Category Archives: Early Church

Choosing the Canon (4) the rule of faith

31 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith, Reading the BIble

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

,

Saint-Irenaeus

“Wherefore, let us leave empty and vain thoughts, and come unto the glorious and venerable rule of our holy calling,” thus  Titus Flavius Clemens, or as he is better known to history, Clement of Alexandria, in  his first letter to the Corinthians. what was this “rule of faith’? Irenaeus outlines it in chapter 9 of the first book of Adversus Heraesis when he writes about St John:

proclaiming one God, the Almighty, and one Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten, by whom all things were made, declares that this was the Son of God, this the Only-begotten, this the Former of all things, this the true Light who enlighteneth every man, this the Creator of the world, this He that came to His own, this He that became flesh and dwelt among us

We see it in Tertullian (c.160-225), Hippolytus (c.170-236), as well as later in St Athanasius (c.296-373) and St Augustine (c. 354-4300. It consists of a statement of early Christian teaching and communal belief which could be used, as Clement used it, to refute heresy.

The core belief was that Jesus is the Son of God, the Creator of all things, who had become man and dwelt among us, and who died on the Cross, rose from the dead, and later ascended into Heaven, and who is the Way, the Truth and the Light. These beliefs were supported in the Apostolic writings which were identified by tradition because they were the “rule of faith” by which Christians could be assured of these things. That did not stop some Christians, like Irenaeus taking a view which rested on revelation, tradition, and on the power of the Holy Spirit, or others, like Clement, taking a more philosophical view. The “rule of faith” allowed both idioms; what it did not allow was Gnostic claims that there was “another Saviour, and another Logos, the son of Monogenes, and another Christ produced for the re-establishment of the Pleroma.” This “rule of faith” we see across the Mediterranean and what we call the Middle East, it was not the product of Rome or, indeed, of any central authority, it was the common possession of the Church from the “elders” supported by the Canon.

This is expressed best by Irenaeus when he wrote:

The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone [in this], for there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome despatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace, renewing their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles, proclaiming the one God, omnipotent, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Creator of man, who brought on the deluge, and called Abraham, who led the people from the land of Egypt, spake with Moses, set forth the law, sent the prophets, and who has prepared fire for the devil and his angels. From this document, whosoever chooses to do so, may learn that He, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was preached by the Churches, and may also understand the apostolical tradition of the Church, since this Epistle is of older date than these men who are now propagating falsehood, and who conjure into existence another god beyond the Creator and the Maker of all existing things. To this Clement there succeeded Evaristus. Alexander followed Evaristus; then, sixth from the apostles, Sixtus was appointed; after him, Telephorus, who was gloriously martyred; then Hyginus; after him, Pius; then after him, Anicetus. Sorer having succeeded Anicetus, Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold the inheritance of the episcopate. In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth.

This is worth quoting at length as it conveys better than any summary the way in which Bishops like Irenaeus saw themselves as receiving and passing on what had been received from the Apostles themselves, as recorded in the canonical Gospels. As Clement put it:

42:1 The Apostles received for us the gospel from our Lord Jesus Christ; our Lord Jesus Christ received it from God.

42:2 Christ, therefore, was sent out from God, and the Apostles from Christ; and both these things were done in good order, according to the will of God.

42:3 They, therefore, having received the promises, having been fully persuaded by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and having been confirmed by the word of God, with the full persuasion of the Holy Spirit, went forth preaching the good tidings that the kingdom of God was at hand.

42:4 Preaching, therefore, through the countries and cities, they appointed their firstfruits to be bishops and deacons over such as should believe, after they had proved them in the Spirit.

42:5 And this they did in no new way, for in truth it had in long past time been written concerning bishops and deacons; for the scripture, in a certain place, saith in this wise: I will establish their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.

As Irenaeus put it:

WE have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. 

These men were not part of some “orthodox” conspiracy designed to impose order on “diversity:, they were the stewards the the Gospel message which they had the duty to protect and proclaim. It is not surprising that this “rule of faith” became the origin of the Nicere Creed.

That should not be taken to mean that there were not theological developments along the way, the Trinity is one example of such a development, but it does mean that, as Larry Hurtado put it:

Well before the influence of Constantine and the councils of bishops in the fourth century and thereafter, it was clear that proto-orthodox Christianity was ascendant, and represented the emergent mainstream. Proto-orthodox devotion to Jesus of the seond century constitutes the pattern of belief and practiced that shaped Christian tradition thereafter. [L.W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity].

