.”[45] The text has on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe. Lamentation or קִנִ֥ים (qinîm), “which means ‘elegy’ or ‘dirge’.”[46] Mourning or וָהִֽי (wāhî), indicates sighing and moaning. “…The plaintive cries of the people are to be heard….”[47] Woe or וָהִֽי׃ (wāhî), is obviously equated with the second term mourning (וָהִֽי, wāhî), but may imply “wailing for the dead.”[48]

“One would expect some sort of correlation between the contents of the scroll and what Ezekiel preaches; and yet ‘dirges, lamentations, and wailing’ describe instead the effect of the prophets preaching, especially as his prophecies are fulfilled.”[49] Zimmerli argues, “We are not to think of laments which are written on the scroll, but of threats of divine judgment which the prophet had to proclaim.”[50] Suggesting the substance (or isness) of the scroll, is in the hidden words, known to Ezekiel only by “ingesting” them. The efficacy of the message is lamentations and mourning and woe. Such is the expression of repentance. Consider also, in Ezek. 9, an “opportunity for the survival of a remnant of the people of Judah appears in a vision of seven men (six executioners and a scribe)” who are instructed to “pass through the city of Jerusalem.”[51] They are to find those who are mourning Israel’s sins and “mark their forehead with the Hebrew letter taw (an X shape).”[52] When the seven men travel the city again, they slay everyone without the taw—without the mark of repentance. Ezekiel would have to devour his mourning and woe, it was his repentance. The symbolism is again in abundance:

…the word whose agent we are, whose credential we bear, changes precisely nothing in the downward spiral of violence. A dilemma therefore, then and now. For his part, Ezekiel cannot in principle walk the way of the world. And the world of the priests and people, in Jerusalem or in exile, refuses to walk the way of the word. A stalemate is inevitable, more, a tragedy. Is it to be wondered that the word will stick in his throat, that he will grow now mute, now wild and frenzied, miming like a madman the public madness?...We consider his plight, his bitter portion. From a nebbish, a fainéant, he becomes a chosen one; from a nameless deportee, a guardian of the word. He longs passionately to fulfill God’s hope. Yet he is told of the contempt to be accorded that hope. A contempt that will fall heavily on himself. And his words, like birds in the gun-sights of hunters, will fall from the air.[53]

But Ezekiel consumes the scroll, confirming his affirmative response to the Voice. And in my mouth it was as sweet as honey. Once again, the distinction between mercy and judgment is blurred. The prophecies of Ezekiel inform readers to the content of the scroll, it is a message of judgment (and arguably primarily so). But as it is consumed, its sweetness is evident; mercy is a part of the same word of judgment. Zimmerli disagrees, “This reference is not to be understood as a description of the content of the divine message, in which a promise of salvation follows after the announcement of the judgment.”[54] But such is not the position of this writer; theologically speaking, mercy and judgment are sojourners through the book of Ezekiel. And judgment’s sweetness is evident from the beginning.

Concluding Commentary Comments

Understanding the greater scope of the book of Ezekiel is imperative for understanding his commissioning. In which the hidden words of the scroll become manifest. The book begins with a series of enacted prophecies or street theater. These are symbolic acts, perhaps perceived as lunacy, that demand the attention of his audience. Through such acts, Ezekiel tells of the “impending doom for Jerusalem…a new period of winnowing and transformation… [and] that only a few people, a remnant, will survive.”[55] As Ezekiel explains this judgment he reports of the abominations in the temple, rampant idolatry, and misplaced faith in foreign alliances. Here, Launderville’s thesis is most compelling:

The outcome that Ezekiel seeks from the audience is that they “get a new heart and a new spirit” (18:31), which means that they are entering into a way of symbolic thinking that is embodied. The heart transplant and the infusion of the spirit, which according to 36:27 and 37:14 is the Spirit of YHWH, means that the reconstituted exiles are participating in the reality to which they point. They had previously been called upon to do this by obedience to YHWH’s statutes and ordinances (20:11-12, 19-20), but now such obedience will be focused upon the decision of getting a new heart and a new spirit. Ezekiel’s life is a model for the Israelites of what it would look like to change the alignment and functioning of one’s perceptual capacities so as to incorporate into one’s life a reality beyond appearances.[56]

That is, the new life of this exilic community “will be an embodied life analogous to that experienced in their previous life.”[57] Exampled in Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones reanimating to life, the exiles are challenged to let go of their lamentation, and accept their new life. Be it only a remnant of what it was. The people are to become symbols themselves, in distinction to the idols they so easily ascribed meaning too. It is their life which will manifest the symbol of YHWH. “It is the participation by a particular being in Being itself that brings about the birth of the real symbol.”[58]

Contemporary Interpretation and Application

Some attribute the very survival of the Jewish people to Ezekiel, primarily because when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 70 [CE], the vision of the merkaba [chariot of light] offered inspiration and hope. It is declared that although the earthly temple might be destroyed, Yahweh remained enthroned in heaven, resplendent in glory and inaccessible to mundane military powers.[59]

Thus, the symbolic Ezekiel has a similar function to that of the New Testament figure of Saint Paul. Their parallels are striking. Both have a significant vision or encounter. Both are left impaired, mute and blind respectively. Both challenge the emptiness of temple religion and practice. Furthermore, Paul’s description of Jesus’ glory is a construction similar to that of the merkaba (or heavenly chariot throne). For with Ezekiel, it travels wherever the Spirit would go.[60] And likewise, both advocate taking on a new heart which emboldens the embodied life. But such analogy is only illustration of the symbolic reservoir which is rich in the Book of Ezekiel.

The greater question is in respect to its contemporary application. In the reading of Ezekiel it is easy to see ourselves in his plight. It is easy to assess one’s life as amounting to very nearly nothing. It is natural to see that “our best efforts have altered nothing in the horrid draconian drama of war and war preparation.”[61] There is arguably a sense of nihilism in Ezekiel. That is, no effort of the people (or of God) serves to slow down the machine of dysfunction (the constant paradox of truth and injustice). And yet, the word of Ezekiel is accessible to readers today—a ray of light, a hope, a remnant is the “exception to the awful rule, the curse.”[62] The hope which Ezekiel offers, consequently, is less about victory and more about suffering—suffering in which Israel can become victorious (inwardly in devotion to YHWH). Mercy and judgment are again one—the same manifestation of YHWH. Hope, though materially absent to Israel, is present in the ability to consume the scroll of woe, and to embody that which is now hidden in the heart. Imploring Israel to be a symbol of that which is without representation—YHWH. In Ezekiel’s case, the desolate outcome of life to come was stated beforehand; he was warned by the Voice. But for many, the outcome is “woefully visible in the breach” between matters of the heart and those of the geo-political sphere.

Lastly, regarding humans as symbolic beings, it must be noted that they are thus constituted (brought together or held together) by “expressing themselves in” the other and “responding to the presence” of the other.[63] Existence and being return to communal realities; a product of the symbolic life. And this, most profoundly, is a word for today. It is not difficult to see the power of modern capitalism and consumerism as being an attack on a symbolic life. Post-modern persons exist as an objectified consumer set and their identity is stigmatized by such objectification. The advertising machine seeks to reinforce such stigmas and to monetize our idolatry (idolatry of the consumer self). In fact, this is good business. But what of Ezekiel’s message in such a context? Ezekiel proclaims there is hope in a remnant, even in the midst of rampant idolatry and cultural dislocation (or in a modern sense, cultural disillusionment). The remnant lives within those embodied symbolic lives which refuse and resist the idolatrous consumer identity. The remnant proclaims a communal identity infused with the rūaḥ attested to by Ezekiel. To such a world, in such a time; the word of Ezekiel exists anew, a remnant. May it be devoured.

Bibliography

The Anchor Bible. Ezekiel 1-20. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1983.

Berrigan, Daniel Ezekiel: Vision In The Dust. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997.

Block, Daniel I. The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997.

Brownlee, William H. Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 28, Ezekiel 1-19. Waco: Word Books, 1986.

Klein, Ralph W. Ezekiel: The Prophet And His Message. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988.

Launderville, Dale F. Spirit and Reason: The Embodied Character of Ezekiel’s Symbolic Thinking. Waco: Baylor

University Press, 2007.

Matthews, Victor H. Social World Of The Hebrew Prophets. Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2001.

Mesorah Publications, Ltd. The Book of Ezekiel: A New Translation With A Commentary Anthologized From

Talmudic, Midrashic, and Rabbinic Sources. New York: Mesorah Publications, 1977.

McConville, J. Gordon Exploring The Old Testament: A Guide To The Prophets. Downers Grove: InterVarsity

Press, 2002.

Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentaries of the Prophets, Vol. 2, Commentary On The Prophet Ezekiel. Brookline: Holy

Cross Orthodox Press, 2006.

Zimmerli, Walther Ezekiel 1: A Commentary On The Book Of The Prophet Ezekiel, Chapters 1-24. Philadelphia:

Fortress Press, 1979.

------. I Am Yahweh. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982.

[1] Ralph W. Klein, Ezekiel: The Prophet and His Message (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988) 3.

[2] See, Ezek. 24: 15-24.

[3] He was the son of a priest named Buzi.

[4] Consider expanded comment in Zimmerli, Klein, and Launderville.

[5] Walther Zimmerli, I Am Yahweh (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) 111.

[6] Ibid., 111.

[7] Klein, Ezekiel, 5.

[8] Taken into exile along with “Jehoiachin, the royal family, and many of the chief priests” (Matthews, Social World, 132).

[9] Dale F. Launderville, Spirit and Reason: The Embodied Character of Ezekiel’s Symbolic Thinking (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007) 2.

[10] Ibid., 6.

[11] Launderville, Spirit and Reason, 11.

[12] Klein, Ezekiel, 4.

[13] Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970) 11.

[14] Launderville, Spirit and Reason, 6.

[15] Ricouer designates a sign as a term that is univocal in nature. Its intended meaning is clear.

[16] Launderville, Spirit and Reason, 6.

[17] Ibid., 11.

[18] NRSV translation used here and throughout.

[19] Launderville, Spirit and Reason, 12.

[20] Ibid., 12.

[21] Ibid., 13.

[22] Victor H. Matthews, Social World of the Hebrew Prophets (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing, 2001) 133.

[23] Ibid., 133.

[24] Ezekiel 2: 6-7

[25] Daniel Berrigan, Ezekiel: Vision in the Dust (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997) 8.

[26] Ibid., 9.

[27] Ibid., 9.

