Dorothy Day, the Child

Unsurprisingly, Dorothy Day began life as a child. Equally unsurprisingly, when she looked back on her childhood she found both profound truths and glimpses of her future self. This is perhaps a great act of anachronism--one which would be by no means unique to her--in which we project back onto a past of infinite possibilities the notion of fate which comes from hindsight and the wisdom which comes from distance. Even if that is true, even if to the smallest degree, it does not thereby negate the value of this self-reflection, this turning to the past to explain the present and to extract from its eventualities eternal truths. After all, Christ pointed often to children for just such a reason, either to validate this human instinct or because he knew that through it we might more easily grasp that which he taught us. It was to those like "little children" that truth had been revealed, not the wise, whom Jesus must rebuke and remind that out of the mouths of babes came true praise. To the those who would become children, the kingdom of heaven belongs. So when Day looks back on her childhood in search of kernels of truth, she may indulge a human impulse but she also practices a Christian virtue.

What she finds is both the seeds of simple faith and the onset of our most basic sins:

We did not search for God when we were children. We took Him for granted. We were at some time taught to say our evening prayers, “Now I lay me,” and “Bless my father and mother.” This done, we prayed no more unless a thunderstorm made us hide our heads under the covers and propitiate the Deity by promising to be good.

Very early we had a sense of right and wrong, good and evil. My conscience was very active. There were ethical concepts and religious concepts. To steal cucumbers from Miss Lynch’s garden on Cropsey Avenue was wrong. It was also wrong to take money from my mother, without her knowledge, for a soda. What a sense of property rights we had as children! Mine and yours! It begins in us as infants. “This is mine.” When we are very young just taking makes it mine. Possession is nine points of the law. As infants squabbling in the nursery we were strong in that possessive sense. In the nursery might made right. We had not reached the age of reason. But at the age of four I knew it was wrong to steal.

She also remember with what innocence and clarity she first learned about poverty and became disillusioned with the way it is approached in supposedly Christian society. Her words are both a testament to the obviousness of our shortcomings and to the wisdom and impressionability of our youth:

Children look at things very directly and simply. I did not see anyone taking off his coat and giving it to the poor. I didn’t see anyone having a banquet and calling in the lame, the halt and the blind. And those who were doing it, like the Salvation Army, did not appeal to me. I wanted, though I did not know it then, a synthesis. I wanted life and I wanted the abundant life. I wanted it for others too. I did not want just the few, the missionary-minded people like the Salvation Army, to be kind to the poor, as the poor. I wanted everyone to be kind. I wanted every home to be open to the lame, the halt and the blind, the way it had been after the San Francisco earthquake. Only then did people really live, really love their brothers. In such love was the abundant life and I did not have the slightest idea how to find it.

Answering Allison: Pacifism and Love

As part of my research for the Anarchy in May series, I was lured in by the title of Dale Allison’s The Sermon on the Mount: Inspiring the Moral Imagination. Hoping to have my moral imagination inspired, I cracked the spine only to find that I still feel more invigorated by the old familiar text of Matthew 5 than by Allison’s exposition of its meaning. More than anything, his attempt to take to task the pacifist interpretation of the command to “resist not the evildoer” stirred the polemicist in me, unsurprisingly. In fact, quite contrary to the very limited homiletics training I had many years ago, I managed a list of five distinct problems with his critique that can be answered with relative ease.

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The third attempt Allison tries to make to undo any pacifist interpretation of Matthew 5 sees a contradiction between total pacifism and the all-important command to love. He argues, “One can also, on the basis of the command to love (7:12; 19:19; 22:37-39), question the pacifist’s interpretation. Each situation envisioned in 5:38-42 is one in which the disciple alone is insulted or injured. But what does one do if others are being insulted or injured…Non-retaliation is one idea embodied in our text; but what if the equally important imperatives for justice or defense of the innocent appear to demand the exercise of force?” Allison proposes some interesting problems, but the assumed answered to his own questions leave a lot to be desired, as, to a degree, do the questions themselves.

