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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

Category Archives: Galatians

Working with the Spirit

21 Sunday Jun 2020

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

≈ 45 Comments

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Black Lives Matter, Christianity and politics

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.

 

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Joy

31 Sunday May 2020

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Faith, Galatians, Pentecost

≈ 16 Comments

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Holy Spirit, Pentecost

Pentecost

It has been quite a journey since Good Friday, and, perhaps due to lockdown, it has been somehow easier to follow, at least emotionally, in the steps of the Apostles. Crushed by what they took to be the ultimate defeat that we now call “Good” Friday, they passed into what looks like a state of bewilderment on that first Easter Sunday. Even the ever-faithful Mary Magdalene did not recognise Jesus by sight; it was the sound of His voice which drew from her the word: “Rabboni.” Thomas would not believe until he saw, and Peter, well Peter had good reason to be anxious as well as delighed; despite his big words at Gethsemane, he had betrayed his Lord.

Indeed, we see in John 21 that Peter had returned to his nets. It was John who first recognised the Lord. Impulsive as ever, Peter plunges into the water to greet Jesus. But what ground did he have to assume anything other than that there would be, at the least, a rebuke for his behaviour? Then, beside another fire, lit by Jesus, Peter receives forgiveness and healing. The three times Jesus asks him whether he loves Him echo the three denials, and what comes with that is forgiveness and a great commission, as well as a foreshadowing of suffering and death. Pardoned, healed, restored and forgiven, Peter is the pattern for us all. Our frailties and our wounds are not what define us, God’s forgiveness and Grace does that.

Throughout the earthly ministry of Jesus there were abundant signs that this joy, this forgiveness, this Grace was not simply for the children of Israel: the woman at the well who believed in Him was a Samaritan, a member of a despised minority; the Syro-Phonecian woman who begged Him for the crumbs of mercy was, likewise as a Canaanite, one beyond the pale – as the disciples were quick to point out; and the centurion of whom Jesus said:  “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!” was an officer in the hated army of occupation. But it was not until the day of Pentecost, which the Church celebrates today, that the fullness of this message and its meaning were made clear.

The division between Jew and Gentile was deep and wide in the world into which Jesus was born, lived, and died; that division, like all others, was healed after the Ascension by the coming of the Holy Spirit. We are told in Acts that after the Spirit descended, everyone heard the Disciples speaking in his or her own tongue and that in that first day, three thousand were received into the Church. As Paul told the “foolish Galatians,” all who had faith were the “sons of Abraham.” Whether Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free, all that mattered was faith in Jesus. It was for this reason that Paul gave Peter himself the challenge when the latter tried to argue that Gentiles needed to be circumcised and follow Jewish practices. Neither did Paul speak in his own name, as he told the Galatians: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

The Church is the risen life of Jesus, the means through which the joy that brings is shared with others. This morning’s “Thy kingdom come” Pentecostal service was a vibrant reminder of Paul’s words, and of the Spirit which binds where sin seeks to divide.

It has been a long journey from Good Friday to Pentecost, but with the birth of Church, may a new flame be kindled in all our hearts and may we love one another as He loves us; only thus will the world recognise us as His.

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The Holy Trinity and love

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Faith, Galatians

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, Catholicism, love

trinityC

In researching this morning’s Patristic commentary on Galatians, I cam across St Augustine’s comment that we ‘obey the law spiritually when we act out of love, not fear’, and his reminder that the law is there for our good too. That took me back to some of the recent discussions here about ‘love’ and ‘the law’ where, at times, one might have gained the impression that they were somehow antithetical. It can, it is true, seem that way. Newman described well the type of Christian who is so worried about ‘Judgement’ that he never shares the joy of knowing Christ, so conscious of his sins that he appears to derive no joy from knowing Christ. One of the things often commented upon by anti-Christian polemicists is just that tendency to be concerned with judging others which can come from judging ourselves. Jesus Himself asked how we could love God, whom we did not know, if we did not love our brother whom we did? If we hate ourself, how can we love others? What, after all, is love, save that which emanates from the mystery of the Economy of the Trinity?

The most startling insight of Christianity is not the revelation that God is one, but that He is Three. The Jews, and now the Muslims, hold the first belief; Christians alone hold the latter. When St. John tells us that ‘God is love’, he describes the relationship of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

The only distinction between the persons of the Trinity is their mutual relations. None of the persons exists in respect to Himself alone, but each exists relatively to the other two:
…the “three persons” who exist in God are the reality of word and love in their attachment to each other. They are not substances, personalities in the modern sense, but the relatedness whose pure actuality… does not impair unity of the highest being but fills it out. St Augustine once enshrined this idea in the following formula: “He is not called Father with reference to himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by himself he is simply God.” Here the decisive point comes beautifully to light. “Father” is purely a concept of relationship. Only in being-for the other is he Father; in his own being-in-himself he is simply God. Person is the pure relation of being related, nothing else. Relationship is not something extra added to the person, as it is with us; it only exists at all as relatedness.