I would be tempted to tweak that a little after what has been outlined here and to say that the Creeds approved by the Church Fathers, like the Canon they confirmed, served as a theological continuation of inherited orthodoxy, and as its chief means of transmitting what had been inherited.

None of that is to take away from the fierce debates over heresy and the part they played in focussing the mind of the Church on subjects such as the Trinity and Christology, but it is to say that it was the Church which preserved and transmitted what it had received from the Apostles.

My thanks to those of you who have borne with me thus far, and to those who have commented. The attempt to summarise such a vast topic inevitably produces simplifications, but I hope I have reflected what I have read. I am conscious that the sources here are Western in the main, and in later posts I hope to explore other examples of the tradition.

 

Choosing Scripture (1) Canon

28 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Bible, Early Church, Faith, Reading the BIble

≈ 47 Comments

Tags

,

bishops-bible

How do we know what is “Scripture”? Despite the ingenious answer of our long-time commentator, Bosco, that “it’s in the contents page,” that is not the right answer. Indeed, one question we need to pose at the start is whether the Evangelists knew that they were writing “Scripture”? Even before that we need to ask how we know who wrote the Gospels? Since the answer in both cases is “the Church” we also need to know what that means? This is not just to combat the anti-Catholic gut instinct which recoils from the idea, but also to combat the conspiracy theorists who claim that we owe the Bible to some nefarious work under the Emperor Constantine.

The first thing to note here is that when the Evangelists wrote they knew what they meant by “scripture”, it was what we call the Old Testament. The Law, the Prophets and the Writings, the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible were at the heart of Jewish culture and all Jews would have been versed in them. We know that about 85 A.D. there was a council at Jamnia which decided what books were canonical, but most scholars agree that simply ratified long practice – something which, as we shall see, was true of what we call the New Testament too.

The first part of Jewish Scripture, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testment were substantially complerte by the fifth century B.C., but may date back even earlier. The Prophets and the Writings date back to about 165 B.C. As the Jewish author Josephus, writing in the first century AD. put it: “We do not possess  myriads of inconsistent books, conflicting with each other, our books, those which are justly accredited, are but two and twenty.” At Jamnia there was a pruning process which excluded writings classed .as apochrypha. There were two common forms of Scripture.

Some time in the third century BC. the large Jewish population in Alexandria produced what we call the Septuagint, that was a Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures designed to meet the need of the already numerous diaspora. The original Septuagint included only the Books of the Law, the rest of the Old Testament was translated by the early Christians as a service to those coming to the Faith.

The Jews regarded these books as inspired by God and the list of books was seen as a rule of faith – the Greek kanon means a measuring rod or a rule. It was not until the fourth century AD. that the word came to be used to describe the list of Christian books which contained the rule of faith. To be clear, the Canon reflected a consensus on the books already in circulation in the early Church, and as at Jamnia, the Canon reflected the choices made by that Church. There was no grand Council at which learned men argued the case for book x or book y, there was no choice between the “Gospel of Thomas” and the “Gospel of Mark” at which the latter was accepted and the former rejected; what they was instead was a recognition of what the early Church considered to be the Canon, or the rule of faith which summed up Christian teaching. That is a vital point to bear in mind. What we call the New Testment did for Christians what the Old Testament did for the Jewsm which is to act as a summary of Christian teaching; the Old Testament books had also been accepted for the same reason, they were vital to understanding what one writer called “the memoirs of the Apostles.”

It is, as so often, St Paul, in the earliest of the writings which comprise the Canon, who sets out its purpose. Writing to the Colossiansas early as thirty years after the crucifixion, he tells them that Jesus is “the image of the God we cannot see”, the “one by whom all things were made” and for whom they were created. He tells the Corinthians that they are the “body of Christ,” and that, as he told the Colossians, Jesus is the Head of that Church: “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead [f]bodily; 10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all [g]principality and power.” Even earlier, in the 50s, Paul had told the Philippians that:

Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it [b]robbery to be equal with God, 7 but [c]made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

What a huge claim! But that is what the early Christians believed, it was not added later by others, it was there from the start. We see it in St Mark’s opening words: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. St Matthew is at pains to point out in his first chapter that Jesus’ name means “God with us.” We see the same in Luke and John. This was the dinstinctive Christian message – all authority on Heaven and Earth had been given to Jesus – He is Lord and God. That being so, the followers of Jesus saw His words as Scripture and naturally did what the Jews had done with the Old Testament, they wrote down His teachings. It has been plausibly argued that Paul’s first letter to Timothy is the first sign that Christian writings could be considered Scripture.