[28] Berrigan, Ezekiel, 5.

[29] Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997) 113.

[30] Block, Ezekiel, 114.

[31] The ר֗וּחַ (rūaḥ) is also mentioned in Ezekiel’s inaugural vision as the source that had animated the “wheels.”

[32] Block, Ezekiel, 115.

[33] The Anchor Bible, Ezekiel 1-20 (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1983) 61

[34] Ibid., 61.

[35] Berrigan, Ezekiel, 10.

[36] Block, Ezekiel, 117.

[37] Block, Ezekiel, 117.

[38] Ibid., 119.

[39] Ibid., 119.

[40] Ibid., 120.

[41] Ibid., 120.

[42] Anchor, Ezekiel, 63.

[43] Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentaries on the Prophets: Volume Two, Commentary on the Prophet Ezekiel (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006) 46.

[44] Block, Ezekiel, 121.

[45] William H. Brownlee, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 28, Ezekiel 1-19 (Waco: Word Books, 1986) 30.

[46] Ibid., 30.

[47] Ibid., 30.

[48] Ibid., 30.

[49] Brownlee, Ezekiel (1-19), 31.

[50] Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1: A Commentary On The Book Of The Prophet Ezekiel, Chapters 1-24 (Philadelphia:

Fortress Press, 1979) 135.

[51] Matthews, Social World, 138.

[52] Ibid., 138.

[53] Berrigan, Ezekiel, 10.

[54] Zimmerli. Ezekiel 1, 136.

[55] Matthews, Social World, 135-6.

[56] Launderville, Spirit and Reason, 14.

[57] Ibid., 17.

[58] Ibid., 8.

[59] Block, Ezekiel, 110.

[60] See Ezek. 1: 12

[61] Berrigan, Ezekiel, 10.

[62] Ibid., 11.

[63] Launderville, Spirit and Reason, 9.

Saint Paul: Resurrection, Universalism, and Love

2012-03-20T17:33:00.000-04:00

By Joshua W.C. Stafford

Joshua Stafford

The writings of St. Paul remain the most controversial of the New Testament corpus. The self-proclaimed “apostle” is frequently tied to the least inclusive and most institutional aspects of Christianity: the church, moral discipline, social conservatism, misogyny, and even suspiciousness toward Jews. Is this an accurate portrayal of St. Paul? “He had been a man of conflict before his sudden conversion on the road to Damascus….He remained a subject of controversy after that event not only among his conservative Jewish countrymen but also within the early church.”[1] Modern scholarship is also divided, celebrating or cursing St. Paul as the true founder of Christianity, “granting that Jesus himself had not crossed the borders of ancient Judaism.”[2] Despite the enormous task, any investigation into St. Paul must carefully balance the source material with the life and religious background of the apostle.

It will be beneficial to narrow the investigation using three questions about the life and thought of St. Paul. First, what if anything constitutes the relationship between Jesus and Paul? Second, how does Paul understand Jesus; or rather, who is Jesus with respect to God in the Pauline letters? Third, what type of community is Paul trying to perpetuate in light of his beliefs about Jesus? The following three sections (Resurrection, Universalism, and Love) will reflect this writers attempt to answer these questions respectively. It will be asserted, herein, that the writings of St. Paul reveal a dynamically different character than that commonly boasted by the exclusive and institutional church he is said to have founded. Instead, what one finds in the writings of St. Paul, a vast universalism; which is a radical and militant discourse within the first century world.

Resurrection: The Damascus Road

The commonalities between Jesus and Paul are well documented in the work of Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (hereafter, JMO). In his work Jesus and Paul: Parallel Lives JMO suggests six commonalities between these two essential Christian figures: 1) Jesus and Paul were contemporaries, 2) child refugees, 3) inserted into an alien environment, 4) shared a commitment to the law (Jesus as a Prophet, Paul as a Pharisee), 5) both had a conversion and rejected the law, and 6) were executed by Romans.[3] It is prudent, at this point, to examine precisely what biographical sketch of Paul is implied by this proposed symmetry.[4]

JMO suggests that Paul was born in the Judean town of Gischala in 6 BCE.[5] Although Paul is known as Paul of Tarsus, “there is good reason to think he acquired the name simply because he grew up there.”[6] It is likely, JMO argues, “that Paul’s father had been a slave who was set free by a Roman citizen of Tarsus, and who thereby acquired a degree of Roman citizenship which improved with each succeeding generation.”[7] That is, Paul was of Hebrew descent (of the tribe of Benjamin) but assumed Roman citizenship. Thus, Paul is accurately labeled a Hebrew and a Roman citizen. Receiving his pharisaic studies in Jerusalem under Rabban Gamaliel I,[8] Paul grew in pharisaic zeal from 16-33 CE.[9] It is well documented by the New Testament writers (including the letters attributed to St. Paul) that Paul took great pride as a Pharisee in his persecution of the Jesus movement people. JMO notes Luke’s detail in describing Paul’s persecution of the church:

He is first noticed as a youth (Acts 7: 58) looking on with satisfaction at the grisly execution of Stephen (Acts 8: 1; cf. 22:20). His next appearance is as the arch-persecutor, bursting into Christian houses and throwing their occupants into prison (Acts 8: 3). His authority is confirmed when, at his request, the high priest issues letters enabling him to bring prisoners from Damascus (Acts 9: 1-2; cf. 22: 4-5). The nature of this authority becomes apparent only when Paul is made to say, ‘I not only shut up many of the saints in prison, by authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them’ (Acts 26: 10).[10]

Paul, there is little doubt, was deeply committed to his Jewish heritage, and more specifically, to the Law. Looking back many years later in his letter to the Galatians the apostle notes, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers” (Gal 1: 14). As noted, Paul and Jesus were contemporaries, although there is no evidence to suggest that Paul and Jesus actually interacted in Jerusalem during Jesus’ life.[11] However, Paul’s relationship to Jesus had little to do with biographical similarities or social interaction. Paul claimed to have met Jesus resurrected on that “Damascus Road.”[12] According to Luke, during Paul’s hearing before Agrippa II, Paul told his conversion story:

With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, when at midday along the road, your Excellency; I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.’ I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The Lord answered, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you.’[13]

Paul is certainly not silent about this resurrected Jesus encounter. Consider Gal. 1: 11-17:

For I want you to know brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ… [Paul describes his early life as a zealous Jew]…But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who are already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

Additionally, in I Cor. 9: 1, “…Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?...”. Or again in I Cor. 15: 8, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

This conversion encounter with Jesus is critical, even essential, in Pauline thought. Alain Badiou, in his philosophical treatise, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, argues that Paul “for crucial reasons reduces Christianity to a single statement: Jesus is resurrected.”[14] Though Badiou’s thesis is essentially a philosophical one, it is right to note the compelling nature of a theological construct similarly reduced to: Jesus is resurrected. There are certainly similarities between Jesus and Paul, but they are not what define Paul’s understanding of Jesus. Paul’s thought about Jesus is gripped by the centrality of this Damascus Road experience. Paul understands Jesus as the resurrected Lord. But how is one to interpret such a position? It would not be fair to the Pauline or Lukan accounts to subject this merely to an “internal” happening. It appears, from all the evidence, Paul believed that Jesus had “actually” appeared to him. Before moving forward, one is here in debt to the cautioning of N.T. Wright:

it is worth noticing that the ‘modernist’ conception of ‘religion’, within which framework a good deal of critical scholarship has been pursued, has thought a priori of ‘religious experience’, including all reported experience of revelations from another world (e.g. ‘heaven’), as of necessity ‘internal’. That is part of the classic post-Enlightenment paradigm in which, following eighteenth-century Deism, anything to do with ‘God’ or ‘religion’ was removed by definition from contact with the world of space, time and matter. Thus, whenever someone constrained by this worldview comes upon a report of a heavenly vision, they are bound to classify it as ‘internal.’ That is all it can be—for them. But first century Jews would not have seen things like that. For them, ‘heaven’ as God’s sphere was every bit as real, and every bit as external to their own reality, their own hearts, minds and feelings, as the world of ‘earth.’ It is all very well for us to tell them, two thousand years later, what was ‘really’ going on. We need, perhaps, to be a bit more sure of our own ground before we patronizingly impose our etic view, squelching what would emerge from a more historical, a more emic, understanding.[15]

What Wright is advocating is allowing Paul to speak within his context. An “emic” understanding is a description of a belief in terms meaningful to the actor/speaker. In contrast to the observer, as is suggested by the “etic” understanding.

Furthermore, it begs the question, “If Jesus was resurrected, what does this say about Jesus in respect to God?” Was Jesus God? Was Jesus merely human? What kind of figure is Jesus in history? It will be argued, that for Paul, Jesus was neither God or merely human, Jesus was Messiah or Son of God—or more specifically for Paul, the second Adam.[16] “Paul, we should note, shows no interest in a priestly Messiah such as we find in some Qumran texts alongside the king…[rather], the Messiah will act as God’s representative or agent to Israel and hence to the world.” [17] Paul views Jesus as a universal figure.

Universalism: The Second Adam

Consider Paul’s words in Rom. 5: 18-9: “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” And again in I Cor. 15:22, “…for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” Also, in Phil. 2: 10-1, “…so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” [All emphasis added.] And perhaps most powerfully in Col. 1: 15-20:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

The language is quite persuasive. Paul appears to be saying that God will eventually bring all things into subjection to Christ and reconcile all things in Christ, and even bring fullness of life to all persons through Christ.

The most common objection to this interpretation involves an exhaustive word study on the words all and every. In which, conservative scholars would argue that all and every is used in limited sense, not to reflect the full salvation which is being argued herein. That is, limited to those who are “in Christ.” According to Loraine Boettner, “In some fifty places throughout the New Testament the words ‘all’ and ‘every’ are used in a limited sense.”[18] This point shall be conceded. Nonetheless, Tom Talbott has noted that, “Though Paul’s theological arguments are riddled with statement about ‘all human beings’ and it is Paul’s view that is supposedly at issue here, Boettner fails to cite a single example from one of these contexts.”[19] Thus, although the general point is conceded that “all” is often used in a limited sense, it is difficult to concede that this was Paul’s use of “all”. Boettner’s examples of a limited use of the world “all” are almost exclusively from the narrative gospel accounts. “And narrative is just where one would expect to find uses of ‘all’ in which the scope of its reference is less than precise.”[20] (Such as “When the Indianapolis Colts released Peyton Manning, they disappointed all of Indiana”).

