It is a glorious thing to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one what which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one hold the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.
I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
It was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and understood by a particular gift.
-Thomas Merton
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
What is Mount Athos?
Mount Athos, also known as the Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain, is a self-governed monastic state within the Hellenistic Republic. It is situated entirely on one mountain and consists of 20 Eastern Orthodox Monastaries under the patriarchate of Constantinople. It is only accessible by boat. Only males can visit, and only Orthodox males over the age of 18 can reside there.
Also called "the holy mountain," it was legendarily established by the Mary the mother of Christ during a trip with John the Evangelist to visit Lazarus. Nearly shipwrecked, Mary asked Christ for it to be her garden, and Jesus blessed it from the heavens. Historically, the community's origins are less clear. Both pagans and Christians lived there during the 4th Century reign of Constantine I; Christians fled there from persecution both during the Roman reign of Julian the Apostate and the later conquests of the desert regions by Islamists.
Since then, despite greatly varying political and religious climes, Mount Athos has been a nearly constant refuge for contemplative monks and scholars. And as more monasteries arose, the population naturally became more Christian overall.
In modern times, through Greece, it has become a member of the European Union.
Each of the 20 monasteries of the autonomous state is itself self-governing, led by an Abbott. The whole community is administered by a group of four abbots, elected by all the monasteries of the island and subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Except for cats, there are no female animals permitted on the island.
Also called "the holy mountain," it was legendarily established by the Mary the mother of Christ during a trip with John the Evangelist to visit Lazarus. Nearly shipwrecked, Mary asked Christ for it to be her garden, and Jesus blessed it from the heavens. Historically, the community's origins are less clear. Both pagans and Christians lived there during the 4th Century reign of Constantine I; Christians fled there from persecution both during the Roman reign of Julian the Apostate and the later conquests of the desert regions by Islamists.
Since then, despite greatly varying political and religious climes, Mount Athos has been a nearly constant refuge for contemplative monks and scholars. And as more monasteries arose, the population naturally became more Christian overall.
In modern times, through Greece, it has become a member of the European Union.
Each of the 20 monasteries of the autonomous state is itself self-governing, led by an Abbott. The whole community is administered by a group of four abbots, elected by all the monasteries of the island and subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Except for cats, there are no female animals permitted on the island.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Daily Prayer: Wednesday Dark
There should be at least a room, or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other men.
"But though, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret..." Once you have found such a place, be content with it, and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be quick to change it for another.
-Thomas Merton
"But though, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret..." Once you have found such a place, be content with it, and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be quick to change it for another.
-Thomas Merton
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Cliff Notes: A New Image and a New Faith in Christ
Sobrino's second chapter of Jesus the Liberator begins with the assertion that the Church in Latin America has emphasized the divinity of Jesus at the expense of his humanity. This is in direct oppostion to the image that the poor of Jesus have long held: Jesus suffering on the cross for their sake and along with them.
This image is of Christ conquered and annihilated. In this Christ the poor recognized themselves, and from him took patience and resignation.
But this Christ did not stay on the cross. This Christ has become in recent years 'Jesus the Liberator.' This has happened as a self-adjustment of the mass of believers in Latin America, for whom Christ must be both relevant and identifiable. Christ on the cross must remaining the suffereing Jesus of history, but must also have the power to liberate them from the systems of oppression on the continent, and to inspire them to be agents of liberation themselves.
This new image of Christ has led to a new way of living faith in Him. It has led them to martyrdom and an explicit conflict with the systems of oppression. This new faith means first and foremost following Jesus in a historical and existential sense.
The conflict the new believers face results from being specifically for the poor and specifically against their oppressors. That this has occurred after five hundred years of a transcendent, abstract and removed image of Christ as a reconciler without conflict and a savior without condemnation might explain to some degree the violence incurred by and through the shift.
But it does not explain why the image of Christ has not previously raised any questions about centuries of systematic repression and abuse until now. We can only say that this has failed to happen because the Church has severed Christ from Jesus, abstracted God from man, the Messiah from history, and individual sin from collective persecution.
In other words, Christ has been love, without loving anyone specifically, and Christ has been a reconciler who condemned none of the parties, who loved the poor but did not condemn the rich and the self-righteous.