The idea of the Canon was there from the start in the form of what we call the Old Testament, and such was the impact of the Risen Christ that His early followers accorded the same status to the writings of the Apostles – and it is to that we turn next.

Ideal and reality

10 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in Early Church, Faith

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

pharisee-taxcollector

There is a paradox at the heart of our Christian lives. We see it portrayed in the Old Testament. Israel is God’s Chosen People. Yet its people are often disobedient, unfaithful and they provoke God’s wrath. It is likewise with the Church. Membership of the Church is no guarantee of salvation, or indeed, even of good behaviour. It is hard to read very far in Catholic social media without coming across expressions of asperity about the Pope, the Bishops, the liturgy and, indeed, the Church itself. This is excused, as all who resort to such criticisms in whatever area of life excuse it, by concern for right-thinking and right practice, or, in Christian terms orthodoxy and orthopraxis. That the ideal exists only on paper, or in the imagination of the critics, or (which is the same thing) in an idealised version of some past “golden age”, is no bar to the critic. It reminds me of the old excuse for corporal punishment – it is necessary to inflict pain in order to stop the person being punished doing something worse. It seems as insufficient an instrument for Christian discourse as our fallen nature could contrive – hence no doubt its prevelance. The irony, in a Culture Wars context is indeed black. Where, I sometimes wonder, do its Christian critics think the idea of “cancelling” someone for their unorthodox views came from? Naturally, when ideas one holds oneself become targets for “cancellation,” one protests. For those doing the cancelling, nothing short of recantation and orthodxy and orthopraxis will do.

This paradox has been with the Church from its founding by Christ. The man to whom He entrusted His sheep loved them, as he loved Jesus, but that did not stop him being a deeply fallible human being, any more than it stopped him from bringing souls to Christ for salvation. St Paul was clearly a man who aroused strong opinions, and to judge from the tenor of his letters, he was hardly the easiest person to get on with. None of that stopped him being the most effective missionary in Christian history. His letters were kept and copied and circulated because they touched the early Church in so many of its concerns, practical as well as theological.

Perhaps we might learn something from St Paul here? We can see from his letters to the Corinthians that, to put it frankly, he considered some of them to be sinful and wayward and in danger of straying from the Way. But not once, in all his criticisms, does St Paul tell them that they do not belong to the real Church, composed of the faithful. They are, as he makes clear, desperately unworthy, and yet they are the ‘elect’ and they are ‘saints’ and members of the body of Christ.

St Paul looks forward, as does the whole Body of Christ, to the age to come, but he lived, as we live and as the whole Body of Christ lives, in a present where things are far from perfect – and chief among those things is us. The Church is one, even as we are sanctified by baptism, but that is in an echatalogical context; in this fallen world it is hard to see that in the divisions we have caused. Not all who are in the Church will be saved; not all who seem to be outside it will be lost. God alone is the Judge.

We have to live, as Paul’s Corinthians did, with the knowledge we fall short. But we know that what matters is not the falling, but the getting up again. Sometimes all I can say is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Sometimes I think it is all I need to say. Knowing you are actually the tax collector in the Synagogue has only one advantage, it stops you thanking God you are not like yourself, which may be the beginning of wisdom, in learning how to be more like Him.

What is the Church for?

04 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

,

church-fathers

The question of how we communicate Christianity is tied up with the question of what we think the Church is for. Too often discussions of this concentrate on what needs to be done to revive the Church (that is, what actions we need to take) rather than on what the Church is for (that is what God meant in founding it). Here I want to begin with some wise words from +Rowan Williams:

the Church is because God is and acts, not because of what we do or think. We did not invent the Church. The Church, the body of Christ, is given to us as the means of our particpation in an eternal reality .

He goes on to write: “to engage in mission is not to engage in a recruitment or publicity campaign. It is to seek day after day to extend the invitation built into God’s very being, the invitation to share God’s very life”. (God’s Church in the World, chapter 1).

Do we do this? To what extent does the prevelance of what one might call “management speak” in talking about the Church and its leadership get in the way of a theologically-informed approach to Ministry? As Professor Martyn Percy wrote in 2016 about the reform programme brought in by ++ Welby: “If the changes he is augmenting don’t have a theological root and depth, then the risk is that the change is one of mere pragmatism and expedient managerialism.”

