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All Along the Watchtower

~ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you … John 13:34

All Along the Watchtower

Search results for: universalism

A Journey through Lent: Universalism & Julian of Norwich

23 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by JessicaHoff in Book Club, Faith, Julian of Norwich, St. Isaac, Trinity

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Julian of Norwich, Lent Book Club, St Isaac the Syrian

“In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.“

St Isaac the Syrian Discourses II.38.1-2

Holy Church teaches me to believe that all these shall be condemned everlastingly to hell. And given all of this I thought it impossible that all manner of things should be well, as Our Lord revealed at the this time. And I receioved no other answer in showing from our Lord God but this: “what is impossible to you is not impossible to me. I shall keep my word in all things, and I shall make all things well.”

Revelation of Divine Love, Chapter 32

The best known of all Mother Julian’s sayings is that “all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well”. But we see here how conflicted she was after the “showings”. The Church taught one thing, the experience of God seemed to teach her another. Her anxiety is clear in chapters 32 and chapter 50. In the latter she wrote:

My good Lord, I see that you are truth itself and I know for certain that we sin every day and deserve to be bitterly blamed; and I can neither give up the knowledge of this truth, nor can I see that you show us any kind of blame. How can this be?

Revelation, Chapter 50

She could not find in any of the “showings” that the omniscient and omnipotent God was “angry” with his finite creation. Indeed for her, our very existence proved that God was not angry, not least since he could simply have annihilated all of us at a stroke:

It seems to me that if God could be even slightly angry we could never have any life, or place, or being

Revelation Chapter 49

If God is, as we are told, “love” then how can he also be angry and want to exact vengeance on us?

The image of God as vengeful father is one at odds with the image of him as a loving mother. Speaking personally, I have always had a problem with the idea of an angry God, and the first time I read Mother Julian, as with the first time I read St Issac the Syrian (whom I quote above) it made me crystallise my discomfort. Like Mother Julian I can do nothing with it, but what she taught me was that I don’t need to do anything with it.

This is where the fact that she was an “unlettered” woman helps. A Schoolman would have wanted to come to a resolution of the difficulty and would have ended by agreeing with the condemnation of Origen’s (supposed) teaching at the second council of Constantinople in 553, that we cannot believe in “universal salvation”. Mother Julian, not confined by the rules of debate, could. according to taste, do what mothers often do when it comes to their children and discipline, which is exercise what (to some men) looks like muddled thinking, or what (to others) is a sensible acknowledgement of limitations. She could not, and did not, go outside what the Church taught, any more than I could or would.

But what she could do was to express what she was shown, which is the God of love who fits St Paul’s definition of love:

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not [a]puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, [b]thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Cor, 13-4-7

If this is “love” then St Paul omits to mention that the God who is love is “angry’, and will wreak vengeance on those who fail him. That was as far as Mother Julian could go. But without ever having heard of St Isaac, she found herself in the same place in terms of how the God who is love would bring creation to a place where it would be true that “all shall be well”:

there is a deed which the Holy Trinity shall do on the last day, and when that deed shall be done and how it shall be done in unknown to all creatures under Christ and shall be until it has been done … This is the great deed ordained by our Lord God from eternity, treasured up and hidden in his blessed breast, only known to himself, and by this deed he shall make all things well; for just as the Holy Trinity made all things from nothing, so the Holy Trinity make all well that is not well.

Revelation, Chapter 32

Just as God made everything at the beginning of the world, like a mother birthing a child, so at the end of things he will match that with another motherly action. We do not know what it will be, and anyone who claims they do claims too much, but we know it will make “all things well.” And after all, when it comes to seeking comfort, it is, perhaps, more usual for a child to go to her mother for that than to go to her father.

Mother Julian goes no further than St Isaac. But both mystics did not see God as an angry father whom we should obey because of fear of punishment. That idea might, of course, pose a problem for some, and as Mother Julian was the first to acknowledge, cannot be squared with the official teaching of the Church. But I, for one, come to God because I can do no other than to respond to the love he has shown me. A God who would behave in a manner which, in an earthly father, would have him banged up for child abuse (“if you don’t behave you will burn forever”) is one who is too frail and human to die upon a Cross for me. That he did, that he did it because he loves me is why I love him; I can do no other.

As for hell, for sure, we have Scriptural authority for knowing it exists, but what is it? Here I quote St Isaac again:

As for me I say that those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion of love. What is there more bitter and violent than the pains of love? Those who feel they have sinned against love bear in themselves a damnation much heavier than the most dreaded punishments. The suffering with which sinning against love afflicts the heart is more keenly felt than any other torment. It is absurd to assume that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by the presence of a friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been faithful.

That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion: remorse. But love inebriates the souls of the sons and daughters of heaven by its delectability.

 St Isaac the Syrian, Ascetic Treatises, 84

What could be worse than cutting yourself off from love by closing your heart to it?

Mother Julian and St Isaac have a lot in common, and I just wish I had the time and the ability to compare and contrast, but for our purposes this Lent, perhaps this will suffice? To some I shall be thought to have said too much, to others I shall be held to have been too cautious. In these matters the latter is perhaps the better charge.

#lentbookclub is on Twitter as #LentBookClub, Facebook as https://www.facebook.com/groups/LentBookClub, and is using The Way of Julian of Norwich by Sheila Upjohn which can be bought here rather than Amazon. It runs from Ash Wednesday 20210219 to Easter Sunday-ish 20210404 and we are doing a chapter a week, roughly. Folk who are blogging about this are Graham, at https://grahart.wordpress.com/, Andrew at https://www.shutlingsloe.co.uk/, Eric at https://sundrytimes2.wordpress.com/, Soobie at https://soobie64.medium.com/, Ruth at https://becausegodislove.wordpress.com/. Come join the pilgrimage with Julian to Norwich!