For example, he makes an allusion to the imperatives for justice and defense of the innocent in the Sermon on the Mount but curiously offers no citation. He came up with three separate verses from Matthew as a whole for the command to love but can apparently offer none at all for the command to defend the defenseless or dole out justice. That is not to suggest that justice and concerned for the defenseless are not biblical principles. If Allison were willing, he might point to the command to give alms in Matthew 6 as an example of such a measure on behalf of the weak. Of course, it would, unfortunately for him, be an example of positive yet non-violent social action and wouldn’t further his point. In fact, the absence of a supporting citation turns out to be because there is no text which might further his point, in Matthew or elsewhere in the New Testament. The reader is never presented with an occasion when “defense of the innocent appear[s] to demand the exercise of force.” Perhaps the biblical authors just left it out. After all, the Greco-Roman world was such a friendly, well-policed place—unlike the modern West. They probably never encountered the kind of injustices demanding violent reaction that we do on a daily basis in America.

More importantly than the now characteristically extra-biblical methodology, however, is the implied answer to Allison’s question. It is true that ethical cases do arise in which the love of neighbor and the love of enemy do conflict, and Allison seems to admit that to respond with violence toward our enemy is to do something other than to love him (something which not all proponents of violent Christianity are willing to admit). Setting aside the evocation of the illusory moral category of “innocents,” the problem, unfortunately, with choosing love of neighbor over love of enemy is that it seems to directly contradict the very logic of Jesus presented in the command to love one’s neighbor. Jesus makes the point very explicit, and Paul will later as well, that human logic would suggest that we give preferential treatment to our neighbor. In Christ, however, no one gets preferential treatment. The commands to love our neighbor and our enemies are parallel, and there is no ethical hierarchy about them. If anything, indulging the vulgar tendency to love our neighbors just a little better than our enemies undermines the Christian spirit and nullifies the teaching. Allison admits, and I agree, that the conflict between loving one’s neighbor and loving one’s enemy are impossible to resolve perfectly and logically. We differ in that I embrace the reversal of terrestrial logic imposed by God in Christ and argue that it is nearer to the heart of the Gospel to shower your enemy with love than to love him only when there is no impediment to that love, when it doesn’t get in the way of you loving the people you really want to love.

(Parenthetically—which is a word I feel strange using when there are actual parentheses visible—my wife joked with me that we ought to buy each other guns so that, by Allison’s logic, so long as we’re together we can be protected. If someone attacks me, she could shoot him and be morally justified because her action was the defense of others rather than self. If someone attacks here, the situation could play out in reverse. It was so magnanimous of God to give us such a convenient end run around ethics.)

Customized Chrisitanity: Finding Your Divine Spark

The following is one of a multi-part response to an article by Jim Burklo entitled "How To Live As a Christian Without Having to Believe the Unbelievable." For an introduction to these thoughts, see Burklo's Bible.
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As promised, let us turn now to that nasty dogmatic discussion of Arianism, a spectrum of beliefs which, in their many forms, share the common denominator of a belief that Jesus was somehow less than divine. The Trinity, and its necessary belief in the full and equal divinity of Jesus, is among those pesky doctrine that Burklo would have us do away with if we find them at all offensive. What he proposes instead is a benign, new age rendition of the divinity of Christ more palatable to our refined, enlightened sensibilities.

When Jesus asked us to believe in him, he wasn’t asking us to believe a list of ideas about him. He was asking us to believe in that spark of the divine that was inside of him, because he wanted us to believe in the spark of the divine that is in every one of us.

Let's ignore, for the time being, the unfortunate reality that Jesus never actually says what Burklo wants him to. He never references a common divine spark shared between himself and humanity. He doesn't mention a divine spark at all. But this willingness to pick and choose and distort Burklo's own chosen source material to conform to his preset notion of who Jesus ought to be is a problem to deal with tomorrow.

Instead, let's assume, arguendo, that Burklo's argument isn't self-defeating on its face and look to the disastrous implications of his vision of Christianity. What Burklo has offered us is a perverted version of Jesus message read anachronistically through the lens of Enlightenment humanism. It imagines Jesus not as something other than or apart from the human condition but as an exemplar of the ideal human as humanity can and ought to be. If only humanity would see and embrace love ("who is God") which is already available to us, already accessible, then we could construct a heaven on earth.