It is sometimes said that whilst history does not repeat itself, historians do; the same thing might be said of large organisations. As anyone who has endured “Management training days” in any organisation will know to their cost, large organisations tend to buy into management-speak, with its “key performance indicators” (KPIs) and “performance targets,” often with the zeal of the neophypte convert. That said, it would be foolish to ignore gems of wisdom embedded in such programmes, though when examined they do seem to have a tendency to be statements of the blindingly obvious heavily disguised by jargon to make them sound more profound. When it comes to the Church, no doubt secular strategic theory has its place, but if it is not informed by faith, then it’s hard to see how the Church distinguishes itself from other organisations. If that is thought desirable, fair enough, but if it is an unintended by-product, that is a different matter.

Martyn Percy’s words here ring true four years after they were written:

Our calling is not to heroically rescue the church, or to save the world. God, in Christ, has already done both of these. It is this God we need to hear more about – and less about how people currently claim to be operating in his name.

Theology is not a detached exercise of the Christian intellect – or at least it ought not to be for a Christian – it is the life of the Body of Christ. As Rowan Williams has commented: “the Church cannot be reformed by human effort and ingenuity, any more than sin can be eradicated by good will.” (Gill & Kendall, Michael Ramsey as theologian, 1995, p. 12). If you define the Church as a human society for promoting certain kinds of behaviour or codes of practice as specified by an elite governing class, or if, in practice, that is what a Church becomes, and if your theology becomes, in effect an exercise in submission to one supreme legitimate source for imperatives in faith and morals, then that runs several sorts of risk – as history shows.

A Church which amounts to a supreme authority to which its members must unquestioningly submit runs the risks inherent in any organisation staffed by human beings. When Lord Acton commented that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely,” he was writing about the history of the Inquisition. As he told the then Bishop of London, Mandell Creighton:

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. 

Three phenomena tend to accompany such a vision of what Church is: outward conformity out of fear or self interest; conformity because of agreement; nonconformity and schism. The fruits of the former are inward corruption in a whited sepulcre; the fruits of the second are intellectual stagnation and want of lively minds; and the latter, well it usually ends up with the leaders of any particular sect doing precisely what they began by condemning the leaders of their old church for doing: rinse and repeat.

But if we define the Church as a Divine Epiphany, that is a showing of God’s love for us as revealed in Incarnation and Resurrection, and a revelation to us, albeit through a glass darkly, of what can be known about the Infinite by the finite, then we build on rock. We are Christians, that is we are “in Christ.” We can abandon the limitations imposed by our nature which makes us see the Church as a project begun by Christ through His Apostles, struggling against the forces of darkness in this world, and which needs the application of human wisdom through (take your pick) the Inquisition, the Reformation, schemes of Church planting, better management structures or the like, to survive; it already exists in its fullness which is the Eucharist. The real unity of the Church is a sharing of that sacrifice offered once and for all.

Theology and history point, perhaps, in this direction. In the recent post on Junia, the question was asked “what did St Paul mean by ‘Apostle?'” The Bishop or priest presides at the celebration of the Eucharist in order to let the Messiah act through him (or, in the Anglican understanding, her). The first Apostles were not there by some decree of Canon Law, or because of some semi-occult belief that they had special powers denied to others, but because they represented Christ. It is in that showing that the Church exists in its fullness.

In its language and actions the Church is an assembly which draws us towards a fuller, deeper understanding that through the Incarnation and Resurrection, God’s love is poured out for us, not was poured out, but is poured out. It is because of this, because the Eucharist is the essence of the Church that we have missed it so much.

 

Christianity without Christ?

25 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in Church/State, Early Church

≈ 32 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Gene Veith at Cranach had an interesting post yesterday on whether the Christian virtues can survive without Christianity. I think this ties in well to mine on NEO today on the immorality of Christian clergy supporting BLM, instead of continuing our own mission, the most successful in helping the disadvantaged in history, by far. Here’s part of Gene’s article.

The secular British historian Tom Holland has published a new book entitled Dominion:  How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (Basic Books).  Here is the summary from Amazon.com:

Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion-an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus-was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization. Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.
His book shows just how different Christian values and ethics were from those of the Greeks and the Romans and how the Christian mindset has prevailed in Western Civilization even among his fellow secularists.  (Holland is an atheist.)  The Greeks, for example, considered compassion, for example to be a weakness, not one of the highest virtues as Christianity made it.  The principle from Christianity that all human beings have equal value was incomprehensible to the hierarchies of ancient Rome.  Today we assume that peace is better than war, a legacy of Christianity utterly foreign to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and European tribes.