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Thoughts

31 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by Nicholas in Faith

≈ 10 Comments

All shall be well

I have enjoyed Jess’ posts on Julian of Norwich and look forward to many more. I would also be interested in seeing posts about Hildegard von Bingen.

Thinking about God’s love and justice and the concept of anger naturally led me to reflect on the Dies Irae and the promised restoration of all things. What does it mean to say that “all things shall be well”?

As orthodox Christians, we can proclaim neither universalism nor annihilationism. We believe in everlasting conscious torment for the unrepentant (those whom our politically incorrect forebears would call “the damned” and “the reprobate”). For them as individuals, it will not be well.

They shall be in everlasting agony. While there may no way around this and we accept that it is necessary for such individuals to be removed from the new heavens and new earth, lest it be spoiled and justice denied, we (and surely God, who is love) must be sad at such an outcome. Indeed, Christ Himself said that the Way is narrow, and that few find eternal life. We might understand “few” in a kind of relative sense; but, on any reading, it presupposes that there will be those who do not find eternal life.

The image found in Revelation of people being cast into the Lake of Fire is a haunting one. To describe all things as being well is to speak in an overall, objective sense about the fate of the cosmos, with the great division between the redeemed and the condemned, on whom “the wrath of God remains” (John 3:36).

Having recently finished reading a book defending the historical reliability of John’s Gospel, I am apt to remind the traditionalists and conservatives here, that the same John who wrote “God is love” is the John who recorded Jesus as speaking about the wrath of God and who received and recorded the visions of Revelation, which include, inter alia, this verse: “Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever” (Revelation 15:7, NIV). We must not mischaracterise the wrath of God, but neither must we pretend it is not a concept taught in Scripture.

Trumpets

I am still mulling the post-tribulational framework and will no doubt write more on the subject when I have found some appropriate resources. I would, however, like to set out some initial thoughts.

Post-tribulationists generally posit a parallel unfolding of the seals, trumpets, and bowls of Revelation, rather than the sequential reading espoused by pre-wrathers (and generally pre-tribulationists too). They must of necessity do this because they posit that Christ returns at the seventh trumpet, but the seventh seal clearly depicts his return. Therefore, in their schema, the seventh seal and seventh trumpet are different visions, but describing the same event. This is, as many of them have pointed out, is essentially the same process as we use to harmonise the Four Gospels, in order to dispel potential contradictions.

Revelation is clearly made up of different vision units. In general, I am quite comfortable with the idea that John revisits various events in the narrative to add further detail or show them from other perspectives, and this is consistent with how the Book of Daniel is written too (i.e. different visions given at different times, but describing – more or less – the same things).

However, I have always found Revelation 8:1-6 problematic for the reading of the seals and trumpets as concurrent, since it seems to imply that the trumpets follow the seals. I think, to preserve the concurrent reading, one would have to take 8:2 as indicating a new vision sequence has begun, which is certainly possible, as “And I saw” does seem to indicate new vision units in Revelation. The difficulty I have is as follows.

  1. The Day of the LORD clearly comes after Jesus returns (as we see from reading Joel 2 in parallel with the Olivet Discourse and Revelation 6).
  2. The Olivet Discourse (using the analogy of Noah) and the Lukan analogy of Lot, clearly depict physical catastrophe befalling the earth after Jesus has resurrected or transformed and gathered the saints.
  3. The trumpets and bowls (unlike the seals) clearly describe physical calamities befalling the earth.
  4. Therefore, it would make sense to understand these as the Day of the LORD and to place them after Jesus has returned, which is what the pre-wrath framework does.

I think there are a few ways the post-tribulationist can respond to this problem. One is to point out that physical calamities happen already in the present age, before Jesus has returned, so we need not locate the trumpets and/or bowls after the return of Christ simply because they involve physical calamities. Another, which I believe some – but not all – post-tribulationists do, is to make the seals and trumpets concurrent, but not the bowls.

This is a harmonisation the both places physical calamities after the return of Christ and keeps the seventh seal and sevent trumpet as concurrent. However, this view is not universally held by post-tribulationists because the earthquake at the seventh bowl is usually identified with the earthquake at the seventh trumpet, on the grounds of simplicity.

Lastly, I wanted to comment on post-tribulationism’s identification of the seventh trumpet of Revelation with the “last trumpet” mentioned by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4. As many have pointed out, Revelation was written some time after 1 Thessalonians. Furthermore, Paul does not give additional detail about the last trumpet itself. Accordingly there are different theories about what he may have meant. This makes it hard to be sure that the last trumpet in Paul’s writings is the same as the seventh trumpet in Revelation. That being said, I have no firm opinion either way at this time.

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End of year …

28 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by JessicaHoff in Anglicanism, Blogging, Faith

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Pre-Advent

Remember not the former things, nor consider of the things of old

Thus says the prophet Isaiah as he prepares the way for the one who is to come and make all things new. But for those of us coming to the end of the church year, with the new one starting tomorrow with the first Sunday in Advent, it is hard not to remember the former things. Advent is a time of preparation, and part of that, for me, is grounding myself.

For all of us this has been a year of struggle, and struggle in a way none of us could have anticipated only a year ago. The very idea that we would have been wearing face masks to go into a shop would have been laughed out of court; now you could find yourself in court for not doing it.