Part of the undoing of this failed image of Christ has been to place him back within trinitarian relationship as a reference point in the Kingdom of God and the God of the Kingdom. To removed Christ from absolute abstraction and place him in relation and in historic specificity.
This image of Jesus, it should be noted, is not precisely new but present in the Church's own authoritative documents which equate salvation with liberation and posit a Christ with partiality for the poor. This image of Christ is also consonant with Christian principles of hope and practice and the presence of Christ in the oppressed, "simply because they are poor."
Most powerfully, then, the poor become a sort of sacrament of the presence of Christ. The poor call us to conversion and to solidarity with lives of service, simplicity and openness to the gifts of God.
This image is of Christ conquered and annihilated. In this Christ the poor recognized themselves, and from him took patience and resignation.
But this Christ did not stay on the cross. This Christ has become in recent years 'Jesus the Liberator.' This has happened as a self-adjustment of the mass of believers in Latin America, for whom Christ must be both relevant and identifiable. Christ on the cross must remaining the suffereing Jesus of history, but must also have the power to liberate them from the systems of oppression on the continent, and to inspire them to be agents of liberation themselves.
This new image of Christ has led to a new way of living faith in Him. It has led them to martyrdom and an explicit conflict with the systems of oppression. This new faith means first and foremost following Jesus in a historical and existential sense.
The conflict the new believers face results from being specifically for the poor and specifically against their oppressors. That this has occurred after five hundred years of a transcendent, abstract and removed image of Christ as a reconciler without conflict and a savior without condemnation might explain to some degree the violence incurred by and through the shift.
But it does not explain why the image of Christ has not previously raised any questions about centuries of systematic repression and abuse until now. We can only say that this has failed to happen because the Church has severed Christ from Jesus, abstracted God from man, the Messiah from history, and individual sin from collective persecution.
In other words, Christ has been love, without loving anyone specifically, and Christ has been a reconciler who condemned none of the parties, who loved the poor but did not condemn the rich and the self-righteous.
Part of the undoing of this failed image of Christ has been to place him back within trinitarian relationship as a reference point in the Kingdom of God and the God of the Kingdom. To removed Christ from absolute abstraction and place him in relation and in historic specificity.
This image of Jesus, it should be noted, is not precisely new but present in the Church's own authoritative documents which equate salvation with liberation and posit a Christ with partiality for the poor. This image of Christ is also consonant with Christian principles of hope and practice and the presence of Christ in the oppressed, "simply because they are poor."
Most powerfully, then, the poor become a sort of sacrament of the presence of Christ. The poor call us to conversion and to solidarity with lives of service, simplicity and openness to the gifts of God.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Daily Prayer: Monday Dawn
The forms and individual characters of living
and growing things,
of inanimate beings, of animals and flowers and all nature,
consitute their holiness in the sight of God.
Their inscape is their sanctity.
It is the imprint of His wisdom and His reality in them.
The special clumsy beauty of this particular
colt on this day in this field under these clouds
is a holines consecrated to God by His own
creative wisdom
and it declares the glory of God.
The pale flowers of the dogwood ourside this window
are saints.
The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of
that road are saints
looking up into the face of God.
This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins
and its own holy shape,
and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river
are canonized by their beauty and their strength.
The lakes hidden among the hills are saints,
and the sea too is a saint who praises God
without interruption
in her majestic dance.
The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another
of God's saints.
There is no other like him.
He is alone in his own character;
nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God
in quite the same way.
That is his sanctity.
But what about you? What about me?
and growing things,
of inanimate beings, of animals and flowers and all nature,
consitute their holiness in the sight of God.
Their inscape is their sanctity.
It is the imprint of His wisdom and His reality in them.
The special clumsy beauty of this particular
colt on this day in this field under these clouds
is a holines consecrated to God by His own
creative wisdom
and it declares the glory of God.
The pale flowers of the dogwood ourside this window
are saints.
The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of
that road are saints
looking up into the face of God.
This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins
and its own holy shape,
and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river
are canonized by their beauty and their strength.
The lakes hidden among the hills are saints,
and the sea too is a saint who praises God
without interruption
in her majestic dance.
The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another
of God's saints.
There is no other like him.
He is alone in his own character;
nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God
in quite the same way.
That is his sanctity.
But what about you? What about me?
