God is hidden from our eyes, mankind cannot look upon him and live. He appears in a cloud, in a burning bush, in the quiet after the storm, and he speaks through the prophets and through His Law. This is the God we see in the Old Testament. This is God as King, as Judge, too splendid for human eye to see – only to be accessed through other mediums – never directly. God made man. We are the creature, He is the Creator: his wisdom so far above our imaginings that we cannot quite grasp it. All of this is the language we might expect from a people who lived with the splendours of the Pharoahs or the rulers of Babylon: God is like those rulers, but so much more potent and so much more mysterious. He is the God who drowns Pharoah’s men in the tide, who assails the enemies of the House of Israel, and who will avange all slights and wrongs. This is like the most powerful monarch ever known to the power of a million. God is hidden from our eyes, immortal, invisible, the only wise.
All of that granted, we can understand better why so many Jews would not receive Christ. Yes, by all means, when He was doing great miracles, they could believe he was the Prophet long-promised – even the Messiah who would sweep the Roman filth from the land and restore Zion. But when he hung there on the Cross, scourged and battered beyond recognition? Were they to believe that the God that was hidden was now hanging there for all to jeer at? Were they to believe that God had come in human form as a tiny baby, nursing at his mother’s breasts? What was this? How could it be so? It was little wonder that even some of those who confessed Christ as saviour sought to find a way to align that with the God who was hidden. One of the earliest heresies – docetism – posited that God’s Spirit had inhabited the body of Jesus, but had departed at the crucifixion – a belief shared today by many Muslims, picked up, in all probability, by Mohammed from Christian heretics. It was certainly a way of reconciling the grandeur of the hidden God with the reality of Christ’s suffering.
But it is a heresy, because we cannot be redeemed by a fellow creature, no matter how holy. Only the assuption of our human nature on the part of God could redeem it. The whole of early Christology was a search for how this necessary condition could have happened. When the smoke of battle cleared, the Church accepted that the divine and human nature existed in the one body of Christ, without intermingling. Christ was fully human and fully God. That is why it mattered that Mary was the ‘Mother of God’ – Christ is God, Mary is his mother, she is therefore the mother of God. That is why it was important to the early Christians to be able to represent Christ pictorally and in other ways – the fact that God was made flesh meant we could see Him – he was no longer hidden from our eyes. Those who mistakenly suppose God fobids us to make an image of Jesus and his mother, inadvertently fall into the trap of supposing God does not mean us to worship him in images. Images of God in the flesh are a living testimony to the truth that God is man and God is divine. The divinity we see as through a glass darkly – but the flesh we see, and through the flesh our flesh is redeemed and we are made one with him.
Nicholas said:
A lovely post, C, and an important reminder of the reality of depiction in the early Church, as seen at places like the Via Labicana Catacombs, and the Church of Dura Europos.
I think one of the problems why certain Protestants fail to understand our liberty in this matter is their lack of contextual knowledge for the Old Testament. Another reason is that many churches simply ignore or minimize the Old Testament, which in turn deprives the new Testament of its proper context, since so much of it is essentially a Second Temple commentary on the Old Testament and Deuterocanon and Pseudepigrapha (Enoch is actually referenced multiple times, not just in Jude’s epistle).
Lastly, we generally don’t spend enough time at the meta-level, reflecting on the a priori assumptions we bring to our reading of Scripture. While many might decry this as unnecessarily leaning on man’s wisdom, it is in fact necessary because we have a break between how our forebears read the Scriptures and how we do. What they did naturally many are oblivious to.
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Philip Augustine said:
Nick, I’m curious, in regards to meta-level and priori assumptions does your language here simply a redundancy to stress the point? Or am I failing to understand your use of meta?
I also found the idea of priori knowledge fascinating is why I ask.
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Nicholas said:
By a priori ideas, I mean the rules that we unconsciously apply to the text that arguably are not derived from the text itself (therefore, are not a posteriori). E.g. “Genesis 1 should be read hyper-literally”. This is a rule many people apply to the text (thus becoming Young Earth Creationists), but the text doesn’t actually say: “Read me this way.”
Re: meta-level, I mean we should be consciously reflecting on how we read the Bible – analysis of hermeneutics, but also, stepping back from that, a little psychology, asking why we tend to jump into certain hermeneutic approaches.
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Philip Augustine said:
Ahh thanks, I understood your use of priori, I failed at meta-level, but I do fail at actually consciously examining the way I look at scripture. My problem is that I’ve been trained to analysis historical documents for biases etc. but I usually only apply the knowledge to things I disagree with…
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Nicholas said:
I know what you mean. And of course, there is a tension in our faith between the view of knowledge as leading to pride and the view of teachers as important parts of gods community. I use the Nicene Creed as a kind of safety valve to protect me from certain extremes – so I guess I implicitly acknowledge the role of the Magisterium to safeguard orthodoxy.