However, the most compelling evidence of St. Paul’s universalism is in the grammatical data from the text. “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (5: 18). This is certainly a Pauline grammatical construction. Later in Rom 11: 32, “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” And in I Cor. 15: 22, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” And as Talbott argues:

In each of these texts, we encounter a contrast between two universal statements, and in each case the first ‘all’ seems to determine the scope of the second. Accordingly, when Paul asserts in Rom. 5: 18 that Christ’s one ‘act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all,’ he evidently has in mind every descendant of Adam who stands under the judgment of condemnation; when he insists in Rom. 11: 32 that God is merciful to all, he has in mind every human being whom God has ‘shut up’ to, or has ‘imprisoned’ in, disobedience; and finally, when he asserts in I Cor. 15: 22 that ‘all will be made alive in Christ,’ he has in mind everyone who has died in Adam. The grammatical evidence here seems utterly decisive….[21]

But what of God’s judgment? This is certainly a New Testament theme and would have been fundamental to Paul’s Jewish understanding. Many believe that such universalism is impossible to justify with the theme of divine judgment. The God of Scripture is not only merciful, but just. “But where is the biblical warrant…for thinking that divine justice requires something that divine mercy does not, or that divine mercy permits something that divine justice does not? Where is the biblical warrant for thinking that mercy and justice are separate and distinct attributes to God?”[22] It is certainly easy to slip into this line of thinking. It is easy to assume that God’s love/mercy is an attitude of one kind and his wrath/judgment is an attitude of the opposite kind. That is, God condemns for one reason and forgives for another. But Paul challenges this entire way of thinking. Consider Rom. 11: 7-8, 11-2:

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, ‘God gave them a sluggish spirit, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day. …So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. No, if their stumbling means riches for the world and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their inclusion mean!

And later Paul continues in Rom. 11: 15, “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead!” And again later in Rom. 11: 25-6 Paul writes, “…a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved.” The implication of the eleventh chapter of Romans is the unbelieving Jews were somehow “enemies of God” (11: 28). But, nonetheless, they became disobedient “in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy” (11: 31). And even more profoundly stated in Rom. 11: 32, “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that they may be merciful to all.”

According to Paul, therefore, God is always and everywhere merciful, but we sometimes experience his mercy (or purifying love) as severity, judgment, punishment. When we live a life of obedience, we experience his mercy as kindness; when we live a life of disobedience, we experience it as severity (see Rom. 11: 22).[23]

Not only does one find a universalist soteriology in Paul, but one finds a philosophical universalism as well. Paul’s understanding of resurrection is here again significant. The work of the French philosopher Alain Badiou is essential to understanding Paul’s philosophical universalism. “Let us say that, for Paul, it is a matter of investigating which law is capable of structuring a subject devoid of all identity and suspended to an event whose only ‘proof’ lies precisely in its having been declared by the subject.”[24] The gist of Badiou’s argument is this:

… if there has been an event [the resurrection], and if truth consists in declaring it and then in being faithful to this declaration, two consequences ensue. First, since truth is evental, or of the order of what occurs, it is singular. It is neither structural, nor axiomatic, nor legal. No available generality can account for it, nor structure the subject who claims to follow in its wake….Second, truth being inscribed on the basis of a declaration that is in essence subjective, no preconstituted subset can support it; nothing communitarian or historically established can lend its substance to the process of truth. Truth is diagonal relative to every communitarian subset; it neither claims authority from, nor (this is obviously the most delicate point) constitutes any identity. It is offered to all, or addressed to everyone, without condition of belonging being able to limit this offer, or this address.[25]

Perhaps, it will be helpful to examine Badiou’s thought in light of a Pauline passage. Consider Paul’s words to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3: 28). Consider, again, just the single coupling of “Jew or Greek” used by Paul. Badiou’s suggestion is that Paul is not referring to nationalities or religions specifically, but rather theories of discourse. That is, coherent intellectual constructs. What, then, is the Greek discourse? “As a rule, [Paul] is talking about wisdom, and hence about philosophy.”[26] The French philosopher notes, “Greek discourse is cosmic, deploying the subject within the reason of a natural totality. Greek discourse is essentially the discourse of totality, insofar as it upholds the sophia (wisdom as internal state) of a knowledge of phusis (nature as ordered and accomplished deployment of being)”.[27] Next, what is the Jewish discourse? Above all, it is the discourse of the sign. “Jewish discourse is a discourse of exception, because the prophetic sign, the miracle, election, designate transcendence as that which lies beyond the natural totality.”[28] Paul’s task, thus, is to present a universal plan of salvation (having seen the resurrected Lord) which cannot be reconciled with the law, be it one that ties thought to the cosmos or to the exceptional sign.

“One may also say: Greek and Jewish discourse are both discourses of the Father. That is why they bind communities in a form of obedience (to the Cosmos, the Empire, God, or the Law). Only that which will present itself as a discourse of the Son has the potential to be universal, detached from every particularism.”[29] For Paul, the emergence of the event of the son (as realized via his meeting the risen Jesus) is tied to the conviction that the Christian discourse is new. “That it is the son, not the father, who is exemplary, enjoins us not to put our trust any longer in any discourse laying claim to the form of mastery.”[30] As one will note, it was John who made the logos a principle subject to the Greek discourse of logos philosophy. But this is certainly not the way Paul proceeds. “For him, Christian discourse can maintain fidelity to the son only by delineating a third figure, equidistant from Jewish prophecy and the Greek logos.”[31]

Thus, Paul is neither a prophet nor a philosopher, he is an “apostle.” But how is one to know they are an apostle? “According to the truth of a declaration and its consequences, which, being without proof or visibility, emerges at that point where knowledge, be it empirical or conceptual, breaks down. In characterizing Christian discourse from the point of salvation, Paul does not hesitate to say: ‘Knowledge [gnosis] will disappear’ (I Cor. 13: 8).”[32] In the words of E.P. Sanders, although Paul “did not preach with eloquence and wisdom…he was in fact not deficient, for he spoke the ‘wisdom of God’, which is foolishness to humans: ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’.”[33] Moreover, Jesus Christ resurrected.

A summary is important before moving forward. The first question posited for discussion was “what constituted Paul and Jesus' relationship?” No evidence is available to substantiate actual encounters during Jesus’ life, so one is left only with Paul’s declaration that he had met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. And, if Paul understood Jesus to be resurrected, “who is Jesus in respect to God?” Jesus was the second Adam, the person by which a new world order was established. Just as all had been marred by the sin of the first Adam, all would be reconciled through the second. Paul, likewise, presents himself as an anti-philosopher and an anti-prophet (“no longer Jew or Greek”) by taking on apostleship, appointed by the risen Lord. And in fact, Paul offers the Christian discourse in distinction to the discourse of wisdom or the discourse of the sign. It has been argued, soteriologically and philosophically, Paul is a Universalist. But, as any surface investigation into Paul will show, Paul’s life revolved around developing communities (congregations or churches) which strive to embody this actualized Christian discourse. And so lastly, we seek to examine exactly what type of communities St. Paul was trying to perpetuate in light of the resurrected Lord Jesus.

Love: A Universal Power

The task begins with an apparent contradiction contained within Paul’s correspondence to the Romans. Paul first asserts that “Christ is the end of the law…” (10: 4), and yet, later “love is the fulfilling of the law” (13: 10). Badiou beautifully expounds on love fulfilling the law,

“Under the condition of faith, of a declared conviction, love names a nonliteral law, one that gives to the faithful subject his consistency, and effectuates the postevental truth in the world…. To this universal address that faith, or pure subjectivation, does not constitute on its own Paul gives the name ‘love,’ agape…Its principle is this: when the subject as thought accords with the grace of the event—this is subjectivation (faith, conviction)—he, who was dead, returns to the place of life. He regains those attributes of the power that had fallen onto the side of the law and whose subjective figure was sin. He rediscovers the living unity of thinking and doing. This recovery turns life itself into a universal law. Law returns as life’s articulation for everyone, path of faith, law beyond law. This is what Paul calls love. [Emphasis Added][34]

In his correspondence to the Corinthians Paul conveys his vision for these early Christian communities, “And now faith, hope, and love abide…and the greatest of these is love” (13: 13). Though Paul gives supremacy to love, it is wise to ask, “what of faith and hope?” For this is surely the most robust vision of Paul’s communitarian work. What are the implications of a community given to faith, hope, and love?

What of faith? Paul tells us that, “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart, (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim; because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10: 8-9). As suggested here, faith is not merely a private conviction, it is a public declaration.

The real of faith is an effective declaration, which with the word “resurrection,” utters that life and death are not ineluctably distributed as they are in the ‘old man’….But it becomes apparent that faith, confessing the resurrection of one man, merely declares a possibility for everyone. That a new assemblage of life and death is possible is borne out by resurrection, and this is what must first be declared. But this conviction leaves the universalization of the ‘new man’ in suspense and says nothing as to the content of the reconciliation between living thought and action. Faith says: We can escape powerlessness and rediscover that from which the law separated us. Faith prescribes a new possibility…[35]

What of love? As it has been argued, it is essential that love become law so that the universal nature of the event can continuously inscribe itself in the world. What is made possible in faith, becomes real or actual in love. That is, “faith working through love” (Gal. 5: 6). This also seems to imply that salvation is not instantaneous, grace itself is no more than a possibility. “The subject has to be given in his labor, and not only in his sudden emergence. ‘Love’ is the name of that labor. Truth for Paul is never anything but ‘faith working through love’.”[36]

What, then, of hope? With Paul, hope pertains to justice. That is, “For one believes with the heart and so is justified” (Rom. 10: 10). But what has Paul in mind? Is it divine judgment, or more specifically, the Last Judgment? In I Thessalonians faith is compared to striving (ergon), and love to the grueling and laborious work of the universal plan. Hope, likewise, pertains to endurance and patience. Badiou summarizes, “Faith would be the opening to the true; love, the universalizing effectiveness of its trajectory; hope, lastly, a maxim enjoining us to persevere in this trajectory”.[37] And this, again, confirms the universalism about which Paul is so passionate. It does not seem by chance that Paul was known as the apostle to “the nations.” His central conviction is that the resurrection exceeds all that is “particular”. The work of love is set out before Paul, and the empire is vast. “Paul’s universalism will not allow the content of hope to be a privilege accorded to the faithful who happen to be living now. It is inappropriate to make distributive justice the referent of hope.”[38] Hope is rather, the tenacity of love through the ordeal of life. That is, hope is not the imaginary of justice distributed at last against our enemies, but what “accompanies the patience of truth, or the practical universality of love, through the ordeal of the real.”[39]

It is easy to see Paul’s vision for the New Testament communities or cells he was establishing. They were to be built on faith, hope, and love. Paul not only refuses to stigmatize differences, or particularities, but goes to great lengths to accommodate them. He does not waiver in saying, “All things are lawful” (I Cor. 10: 23). In the end, it could be said that the maxim of this great “moralist” is that all things are permitted. The contextual and cultural differences are what “we must let be from the moment we bring to bear on them the universal address and the militant consequences of faith.”[40]

[1] Klaus Haacker, “Paul’s Life,” In The Cambridge Companion to St. Paul, ed. James Dunn (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 19.