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Cliff Notes: Jesus the Liberator
Jon Sobrino, a Spanish-born Jesuit theologian in El Salvador, has written numerous books about Jesus Christ and Latin American spirituality and theology over the last thirty years.
His 'Jesus the Liberator' takes the suffering poor of El Salvador as a starting point for understanding Christ. The resulting picture is of Jesus Christ as historically liberating and as carrying a liberating message of the Kingdom of God as a kingdom through, and on behalf of, the poor.
Sobrino begins the volume with a confessional introduction. Why write a christology? More specifically, why write yet another christology? Generally, Because liberation and crucifixion, hope and persecution, remain a central tension within Christianity, and one that can only be reconciled by understanding Jesus Christ.
Because the re-emergence of a historical understanding of Christ means a new understanding of Christ, and one that has already been fruitful for believers. Because the mystery of Christ is not an abundance of darkness, but an over-abundance of luminosity. Because Christ ill-considered can be Christ abused as an instrument of oppression. And because it is the necessary means of giving reasons for the hope that Christians have, and, simultaneously, the vital articulation of a Christ glimpsed by the silenced people of the world.
Why Sobrino's Christology, in particular? Because in Latin America Christ is still actively present to the masses, and this is not the case in much of the rest of the world. In Africa, he is not present to most. In Eurpose, he is not active. Because in spite of this reality (or perhaps because of it) Christ is mis-used to defend the status quo of oppression in Latin America.
Because Christ asked "Who do you say that I am?" and it is by our answers to this questions that personal and ecclesial change occurs. Because suffering forces thinking, and so suffering for Christ forces thinking about Christ. Because of gratitude for the evangelion, the good news of Christ, which is both Christ's message and the person of Christ himself.
The purpose of Sobrino's christology, then, is to "set forth the truth of Christ from the standpoint of liberation." The resulting Christ will not be entirely original, but will depend heavily on the perspectives from extant and increasing oppression. This Christ will have three aspects: his service to the Kingdom of God, his relationship to God the Father, and his death on the cross.
Such specificity is not distortive or arbitrary, because a liberating approach to Christ is precisely the one more apt to be inclusive than others, and because the study of Christ must result in spiritual goods for believers- something that, again, a liberating Christ is well-poised to accomplish.
Indeed, Sobrino closes by writing, a liberating Christ has already done so. He wrote the book in the middle of a war, of threats, of persecution, of the martyrdom of his colleagues and associates. It is a book for the crucified people of a nation, his country of El Salvadore.
This atomosphere, I would add, gives Sobrino's book about Christ a viscerality absent from nearly any other theological work I have read. It might as well be a book written in blood, and it is with some urgency that I ask my readers to follow me along its thorny path.
His 'Jesus the Liberator' takes the suffering poor of El Salvador as a starting point for understanding Christ. The resulting picture is of Jesus Christ as historically liberating and as carrying a liberating message of the Kingdom of God as a kingdom through, and on behalf of, the poor.
Sobrino begins the volume with a confessional introduction. Why write a christology? More specifically, why write yet another christology? Generally, Because liberation and crucifixion, hope and persecution, remain a central tension within Christianity, and one that can only be reconciled by understanding Jesus Christ.
Because the re-emergence of a historical understanding of Christ means a new understanding of Christ, and one that has already been fruitful for believers. Because the mystery of Christ is not an abundance of darkness, but an over-abundance of luminosity. Because Christ ill-considered can be Christ abused as an instrument of oppression. And because it is the necessary means of giving reasons for the hope that Christians have, and, simultaneously, the vital articulation of a Christ glimpsed by the silenced people of the world.
Why Sobrino's Christology, in particular? Because in Latin America Christ is still actively present to the masses, and this is not the case in much of the rest of the world. In Africa, he is not present to most. In Eurpose, he is not active. Because in spite of this reality (or perhaps because of it) Christ is mis-used to defend the status quo of oppression in Latin America.
Because Christ asked "Who do you say that I am?" and it is by our answers to this questions that personal and ecclesial change occurs. Because suffering forces thinking, and so suffering for Christ forces thinking about Christ. Because of gratitude for the evangelion, the good news of Christ, which is both Christ's message and the person of Christ himself.