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NEO said:
Just a quick interjection here, Philip, I think we all do that. It’s one of the ways we form our own personal ‘echo-chambers’ as they say these days. I doubt any of can fix it, but we should try.
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Celia said:
This would make a very interesting blog I think, if you can expand on these thoughts.
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Nicholas said:
Thank you, Celia. I shall try to get around to it this week. I have avoided the topic somewhat as I’d rather not set of Bosco…
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Celia said:
I completely understand. However, there are some of here eager to learn and grow in our faith. 🙂
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Bosco the Heretic said:
I thought you said you went a Mary worshiper.
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Celia said:
Right I’m not a “Mary worshiper” as you so impolitely put it any more than Nicholas is. Some of enjoy learning, others enjoy repeating their errors over and over again. To each his own I guess.
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chalcedon451 said:
Most of us prefer your way, Celia.
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Celia said:
Thank you! 🙂
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Bosco the Heretic said:
The divinity we see as through a glass darkly – but the flesh we see, and through the flesh our flesh is redeemed and we are made one with him.
I just noticed this on reading the post a second time. My gut reaction to this statement is that it is a yes and no statement. Ill have to research again. Yes…by his strips(on his flesh) we are healed.
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tony s. said:
Your gut reaction. Yes, you just believe whatever your gut tells you to believe. Just make up your beliefs as you go along, Bosco, based on your feelings and tingles.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
Im getting another gut feeling. You sound vaguely familiar. Have we met befor? Im sensing this evil smell ive smelled somewhere befor.
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Celia said:
Bosco, I don’t think you should call someone evil because they disagree or challenge you. Just sayin’, don’t blow your stack at me please.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
Don’t worry about it good sister. We are cool. I have long standing enemies.
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Patrick E. Devens said:
Don’t worry Bosco. The smell follows you where ever you go.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
Since good brother XChalcedon believes every word of the catechism, I guess he believes he is going to be a god. he swears he believes every word of it. I cant wait to se what else these pedophiles have come up with that good brother Chalcedon must believe.
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Celia said:
I am hoping that Chalcedon can address that “becoming a god” business in a blog post. This much I understand, that God wants us to be one with him. Jesus is the bridegroom, the church (all believers) are the bride. Bride and bridegroom become one. Also, we are made in God’s image. We are sons and daughters of the Most High. We are not just friends, not just neighbors, but intimately called to be in union with Christ in Heaven. This is what I think is meant in the CC. I don’t think that is so horrible, in fact it is a great blessing.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
What you just said was the first thing to run thru my small mind. But the catechism is false. That’s the bottom line.
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chalcedon451 said:
Three questions, Bosco: Have you ever read it? Which parts? And why do you think those parts are false? I’m guessing you will say you haven’t but you don’t need to because “you know”. Just so you know, that explanation is so lame because it really means you don’t have an argument or an explanation, but you do have a prejudice which you don’t want to shift.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
Im never gonna read the whole katerkism. I waste enough time. What I did read was breath taking. It would say something made up and then finish the sentence with a quote from scripture, hoing the reader would think the whole sentence was scripture. Verily they will have their reward.
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tony s. said:
Bosco, is asking for an explanation. This is a request from a person who believes what he believes because it just feels right to him.
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chalcedon451 said:
We are all adopted children of God, and as such will, indeed, be one with him. I wouldn’t expect you to take what Jesus says seriously.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
Don’t believe the catechism. Its a handbook for a religion that bows itself to graven images.
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chalcedon451 said:
We have been here so many times. IN pagan times bowing to an image was bowing to a false God not the real God. No Catholic believes in pagan gods.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
We have been over this. My answer to why I maintain Catholicism to not just be false, but of the Devil , is its use of graven images. Not counting the made up fables. I have nothing agaist the washinton monument or Lincolns statue. They aren’t for religious purposes.
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chalcedon451 said:
Graven images are images you worship – as Nicholas has spent two posts telling you. Your ignorance is amazing.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
Good brother Nicholas tan talk and explain till hes blue in the face. An image made by human hands is a graven image. Im not falling for the..” if only one doesn’t worship it” rroutine. Do you know how much trouble images got the Israelis into with god? Even if they didn’t worship them. Im not going to give you an example because you are a bible scholar and know it already. HHmmmm, if you know it…hhhmmmmm, why would you continue in a cult knee deep in images. Well. that’s not for me to reason why?
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chalcedon451 said:
As I say, your mind is closed to facts. The obvious fact is one you refuse to admit, which is that neither I nor any Catholic worship images. This is obvious, and sometimes you even admit it. You are simply an anti-Catholic bot, Bosco, you repeat your lies because you are occupied by a lying spirit – sad.
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Bosco the Heretic said:
Yeah, you caught me. Im a liar.
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chalcedon451 said:
No, the spirit in you tends that way.
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Patrick E. Devens said:
You are taking the ‘god’ business out of context.
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