A year ago I was still not sure if I would write here, or anywhere else, ever again. As some of you know, I had what is often referred to as a “breakdown”. It was more of a “burn out”. I had left nothing undone, which was part of the problem, sometimes your body needs a break, even if your mind is saying otherwise. I have always lived more in my mind and paid it more attention than I have given to my body. The spirit has always been willing, it turned out that it and the flesh disagreed, and the latter has its own way of making its view felt if it feels ignored. But, with rest, and help, about this time last year, I began to emerge from the darkness, a darkness so black that it has helped me cope with the current darkness. At least now I see a light – and know it is not the oncoming train.

I am one of those fortunate people who has never doubted that God exists and is with me. I have often doubted the version of him that is sometimes served up to me. What I have experienced by way of love and mercy does not cohere with the view of a Father who would condemn many of his children to eternal torment. That’s not a doctrinal claim for universalism, it’s more an inability to believe that the God who has been with me through the very darkest times is the same God as preached in some quarters. As I recently commented to one of our longest and loveliest commentators, Paul was right – we see now through a glass darkly – but one day we shall see clearly.

And that is what looking back at this juncture tells me as I sit in the silence of my room with just my Rosary for company. Breaking down is a way to building back up, and building better. Making time to be with God every day, recognising that assuming he is there is fine, and right, but the only person in this relationship who suffers if I don’t make time for him is me.

Prayer is a habit, and by ensuring that I pray Morning and Evening Prayer, and Compline last thing, and my Rosary between times, I have found something which I probably ought to have known, but didn’t. When I started it felt like me addressing God, thanking him for his mercies to me and putting my petitions for others before him (I have real trouble praying for myself, but am getting there), but as I have gone on it feels different. It feels like tuning into something that is ongoing all the time – and during this period between All Saints’ and Advent, I really have felt as though I was accompanied by a great cloud of witnesses.

The lectionary readings too, are well-chosen. Through this last few weeks we have been following Isaiah and the writer of Revelation. The darkness through which Israel passed has been vivid in my mind, and the horror of the vision of John has, at times, been disquieting and even disturbing. But the Collects and the Prayers of Thanksgiving have carried me along. I have come to love the Blessing of Light that I use in place of the preparation for Evening Prayer, and as the last contribution here before Advent starts, I shall leave you with it:

Blessed are you, Lord God, creator of day and night:

to you be praise and glory for ever.

As darkness falls you renew your promise

to reveal among us the light of your presence.

By the light of Christ, your living Word,

dispel the darkness of our hearts

that we may walk as children of light

and sing your praise throughout the world.

Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit

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Leo the Great

10 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith, Pope

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Papacy, Pope Leo the Great

Today is the feast day of St Pope Leo the Great. As we have had some excellent posts recently on the themes of authority and catholicity, this might be an opportunity to say something about the role of Leo the Great in the process of establishing the place of the Papacy in these matters.

It is easy (which is why it is ao often done) to assume that from the beginning the Papacy based itself on the Petrine verses in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The Eastern Orthodox like to point out that those claims were cast in terms of ‘primacy’; they are correct. But what did that much-disputed word mean to those who used it in the early Church? If we are to understand this, we need to understand something about Roman ideas of inheritance and authority – ideas which were shared across the whole Empire – including Constantinople.

St. Leo the Great made two main contributions to the developing understanding of what ‘primacy’ mean. The first amounts to an assertion that the past existed in the present, not just because he was Peter’s successor, but in the form of a direct and present link between the Apostle and the Pope. As he put it in his sermon on 19 September 443 (Sermon 3.4)

Regard him [Peter] as present in the lowliness of my person. Honour him. In him continues to reside the responsibility for all shepherds, along with the protection of the sheep entrusted to them. His dignity does not fade even in an unworthy heir.’

This is what Leo understood by the saying of the Chalcedonian Fathers: ‘Peter has spoken through Leo. (See here also W. Ullmann, ‘Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies 1960, pp. 26-28).

Under Roman jurisprudence, a person was supposed to be present in his legal representative, even as the deceased was in his heir. The same jurisprudence was present in the eastern empire, so to argue that anyone in Constantinople would have been ignorant of this conception of what it meant for Leo to have said what he had said seems to strain credulity. Indeed, as K. Shatz puts it in Papal Primacy From Its Origins to the Present (1996), Leo made ‘the “church of tradition … into the church of the capital city that extends its laws to the whole world.’ (pp. 33-36 for the argument).

On this understanding the Pope was not simply Peter’s representative but his living successor – Peter spoke through him. Thus, Rome’s judgments and decrees were rendered universal because the Holy Apostle was understood to be present in Leo and in the system of justice he administered. As Leo put in in that same sermon on 19 September 443 (3.3):


Persevering in the fortitude he received, blessed Peter does not relinquish his government of the Church. He was ordained before the others so that, when he is called rock, declared foundation, installed as doorkeeper for the kingdom of heaven, appointed arbiter of binding and loosing (with his definitive judgments retaining forces even in heaven), we might know through the very mysteries of these appellations what sort of fellowship he had with Christ. He now manages the things entrusted to him more completely and effectively. He carries out every aspect of his duties and responsibilities in him and through him whom he has been glorified.

So, if we do anything correctly or judge anything correctly, if we obtain anything at all from the mercy of God through daily supplications, it comes about as the result of his works and merits. In this see his power lives on and his authority reigns supreme. This, dearly beloved, is what the confession has obtained [Matthew 16:18]. Since it was inspired by God the Father in the apostle’s heart, it has risen above all the uncertainties of human thinking and has received the strength of a rock that cannot be shaken by any pounding.