It’s something that is easy to forget, and mostly we have.

Holland appears to think that it’s possible to have the fruits without the faith, to have Christian influence without the Christianity.  Strand, however, disagrees:
Christian ethics cannot be about merely upholding and claiming certain values that flow from the Christian faith. That would be to mistake the fruit from the tree. The very center of the Christian life is not what the cross teaches us morally but what the cross did for us in atoning for our sins and bringing us from life to death in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The transformation of the person from death to life and the ultimate union with the Triune God in the City of God is the goal of all Christians. Their works of mercy and sacrifice for neighbor and their culture-building over millennia are a testament of this transforming power. We make a mistake if we think the fruit is the goal or that we can separate the fruit from the tree that produced it.

I would say that although principles such as love, equality, compassion and the like are still dominant, even among the secularists, they are starting to fade.  Certainly those who no longer believe in the key Christian teachings of atonement and redemption will have difficulty with the concept of forgiveness, and we are seeing that.  Secularists today say they believe in equality, but they are also demonizing and deriding the worth of those with whom they disagree.  And the strange embrace of abortion on the part of so many secularists, even liberals and progressives, undercuts their claim to be compassionate and supportive of the powerless.  It is, in fact, a reversion to the Greco-Roman practice of infanticide, with everything else that implied about the value of human life.

I should at this point go on and add examples of my own, but two things, I think this is perfectly lucid, clear, and self-evidently correct. Our morality will never stand on its own, its foundation is in our hope of redemption, not in earthly values. To claim otherwise is sophistry and sophistry which history has shown to be false. Without the hope of redemption, we return to the dog eat dog world of Greece and Rome, where the only reason for doing anything is self-aggrandizement. We see that happening already in our so-called elites, who are mostly post-Christian, for not believing in God, they seem to only believe in earthly acquisition and what may be even worse, they seem to think this is a zero-sum game.

Well, Christ taught us better, as they will find out one day. After all, the Lord did say, “Vengeance is mine”. And as I’ve said a few times, without hell there can be no heaven.

Working with the Spirit

21 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by in Church/State, Early Church, Faith, Galatians

≈ 45 Comments

Tags

,

Probably_Valentin_de_Boulogne_-_Saint_Paul_Writing_His_Epistles_-_Google_Art_Project

As expected, yesterday’s post on Black Lives Matter, evoked some heated responses. It is essential that we differentiate between what extremists (on both sides) say and the problem itself; to identify the two, or to deny there is a problem, seems to me self-defeating. One way lies political opportunism masquerading as concern, the other way lies a continuation of the ills which caused the problem in the first place. Whilst it is true that extremists have sought (literally) to fan the flames, the idea that the emotions behind the protests is all manufactured by sinister agencies intent on overthrowing the system, risks precipitating the danger it dismisses. Scoop, yesterday in the comments, rightly listed all the legislation passed in the USA since the Civil War, and yet there are problems to this day. Law alone is not enough. As we know, we are not saved by the Law, were that the case, Jesus would never have had to suffer and die to redeem our sins, neither would He have needed to rise again as the first-fruits of His sacrifice for us.

There are those who see the attitude of the Churches on this issue as mealy-mouthed; these are, in the main, critics of whatever Church leaders do. None of that is to say that Church leaders get it right all the time, but it is to put the heated criticism in context. Church leaders have a wider responsibility than to the scribbling and commentating classes, and even as criticism is levelled (no doubt some of it deserved) it should be leavened with that caveat. To ignore the furore would be to condemn Church leaders as out of touch, to acknowledge it risks the accusation of being an appeaser. As statues of Saints fall, Church leaders have to respond whether they will or not. Nor should ot be forgotten that Churches are multi-racial organisations. Christianity, from the beginning, has been unusual in religions in this aspect of its teaching and practice.

The main problem with the slogan “Black Livers Matter” is that taken to extremes it implies that there is a united “Black” view of the world, and it can lead, and has led to, those BAME politicians who are conservatives or Republicans, being insulted, as though they are the “wrong sort” of BAME person. This, as yesterday’s post argued, is as pernicious as the attempt to deny there is any problem in our society for people of a different skin colour. I suppose extremists will, by nature, go to extremes, but that’s no reason for the rest of us to follow them. To deny that there are those in the Church who feel that their skin colour makes them a problem for others is to deny the obvious. The orthodoxy of men like Cardinal Sarah has occasionally drawn the ire of some Western Bishops in terms which suggest that the latter may not be free sin here.

