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]]>Clearly, the Bible is a violently partisan book: as with any other form of propaganda, what is true is what the writer thinks ought to be true; and the sense of urgency in the writing comes out much more freely for not being hampered by the clutter of what may actually have occurred.
The general principle involved here is that if anything historically true is in the Bible, it is there not because it is historically true but for different reasons. The reasons have presumably something to do with spiritual profundity or significance. And historical truth has no correlation with spiritual profundity, unless the relation is inverse.
~ Northrop Frye, The Great Code
Many serious Christians start getting really nervous if someone suggests the stories of the Bible might not be “historically true.” Why? The assumption would have to be — since I assume everyone who reads the Bible as a divinely authoritative book is interested in “spiritual profundity” — that history (“what really happened”) is spiritually profound. But why should that be the case? One should probably think that the history of a fallen world is precisely NOT spiritually profound.
The concern must rather be about the “historicity” of God Himself, not what “really happens” in the world, but what God “really does.” The imputed danger of the Bible not being “historical” is that God might not have really “done” what the Bible says He did. This is the threat of modern atheism. There is no God, so of course He didn’t really “do” anything.
But I wonder if the truth of the matter doesn’t lie in a curious paradox between “bringing God down to earth” and the recognition of the existence (and concern) of God in providing human beings — via the Bible, and perhaps other sacred literature — with spiritual profundity. If God comes to earth and stomps around, beating up the bad guys, how profound is this? And yet, if He really did it, He was “really here.”
If God tells stories of creation, exodus, and the follies of kings, which turn out to carry significant spiritual profundity in them — whether or not they are historically true — hasn’t He also been “really here”? Not literally as a character stomping around in those stories (though He often is depicted that way as well), but as the literary Giver of those stories in the first place — “given over to us for our contemplation” (as Fr. Alexander Rentel always says of the liturgical texts given to us by the Church on every day of the Church year).
If the history of a fallen world is precisely the opposite of spiritual profoundity, and if the more anthropomorphized God gets, especially in a grossly historical sense, the less “profound” He is, then we should expect the ahistoricity of Scripture, should we not? Consider that when God does finally come “really” in the flesh, He comes as an infant born of a carpenter and his virgin wife in a backwater Galilean town; and when He leaves, He dies a criminal on a Cross. Such would be proof — against the atheists — that God is real, and bigger than the Fall. He never stomps around like Pharoahs and Caesars.
]]>What if Scripture is primarily a storehouse of literary and theological motifs that are powerfully and uniquely suited to convey a special class of truths about God, about human life, about the Church, about salvation, about religious problems, about the proclivities of the human soul throughout our myriad pasts and futures? What if the task were then to convey those special truths, about how things are, using the guise of Scripture to do so, in various ways suited to various times and tempers? And thereby to lend insight, understanding, and authoritative weight into those truths because of the very medium through which they are expressed? Would such be a misuse of Scripture? Would such be a wrong interpretation “of” it?
Let’s take a concrete case. Think for a moment about the problem of the Christian Church’s appropriation of Jewish Law. What is the Church’s relation to the Law? A network of complex thoughts immediately enters our mind when we consider this question. Would it be helpful to “see” all those thoughts resolved into a clear picture by means of a metaphorical vision? A metaphorical vision drawn from Scripture?