It is Peter’s presence that brings about the Christian universalism that Leo envisoned himself exercising. If we look at his letter to the bishops of Illyricium, 12 January 444, placing them under Anastasius, the bishop of Thessalonica, and telling them that serious disputes must be referred to Rome, we see him exercising that power of which his sermons spoke.

The primacy of Rome was not simply the result of Apostolic succession, or of inhertance from St. Peter, but of this very special relationship which ensured that Peter spoke through the Pope. As Leo says in a sermon given on 29 September: [Sermons 5.4]


our solemnity is not merely the apostolic dignity of the most blessed Peter. He does not cease to preside over his see but unfailingly maintains that fellowship which he has with the eternal Priest. That stability which he received from Christ the rock (by having himself been made ‘rock’) has poured over onto his heirs as well. Whenever there is any show of firmness, it is undoubtedly the shepherd’s fortitude that appears.


Leo’s views are set out in fuller form in a sermon preached on 29 June 443 (Sermon 83.1) in which he makes it clear that since Peter exercises the Lord’s power on His behalf, so too does the Pope exercise the powers of Christ Himself, as Peter speaks through him.

This is not a claim made by any other Bishop. It was made in public by Leo in his sermons and letters, and it was based firmly upon Scripture, patristic testimony and the common law of the Empire. Leo deserves to be called ‘the Great’, not only for what he did in his time as Pope, but also for the rich legacy he left us. His sermons are well worth acquainting yourselves with.

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Rotting in our Graves

21 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by Nicholas in Faith

≈ 4 Comments

Just as the resurrection is the hope of an individual, the Millennium is the hope of nations as entities in their own right.

And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

-Revelation 20:4

When we really begin to look at the small details of life and set them alongside the big picture, we see a great need for evangelisation and for the return of Christ. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are longing to see Christ ruling from Jerusalem over the nations. They long to see the death of Babylon the Great and the destruction of the Beast and the False Prophet. Ultimately, they desire the imprisonment and judgment of Satan, our enemy. The rot, the corruption is everywhere to see.

We may note that there has always been failure and evil in the world; we are fallen beings and there are fallen spirits at large. That does not mean that evil will always have sway over the human world. The earth belongs to God – He has the right to rule it as He sees fit, and He will step in at some point in history to free the earth from despotic governors.

Corruption of the State

The state was ordained by God to ensure civil harmony and as a defence against foreign invasion. These are legitimate aims, and are most easily observed in the acts of the police, the criminal courts, and the army. The state is not entitled to interfere in all aspects of life, however.

We see the corruption in the big controversies on front pages of newspapers and blogs:

  • redefining marriage;
  • redefining gender;
  • hampering free speech; and
  • permitting abortion.

But the rot is seen in the small things, the boring aspects of our everyday lives:

  • Inheritance tax;
  • Capital gains tax;
  • Some aspects of income tax;
  • Corporation tax;
  • Politicisation of education;
  • Excessive regulation for businesses; and
  • Quantitative easing.

The fingers of the state are in practically all aspects of our lives these days, and our ancestors would find this strange. Roger Scruton, talking about the free market, once remarked that one of the pillars of true conservatism is that we reserve some things from the market. These things we keep for family and church, and so forth. Similarly, we might remark that some things ought to be reserved from the state. The state has no right to interfere in private transactions, in matters of family life and personal expression. Conservatives are horrified by the vision of the state conjured up in Plato’s Republic; we ought to be asking ourselves whether those phantoms are present now even in so called “moderate” and “centrist” states. Where is the liberty our ancestors protected?

Corruption of Culture

If the state has signs of corruption, it inherited the disease from its people. Our legislatures, executives, and judiciaries are staffed by real, fallen human beings. As dangerous values perfuse the populace, they will inevitably find their way into the institutions that govern the people. The rise of leftism is evidence of this: even so called “conservative” parties show signs of the infection in their unquestioning approval of the expansion of the state. When small-government people ask questions or make observations, others around them look at them as if to say, “Are you out of your mind? Why shouldn’t the state be involved in X?” Few it seems are willing to ask the fundamental philosophical question of what the limits of state competence should be.

We have neo-conservatism to blame, in part, for this. Its constant use of the word “democracy” as a buzzword, as a sacred chant, has blinded people to the dangers of democracy and statism. It takes great effort now to introduce people to the ideas of classical liberalism and to show that the Founding Fathers of the United States of America were wary of the excesses of democracy they understood from their study of ancient Athens. A further contributing factor in the rise of this corruption is the decline of classical studies, which would reveal once again what the Founding Fathers knew from their childhood days. Were classical studies to become popular again, they would also need to be taught in a level manner – the leftist tendencies of revisionism would need to be exposed.

Corruption of the Church

The problems in the Church are increasingly being exposed for all to see across all traditions: Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, and evangelical/dissenting. Some of the most striking are:

  • Pederasty;
  • Ephebophilia;
  • The “Prosperity Gospel”;
  • National divisions within the Church (e.g. in the Ukraine);
  • Annihilationism;
  • Universalism;
  • Gay marriage;
  • Financial mismanagement;
  • Full preterism;
  • Ecumenism; and
  • Inter-faith dialogue.

These issues not only deter outsiders from the Gospel, but they also cause issues of governance and participation within the Church. There is now a choice facing Christians in all these traditions: do we try to remove the corruption from our ranks or do we go elsewhere? This is not an easy decision. There are good reasons to stay, the principal reason being to witness to those who are not Christ’s in the hope that they will repent. Catholics will of course argue that as theirs is the one, true Church, they cannot flee Catholicism itself: such would be apostasy or schism or both. They have “underground” options to consider, however – though these are more common in places of overt persecution than in the West.