[2] Ibid., 19.

[3] Jerome Murphy-O’Conner, Jesus and Paul: Parallel Lives (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007).

[4] Being that Jesus is not the object of this inquiry, the biographical sketch of Paul presented in Jesus and Paul: Parallel Lives will be lifted from its context of comparison. Furthermore, in developing a biographical sketch of Paul as proposed by Murphy-O’Connor, one is in debt to his significant work Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

[5] Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 8.

[6] Murphy-O’Connor, Jesus and Paul, 16.

[7] Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 41.

[8] “His dates cannot be established with any certitude, but his years of activity are thought to be roughly AD 20-50, or more narrowly, but still approximately, AD 30-40” (Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 55).

[9] Ibid., 59-62.

[10] Ibid., 65.

[11] One must keep in mind that Jesus’ work in Jerusalem was essentially a failure, save the instance of Nicodemus (John 7: 52). Likewise, Paul, as a Pharisee, would have been singularly focused on his studies, with little attention to pay to a failing prophet. Paul’s focus would have shifted toward the Jesus movement, after the crucifixion of Jesus, once there was numerical and substantive growth in Jerusalem (which begged the attention of the Pharisees).

[12] N.T. Wright aptly notes that “People who know little else about Paul know that he had a dramatic conversion. The phrase ‘Damascus Road’ has entered popular usage as a metaphor for a place, or even a moment, of sudden illumination and transformation, of discovering that one is on the wrong course and being turned around to follow a different one” (Wright, Resurrection, 375).

[13] Acts 26: 12-16 (NRSV), All texts herein are from New Revised Standard Version.

[14] Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003) 4.

[15] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) 377.

[16] The “First Adam” being the means by which sin was brought into the world.

[17] N.T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009) 43.

[18] Loraine Boettner, Studies in Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1947) 321.

[19] Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God (Salem: Universal Publishing, 1999) 77.

[20] Ibid., 81.

[21] Ibid., 83.

[22] Ibid., 91

[23] Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 94.

[24] Badiou, Saint Paul, 5.

[25] Badiou, Saint Paul, 17.

[26] Ibid., 40.

[27] Ibid., 41.

[28] Ibid., 41.

[29] Ibid., 42.

[30] Badiou, Saint Paul, 43.

[31] Ibid., 43.

[32] Ibid., 45.

[33] E.P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) 16.

[34] Badiou, Saint Paul, 87-8.

[35] Badiou, Saint Paul, 88.

[36] Ibid., 91-2.

[37] Ibid., 93.

[38] Ibid., 95.

[39] Ibid. 96.

[40] Badiou, Saint Paul, 101.

A Review of Alain Badiou's "Saint Paul: Foundation of Universalism"

2012-03-02T01:08:00.000-05:00

Alain Badiou

-Fiona Marantelli, Monash University

This study is one of an emergent group that offers not just a provocative and original interpretation of the Apostle’s thought but a unique interface with contemporary political theory and philosophy. In this regard its value extends beyond its interest to Pauline scholarship. Interested primarily in neither history nor exegesis Badiou’s dialogue is primarily with the Paul of contemporary cultural memory. But even this is a re-write: overwritten and claimed for a contemporary ideological cause, for Badiou seeks a practical and philosophical hero, one that can engage and critique late 20th century Capitalism, its relativism, its dissolution of truth, its cynicism toward universals and its tendency to infinitely fragment identity and culture. The most interesting aspect of this text lies in Badiou’s ability to surmount purely historical concerns and appropriate Pauline ideas to a contemporary political cause. With no hint of the hagiographic sentimentality present in traditional studies, Badiou presents Paul as a political philosopher rather than a saint, and as such, he offers to invigorate Pauline studies even as he challenges it.

The prologue and first chapter are largely confessional. Badiou is unapologetic in naming his interest, his opponents and his project. His named interest is in Paul as a subjective figure; a militant anti-philosopher whom he sees as re-inscribing truth and identity both outside of politics (the Roman Empire) and outside of the specificity of cultural identity (Judaism and the law). Badiou’s argument proceeds thus: Paul’s truth emanates from the subjective event of his Damascus experience; his resurrection experience rather than Jesus’. Armed with this subjective truth Paul effectively challenges both cultural realities (Jerusalem and Rome). Central to Badiou’s reading is his insistence that truth-event (Resurrection) emphatically be described as fable, thus it is the procedure rather than content that is important here: the subjective ‘event’ is impetus for internal change, thought and action. Further: Paul’s challenge to politics and his critique of the law. Situated resolutely in the present, Badiou is frustrated by the cultural and historical relativism that defines the contemporary milieu: our tendency to fracture society and ideas into subsets (infinite combinations of language, race, religion and gender) is seen not as indicative of freedom but as a symptom of Capitalism’s endless need for new markets; the commodification of both ideas and identity. Globalisation then represents the hegemony of capital’s empty universality; it renounces truth, affirms the ever-expanding inventory of minorities then offers monetarist free exchange under the guise of democracy. With this in mind he seeks to reorient the subject not in relation to cultural specificities (race, religion or gender) but in relation to truth; to score one for the possibility of universality. Hence it is not Paul’s gospel specifically that interests Badiou but Paul’s insistence and success in universalising his message: freeing it from the rigid enclosure of Judaism (cultural specificity), and equally refusing to have it conform to political and legal specificities of Rome: Jews, Greeks, slaves, women, ad infinitum (Galatians is central here). Badiou seeks to learn from Paul’s method.
Chapter 2 advances Badiou’s thesis on Pauline identity: his biography and philosophical project (theology). Shunning the ‘sanctimonious style’ of usual biographers, Badiou offers a synopsis that is pithy, satirical and prone to the type unsubstantiated speculation that others will delight to dismiss as unscholarly. Badiou knows it, and while there are some points at which he does insist on one historical reading over another, he always subordinates the unanswerable questions of biography (and history) to the more important questions of the texts themselves. In avoiding what we don’t know, or can’t know, about Paul the man, Badiou sidesteps the long meticulous roads to nowhere that are prevalent in Pauline studies and treats the texts on their own terms. He accepts the most cautious analysis of scholarship, reducing the Pauline Corpus to only 6 texts (Rom, Cor I & II, Gal, Phil, Thess I), and except at a few convenient junctures dismisses the Acts of the Apostles as an idealised ‘retrospective construction […] whose form is frequently borrowed from the rhetoric of Greek fables’ (p. 18). Badiou assumes an internal coherence to Pauline texts, allowing the subjective (autobiographical) elements of Paul’s writing to stand on their merit; existential fragments in the tradition of Rousseau, Kierkegaard or Nietzsche (p. 17), these fragments inform our reading of the rest of Paul’s writing. The texts are then treated as literary wholes, their overtly religious aspects, their contradictions (puzzles), chimeras and impurities tolerated in deference to the overarching artistic (and political) merit of the texts.

Saint Paul

Badiou overwrites the biography of Paul with the terms of revolution, briefly acknowledging the anachronism; the move likely (and conveniently) slips from the mind of the reader. ‘Sympathizers and adherents’ describe proselytes of the Diaspora, (p. 19) Ecclesia becomes a 'small group of militants’, 'adelphoi’ predictably: comrades. Paul's churches become, by deliberate and careful association, French résistance fighters during the Nazi occupation (1940–41): they and they alone uphold and represent truth (p. 20). While this string of metaphors works on one hand to animate the character (Apostle), the primary motivator is again not historical accuracy but the need to re-inscribe common perceptions of the apostle to render him useful to the present task. Badiou here recognises something about his subject: Paul is not a neutral identity. One can hardly imagine too many readers in the west without preconceptions about Paul and his writings. Badiou's biographical work then, is more palimpsest than history – though one might note that the uniform of the revolution is well tailored. Badiou’s reading then is as situated in his own context and as dependant on his own subjectivity as are the Apostle’s texts to his time and experience. Perhaps this is Badiou’s point (here he practically demonstrates his own thesis: that event and time are inextricably linked, and universality is contingent in its outcomes if not in its methods). The text functions (wittingly) as an allegory of context; 1st century and 20th, paired.

This type of Marxist allegory and parallelism continue through subsequent chapters. Badiou deals interestingly with the Pauline texts, his letters are characterised as ‘interventions’ (p. 31) more akin to the works of Lenin than to Marx. They are foundational to Christianity; the only ‘doctrinal’ texts of the New Testament. Badiou characterises them as timeless with few traces left by genre, era, and circumstance. This characterisation reflects Badiou’s interest in these texts as philosophical rather than historical documents. Here Paul’s ‘universalised and de-centered vision’ (p. 34) is inscribed not just as an historical representation which draws curiosity, but as able to be transplanted unaltered, almost seamlessly into the 20th C, with its war, fascism, and late Capitalism. It is here that the universal core of Paul’s thought can, Badiou asserts, offer us strategies to successfully confront our context.