We know from St Paul’s struggles on the matter, how hard it was for him to persuade his fellow Jews that Gentiles were not “unclean” and that it was in order to break bread and share wine with them. It is very easy for us, at thise distance, to forget how fierce an argument this was among early Christians. Even St Peter, under pressure from Jerusalem, recant from his position of sharing table fellowship with Gentiles, forcing St Paul intoa fierce condemnation of his position. For St Peter to agree with St James and the Jerusalem Church undermined, for St Paul, the whole thrust of the Gospel message that “For no one is put right with God by doing what the Law requires.”

The Church is a fellowship of believers or it is nothing. The first Christians found it as hard as we often do. Men from Corinth probably found men from Rome stand-offish and a bit inclined to assume superiority; men from Rome probably found the Corinthians a bit lively for their taste; and women, such as Phoebe, would have wrestled with male condescension as much as their modern contemporaries often do. But they were one on Christ, and the Spirit worked through them to make them one, as He does with us, if we let Him.

 

Apostle to the Apostles

23 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Easter, Faith

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

This happened to catch my eye over at Father Z’s. While in my tradition we don’t do Saints like the Catholics do, we do respect the stalwart in faith who have gone before us. Amongst them is Mary Magdalene, the first witness of the Risen Christ, and her Feast day was yesterday. That is why she is sometimes called the Apostle to the Apostles, Christ himself charged her with going and telling the apostles that He was risen.

Well, I gather some think that the Church has rather shortchanged her and that her reputation has been sullied. Maybe so, not my department, but I keep in mind what Jessica wrote long ago about her on NEO, my blog. It was this:

Under Jewish Law the testimony of a woman was no testimony at all. The first witness to the Risen Lord was a woman – Mary Magdalen. She was tearful. There she was, come to the tomb to anoint Him, and there was the stone moved. Her mind went where most of our minds would have gone – someone had taken Him away. That great stone had not moved itself, and dead bodies don’t walk out of tombs. The grave-clothes were bundled up and there was no trace of Jesus. Hard to imagine her feelings at the point. Only two days earlier her world had fallen apart. The man whose feet she had anointed and whom she had followed so loyally had been taken, tortured and then crucified. She knew that; she’d been there (which was more than could be said for most of those Apostles). It was over. All that remained was for her to do a final duty to the corpse. But even that was to be denied her. They had taken her Lord away.

She ran back to where the disciples were and told Peter the horrible news. Typically Peter, he ran to the tomb, and equally typically was outpaced by the younger John. But John stood at the entrance, and when Peter arrived he it was who, impulsive and brave as ever, went inside to see that the tomb was, indeed, as empty as Mary had said. The men went back home, no doubt to tell the others; Mary, as is the way of women, wanted to stay there a moment longer, perhaps to gather her thoughts, perhaps to mourn a moment alone.

She looked into the tomb again, only to be met by the most amazing sight – two angels asking her why she wept. The answer she gave echoes down the ages:  “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” As she turned away she saw a stranger, whom she took to be the gardener and asked where Jesus was. Then the man spoke – just one word, one word which shattered the world as she had known it and which echoes down the ages, even to the end of all things. ‘Mary’ was that word, the first from the lips of the Resurrected Lord. However much her tears had blinded her, that voice was clearly unmistakable: “Rabboni!” She said. Teacher, teacher, that was what she called Him. She went to cling to Him and He said: ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’  He bade her to go and tell the others what she had seen.

The testimony of a woman was no testimony in Jewish Law, and yet it was to a woman that the Risen Lord first came. He had broken the bonds of death, He had conquered the power of death and of Satan, the hold of sin on mankind was broken; and these things He entrusted to the power of one who in Jewish Law could offer no testimony at all.

She was the first. Let us love and honour her for that this Easter morning: ‘He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!’

And there, on Easter morning itself, our Lord made his statement on the equality of women. We would do well to note that he made no case for their superiority, as so many these days seem to think, he made the case that women are valuable, and trustworthy, in their own right, which role is not the same as men but is complementary and equal to men.

In the Tridentine Missal, the Epistle is this (from the Song of Songs)

I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not. (quaesivi illum et non inveni.) The watchmen who keep the city, found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth? When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him: and I will not let him go …

Would that we all (or any of us) were that faithful to the Lord.