***

I am aware that this post is largely assertions rather than argumentation. Such is required given the space of a single post, but it is worth discussing the reasoning behind these claims in the comments below as well as providing examples in evidence.

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Pope St Leo the Great and the development of the Papacy

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pope, Saints

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, Faith, history, Leo the Great

13 May is the centenary of the first appearance of Our Lady at Fatima, and we shall have a post on that. After that there will be a short series on the Council of Chalcedon, but as some background to the latter might be in order, especially around the claims made for the powers of the Pope, it seemed appropriate to deal with those wider questions in a short post, before proceeding to deal with Chalcedon,

It is easy (which is no doubt why it is done so often) to assume that from the beginning the Papacy based itself on the Petrine verses in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The Eastern Orthodox like to point out that those claims were cast in terms of ‘primacy’; they are correct. But what did that much-disputed word mean to those who used it in the early Church? If we are to understand this, we need to understand something about Roman ideas of inheritance and authority – ideas which were shared across the whole Empire – including Constantinople.

St. Leo the Great made two main contributions to the developing understanding of what ‘primacy’ mean. The first amounts to an assertion that the past existed in the present, not just because he was Peter’s successor, but in the form of a direct and present link between the Apostle and the Pope. As he put it in his sermon on 19 September 443 (Sermon 3.4)

Regard him [Peter] as present in the lowliness of my person. Honour him. In him continues to reside the responsibility for all shepherds, along with the protection of the sheep entrusted to them. His dignity does not fade even in an unworthy heir.’

This is what Leo understood by the saying of the Chalcedonian Fathers: ‘Peter has spoken through Leo. (See here also W. Ullmann, ‘Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies 1960, pp. 26-28).

Under Roman jurisprudence, a person was supposed to be present in his legal representative, even as the deceased was in his heir. The same jurisprudence was present in the eastern empire, so to argue that anyone in Constantinople would have been ignorant of this conception of what it meant for Leo to have said what he had said seems to strain credulity. Indeed, as K. Shatz puts it in Papal Primacy From Its Origins to the Present (1996), Leo made ‘the “church of tradition … into the church of the capital city that extends its laws to the whole world.’ (pp. 33-36 for the argument).

On this understanding the Pope was not simply Peter’s representative but his living successor – Peter spoke through him. Thus, Rome’s judgments and decrees were rendered universal because the Holy Apostle was understood to be present in Leo and in the system of justice he administered. As Leo put in in that same sermon on 19 September 443 (3.3):
Persevering in the fortitude he received, blessed Peter does not relinquish his government of the Church. He was ordained before the others so that, when he is called rock, declared foundation, installed as doorkeeper for the kingdom of heaven, appointed arbiter of binding and loosing (with his definitive judgments retaining forces even in heaven), we might know through the very mysteries of these appellations what sort of fellowship he had with Christ. He now manages the things entrusted to him more completely and effectively. He carries out every aspect of his duties and responsibilities in him and through him whom he has been glorified.

So, if we do anything correctly or judge anything correctly, if we obtain anything at all from the mercy of God through daily supplications, it comes about as the result of his works and merits. In this see his power lives on and his authority reigns supreme. This, dearly beloved, is what the confession has obtained [Matthew 16:18]. Since it was inspired by God the Father in the apostle’s heart, it has risen above all the uncertainties of human thinking and has received the strength of a rock that cannot be shaken by any pounding.

It is Peter’s presence that brings about the Christian universalism that Leo envisoned himself exercising. If we look at his letter to the bishops of Illyricium, 12 January 444, placing them under Anastasius, the bishop of Thessalonica, and telling them that serious disputes must be referred to Rome, we see him exercising that power of which his sermons spoke.

The primacy of Rome was not simply the result of Apostolic succession, or of inhertance from St. Peter, but of this very special relationship which ensured that Peter spoke through the Pope. As Leo says in a sermon given on 29 September: [Sermons 5.4]
our solemnity is not merely the apostolic dignity of the most blessed Peter. He does not cease to preside over his see but unfailingly maintains that fellowship which he has with the eternal Priest. That stability which he received from Christ the rock (by having himself been made ‘rock’) has poured over onto his heirs as well. Whenever there is any show of firmness, it is undoubtedly the shepherd’s fortitude that appears.
Leo’s views are set out in fuller form in a sermon preached on 29 June 443 (Sermon 83.1) in which he makes it clear that since Peter exercises the Lord’s power on His behalf, so too does the Pope exercise the powers of Christ Himself, as Peter speaks through him.

This is not a claim made by any other Bishop. It was made in public by Leo in his sermons and letters, and it was based firmly upon Scripture, patristic testimony and the common law of the Empire. How this impacted upon the background to Chalcedon will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.

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Leo the Great and the Papal claims

20 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith, Pope

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, history, Papacy

Leo the Great icon

In our search for authority we have seen that the Scriptures neither define nor interpret themselves The obvious place to go is the Pope. There is a good analysis of the claims made by the Church for Matthew 16:18 at the ‘Lonely Pilgrim’ blog (follow the link). Now either we believe Jesus meant what he said, or we need to explain it away. The Protestant view has been to find ingenious reasons why it doesn’t mean what the Catholic Church says it does, but before Catholics get too triumphalist, they might want to note that the Orthodox do not accept the Catholic view, even whilst fully acknowledging that the Bishop of Rome has an honoured historic position. Those with a taste for esoteric controversy might follow up this argument on various Catholic and Orthodox fora.