Badiou believes that Paul’s discourse offers a radical departure from dominant modes of 1st century discourse: both Jewish (Prophetic and sign oriented) and Greek (logic and wisdom) (chapter 4). While both require proofs, albeit radically opposite proofs, Paul’s position is markedly defined by its absence of proof (sign or logic). It is this absence that ‘constrains faith [and is] constitutive of the Christian subject’ (p. 50). Thus Paul is Badiou’s quintessential antiphilosopher, and upon this understanding he develops his conception of the subject: subjectively defined andoutside of known systems. This reading offers a radical departure from mainline ecclesial scholarship with its various factions intent on aligning Pauline thought and theology to either Jewish tradition (advocating continuity) or Greek logos (advocating discontinuity). Badiou’s reading is interesting because it advocates a third stream; to read through the insights of contemporary political philosophy rather than limiting our understanding of Pauline thought to its historical milieu. In this way Badiou is able to wrest Pauline theology from the past and claim its method (if not its content) for a present application. Badiou appears to seek an appropriation of Pauline truth to and for the contemporary context, but his position is more nuanced than that. I suspect what he seeks is a new political conviction, here elided with the faith of Paul. This is seen in the second half of the text where Badiou systematically de-theologises a number of recognisable core Pauline ideas. Essentially, Badiou is seeking to appropriate and develop from Paul, a secular notion of Grace. This is important for Badiou because he sees in Paul’s experience a defining moment that shapes and motivates Paul’s faith and shapes him as a political subject. There is an essential relationship between truth as fable and faith (read: conviction). This method binds subjective experience to truth and truth to political action. Subjectivity governs conviction (the universal). The thesis is not without problems, not least the difficulty of filtering out the overtly religious nature of Paul’s thought. Badiou is unable to find a contemporary and secular example that adequately demonstrates his point. Badiou seeks a model for political change but, recognising that effective political change/activism develops from (subjective) experience and picking up on Paul’s Damascus declaration, the closest Badiou comes is in his secularisation of this key Pauline idea: a laicization of grace. Still, he struggles to find a contemporary fable that will act as such a change agent.

Badiou’s reading of Paul is part history, certainly, but also part contemporary philosophical project and part autobiographical confession. History and subjectivity make strange bedfellows; Paul’s subjectivity is acceptable because it matches the author’s own subjectivity and is bound by his purpose: ‘My intention, clearly, is neither historicizing nor exegetical. It is subjective through and through’ (p. 2). The text is marked by the overt presence of 20th century political experience; French and left wing in particular. Badiou defines his project as ‘refound[ing] a theoryof the subject that subordinates its existence to the aleatory dimension of the event as well as the pure contingency of multiple-being without sacrificing the theme of freedom’ (p. 4). The novelty of Paul lies in his unmovable fidelity to the event and his insistence on the ‘termination of communitarian particularisms’ (p. 108). In a move that flies in the face of the majority of post holocaust readings of Paul (which seek to address the contemporary milieu by conceptualising the Apostle and his teaching in direct relationship to his Judaic heritage) Badiou is careful to establish the singularity of Paul’s position; its difference and opposition to both Judaism’s perceived ethnic election (and law) and the Greek love of logic (philosophy). Evental subjectivity has need for neither sense nor law.

Badiou’s reading is not without problems, his appropriation relies markedly on post-reformation memory. There is scant consideration of post-Holocaust/mainline Pauline studies in the latter part of the 20th C, rather Badiou’s ‘historical’ Paul is a Paul reminiscent of Luther and Calvin: a reformer big on grace as a change agent. This undoubtedly reflects Badiou’s own penchant for revolution and reform, hence the figures: Paul, Luther, Lenin. Indeed it is the typology of revolutionary that Badiou relies upon: Paul is to Jesus as Lenin is to Marx; each a revolutionary thinker able to put philosophy into practice.

Symbols of Marxism

Thus, Badiou’s project is neither historical nor hagiographic. While he does not disavow claims of history he rather recognises first the primacy of the contemporary context as impetus for his project, and while most of those who write about Paul come to the man and his texts with a devotional respect, if not fervor, Badiou’s atheism, philosophical training and late encounter with the writings of Paul provide him with a unique perspective. His Paul is a militant political figure and a subject ripe for an unapologetic appropriation to the cause of contemporary Marxism. It is this engagement with contemporary culture and critical theory that defines this text and makes Badiou’s engagement with Paul intriguing reading. Badiou’s perspective is most simply reflected in the question ‘Who is Paul?’ Badiou’s reframing becomes for the reader a candid reminder that the value in understanding the life of Paul is not the value found in history for its own sake (objective or disinterested empiricism) but only in history’s efficacy in addressing the questions of our own time. Badiou seeks his own revolution, with any luck he may just get one – in Pauline studies at least.

-See Original Link

Zinzendorfism

2012-02-15T12:03:00.003-05:00

From The Carnal Mind by H.A. Baldwin

"Does depravity remain in the heart of that person who is justified? is a very important question, and deserves further notice. Different schools of thought have arisen which have promulgated widely divergent ideas. One class takes the position that depravity must invariably remain in the heart until death; they hold that although some may honestly profess deliverance, yet, sooner or later, the evil nature will again appear, and thus show that the person has been mistaken. The scores of Scriptural passages which command and promise holiness of heart, and which any person can find for himself, are, for the present, sufficient proof of the error of this position.

Another class exaggerates the power and outcroppings of remaining depravity, until there is little or no difference between the life of a professed Christian and that of an open sinner; and, on the other hand, there are some who so minimize the inbred foe that they leave little or no room for any further change, either in heart or life, in the article of entire sanctification. These two erroneous extremes are brought about by either minimizing or exaggerating the experience of regeneration. Both extremes should be carefully avoided. Still another class teaches that as long as any depravity remains in the heart, the person is not accepted of God. The author of this belief was Count Zinzendorf, and because of his connection therewith the doctrine has been named for him.

Count Zinzendorf

Zinzendorf was a German count. He was born in Dresden, May 26, 1700, and died May 9, 1760. He was the founder of the Moravian denomination. At one time he visited London and was received with much consideration by Wesley. He founded the Moravian colony at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1741. Concerning his character and religious zeal, the Columbian Cyclopedia says: "His natural ardor sometimes led him to press his doctrinal statements beyond Scriptural limits, and to decide questions on an appeal to his feelings, and to act with a zeal whose force was like fire; but he had a splendid nobleness of character, a great love for his fellow men, a readiness for self-sacrifice in doing good, a high conception of the Christian calling, and a devoted affection for the personal Lord Jesus, which mark him as one of the princes of the kingdom of God on earth. His great estate was nearly all expended in a work which was his delight -- the founding and maintaining the Moravian Brethren as a little church within a church."

The life and spotless character of Zinzendorf viewed in connection with his errors in doctrine go to show that a person may be saved and much devoted to the cause of God, and yet be mistaken concerning some important doctrine. The very fact that he possesses a good character will make his misstatements all the more dangerous. William Bramwell wrote, "An idea is going forth that when we are justified we are entirely sanctified; and 'to feel evil nature after justification is to lose pardon,' etc. You may depend upon it, this is the devil's big gun. We shall have much trouble with this, and I am afraid that we cannot suppress it."

Wesley has written a sermon entitled, "Sin in Believers," in which he has fully answered all the chief arguments which are advanced in favor of the peculiar doctrines of Zinzendorf. We can do no better than to transcribe a part of this sermon. "Is there then sin in him that is in Christ? Does sin remain in one that believes in Him? Is there any sin in them that are born of God, or are they wholly delivered from it? Let no one imagine this to be a question of mere curiosity; or, that it is of little importance whether it be determined one way or the other. Rather it is a point of the utmost moment to every serious Christian; the resolving of which very nearly concerns both his present and eternal happiness. "And yet I do not know that ever it was controverted in the primitive church. Indeed there was no room for disputing concerning it, as all Christians were agreed. And so far as I have ever observed, the whole body of ancient Christians who have left us anything in writing declare with one voice that even believers in Christ, till they are 'strong in the Lord and in the power of his might,' have need to 'wrestle with flesh and blood,' with an evil nature, as well as 'with principalities and powers.'

"However, let us give a fair hearing to the chief arguments of those who endeavor to support it. And it is, first, from Scripture they attempt to prove that there is no sin in a believer. They argue thus: 'The Scripture says, Every believer is born of God, is clean, is holy, is sanctified, is pure in heart, has a new heart, is a temple of the Holy Ghost. Now, as that which is born of the flesh is flesh, is altogether evil, so that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, is altogether good. Again, a man cannot be clean, sanctified, holy, and at the same time unclean, unsanctified, unholy. He cannot be pure and impure, or have a new and an old heart together. Neither can his soul be unholy, while it is the temple of the Holy Ghost.'

"I have put this objection as strong as possible, that its full weight may appear. Let us now examine it part by part. And, 1. 'That which is born of the Spirit is spirit, is altogether good.' I allow the text, but not the comment. For the text affirms this, and no more, that every man who is 'born of the Spirit 'is a spiritual man. He is so. But so he may be, and yet not altogether spiritual. The Christians at Corinth were spiritual men; else they had been no Christians at all; and yet they were not altogether spiritual: they were still, in part, carnal. 'But they were fallen from grace.' St. Paul says, No. They were even babes in Christ. 2. 'But a man cannot be clean, sanctified, holy, and at the same time unclean, unsanctified, unholy.' Indeed he may. So the Corinthians were. 'Ye are washed,' says the apostle, 'ye are sanctified,' namely, cleansed from 'fornication, idolatry, drunkenness,' and all other outward sins (1 Cor. 6:9-11), and yet at the same time, in another sense of the word, they were unsanctified; they were not washed, not inwardly cleansed from envy, evil surmising, partiality. 'But sure they had not a new heart and an old heart together.' It is most sure they had; for at that very time their hearts were truly, yet not entirely renewed. Their carnal mind was nailed to the cross; yet it was not wholly destroyed. 'But could they be unholy, while they were temples of the Holy Ghost'? Yes; that they were temples of the Holy Ghost is certain (1 Cor. 6:19), and it is equally certain they were, in some degree, carnal, that is, unholy.

"However, there is one scripture more which puts the matter out of question: 'If any man be [a believer] in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new' (2 Cor. 5:17). 'Now, certainly a man cannot be a new creature and an old creature at once.' Yes, he may; he may be partly renewed, which was the very case with those at Corinth. They were doubtless 'renewed in the spirit of their mind,' or they could not have been so much as babes in Christ; yet they had not the whole mind which was in Christ, for they envied one another. 'But it is said expressly, "Old things are passed away: all things are become new."' But we must not so interpret the apostle's word, as to make him contradict himself. And if we will make him consistent with himself, the plain teaching of the words is this: His old judgment concerning justification, holiness, happiness, indeed concerning the things of God in general, is now passed away; so are his old desires, designs, affections, tempers, and conversation. All these are undeniably become new, greatly changed from what they were. And yet, though they are new, they are not wholly new. Still he feels, to his sorrow and shame, remains of the old man, too manifest taints of his former tempers and affections, though they cannot gain any advantage over him, as long as he watches unto prayer.