Now hear Origen —
I think Pharoah’s daughter can be regarded as the Church which is gathered from the Gentiles… This Church, therefore, coming from the Gentiles finds Moses in the marsh lying cast off by his own people and exposed, and gives him out to be reared. He is reared by his own family and spends his childhood there. When, however, “he has grown stronger” (Exo. 2.10), he is brought to her and adopted as a son. We have already frequently argued in many places that the Law is referred to as Moses. The Church, therefore, coming to the waters of baptism, also took up the Law. The Law, however, had been enclosed in a “basket” and smeared with pitch and “bitumen” (Exo. 2.3). The “basket” is a kind of covering woven together from twigs of papyrus or even formed from the bark of trees. The infant placed within this basket was seen exposed. The Law, therefore, was lying helpless enclosed in coverings of this kind, besmeared with pitch and bitumen. It was dirty and enclosed in cheap and offensive meanings of the Jews until the Church should come from the Gentiles and take it up from the muddy and marshy places and appropriate it to itself within courts of wisdom and royal houses. The Law, however, spends its childhood with its own people. With those who are not able to understand it spiritually it is little, an infant, and has milk as its food. But when Moses comes to the Church, when he enters the house of the Church, he grows stronger and more robust. For when the veil of the letter is removed “perfect and solid food” (cf. Heb. 5.12-14) is discovered in its text.
~ Origen, Homily on Exodus
There is no need to read anti-Semitism into Origen’s commentary, for anyone can treat God’s Law well or poorly, including Christians (of various parties), Jews (of various parties), and pagans. What God gives can be misunderstood, covered over with pitch, veiled, made ineffective and powerless as an infant by anyone.
There was indeed debate in the early centuries of the Christian era between Christians and Jews about how to to read Scripture, “the Law and the Prophets.” See for example Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. Origen’s point is the necessity to seek out true reading, to unveil what is given by God for the good of our souls. In a short comment just previous to the passage quoted above, Origen called the two midwives who attend Hebrew births “a figure of the two testaments.” He says, “Souls, therefore, which are born in the Church are attended by these testaments, as if by midwives, because the entire antidote of instruction is conferred on them from the reading of the Scriptures.”
The point is not just to read and interpret the words of Scripture for their own sake, but to receive “the entire antidote of instruction” which is conferred on us from or through the reading of the text. The texts are midwives only. They must give birth to living souls.
Origen’s further claim is that the Christian Church is able to penetrate the heavy layers of sticky darkness and murk that lay over the Law, and therefore over the possibility of giving birth to sons of God, by shining forth the light of Christ. Christ is the key to unlock the Scriptures, the “Law and the Prophets.” He is a cure and antidote to what ails us, Physician of souls. He removes the veil, not only from a text, but from the way to life itself.
“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
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These words were not written to instruct us in history, nor must we think that the divine books narrate the acts of the Egyptians. What has been written “has been written for our instruction and admonition.” (1 Cor. 10:11) Its purpose is to address you, who hear these words, who perhaps have already received the grace of baptism and have been numbered among the sons of Israel and received God as king in yourself. Then, if later you wish to turn away and do the works of the world, to do deeds of the earth and muddy services, you may know and recognize that “another king has arisen in you who knows not Joseph” (Exodus 1.8), a king of Egypt, and that he is compelling you to his works and is making you labor in bricks and mud for himself. It is he who leads you by whips and blows to worldly works with magistrates and supervisors put over you that you may build cities for him. It is he who makes you run about through the world to disturb the elements of sea and earth for lust. It is this king of Egypt who makes you agitate the forum with lawsuits and weary your neighbors with altercations… When, therefore, you see yourself acting in these ways, know that you are a soldier for the king of Egypt, which is to be led by the spirit of this world.
~ Origen, Commentary on Exodus
Our Lenten journey is a Passover journey out of Egypt, out from under the heavy labor imposed on us by Pharoah, to the Kingship of God.
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I just read Anatolios’ “Oppositional Pairs” on Augustine’s De Trinitate. I thought he was going to talk about reconciling passibility and impassibility in Christ, a topic we discussed in Patristics last semester. He is working with a different pair of terms (faith/sight) — though he still reconciles them in Christ. It’s a good paper. I’d like to bop him over the head with my editorial red pen for this sentence: “Her recommendation of strategies generated by the linguistic turn is shaped by her own commitment to a critical theory that seeks to agitate presumptions of stability of meaning and the integrity of referentiality.” The rest of the paper is almost as dense and jargon-laden. Still, it is useful for trying to understand the Fathers’ theologizing (theology as verb, not noun). I am happy that Anatolios disses “faith and reason.” What an awful dichotomy. It has thrown the West off for a millennium. That Augustine uses antithesis as a key rhetorical strategy is not surprising, given his Manichaean roots. (Though many Fathers use antithesis to great effect, and it’s probably not polite to speculate on philosophical-cum-rhetorical inclinations.) That Augustine overcomes antitheses in Christ is also not surprising. That’s orthodox. (By the end of the paper, tho, it all begins to feel extremely Hegelian!)