I probably ought to say up front that to me both the Catholic and the Orthodox views of the Papacy smack of special pleading: both selectively report Church history to justify their existing position. That does not mean that I don’t think they both have something in them, but it does mean that there is a good amount of tares in with the wheat.

The Orthodox are happy to accept a primacy of honour. That phrase would do a politician proud, since it can mean whatever its users want it to mean. It is said that that is what the early Church gave to the Bishop of Rome, but what does that mean?

Of course we can go back to Clement’s letters, and we can argue about who Clement was, and whether he was Pope, but let us not forget that the last person sending letters to advice and admonition to Corinth was St. Paul, and no one said he was Pope. But before we get carried away in the other direction, let us not try to make great claims for the so-called Pentarchy either. Jerusalem lost its important very early and never recovered its authority; Antioch’s first bishop was St. Peter, but no one there ever based any claims to general authority on it; Alexandria, which housed a famous theological school, never claimed authority outside of North Africa; and Constantinople was a late-comer which owed its authority solely to the Emperor.

If our understanding of anything has developed, it is the understanding of the position of the Pope. A recent scholarly book by Susan Wessel shows how Leo the Great (Pope 440-41) was the first Pope to make systematic use of the Petrine verses to show that Rome did, indeed, have authority over other Sees. St. Leo the Great made two main contributions to the developing understanding of what ‘primacy’ mean. The first amounts to an assertion that the past existed in the present, not just because he was Peter’s successor, but in the form of a direct and present link between the Apostle and the Pope. As he put it in his sermon on 19 September 443 (Sermon 3.4)

Regard him [Peter] as present in the lowliness of my person. Honour him. In him continues to reside the responsibility for all shepherds, along with the protection of the sheep entrusted to them. His dignity does not fade even in an unworthy heir.’

This is what Leo understood by the saying of the Chalcedonian Fathers: ‘Peter has spoken through Leo. (See here also W. Ullmann, ‘Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies 1960, pp. 26-28).

Under Roman jurisprudence, a person was supposed to be present in his legal representative, even as the deceased was in his heir. The same jurisprudence was present in the eastern empire, so to argue that anyone in Constantinople would have been ignorant of this conception of what it meant for Leo to have said what he had said seems to strain credulity. Indeed, as K. Shatz puts it in Papal Primacy From Its Origins to the Present (1996), Leo made ‘the “church of tradition … into the church of the capital city that extends its laws to the whole world.’ (pp. 33-36 for the argument).

On this understanding the Pope was not simply Peter’s representative but his living successor – Peter spoke through him. Thus, Rome’s judgments and decrees were rendered universal because the Holy Apostle was understood to be present in Leo and in the system of justice he administered. As Leo put in in that same sermon on 19 September 443 (3.3):
Persevering in the fortitude he received, blessed Peter does not relinquish his government of the Church. He was ordained before the others so that, when he is called rock, declared foundation, installed as doorkeeper for the kingdom of heaven, appointed arbiter of binding and loosing (with his definitive judgments retaining forces even in heaven), we might know through the very mysteries of these appellations what sort of fellowship he had with Christ. He now manages the things entrusted to him more completely and effectively. He carries out every aspect of his duties and responsibilities in him and through him whom he has been glorified.

So, if we do anything correctly or judge anything correctly, if we obtain anything at all from the mercy of God through daily supplications, it comes about as the result of his works and merits. In this see his power lives on and his authority reigns supreme. This, dearly beloved, is what the confession has obtained [Matthew 16:18]. Since it was inspired by God the Father in the apostle’s heart, it has risen above all the uncertainties of human thinking and has received the strength of a rock that cannot be shaken by any pounding.

It is Peter’s presence that brings about the Christian universalism that Leo envisoned himself exercising. If we look at his letter to the bishops of Illyricium, 12 January 444, placing them under Anastasius, the bishop of Thessalonica, and telling them that serious disputes must be referred to Rome, we see him exercising that power of which his sermons spoke.

The primacy of Rome was not simply the result of Apostolic succession, or of inhertance from St. Peter, but of this very special relationship which ensured that Peter spoke through the Pope. As Leo says in a sermon given on 29 September: [Sermons 5.4]
our solemnity is not merely the apostolic dignity of the most blessed Peter. He does not cease to preside over his see but unfailingly maintains that fellowship which he has with the eternal Priest. That stability which he received from Christ the rock (by having himself been made ‘rock’) has poured over onto his heirs as well. Whenever there is any show of firmness, it is undoubtedly the shepherd’s fortitude that appears.
Leo’s views are set out in fuller form in a sermon preached on 29 June 443 (Sermon 83.1) in which he makes it clear that since Peter exercises the Lord’s power on His behalf, so too does the Pope exercise the powers of Christ Himself, as Peter speaks through him.

This is not a claim made by any other Bishop. It was made in public by Leo in his sermons and letters, and it was based firmly upon Scripture, patristic testimony and the common law of the Empire. Before examining how it was exercised in a situation where there was a dispute, we must turn to Leo’s second contribution to the delineation of the Petrine primacy.

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Saved? An Advent reflection

30 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Advent, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Salvation

≈ 37 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, Christianity, Faith, God, Jesus, love

AdventWeek1

The major, but often unstated argument against the idea of universalism – that is that all will be saved – is that Christ was incarnated, died and was resurrected to save us. If we are all saved by God’s mercy, the question arises why did he bother? There was a purpose in his mission, his suffering and in the work of the Church he founded, none of which can be adequately accounted for in the belief that we are all saved. At the very least, the requirement for salvation is faith that Jesus is Lord and that we are saved through faith in him. It follows from this that, embracing our salvation, our new life in him should bear witness to the changes it has wrought in us. That’s not asking for the sort of behaviour which some of us might find excessive (although we might pull ourselves up a bit here and ask how else one is supposed to respond to the Good News that we are saved?), but it is to say that a faith which in no way evidences itself is a strange phenomenon (St James has harder things to say about this, of course). Now we can, and we do, argue about the Church, but as four years or so here shows (and as history confirms) this is a fruitless pursuit; but the churches all have in common the view that Jesus came to save us, and to offer us eternal life.