"The whole argument, 'If he is clean, he is clean,' 'if he is holy, he is holy' (and twenty more expressions of the same kind may easily be heaped together), is really no better than playing upon words: it is the fallacy of arguing from a particular to a general; of inferring a general conclusion from particular premises. Propose the sentence entire, and it runs thus: 'If he is holy at all he is holy altogether.' That does not follow; every babe in Christ is holy, and yet not altogether so. He is saved from sin; yet not entirely; it remains, though it does not reign. If you think it does not remain (in babes at least, whatever be the case with young men, or fathers), you certainly have not considered the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the law of God (even the law of love laid down by St. Paul in the thirteenth of Corinthians); and that every disconformity to or deviation from this law is sin. Now, is there no disconformity to this in the heart or life of a believer? What may be in an adult Christian is another question; but what a stranger must he be to human nature, who can possibly imagine that this is the case with every babe in Christ!""

-See Original Link

The Carnal Mind And The Cure For It

Abraham Maslow and the All-American Self

2012-02-12T14:06:00.001-05:00

- By Algis Valiunas
-See Full Source Article on The New Atlantis

The most important American psychologist since William James, and perhaps the most important psychologist altogether since Carl Jung, was Abraham Maslow (1908-1970). Maslow’s brainchild was the ideal of the “self-actualizing” person, the supreme human type who becomes everything he is capable of becoming. “Everything?,” one may justly ask. That has a Nietzschean ring to it, and leaves a lot of room for moral ugliness and even enormity. Thus self-actualization has drawn heavy fire, principally from conservative intellectuals, as typical Sixties folderol, a bad idea endlessly spreading, infesting the public mind like a colony of poisonous spiders, and contributing to the dangerous stupidity of our culture. Such censure is not entirely misguided. The predominant effect of Maslow’s key idea, at least as it has been transmitted by various acolytes, epigoni, and pseudo-philosophical beachcombers, is far from wholesome. And yet Maslow himself must be distinguished from his following. He was a serious thinker with a vision of human sublimity for a democratic age, revering the extraordinary and sometimes far from democratic minds with whom he consorted, and contended, throughout his life: Aristotle, Nietzsche, Freud. Maslow may indeed have a lot to answer for, even if he did not intend or foresee the worst consequences of his line of thought, but before he is pilloried as a false prophet or worse we need to measure him by his own ideas and not what others have made of them.

Abraham Harold Maslow was born on April 1, 1908, in New York City, the first child of Samuel, a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked as a cooper, and Rose, his first cousin. Abe grew up in Brooklyn, fearing his father, a rough-hewn, hard-drinking man, and loathing his mother, whom he later described as “schizophrenogenic” — the type of mother “who makes crazy people, crazy children.” She did her best to terrorize him with promises of divine wrath for conventional childhood misdemeanors; from an early age he would test the efficacy of her admonitions against reality, and when he was not paralyzed or struck blind on the spot for some transgression, his suspicion that she was spouting superstitious malarkey was confirmed. Evidently she was a real horror. When he brought home two stray kittens and she found him feeding them milk from one of her good dishes, she dashed the tiny animals’ brains out against the basement walls. Maslow wondered why he didn’t turn out psychotic. Fortunately, a loving uncle, his mother’s brother, watched over him in adolescence and showed him what normality and decency were.

Maslow attended Boys High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where, as the novelist Irwin Shaw declared, you could learn everything you needed to know to get out of Brooklyn. There Maslow’s taste in reading matter would advance, if that is the word, from Tom Swift and Horatio Alger to Upton Sinclair, The Nation, and a series of “socialist classics” that he picked up for a quarter each and read straight through. Socialism and atheism seemed natural as breathing for the youth, but the horrors of Stalinism would put him off his socialist infatuation. Atheism he would cleave to his whole life long, although he would become a peculiar sort of atheist.

Cornell was the university of his dreams — it was the only Ivy League school to take more than a token number of Jews — but his mediocre high school grades meant that the best he could hope for was the City College of New York. After a year there, he also enrolled in night classes at Brooklyn Law School; his father had wanted to be a lawyer, and expected Abe to succeed where he could not. But legal study dealt “only with evil men, and with the sins of mankind,” and a class discussion on spite fences — property fences that neighbors erect to annoy one another — prompted Abe to walk out and never come back. His crestfallen father asked him what he intended to study in that case. Abe answered, “Everything.”

Maslow managed to transfer to Cornell, getting a nearly free state-sponsored ride by applying to the College of Agriculture, with a plan to pick up liberal arts courses on the side. But even the most congenial of the Ivies made him feel unwelcome, as a Jew. Waiting tables at a fraternity house, where none of the brothers deigned to speak to him, filled him with resentment that he held onto for years. He lasted a semester, then fled back to City College.

A single book he was assigned to read there, in a class on philosophy of civilization, directed him to his life’s work: Folkways, by the Social Darwinist William Graham Sumner. Sumner presented the plenum of human cultures in its horripilating variety, lingering over the most savage customs of the most savage peoples — cannibalism, incest, demonolatry — and not exempting our own civilization, with its all too recent history of slavery and religious persecution. Only militant reason, embodied by the few best men, could hope to dislodge the black-hearted masses from their horror-show tastes. In a mood of virtual transport, Maslow vowed to make himself one of those heroes of virtuous rationality.

Overlooked Possibilities

The discovery of behaviorist psychology, in the work of its American founder, John B. Watson, made Maslow’s ambition more specific. At the height of his fame during Maslow’s college years, Watson purported to demonstrate that, like Pavlov’s famous salivating dogs, human beings were wired for stimulus-response behavior, and could be conditioned to operate with enhanced moral efficiency; benevolent science could rid the world of unreason and its attendant cruelties. Superstitious barbarians such as Abe’s mother would be reprogrammed to think clearly and cherish their sons and helpless kittens. Anti-Semitic yahoos would accept Jews as equals. Maslow was smitten with the untold possibilities for human improvement.

He headed off to the University of Wisconsin, famously progressive, with the confidence that he was embarking on a mission to transform mankind. Maslow worked hard and learned the ropes, but his yearning for higher things was stymied. The heroes he expected to find as mentors and colleagues failed to materialize; the professors and students reminded him of businessmen and politicians, out to make a handsome career for themselves, blind to ultimate concerns. His diary entries on the subject fumed with contempt. “They seem to be a bunch of intellectual castrates.... But God dammit, I’ll keep my own intellectual virility if it kills me. To hell with their jobs.”

Monkeys saved him from despair, and indeed would lead him out of the wilderness of behaviorist orthodoxy. From research in animal food preference, Maslow concluded that in higher animals such as monkeys, even a basic physiological need like hunger is not circumscribed by survival instinct: monkeys that have satisfied their hunger will go for delicacies such as peanuts and chocolates while they refuse their dietary staples. The behaviorist insistence that survival drives govern all animal behavior was mistaken. And what goes for monkeys must go for human beings.

Read Full Article Here on The New Atlantis

In a place of Displacement

2012-02-12T12:11:00.000-05:00

"...where i want to steer our interest is towards this moment of foreignness that emerges through displacement; that philosophy--this is what Heidegger wants to tell us--was from the very beginning not the discourse of those who feel the certainty of being at home. It always required a minimum of breakdown of the organic society. Ever since Socrates we always meet over and again this otherness, these holes, and interestingly we can even discover the foreign in Descartes--and thus show up his slanderers. In the second section of the Discourse on Method there is, I think, his famous remark about how he discovered through travel not only the foreignness of other customs, but also that one's own culture is not less strange, even laughable, if one views it with other eyes. That is in my opinion the zero point of philosophy. Every philosopher adopts this place of displacement."

-Slavoj Zizek, "Philosophy is not a Dialogue" from Philosophy in the Present (pgs 70-1)

George Elmer Nichol

2012-02-03T23:47:00.001-05:00

George Elmer Nichol, younger son of the venerable George Nichol, was born at Anderson October 4, 1861 and after finishing his education in the local public schools entered his father's hardware store at the age of seventeen. As a clerk he learned every detail and routine of the business and later with his brother Thomas assumed the responsibilities of managing that large and old established house (Nichol Hardware Co. / Nichol, Makepeace, Co.). He was personally identified wth its management until 1912 being secretary and treasurer while his brother was president of the company and he still holds those offices. In 1912 Mr Nichol took the post of vice president of the Citizens Bank of Anderson and his time was largely occupied with the executive duties of that position for several years and he still remains in the office of vice president. However, since January 1915 his chief post of responsibility has been as president of the Farmers Trust Company. He was one of the local citizens who promoted this company in January 1912. He is thus actively identified with three leading business and financial institutions of his native city.

In 1888, Mr. Nichol married Catherine Malone, daughter of WK and Eleanor Duffey Malone of Hamilton, Ohio. Mr. and Mrs. Nichol have two children George W. born in 1895 and Robert E. born in 1900. Mr. Nichol is affiliated with Fellowship Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, with the Royal Arch Chapter, with the Knights of Pythias, served as exalted ruler of the Anderson Lodge of Elks in 1895, is a member of the First Presbyterian Church, and in politics is a republican without aspirations for any of the honors or emoluments of politics.

The Book of Micah

2012-01-30T11:31:00.002-05:00

The Prophet Micah

Date and Location:

Contemporary of Isaiah, 8^th and 7^th century B.C.E. (in the range of 742-687 B.C.E.), critique Jerusalem/Judah and Samaria (the first “prophetic book in the Twelve to focus its criticism on these” (McConville, Exploring the Old Testament, 195), hometown is Moresheth (a fortified city on the western border of Judah, “about six miles northeast of Lachish in the Shephelah and twenty miles southwest of Jerusalem” (Matthews, Social World of the Hebrew Prophets, 99), Micah represents an isolated people in the north bearing the brunt of the neighboring Assyrian attackers, Shalmaneser III invaded Samaria and the northern kingdom in 724 B.C.E., and in 701 B.C.E. the people of Jerusalem were “bottled up under siege by Sennacherib’s army…the rest of Judah’s population was subjected to rape, execution, and enslavement as the Assyrian troops once again foraged the countryside for food and supplies” (Matthews, Social World, 99), these circumstances shed light on why Micah is so intensely critical of the Israelite capital of Samaria and of Judah’s capital at Jerusalem.

Critical Interpretation:

Because certain passages (Micah 7:11-20 for example) presuppose the exile, it is commonly thought that these are additions to the words of Micah. “Commentators find that Micah is difficult to break down into satisfactory sub-sections” (McConville, Exploring, 197). McConville asserts an outline (1: 1 – 2: 13; 3: 1 – 5: 15; 6: 1 – 7: 20) which consists of a judgment passage followed by an assurance of salvation.