Eugenics, Icelandic Style

25 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by in Abortion, Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Commentaries, Consequences, Early Church, Lutheranism

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Webster’s defines Eugenics as, “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed”. Pretty innocuous, isn’t it? It merely means that as we have children we should be aware that our characteristics; looks, intelligence, and such, will likely carry on. In other words, we should find smart, attractive, whatever matters to you, partners. I think we all knew that even before 1883 when the term was coined.

But what about this, Iceland has all but eradicated Down’s Syndrome. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? A real victory for eugenics. Or is it? Iceland has done this by aborting just about every unborn baby that shows a possibility of Down’s. Rather a different sort of thing, I think.

The worst part is that they seem proud of it. David Harsanyi writing in The Federalist (and you really should read it) tells us:

Now, the word “eradication” typically implies that an ailment is being cured or beaten by some technological advancement. Not so in this case. Nearly 100 percent of women who receive positive tests for Down syndrome in that small nation end up eradicatingtheir pregnancies. Iceland averages only one or two Down syndrome children per year, and this seems mostly a result of parents receiving inaccurate test results.

It’s just a matter of time until the rest of the world catches up. In the United States around 67 percent of women who find out their child will be born with Down syndrome opt to have an abortion. In the United Kingdom it’s around 90 percent. More and more women are taking these prenatal tests, and the tests are becoming increasingly accurate.

For now, however, Iceland has completed one of the most successful eugenics programs in the contemporary world. If you think that’s overstated, consider that eugenics — the word itself derived from Greek, meaning “well born” — is nothing more than an effort to control breeding to increase desirable heritable characteristics within a population. This can be done through “positive” selection, as in breeding the “right” kinds of people with each other, or in “negative” selection, which is stopping the wrong kinds of people from having children.

The latter was the hallmark of the progressive movement of the 1900s. It was the rationalization behind the coerced sterilization of thousands of mentally ill, poor, and minorities here in America. It is why real-life Nazis required doctors to register all newborns born with Down syndrome. And the first humans they gassed were children under three years old with “serious hereditary diseases” like Down syndrome.

Now, as a general rule Down’s Syndrome is not inheritable, and this story “reflects a relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling,” as geneticist Kari Stefansson admits in a video. One is led to ask, what else can we control for in our kids? Want one son and maybe a daughter later? That can certainly be done. Why not, it’s the mother’s body, after all. Isn’t it?

But what about that child, essentially murdered even before he or she had a chance at life?

Over at Landspitali University Hospital, Helga Sol Olafsdottir counsels women who have a pregnancy with a chromosomal abnormality. They speak to her when deciding whether to continue or end their pregnancies. Olafsdottir tells women who are wrestling with the decision or feelings of guilt: ‘This is your life — you have the right to choose how your life will look like.’

Marie Stopes and Margeret Sanger must be so proud of her.

You know, back in the day, when Christianity was known as ‘The Way’, one of the markers of Christians was the way they loved each other, no matter the station, and more to our point, they did not leave unwanted children to die of exposure. As just about every other culture in antiquity did

Seems to me that for all our prattling about human rights, we’re doing a really terrible job of practicing what we preach.

The Touch of a Woman

21 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by in Early Church, Faith, Marian devotion, St Luke's Gospel

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

In my last two posts, I have highlighted how in medieval days Mary was revered, not least because she was approachable. That’s important, I think. Women, as a rule, are seen as non-threatening as compared with even the best-intentioned men, by men but perhaps even more by women. It’s certainly true for me.

The idea of telling my sins to a man (especially when I was young) was a very frightening thing. Not so much Christ, of course, because He knew me better than I did anyway. But I wonder, and always will if Marian devotion had been available to me in those days if it might have made a difference. Not that I was any terrible ogre, mind, but I did things that even then I wasn’t proud of, and would have been embarrassed to tell my mom, so I wonder if knowing Mary then would have made a difference.

And now, as I start to draw near the end, Mary indeed provides me much comfort. Those of you who know me will know that I am divorced and without kids, and sadly see no possibility of that changing. And yes, Mary provides a comfort, nearly a companionship, that I find in no other way, anymore. She is the one I can talk about anything with. Strange how life works out isn’t it? But so it is.

But she is much more than that, of course. She is Theotokos, the Mother of God. And that is surely much more important than my little problems, but still, she finds time to tell me that she has talked to her Son about me and to comfort this old man, not that it is overt or anything, just a feeling.