….the First Person [the Father] does not beget the Son in the sense of the act of begetting coming on top of the finished Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. It is identical with the act of giving.

(Joseph Ratzinger Introduction to Christianity, pp. 131-132; cf. Augustine, ; De Trinitate VII, 1, 2.)

In short, each of the persons of the Trinity lives completely for the others; each is a complete gift of self to the others. The complete self-giving not only constitutes the individual persons of the Trinity, but also their inseparable oneness.

That love, it was which impelled  him to take action to help his creatures gone astray so when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman to redeem us and make us sons by adoption. It is the love that overflows from the Trinity which created the universe and ourselves, it is that love which offers us redemption, and it is that same love which also sets out the law to help us. We obey the law because of love, not fear, but that does mean the law does not matter or is somehow opposed to love.

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Second Reading for 13th Sunday in OT Year C

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Commentaries, Faith, Galatians

≈ Comments Off on Second Reading for 13th Sunday in OT Year C

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Catholic Church, Catholicism

images

Galatians 5: 1, 13-18

Chrysostom points to the number of reasons St Paul adduces to lead his readers and hearers away from error. In the first place he points to the utter folly, having become free, of wanting to become slaves again; in the second, he reminds them that they would be ungrateful to their benefactor, despising the one who frees them and preferring the one who enslaved them; and finally, he points out the absurdity of it, because the Law had no power over those saved by Christ.

Theodoret notes that at this stage (verse 13) Paul shifts to ethical exhortations and his commendation of the practice of virtue ‘For it was not in order to sin without fear that we have been freed from the Law’. It is clear from this that he is commending the observance of the moral law, and above all, love.

St Augustine notes that the works of the law pertain to the new covenant, but adds that Paul is pointing out that those who do good works in Christ do so not because of fear of the consequences of disobedience, but for love of Christ. The Jews fulfil certain works of the law which consist in ceremonies ‘but are completely unable to to fulfil those that consist in good conduct. For nothing fulfils these except love’.

Chrysostom adds that Paul shows how we can fulfil the law – in love and in loving and serving one another. Love of strife, faction, ambition are the causes of error, and from these things we can be rescued by being slaves to one another in love. The law is not fulfilled in circumcision but in love. It is the proper function of the human spirit to govern the flesh, but, as Augustine reminds us, it sometimes makes slow headway against the flesh. All Christian struggle with sin and the old Adam, but the aim is to make virtue a second nature – we obey the law spiritually when we act out of love, not fear, but remembering that the law is there for our good too, and, as Jerome points out, the patriarchs were saved under it. But as Augustine comments, only the resurrection can complete sanctification.

 

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Scripture readings: a note. 12th Sunday OT, year C

19 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Faith, Galatians

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, St Paul

images

For the last three years I have been contributing Patristic commentaries on the Gospel readings of the day for each Sunday. We have now come to the end of that, as I began with the reading for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, which can be found here. I will provide a link for each Sunday for those interested in what the Church Fathers had to say about the Gospel readings. I will now move on to offer a Patristic commentary on the second reading, beginning today with:

Galatians 3:26-29

Marius Victorinus, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, tells us that the metaphor of inheritance refers to our receiving eternal life. This comes about through faith in Jesus Christ – that means when we believe that he is the Son of God and the chosen Messiah, and that he has the power to save us and has accomplished every mystery on our behalf. All these things are reported in the Gospel. But what we should note here is that, while Paul is stating this fact, he refers it to their persons, offering incentives to persuade them more readily. We are now sons from faith in Christ Jesus. This illustrates the perfection of believers, for what is more perfect than to be called sons of God?

Chrysostom asks and answers the question of how we are made sons of God. Christ is the Son of God, and if we put on Christ, having the Son inside us and being made like unto him, then we have been made sons by being baptised in Christ.

Cyprian comments that one who, having laid bare his sins, has been sanctified by baptism and spiritually transformed into a new man has been made ready to receive the Holy Spirit.

St Jerome makes an analogy with metal smelting, noting that when we glow with the ardour of the Holy Spirit, we are all alike, and it does not matter what metal we were originally made of.

Chrysostom notes how insatiable St Paul’s soul is. Having said we become sons of God through faith, he does not stop there, but seeks out something more to say, which can make still more plain ur closer unity with Christ. Having said “You have put Him on”, he is not content with this, but interpreting it he speaks of something more intimate than this association and says, “You are all one in Christ” – that is you have one form, one character, that of Christ. What words could inspire more awe than these? The former Jew or slave is clothed in the form not of an angel or archangel but of the Lord himself and in himself displays Christ.

St Jerome says that whenever the Lord is called Abraham’s offspring, this must be understood in the bodily sense of of his generation from the stock of Abraham. But when it is applied to us who, receiving the Saviour’s word, believe in him, and assume the dignity of Abraham’s race, to whom the covenant was made. We are the inheritors of that promise.

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