Now it may be, as some would argue, that the alternative to eternal life is death, extinction, non-existence, and we have discussed this here many times (as the link will show, a surprisingly large number). In my simple way, I take the many mentions of hell in the New Testament by Jesus to mean that there is a hell. I am quite content to think, with St Isaac the Syrian, that it is a state of separation from God that sinful and wilful men bring on themselves, and that the realisation of what one has done is like a burning pain, and I am uneasy with the literal view; but I know what my Churches teaches and reject the crude caricature foisted on us by atheists who ought to know better. But whatever view one takes, there is a place of separation from God, and it is a place from which, if we but knew it, we should pray to be saved. But we do not need to pray for a Saviour – we have one in Christ Jesus. Although, as a Catholic, I would, of course, say that the best place to find him is in the Church he founded, I don’t, as I say, want to be side-tracked by confessional disputes. I know many people who are better followers of Christ than I am if judged by their behaviour, and many of them are not Catholics, and if pressed I should simply say God is the only Just Judge and he alone can say who is saved and who is not; I should also add that I have found the Catholic Church the best place to find my Lord and could only say, if asked, that I am sure others would find it so too. But, and this gets us back to the main point of this post, the fact remains there is something from which to be saved. That being so, then unless all men embrace Christ as Saviour, they cannot be saved. Those who are ignorant of his holy name are in another category – that of invincible ignorance, and the failure is that of those who preach his name, not of those we have not reached. But again, the conclusion is that people need saving.

Our friend Bosco tells us truly that Christ is knocking at the door of our heart – and we should let him in, not because we fear hell-fire, but because we recognised in his out-stretched arms the love he first had for us. Now there’s a thought for Advent.

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Mercy and the Law

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Faith, Salvation

≈ 33 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, controversy, God, Jesus, love

prodigal_son_1

There are few topics more likely to get Catholics hot under the collar than the topic of this piece. Pope Francis comes in for a lot of criticism for his emphasis on God’s mercy. Many, it sometimes seem, read the parable of the Prodigal Son and think the elder son had it right – why on earth should his wastrel of a younger brother be welcomed back unconditionally? But we are, perhaps, neglecting the message of rdemption and hope it offers. There is a natural desire in us for ‘justice’ to be done. If someone has offended us, many of us find it hard simply to accept an apology and let go of our grievance; some can remember sleights from many years ago with a preciseness which we cannot bring to acts of loving kindness; but perhaps we have not had enough of those and too many sleights?

God as the Israelites came to know him had many of the attributes of the tribal gods of the tribes around them: he would deliver his people victory in battle; he would scatter their enemies; he needed appeasing with animal sacrifices; he was a jaelous God, swift to anger; he could be bargained with and his wrath appeased by sacrifices and by sharp reasoning. The Israelites knew there was One God, and they knew His Law, but they saw Him as the Lord God Mighty in battle who resembled a wise but irascible tribal leader. But as the fuller revelation we got from Our Lord showed, this was an imperfect understanding. Some, now, as then, go to the other extreme and almost see no need for repentance, coming close to, or even embracing, universalism. BUt, alas, not all are saved. Not because they cannot be saved,. but because they elect not to be; God loves us so much that, like any good parent, he does not insist we love him back. A broken and a contrite heart he will not reject; but a proud and haughty spirit will reject him.

The key, surely, is in the revolutionary notion that ‘God is love’? Note, we are not told that love is one of his many attributes, or that it is a part of him, or that it is something he can do or not do; it is his very essence. The Trinity is love, it is sustained by a love so overwhelming that it spilled out intop the creation of all that there is. Can we conceive of that? Not really. But God is good, he knows his children, and so the Word Incarnate taught us that God is the Father – the Father we see in the prodigal, who dioscerns the secrets of our hearts, who desires only that we turn from sin and return his love. But so damaged and broken are we by sin and its effects that we complicate this. Which part of ‘Repent and believe’ do we not understand? Which of us would turn to a child who was sorry and shout at him or her and insist that they did a period of penance before we would believe them? Of course, if they showed their contrition with some act of goodness and kindness to us or to others, we should rejoice, but we would not turn our child from our door if they repented. So nor will God. None of this exempts us from obeying his precepts, or from needing to be reconciled when we fall away – but it gives s the hope that the Resurrection brings – that if we will but return his love then all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

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Hell: a synopsis of Catholic teaching

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Blogging, Catholic Tradition, Faith, St. Isaac

≈ 164 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, controversy, Faith, Hell, Salvation, sin

 

JohnPaulII-Pope

St John Paul II’s ‘Crossing the threshold of hope’ informs much of this post.

The subject of hell has somewhat dominated our blog of late, and it might be time to outline what the Catholic Church has to say on the subject. As so often, it is necessary to draw a distinction between what the pious believe in a general way, and what the Church teaches officially. To give one example, many ordinary Catholics (and non-Catholics) would, if asked about hell, respond in terms of pitchforks, devils and real fire burning people, and if asked why they believe that would say ‘it is in the Bible’. But as our friend Bosco here so often shows, it is not enough to read everything in Scripture literally. The Church teaches from Scripture and Tradition, and does not neglect reason either. It knows that much of what will happen after death is a mystery, and, contrary to the charges of some of its critics, it does not try to make cut and dried what is mysterious. Those caveats entered, let me offer a synopsis of what I understand Catholic teaching in this area to be saying.