But this very human and attractive side of Our Lady goes way back in our history. In our archives there is an article, bylined by Jessica (although I wonder, as it reads more as Chalcedon) speaking of The Protoevangelium of St. James

The Protoevangelium of St. James, which dates from the mid second century, belongs to that group of works which, whilst never canonical, was treasured by Christians for centuries because it filled in the gaps left by the Gospels. Nothing will shake my conviction that in St. Luke we have portions of the memoirs of Our Lady herself; where else could the Magnificat come from, or the story of the Annunciation. It thrills me to know that when I read these things, I am reading what the Blessed Virgin herself said; so I understand why it is early Christians wanted more.

The Protoevangelium filled the gap admirably. It described the circumstances of Our Lady’s birth, and how at the age of three she was brought by her parents to the Temple. It contains one of my favourite accounts of Our Lady. When she came to the Temple she was given to the High Priest who

 set her down upon the third step of the altar, and the Lord God sent grace upon her; and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her

How adorable is that?

Here is where those charming legends that we looked in my article on Lady Day in Harvest got their start. In the 2d century, well before the Scripture was canonized. We have always venerated Mary, she is one of the things that sets Christians apart. It is our kinder gentler side and something that is lacking in most religions which tend to be ‘by the book’ and the book alone. She introduces mercy into the whole thing, and yes, it shown forth in her Son as well. But it is, I think, one of the singularities that divide the Second Covenant from the First.

Coasting to the Well

20 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in Early Church, Faith

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , ,

I get the feeling that AATW is coasting lately. Yes, Jessica has retired, Chalcedon is overbusy, I too am busy with diverse things, one of which is rebuilding my own blog, Philip Augustine has been carrying us, and as fascinating as his articles are, there is a spark missing.

Perhaps, as we’ve said before it is the touch of a woman. Our longtime commenter and friend Annie reblogged an article the other day that moved me, as so many here have over the years. Here is a bit of it.

First, I didn’t know what to write in this blog, so I remained silent for a time and asked the Spirit to lead me. This is the title that came out, and I had to ponder why. And this blog is filled with whys. But the Spirit answers them all by revealing the intention of Jesus in this story.

Whenever I’m in confusion or doubt, I always look to Jesus’ words and actions to inform me and enlighten me. I opened my Bible to review the familiar red-letter words in order to read them again and digest them in light of the leading I received. Since I believe the Bible is the living word – the Living Water and Nourishment – of God, it always has a different meaning depending on where you might be at the moment you read it.

As I read the words of the woman at the well (John 4:4-42), it came to me slowly and certainly. I think as I explain it, the meaning will come to you too.

The first thing Jesus says to the woman is in the form of a request: “Please give me a drink of water.”

The Samarian woman is shocked he is talking to her. After all, she has been treated as unworthy all her life by her kinsmen and her Hebrew neighbors, and she now believes it. Why does he ask the woman for a drink? Does he want something from her? Yes, he does. He wants her to ask him for a drink. He wants her to open her heart and receive.

Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you Living Water.”

All he wants is for her to see she has immeasurable value, for her to attain what she thinks is unattainable, for her to accept the unconditional love and grace he offers. Yet she does not understand the gift. She looks at life literally, and measures what she can see and touch.

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL IS ME

It’s very very good, do read the whole thing.

It’s also something we have spoken of here, Philip here, Jessica here, but the memory that was triggered for me by Susan’s lovely article was also one from Jessica, one which moved me deeply when she wrote it, and moves me still. It is here. Here is a little bit of that.

I am the woman at the well.

I see someone I fear to approach; what would one like him have to do with one like me? But he speaks to me. I do not want to speak back. I am a sinner, I am an outsider; who am I that he should speak to me? When I do, I do not know what to say that will not condemn me. I am working. The man needs the water from the well, and my job, among many, is to get it for him; he will be waiting; he may be angry with me if I am late. Yet this man insists on engaging me in conversation. He wants water from me too; another man who wants something from me?

But as I talk to him it is not what I think. I cannot take in all his words. What is this water he has? How can he offer it to me when he wants something from me? What is it he really wants? He seems to be offering me something; he wants something from me, but it is something good for me. I don’t understand. Then he asks me what I had feared.

Jessica ended with this, and there is no answer to it, for we are all the woman at the well. But it is true, and for me, part of it has been AATW.

It was all long ago now, and I tell my grandchildren of him. We worshipped him before he was crucified; we worshipped him after the Resurrection. He is God. His Spirit is with me. That moment at the well changed my life; it changed the world. Though I was a sinner He loved me; that opened my heart to something which bubbles up in it even this day.