The purpose of Sobrino's christology, then, is to "set forth the truth of Christ from the standpoint of liberation." The resulting Christ will not be entirely original, but will depend heavily on the perspectives from extant and increasing oppression. This Christ will have three aspects: his service to the Kingdom of God, his relationship to God the Father, and his death on the cross.
Such specificity is not distortive or arbitrary, because a liberating approach to Christ is precisely the one more apt to be inclusive than others, and because the study of Christ must result in spiritual goods for believers- something that, again, a liberating Christ is well-poised to accomplish.
Indeed, Sobrino closes by writing, a liberating Christ has already done so. He wrote the book in the middle of a war, of threats, of persecution, of the martyrdom of his colleagues and associates. It is a book for the crucified people of a nation, his country of El Salvadore.
This atomosphere, I would add, gives Sobrino's book about Christ a viscerality absent from nearly any other theological work I have read. It might as well be a book written in blood, and it is with some urgency that I ask my readers to follow me along its thorny path.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Who are the Christian Reformed?
The Christian Reformed Churches (CRC) are a close family of churches descended from the teachings of Protestant Reformers John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. As such, they emphasize:
the sovereignty of God in all aspects of life
the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture in all matters that it addresses
the primacy of the family as a vehicle of God's love
the centrality of the the Word in worship
the importance of education
the neccesary role of faith in daily life
Ultimately, however, they seceded from other Calvinist churches as those churches increasingly embraced or compromised with the teachings of the Enlightenment, and as class differences between the congregations grew. When persecuted, the grass-roots, poor churches that became the CRC fled the Netherlands for America.
The CRC eventually also split from the Dutch Reformed Church in America for the following reasons: doctrinally unsound preaching, accommodation to American culture, the use of hymns in worship, and the practice of open communion.
This led to the formation of the Christian Reformed Church in 1857. Since, social changes have transformed the church, beginning with the adoption of women to ecclesiastical ministries in the 1960's and the emergence of a debate on race relations. They currently embrace a wide variety of ministries, and have adopted an ecumenical stance:
"We should always, always be looking for opportunities to join with other Christians. We should work with them even if our differences will not allow us, yet, to routinely worship with them. We need to keep reaching out to each other as we continue to reach for our Bibles. We may not always agree on doctrine or on how to worship. But there’s plenty we can agree on that God wants us to do in this impoverished, sin-wracked world. So let’s join efforts and do what needs doing together."
Because their history has seen so much division, church unity remains a central concern for the CRC today. They retain their historical ties to Calvin College, Calvin Theological Seminary, the Institute for Christian Studies and continue their emphasis on education, having produced notable philosophers Alvin Plantigna and Nicholas Walterstorff.
Also, I think, my favorite professor Henry Venema, but that is neither here nor there.
the sovereignty of God in all aspects of life
the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture in all matters that it addresses
the primacy of the family as a vehicle of God's love
the centrality of the the Word in worship
the importance of education
the neccesary role of faith in daily life
Ultimately, however, they seceded from other Calvinist churches as those churches increasingly embraced or compromised with the teachings of the Enlightenment, and as class differences between the congregations grew. When persecuted, the grass-roots, poor churches that became the CRC fled the Netherlands for America.
The CRC eventually also split from the Dutch Reformed Church in America for the following reasons: doctrinally unsound preaching, accommodation to American culture, the use of hymns in worship, and the practice of open communion.
This led to the formation of the Christian Reformed Church in 1857. Since, social changes have transformed the church, beginning with the adoption of women to ecclesiastical ministries in the 1960's and the emergence of a debate on race relations. They currently embrace a wide variety of ministries, and have adopted an ecumenical stance:
"We should always, always be looking for opportunities to join with other Christians. We should work with them even if our differences will not allow us, yet, to routinely worship with them. We need to keep reaching out to each other as we continue to reach for our Bibles. We may not always agree on doctrine or on how to worship. But there’s plenty we can agree on that God wants us to do in this impoverished, sin-wracked world. So let’s join efforts and do what needs doing together."
Because their history has seen so much division, church unity remains a central concern for the CRC today. They retain their historical ties to Calvin College, Calvin Theological Seminary, the Institute for Christian Studies and continue their emphasis on education, having produced notable philosophers Alvin Plantigna and Nicholas Walterstorff.
Also, I think, my favorite professor Henry Venema, but that is neither here nor there.
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