Anatolios is correct to begin with the purpose of De Trinitate as laid out in Book I, seeing what Augustine himself says he is doing, and to track this throughout the rest of the work. (We did the same with Athanasius in class.) What is Augustine’s purpose? In the meat of his paper, Anatolios gives a plausible analysis of Augustine’s rhetorical-structural use of the antithesis faith/sight. But was Augustine’s purpose, “As a bishop and preacher… to find ways to structure Christian meaning in communicable form”? Does “the retracing of his maneuvers to this end enable a valuable reappropriation of his theological vision”? Anatolios’ analysis is good, but (like everybody else) he is in doctrine-mode, system-mode, “metaphysics” mode (as in Fr. Behr’s “myth and metaphysics”). Does Augustine have a “theological vision,” a “structure of Christian meaning” he is trying to put into “communicable form”?
What were the Fathers trying to do? Why did they write? (What else were they doing besides writing?) Was their purpose to “communicate” a “theology” (noun)?
I’m also reading Fr. Lienhard on Marcellus. The second chapter of his book _Contra Marcellum_, where he lays out the two “theological traditions,” is helpful. But again we have two “theological visions.” Reasonably enough, Fr. Lienhard poses the question how to choose between them. In effect he asks, which is the right system? Which is the right doctrine? In a nice little paragraph (p. 45) he says, “the doctrine on which the two traditions may best be tested is the doctrine of salvation. In a sense, salvation is the most basic of all religious concepts, and every religious system offers some kind of salvation. Each presupposes that there is a gap or a rift between the human and the divine [cf Anatolios’ study and Augustine’s system] and offers to close or to heal it. The doctrine of salvation finally answers the simple but honest question, ‘What’s in this for me?’” (p. 45) Fr. Lienhard goes on to give an overly simplified characterization of the soteriological view of each of the two theological “traditions.”
What I want to ask is: what is wrong with this whole picture? According to Anatolios, Augustine has a theological system (a teaching about God — naturally, “in Trinity”; the world; humanity; Christ) that he is trying to “communicate,” and according to Lienhard, fourth century patristics may be characterized as a debate about the soteriological impact of two alternative theological systems. System, then communication. System, then salvation.
This whole approach is WRONG. There is no system.
(Or, if there is, this would be a quintessentially “Greek” characteristic of patristics.) A system is theology as noun. It is not method. It is not process. It is not salvation. A system is just a bunch of propositions one can argue about and take or leave. Further, a system is never “bright knowledge,” as Fagerberg put it. It is not “liturgical epiphany,” as Fr. Job put it (as the third stage of Fr. Schmemann’s method, built on stage two, theological reflection, and stage one, historical research to get at liturgical “fact”). (See the Liturgical Symposium at St. Vlad’s last weekend, with podcasts on Ancient Faith Radio.)
Or, look at it another way. The problem with western “faith versus reason” is that both end in system, one “revealed” (from scripture) and one constructed (via reason, either by “natural theology” or by morphing scripture into a system through logical deduction from revealed “first principles”). But there is no system!
Or, consider the other great Catholic duo of “faith and morals.” Faith is what you “believe,” morals are what you “do.” Believe the propositions of “the faith” (i.e. “the system”) as true, and do the commands of God — and you will be saved. Does salvation work this way?? Would we need Christ if it did? Who would He be? On such a view He becomes merely another (“creedal”) proposition to “believe in”; and/or He becomes — supposing, say, that we can’t actually do God’s commands — our propitiation with an (offended/wrathful/judging) Father, who (assuaged with the blood of His Son) might relent after all and let us in to heaven despite our moral failings. Is this how salvation works??