Theological Themes:

Covenant Tradition/ Micah’s message “emphasizes the terms of the Mosaic covenant and condemns the monarchy and the priesthood” (Matthews, Social World, 99).

Prophetic Ethics/ Micah’s assertion is that “Right behavior depends on knowing God, and showing his own concerns in the life of the community. Micah’s preaching of justice is as vivid as any other prophet (Micah 3: 1-3). One point may be highlighted, however. For Micah knows the close link between the thought of sin and the sin itself (2: 1-2)” (McConville, Exploring, 202).

Location in the Cannon:

“Micah stands sixth in the Book of the Twelve in the MT form, but third in LXX (after Hosea and Amos). It is, perhaps surprisingly, the first of the Twelve to turn the spotlight of prophetic criticism directly on Judah and Jerusalem. Micah’s realization that even the Jerusalem temple was not immune to punishment (3: 12) is the primary canonical example of this, as shown by the citation of this prophecy in Jeremiah 26: 18” (McConville, Exploring, 204).

Taking Part in the Dance: Humanity, Holiness, and a Trinitarian Theology of Prayer

2011-11-21T15:37:00.001-05:00

By Jerry Viou

Nardelli's Painting "Holiness"

"Love is the essential inner character of holiness, and holiness does not exist apart from love." - Mildred Wynkoop.

"For if we love another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us." - I John 4:12

"I am the life that’ll never, never die; I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me-I am the Lord of the dance, said he" - Sydney Carter, "Lord of the Dance".

"Karl Rahner referred to us creatures as homo orans or humanity as prayer. What would such a statement mean in conjunction with Biblical passages such as the one above or to quote Mrs. Wynkoop again, "...that holiness has to do with persons in relationship"(25). What gleanings are there in these three seemingly disjointed points in combination with ideas such as holiness and God as triune? My thesis will build steadily on such thoughts as those fore mentioned. I will start with a brief look at modernity and how the residue of modernity has affected us in all the gamut of life. This will follow into a sketch of where we are now (i.e. postmodernism). This rough draft of postmodernism will lead into where we are in the context of spirituality. Is this spirituality simply a new label with modern traces and or a precursor to something deeper yet misguided? The final sections will bring in a Wesleyan bent by keying in on holiness and prayer as, in the words of C. S. Lewis, a taking part in the dance. The dance is that of humanity living in the triune God. "In hisSacred and Profane Beauty, the Lutheran phenomenologist of religion Geradus Van der Leeuw claims that dance is lived meaning; in it, body and spirit commune both with each other and with the world. Dance is the rhythmic mimesis, or representation of a theological reminiscence: that God is love, that is, movement" (Murphy 233). That living and ecstatic habituation in the Trinity is prayer and what flows from such a living, is the redemption and sanctification of the world and ourselves.

My purpose in all of this is to show how prayer is not an objective closet experience of a few saints. Prayer is participation in the Trinity. In this participation is societal redemption and not merely a spiritual agenda. Prayer as participation in the God who breaks forth is also the essence of what a holy life means. It is this holy habituation in which humanity truly becomes human. These three fold aspects interpenetrate one another in the beautiful, mysterious, and manifold aspect called the dance. It is this dance and in the unfolding of this dance I now wish to explore.

Me, Myself, and I. A few musings on modernity
Modernity is difficult to define since it was more of a movement of reaction against assumptions. "Western civilization had reached a state of maturity which led it to call into question fundamental assumptions" (Thornhill 7). Humanity was now finding a new confidence in the reasoning subject (the I) and the elements of reason such as math and scientific rational. The empirical could penetrate and clear away such ideals as miracles and healings. Divine revelation was no longer a mandate since the naked ideals of Christianity could be deduced sans the supernatural. Immanuel Kant referred to the enlightenment as an emergence from self-incurred immaturity. "Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another" (Thornhill 9). This immaturity, this clinging to the past authority’s and myths is overcome by "sempere aude", the courage to think. Modernity was more of an ideological movement than a period. This movement arose as disillusionment with Medievalist thinking. The shackles of antiquated myths and the church as the focal social sphere were being thrown off and in its wake humanity turned inward to the self and outward to rational explanations for existence. Ellen Charry writes, "My argument is that the modern self has been constructed around the themes of self-sufficiency and emancipation of a rather shallow sort that fails to take account of the needfulness of the self beyond autonomy and freedom. It is a hermeneutic of release that provides no larger context for transformation and growth" (Volf 96). This broader context of sorts, which is needed for humanity to be actualized, is the foremost failure of modern thought. It remains in residual forms in postmodernity. But, I am getting ahead of the game here. In such a brief paragraph, what can be learned about this movement? The enlightenment was a time of restlessness. Medieval assumptions and indeed long held notions about humanity, God, and the cosmos were being questioned. It was a detached and sterile time as humanity used reason and empirical propositions to challenge the old way of knowing. Even spirituality changed as humanity began to look for God inward with the mind and rational deductions. "The privatization of the religious led to the erasure of God-talk from the public arena-privately one could believe what one wished, but these beliefs had no "street value. Secular ethics and politics flourished in the wake of flagrant humanism" (Ward xxi). Eugene Peterson writes that intimacy is what is lacking in our spirituality; indeed our moorings are still rooted in modern "turning to I" thinking. God was reduced to Being and the highest in the great chain of beings. God was conceived of the summation of Being and by realizing our place in this chain we could realize where we are and who we are and who God may be. Catherine LaCugna writes about personhood in modernity this way:

The Cartesian method isolated the self from the world beyond the self, and presupposed that the self can be a self by itself, apart from relationship with anything or anyone else. Following Descartes, John Locke defined person in terms of self-consciousness, and Leibniz thought of personhood as an enduring self-awareness that is present to itself and knows itself despite external or bodily changes. Kant completed these definitions with the note of morality: a person is a self-conscious moral subject who is responsible for his or her actions. This understanding of person was consistent with the idea of God as unipersonal, the first cause and the ultimate referent of human subjectivity (251).

Going back to Mr. Ward for a moment, I believe he sums up this movement perfectly in writing: "Man becomes interpreter, measurer of his world-a world stretched out around him, Like Keats’s Cortez standing on a peak in Darien with the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific on the other, buoyed up by the adulation of his fellow conquistadors" (xxiv). I wish to move on now to the vague, overused, and yet relevant theme of postmodernism. Once again, I will not deal exhaustively with the mechanics and myriad definitions of what postmodernism may be. It is here however that new understandings about personhood arise and for that I look to people such as John Zizioulas with gleanings from other sources as well. It is also here where notions about God and spirituality also begin to change. It is here that the residue of modernity may still be seen.

Emerging from the self-marooned island called modernity

Graham Ward writes: "Postmodernism reminds modernity of its own constructed nature; the arbitrariness and inability of its constructions" (xxvi). I want in this postmodern section to deal with the idea of personhood and God to form the definition of postmodernity and form the crux for the following sections. "Modernity is a way of life grounded on fundamental values which were encouraged by the reformation: individuality, rationalism and asceticism. Postmodernity represents ‘an oppositional movement against the rationalizing tendency of the modern project’ and against ‘grand narratives and ‘teleological views of history" (Godzieba 325). In 1953 John MacMuarry delivered the Gifford Lectures and what arose from that were his formulations on what humans are. John saw the human as a person in relation and rejected the modern idea of self as subject and world as object. The modern person sought withdrawal into the self and away from the world of action.I will place withdraw as a formative experience later on. John replaced the "I think" with "I do" as the definition of a person. "MacMurray’s philosophy of the person implies the ethical requirement of overcoming egocentrism by orientation to the other (hetrocentrisim)" (LaCugna 257). MacMuarry was foundational in his approach. He placed the person in the context of relations and those relations and orientations are the definition of what a human being is. John Zizioulas picked up this theme some time later. "A person is not defined by what it is in and of itself but when it breaks those boundaries in a movement of communion" (LaCugna 260). Pointing to oneself as a means of definition of existence is this boundary Zizioulas speaks of. "In postmodernism the autonomous individual of the enlightenment is being supplanted by a more holistic vision of humanity" (Knight III 53). Knight writes on, "...participation in the community with its network of practices and relationships is what constitutes the personhood of the individual" (53). Person hood is not only constituted to the other but also toward God. In his new book, Altogether gift: A Trinitarian spirituality, Michael Downy refers to humanity as theonomous: from God and for God (72).

With a requisitioning of who we are and the demise of a metanarrative, modernity clings close. We seek and desire community but find we still are an island to ourselves and live within our own constructed narratives. "Given the questioning and breakdown of larger frameworks of meaning and of long-held values and assumptions, it is not surprising to find ourselves hungry and wandering" (McGarthy 195). The reemergence of spirituality is a good example of this misguided wandering and confusion. Much of what passes as spirituality comes in the guise of the "new age". "Much of new age spirituality is marked by privatization and commercialization" (McGarthy 198). "A quick tour of the local bookshop will likely display all these proclivities for individualistic quests for something ‘inner’-inner self, inner child, even (in one case I noted recently) the inner wolf" (McIntosh 5).Rowan Williams, in drawing from Ernest Becker’s work, The Denial of Death, refers to experience and individual spirituality as enslaving and supporting of the lies fashioned before us. Williams refers to this as a diet of spiritual salt water (70).As can be seen, the idea of the person as a human constituted by relation to the other (and I might add, God) is coming to the front. However, residue of modernity can still be seen in compartmentalized and individualistic spirituality. "Postmodernism denies that knowledge is secured through distancing oneself from the object" (Knight III 58). It is clear then much of our spirituality is pseudo-spirituality. "Fraudulence is rampant. Our leaders, ignorant of human nature, promote pseudo-intimacies that dehumanize. Our celebrities offer a pseudo-transcendence that trivializes" (Peterson 35). "Spirituality", according to Peterson, is "the alert attention we give to a living God and the faithful response we make to him in community". (40). What about God in this time of flux and emergence?