At death the soul is judged – this is known as the particular judgment. There are, the Church teaches, three outcomes to this judgment immediately after death: immediate unification with Christ; conditional unification, which is commonly called Purgatory; and immediate rejection which is eternal damnation – as the catechism puts it:

To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”

The chief punishment of hell is separation from God. The careful reader of the link will see that the Church puts inverted commas around ‘eternal fire’, and this is because it is not pronouncing on the literal presence of fire. St Thomas Aquinas says it is a real fire, but with all respect to the Angelic doctor, that is his opinion, one we should take seriously, but not an article of faith. But it must be emphasised that in its official teaching the Church relies, as it always does, on the words of Jesus, who, according to St Matthew, said that at death people would be separated into two groups – everlasting punishment or eternal life. I can quite understand the Apologetics which then queries the existence of Purgatory on the ground this does not fit with the twofold division here (although, since the Church teaches that eternally there are only two destinations for us, there is no contradiction); what I find more puzzling is the notion that the idea of everlasting hell is not to be derived from this.

I quite understand the impatience of some thinkers with the assumption that, for example, when Paul speaks of people being unworthy of eternal life, that means they are going to hell, or that when he says the wages of sin are death that means sinners go to hell. If you do not believe in hell, or you do not believe in the Catholic teaching, you could not extrapolate it from such passages. However, we read Scripture as a whole, and once you take the sense of the Matthean passage just quoted, then it is natural to talk of hell in relation to the Pauline passages. I would entirely take Jessica’s point that Paul does not major on this theme, and would add to it that the Catholic Church follows suit – in a catechism of 2865 paragraphs only 5 of them deal with hell. As ever, the Church follows in the path of the first evangelists. This has the huge advantage that it can be secure in its teaching; it has the eternal disadvantage that there will be things it teaches which every age will find difficult. Our own age finds the idea of eternal torment one of those things. But let us examine the nature of that torment as far as we can.

Balthasar, whose Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?” (1986) is more often criticised than read, did not teach universalism (indeed, it seems rather doubtful as to whether Origen did so either, but that’s another matter). He acknowledged that we all stand under judgment, and that, despite the distastefulness of the idea, eternal torment was not to be dismissed:

If we take our faith seriously and respect the words of Scripture, we must resign ourselves to admitting such an ultimate possibility, our feelings of revulsion notwithstanding. We may not simply ignore such a threat; we may not easily dismiss it, neither for ourselves nor for any of our brothers and sisters in Christ” (p. 237).

In this he was at one with St John Paul II, whose book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994), also spoke of the hope that we might legitimately have that all men might yet be saved, but added (as Balthasar did) that sinful, prideful man might reject the love of God and choose not to be in his presence. To quote St John Paul directly:

“… yet the words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Matthew 25:46).”

Speaking in a General Audience on 28 July 1999, St John Paul said:

The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.

God grants us free-will and we can reject him – in which case, as St John Paul II put it:

Damnation remains a real possibility, but it is not granted to us, without special divine revelation, to know which human beings are effectively involved in it. The thought of hell — and even less the improper use of biblical images — must not create anxiety or despair, but is a necessary and healthy reminder of freedom within the proclamation that the risen Jesus has conquered Satan, giving us the Spirit of God who makes us cry “Abba, Father!” (Rm 8:15; Gal 4:6).

The Church prays that all men may be saved (CCC 1821) and that no one will be lost (CCC 1058), and since Christ came to save all, again, and as usual, it does no more than its founder taught it. But Saint John Paul is right, it is not given to us to know who is in hell. Nor, in speaking of the latter, is it necessary to postulate literal flames. St Isaac the Syrian, in speaking of hell, expressed it best:

Those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion of love. What is there more bitter and violent than the pains of love? Those who feel they have sinned against love bear in themselves a damnation much heavier than the most dreaded punishments. The suffering with which sinning against love afflicts the heart is more keenly felt than any other torment. It is absurd to assume that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by the presence of a friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been faithful. That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion: remorse.

This is very far away from pitchforks and devils and torture chambers. It is also, I would suggest, more accessible for us all. Which of us, having done something very wrong and come to repentance has not been tortured by the remembrance of our sin? As the old Anglican General Confession put it: ‘The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.’ These are the things which drive us to confess and to repentance. They are healthy for us because they encourage us to turn aside from our sins.

None of this is to say that ‘fear’ in its common sense, is what drives us to God. If we love Him, we will feel remorse, and the remembrance of our sins is intolerable. If we do not, then hell is most likely the state of coming to that realisation too late. That is our choice. There is no eternal torture chamber created by God – just the one we construct for ourselves.

I hope that this helps set forth what the Church teaches in a form which is of assistance. The traditional caricatures are not, in my own view, very helpful, and, as we have seen here recently, can create confusion and anxiety. That is not what the Church wishes to do – it wishes as its founder wished, that all men might turn from their sins in repentance and come to Christ. Might we hope for that? Of course we can, the Church does; can we say it is so? No, for the Church has not said so. St Isaac said this life is for repentance, and, as the thief at the right hand of the Saviour found, whilst there is life there is hope – and whilst there is hope, then there is prayer we can all offer that all who have not yet repented and turned to Christ, might yet do so.

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"Not all those who wander are lost"- J.R.R. Tolkien

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Pictures by Catherine Young

Men Are Like Wine

Acts of the Apostasy

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