(Note that both “faith and morals” are, further, on this view, matters of will, supported by “grace”. To be saved, one must have both a “will to believe” and “will power” to do what is right — or, at least, hearty “willing-ness” to accept Christ’s propitiation on our behalf for our acknowledged moral failure, when will power fails.)
Or, Fr. Behr has argued that it doesn’t work to transpose system (“metaphysics”) to historical narrative (“myth”), as modern theology is wont to do. Christ, the author of history, may not be subjected to history. Stories are edifying, but how would a story save you? Nor may Christ, Word and Hand of the Father, who is Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible, be subject to philosophical or scientific system, to human rationalization. Systems are handy heuristics, but how would one save you? (Orthodoxy today is particularly strident on the no-salvation-by-scholasticism theme.) Nor may Christ, the fulfillment of the Law, be subject to humanly-constructed moral code (cf the Grand Inquisitor). Social engineering is tempting, but it won’t save you either.
In short, salvation can’t rely on myth, metaphysics, or morals — so what is its method? (to imitate Fr. Hopko’s penchant for alliteration) How are we saved? Why did the Fathers write? What else were they doing besides writing? They weren’t communicating system. They weren’t preaching salvation based on getting a correct system. (This raises a big question about the point of Councils.) They weren’t mythologizing by writing “salvation history.” They weren’t doing either dogmatics or systematics. They were exegetical — we established that in patristics — but to what end? How does exegesis save you?
Christ saves.
How? Who is He?
What’s the connection with exegesis?
Christ is “interpreted” from Scripture. The disciples are converted and become martyrs and missionaries (true apostles) through coming to see who He is via the opening of Scripture and the breaking of bread (road to Emmaus). They find out who Christ is through exegesis. In a mysterious circularity, however, the treasury of Scripture is itself unlocked BY Him (by using the rule of faith, which is the mosaic of Him), as the key. He Himself, not yet recognized, walks along beside the disciples, opening Scripture to them. Scripture reveals Him; He opens Scripture.
OK. But what is all this opening and revealing? How does IT save? I think we are saved sacramentally along all soteriological dimensions, which, to borrow from philosophy, are ontological, epistemological, moral, and aesthetic. (And maybe some more.)
Anatolios develops his analysis of Augustine along epistemological lines. Faith and sight are both epistemological media. Fr. Lienhard’s first theological tradition (“miahypostatic theology”) works on the level of ontology: “Salvation, in this tradition, is essentially a divine act by which the human race is elevated and deified. Salvation takes place in the order of being.” (p. 43) Fr. Lienhard’s second theological tradition (“dyohypostatic theology”) works on the level of “faith and morals,” and will. Christ is mediator, teacher/revealer and moral model/exemplar. “Salvation takes place in the order of will; it is not a new state, but an offer of knowledge. The Son reveals the truth and is the model of a God-pleasing life; Christians are saved when they accept the truth and live it.” (p. 40) Fr. Lienhard over-simplifies when he leans towards divine initiative (and ontology) in the first tradition and human will (and epistemology and morals) in the second, but between the two, he covers the three dimensions. In any viable Christian “tradition,” salvation must involve both God and man, and must work on all dimensions, because this is who Christ is.