David Tracy writes, "God enters postmodern history not as a consoling "ism" but as an awesome, often terrifying hope beyond hope" (Godzeiba 322). Unlike the unmoved principal or a deity conceived by the rational being, God comes to the forefront of postmodernity transcendent, holy, and intimate. Even more so, God is love (as St. John so boldly declared). According to Heiddeger the god of philosophy (the god of modernity) is one neither can pray or sacrifice to...nor can one fall to his knees in awe, play music and dance before this god (Godzieba 322). "The postmodern God is emphatically the God of love, and the economy of love is kenotic" (Ward 598). We see here a God who breaks into every aspect of existence and creation; a God that is community and participation. Again Ward writes, "…the operation of this love provides a redesciption of the Trinitarian God and the economy of salvation" (598). God emerges in postmodern conception as a God in relation and not a god akin to geometrical principals, the highest being in the chain or the mover. As the person of postmodernity realizes he or she is a person in relation to all of creation, so this person sees God, experiences God as holy and immanent. We merely not just dance inthis God, but God dances with us.

Departing to dance alone. Finding strength in the solitary ballet.

Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presence-Martin Buber (italics mine).

It would appear to be a contradiction to speak about individual times of prayer and solitary spirituality in the light of all I have just written However, we will see that being alone does not mean forgetting, ignoring, or not recalling the fact we of the other. The late Robert McAfee Brown called individual spirituality the ‘great fallacy’. He comes down hard on so called dualistic existence in which there is one realm (i.e. daily, physical existence) and then the inner realm (spiritual matters). There is an exterior reality that is left behind when the inner chamber is entered. He overturns the great fallacy by what he terms "withdrawal and return". Brown cites the examples of Moses and Jesus. Moses was not commissioned to pitch his tent after his visit from God in the burning bush. Moses was told to return to Egypt. "In the case of Jesus, each instance of "withdraw" is the vehicle for a "return" to new levels of activity…" (Brown 45). "The best way to understand "withdrawal and return", therefore, is to see it not as an oscillation between two different worlds, but as a way of concentrating for a time on a part of the single world we inhabit"(47). Henri Nouwen wrote in the book, Reaching out: "communal and individual prayer belong together as two folded hands" (113). In this world of bytes, anxiety, hectic and rushed lives, we must agree that times of clarity, refreshing, and refocusing are needed to maintain sanity, direction, and above all our love for others. "According to Nouwen, prayer is wrongly associated with a pious and devotional attitude and nothing more. Prayer deteriorates into an individual line of communion upward where the pious soul is strengthened apart from its social environment. This is the residue of modernity that characterizes a good majority of spirituality in our present day. It is the pseudo-spirituality that is salt water to the soul and leads to a shallow, narcissistic existence; the withdrawal to the subject and not returning to a diseased world.

We must not see times of refreshing and silence before God as a world denying or a forgetful time. The contemplative Thomas Merton wrote, "The love of others is a stimulus to interior life, not a danger to it" (46). The genuine kenotic love of others should drive us to times of silence. Such times of withdrawal into silence however are not empty or random times. Reformed theologian K.H. Miskott refers to such times as "filled silence" and Douglas Steere calls it "relentless clarity".

Communal and individual prayer is indeed two folded hands and seeing it as such is the overcoming of the ‘great fallacy’. Shutting out the world while I focus solely on my needs, wants, and perhaps trivial matters is a shutting out of God. Beholding the world in him and him in the world is where I wish to take this treatment next. This is a Trinitarian ethics of prayer.

Living excessively

Don Saliers writes in his work, The Soul in Paraphrase, "knowing God requires worldly embodiment" (85). Knowing, in this context, is participation and this has more to do with who God is than who we are. However, knowing who God is (triune, a community of overflow) we realize who we are. "The God who is love (ipse amore) does not remain locked up in ‘splendid isolation’ of self love but spills over into what is other than God…"(LaCugna 353). This was my very critique of the modern self. The modern person lived the great fallacy and defined itself by turning to inward realities. "Instead of the Cartesian ‘I think’…beginning with Gods love means I am loved, therefore I am (Olthuis 244). This is the rethought doctrine of humanity put forth by Zizioulas and MacMuarry. There is a two-fold sense in the two quotes above. One is God is not a distant, unmoved, firmly fixed deity. God is love and that love is excessive and spills over into creation. That being the case, beginning with this love, defines who I am to God and to the other. This takes me to the quote I began this section with; knowing this excessive God is participation. In such thinking, it is safe to presume that this excessive existence and participation is the accurate characterization of holiness and a holy life. What such overflow or excessiveness would look like is where I am headed next.

Michael Lodahl in his essay, And he felt compassion: holiness beyond the bounds of communityelucidates such notions as holiness as participation. Lodahl exegetes the parable of the good Samaritan and pivots the exegesis on Jesus’ words, "go and do likewise", which echoes the Deuteronomic code of, "do this and you will live". Jesus challenges the pervasive holiness-as-separation ideology. "To be perfect-a rather inadequate translation of the Greek teleios: complete, fulfilling ones purpose, on target-is to love without boundary" (Lodahl 161). This boundary, first mentioned in the thought of Zizioulas, is the boundary of the self which tries to define itself according to itself. "It must be confessed that there is a tendency among Christians to interpret holiness as withdrawal from society, civic concerns, "bad" people, and everything secular" (Wynkoop 29). Just a few pages earlier she writes in regards to Wesley’s view on holiness…"holiness has to do with persons in relationship" (25).

What is it that is done? What is done is a loving without or beyond boundary. In the Samaritan parable, holiness as separation is seen as perversion of what true holiness is. Holiness is answering speech that demands wine and oil be poured on the Samaritans wounds. "Do this and you will live" is defined in our relationship to one another in loving and living excessively. You may be wondering, "What has this to do with prayer"? Then it seems the great fallacy remains in you! There is a priestly element here. Our "go and do likewise" is mingled with our beholding the world in God. Ora et labora is translated from Latin as "pray and work". "The phrase Ora et labora comes out of the monastic tradition and out of a culture that placed God at the center of reality" (Halvorson 93). This is the definition of participation and worldly embodiment. Life is struggle, rejoicing, weeping, and all of the myriad emotions and experiences humanity may know. We behold the world in God and indeed God in the world and never shall the twain shall be separate. "…Holiness is realized by living in communion as Christ’s body through the Spirit amidst the vicissitudes and interruptions of living in a highly complex and fragmented world" (Downey 101). Jesus saw the whole polyphony of human life as prayer. Whether feeding, healing, rebuking, or praying before dawn, he was a priest offering up all of existence to the Father. He was not tainted by the bleeding woman nor was he defiled by eating the loaf with drunks, whores, and the IRS. In the very life of the Christ we see the abundance of God spilling over into wounded, broken down, abject peoples. They were taken into the very life of God and were changed forever. Mark McIntosh writes, "In Jesus, the finite and broken fragments of human existence are taken up into the healing and person-constituting fellowship of the divine persons" (162). Their lives became living prayers alluding to the grace, compassion, and restorative streams plentiful and flowing from God. Notice though, Jesus did not send them to seclusion or a cloister environment. He said, "go and do likewise". Knowing the Father meant worldly embodiment and such embodiment was the epitome of a holy life lived to the full. Jesus lived an excessive life and in his excess a community of pleroma was born.

Dancing in the steps of the Messiah. A rhythmic community.

In this last section, I want to view all that has been mentioned thus far in a community (i.e. church universal) element. Again, as done throughout, I will draw on various sources. I want to show how transformed personhood overflows outwardly and inwardly. A community of pleroma is a community of prayer, struggle, joy, and feasting on the fruits of the kingdom which has come and will yet come. Such a community living habitually in the Trinity is called to share such fruits with those not yet dancing and feasting.

Mark McIntosh writes, "…the Christian community is led by the Spirit to hear and respond to God’s word, offering the power of Christ in the heart of the world" (157). Johannes Nissan writes about the essence of a community thusly, "it is not a question of "what should I do" but more important is the question "who are we and who are we to be"? (200). Just as the solitary person becomes in relation to others and to God, so a community becomes as it lives to and for the other and God. William Placher refers to community as people who tell particular stories (143). These stories however are not flippant little quips and anecdotes. These stories create meaning, bring life where life was not (meaning ex nihilio), and open the community to draw in the other. These stories are embodied prayers of the community. "These narratives of a vulnerable God are not safe stories" writes Placher (141). "The Gospel of the crucified Jesus is not a safe retreat from the storms of contemporary social issues but sometimes the most direct and radical address that one can imagine"(141). Alan Torrence refers to the narrative-transforming aspect of the community as "doxological and semantic participation in God" (356).

Kenneth Leech picks up this ‘radical address of the kingdom’ (my phrase) in his work, True prayer. "The immediate indication of the presence of the Kingdom is movement: the lifeless stirs, the blind see, the dead are raised" (69). The narratives the community preaches, sings, utters, prays, etc open the community and make it what it is and should be; the body of the Christ on Earth. The community is holy when it overflows its life into the lives of others and the life of the world. "Being holy is being alive in the glory of God that transforms" (Downey 106). Its existence is an erotic existence. Erotic not in the perverted and distorted sense our culture and world has made it out to be. Erotic in that is yearns for the holistic salvation of a fallen world; a Godly yearning to see, taste, and touch the Kingdom come in full. "To preach the Gospel of the Kingdom to the poor, to heal the sick, to accept the despised, to free the prisoners, and to eat and drink with the hungry is the festal procession of Christ in God’s history with the world (Moltmann 78).

"The church is the bride who dances with him" wrote Hippolytus regarding the church (Moltmann 73). To say the church, the communion of saints is rhythmic, is to say it lives, moves, and has being in the living God who is movement, who is dance. The church as such also carries with it the theology of holiness. In the opening quote, we are given clarity in what this community is and does. As it dances in God it invites others to join the blessed motion; in so doing it is made holy. "Holiness is a wholeness transfigured. It sees all life in mysterious interconnection and bids us to join in that dance which emerges in response to the rhythm of the kingdom" (Leech 91). The Kingdom of God has rhythm! The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reverberate through the community of the redeemed. What would the church as movement, as love and prayer in motion look like? It would be opening up our love feast to the unemployed and destitute family living an abandoned Buick. It would look like a pastor sitting in a bar listening to real life, real stories, real pain and in turn uttering the narrative of a vulnerable God who walks among such as these and calls them "blessed". It would look like a congregation opening itself in agape to the gay man, the teenager in chains, black leather, and purple hair, the stepped on, burned out, the abused…the wealthy who think they have it all. In a simpler way, it looks like Jesus who listened, lived, and touched those who otherwise would have no one and nothing. It looks radical and is indeed radical. It is a radical dance of a holy and radical God who bids us, "I’ll lead you all in the dance said he".

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Author: Jerry Viou
Quodlibet Journal: Volume 4 Number 2-3, Summer 2002
ISSN: 1526-6575

-See original link.