Fr. Schmemann also had it right with his “bright knowledge” and “liturgical theophany,” and in general with his overriding perception of the whole “world as sacrament” (the original title of _For the Life of the World_). Our salvation in Christ is total. It is ontological. It is epistemological. It is moral. It is aesthetic. Christ comes to us sacramentally through liturgical prayer and worship, through study of Scripture, through love of neighbor. He is Eucharist, Word, and Friend. He is Beauty and Son. He is Wisdom, Truth, Shepherd, Gate, Human, God, Life and Way. Our “ontological state” is changed through sacrament. Our “epistemological state” is changed through sacrament, as is our will and our behavior. Baptism and chrismation initiate us into a new reality. Immersion in Scripture gives us words and images through which we enter into a “whole new way of thinking” (as Fr. Job said of Fr. Cyprian Kern, this being the most important aspect of Fr. Cyprian’s “method” that Fr. Schmemann inherited). Scripture is epistemological sacrament. The Christian’s changed being, his life lived iconically in the world, and his prayer and worship, lend faith-in-action and beautiful expression to scriptural images and understanding. It’s the whole package.
The Fathers write rhetorically, persuasively, not just for apologetic or polemical purposes; not just to instruct us, to teach us “right doctrine,” a correct system; but to exhort, cajole, draw and push us along a lived path, a path they themselves, presumably, were also traveling. They had not reached the end of this path, so they HAD NO system (as if there will be a system even at the end). They did not have total vision. They had faith and hope; they had experience; they had “bright knowledge.” But they were still on the road. What they write are travelogues.
Jesus journeyed with the disciples on the ROAD to Emmaus. After worship at the inn, the disciples traveled back to Jerusalem. Jesus appeared again and told them to stay in the city until they were “clothed with power from on high,” a brief pause, and then He leads them out to Bethany, ascends, and they return to the city and are “continually in the temple praising God.” Soon enough, they begin their own apostolic journeys.
This is salvation. Not myth, not metaphysics, not morals. Journey. A particular kind of journey understood most clearly as Christ on the Cross, descending into Hades, conquering the devil, ascending to Heaven, sending the Spirit, opening Scripture, guiding the apostles, becoming human, reaching through time and space, creating the world.
This is a test of the blog feature on the new web browser Flock. I was able to get my Squarespace blogs to show up on Flock as self-hosted.Even a cursory glance at the early patristic writings up until the 5th century will show that the church Fathers did not use such terminology as “the experience of the church” or “the living community of faith.” Rather, their reference to the correctness of the faith of the community was the prophetic and apostolic teaching communicated through God’s servants, the prophets and the apostles. And no wonder, since they were raised on the one valid source of the knowledge of God, the only kanon of theology (or word about God), which was nothing other than the word of God Himself as imbedded in His scripture. And it is from this God that they learned His language. They learned that the biblical communities, Israel and the church, are always erring, sinning, and harloting after other gods. They learned that these communities are always in need of the prophets and apostles, whom God sends them, to chastise them and to call them back to the path that leads to salvation and life. The Fathers of the church did not earn their appellation as Fathers honoris causa; they earned it because they did to the best of their ability what every true father is supposed to do: they begot children and raised them with the authority of the one who knows better….
If, as we Orthodox maintain, salvation is the ultimate business of the church, then the main, if not foremost, occupation of the church’s leaders ought to be the study and teaching of scripture.
~ Fr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “Scripture in Theological Education”
People can do me no evil, as long as I have no wounds.
I saw two caves, one of which revealed an echo, while the other had none. And many curious children were visiting the former and were mischievously carrying out shouting matches with the cave. But from the other cave visitors were quickly returning, because it was not answering them with an echo.
If my soul is wounded, every worldly evil will resound within it. And people will laugh at me, and will throng more and more strongly with their shouting.
But truly, evil-speaking people will not harm me, if my tongue has forgotten how to speak evil.
Nor will external malice sadden me, if there is no malice in my heart to resound like a goatskin drum
Nor shall I be able to respond to ire with ire, if the lair of ire within me has been vacated and there is nothing to be aroused.
Nor will human passions titillate me, if the passions within me have been reduced to ashes.
Nor will the unfaithfulness of friends sadden me, if I have resolved to have You for my friend.
Nor can the injustice of the world crush me, if injustice has been expelled from my thoughts.
Nor will the deceitful spirits of worldly pleasure, honor and power entice me, if my soul is like an immaculate bride, who receives only the Holy Spirit and yearns for Him alone.
People cannot shove anyone into hell, unless that person shoves himself. Nor can people hoist anyone up on their shoulders to the throne of God, unless that person elevates himself.
If my soul has no open windows, no mud can be thrown into it.
Let all nature rise up against me; it can do nothing to me except a single thing—to become the grave of my body more swiftly.
Every worldly crop is covered with fertilizer, so that it will sprout as soon as possible and grow better. If my soul, alas, were to abandon her virginity and receive the seed of this world into herself, then she would also have to accept the manure, which the world throws onto its field.
But I call upon You day and night: come dwell in my soul and close all those places where my enemies can enter. Make the cavern of my soul empty and silent, so that no one from the world will want to enter it.
O my soul, my only concern, be on guard and learn to distinguish between the voices striking your ears. And once you hear the voice of your Lord, abandon your silence and resound with all your strength.
O my soul, cavern of eternity, never permit temporal thieves to enter you and kindle their fire within you. Keep quiet, when they shout to you. Stay still, when they bang on you. And patiently await your Master. For He will truly come.
~ St. Nikolai Velimirovic, Prayers by the Lake, XVIII
I would start, as an Orthodox boy, with the fact that everyone who is Orthodox has agreed to “deny himself, take up his cross and follow Christ.” The ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church, the Pillar and Ground of Truth, is found precisely in its weakness and is found there because God wants it that way. If salvation means loving my enemies like God loves His enemies, then I am far better served by my weakness than my excellence. If humility draws the Holy Spirit, then my weakness is far more useful than any excellence I may possess.
The Orthodox Church has perhaps the weakest ecclesiology of all, because it depends, moment by moment, on the love and forgiveness of each by all and of all by each. Either the Bishops of the Church love and forgive each other or the whole thing falls apart. “Brethren, let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” These are the words that introduce the Creed each Sunday, and they are the words that are the bedrock of our ecclesiology.
~ Fr. Stephen, “The Ecclesiology of the Cross”
I take Fr. Stephen to be saying that there is no intrinsic form or institution that guarantees the Church. We don’t have an infallible pope with a direct line to God (or an infallible “teaching magisterium”). We don’t have an infallible interpretation of Scripture — and reliance only on Scripture for all truth (sola Scriptura). No, our Pillar and Ground is that… we don’t have one. Not in ourselves. Not in any form or institution or method or system. No “best practices.” No latest and greatest accounting package. No institutional structure, carefully crafted chain of command, or revised organizational Statute. No constitution or “rule of law” is going to fix us or guarantee the Church or any given incarnation of it. No democratic, participatory, grass-roots, people-power form of governance, however American, will save anything, not even the greatest cause we can imagine living for, not even the evangelization of the Americas.
Having nothing, however, we have everything. For “humility draws the Holy Spirit.” For desert warriors — those who fight the demons — humility is everything. If a monk thinks he can fight the devil (in his pride), he immediately loses, and the devil wins. Only God can win. We win only if, in abject humility, we admit our utter powerlessness and call upon Him to save us.
And when we call, He does.
In a sense, then, we do believe in in sola gratia, sola fidei — grace alone, faith alone. But this does not mean there is nothing we can do. God does give commands to us. Love each other. Forgive each other. “Either the Bishops of the Church love and forgive each other, or the whole thing falls apart.” In humility. Loving our enemies, even as Christ loved and forgave those who crucified Him.
Nor is it only for the bishops. We ALL say, “Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess…” How can we have one mind if we have no love? How can we love if we have no unity of mind? How can we be Orthodox? How can we be the Church, Pillar and Ground of Truth? We cannot.
This is what it means to pick up a Cross. And in that Cross is victory — God’s victory.
Only His victory can be the victory of the Church, its “bedrock ecclesiology.” No form or institution, policy or procedure, can save us.