It is, for all intents and purposes, a functionally atheistic form of Christianity. Except that really isn't fair because what it actually does is deify humanity creating a vulgar, anthropotheistic religion. This devastates theology, particularly the cosmic story of fall and redemption, creation and recreation, that dominates the biblical narrative, replacing it instead with universe which revolves around me. Just the way we like it. This paring away of the annoying doctrines of soteriology, cosmology, and eschatology will be the subject of my final complaint. More crucially here, Burklo's vision of Christianity even undermines his all important ethical consideration. After all, if God is love and I have God (i.e. love) inside me and practicing love is the whole duty of man (not, as the narrator of Ecclesiastes says, fearing God and keeping His commandments) then any behavior which I can reasonably justify as originating from love--whatever that is, however I feel like defining it, since I have the divine spark equal to that of Jesus--is moral.

In fairness, Christians of all stripes do this anyway. I'm loving that homeless man by not giving him a few dollars because he'll probably just use it to buy liquor anyway. I'm loving my spouse by being obstinate because, in the long run, what I know is right will be best for both of us. I'm loving my enemies by invading their country and setting up a democracy because that's how God wants their lives to be governed. It's all ridiculous, but, by making Jesus the messenger of love and divine sparkliness, Burklo actually exacerbates the problem. If Jesus really did come to say, "Hey, I have a divine spark, and I'm living consistent with it. You should look to your divine spark too and live in accordance with its law of love," then he freed every man to be a canon unto himself, the measure of what love is and how it should be applied through the loose framework of "willingness to feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed, heal the sick."

Sure, it makes you always feel good about the kind of loving your doing because it is always consistent with your divine spark, but you're left feeling a little suspicious of the guy down the road whose working just as hard to liberate a different set of oppressed people--maybe the people you thought were oppressing your oppressed people--and in a way that you don't think is all that loving. I guess maybe his divine sparkler just sparkles different from yours.

Jesus, Nuns, and the Margins of Society

I recently commented on the foolishness of reading misogyny into the Vatican criticism of Margaret Farley's defense of homosexuality, masturbation, and divorce. The Vatican having age-old positions on these questions, Farley's sex would have no bearing on their judgment. It is a smokescreen--intended or not--to try to throw sexism into an issue that has been decided for centuries just because the present dissenters happen to be women.

In the article I linked to, the writer referenced critics but made little attempt to name them. Since posting, critics have been coming out of the proverbial woodwork to defend Farley and other nuns against Vatican censure. One prominent monastic, Sister Simone Campbell of the lobbying group NETWORK, went on to Stephen Colbert's show last night in order to say her piece with Colbert as her farcical foil. During the course of their discussion, Colbert asked her to admit that she wasn't socially conservative enough. She responded:

Actually, what I’ll admit is that we’re faithful to the Gospel. We work every day to live as Jesus did in relationship with people at the margins of our society. That’s all we do.

Colbert retorted, tongue firmly in cheek, that it was unfair to play the Jesus card and that he couldn't debate the Bible with a nun. Luckily I have no such compunctions. What Sister Campbell claims to be doing is the Gospel. There really can be no argument about that. Jesus did live his daily life among the socially marginal, forming relationships and working for their benefit. Unfortunately, her contention that this is "all we do" is misleading. The Vatican is not complaining that the nuns are ministering to or forming relationships with homosexuals, divorcees, and other arguably marginal groups. The problem is that they are endorsing morally marginal behaviors.

It is necessary to remember Jesus' stated motivation for being among sinners: it's the sick who need a doctor. Jesus solution to morally marginal behavior was not to expand what was morally permissible but to rehabilitate sinners (a grace of which we are all recipients). When Christ steps in to defend the woman caught in adultery, apocryphal though the story may be, he does tell her "neither do I condemn you" but he concludes with the admonition "go and sin no more." It is critical in this discussion to realize that keeping the commands of love and forgiveness do not translate into a fluid morality.

That's the fundamental problem when people--take Carrie Underwood for example--try to say that their Christianity made them endorse homosexuality. It is possible, because people have done it, to make a number of reasoned (though I think fatally flawed) arguments that homosexuality is consistent with the Scriptures and the broader Christian ethos, though obviously not with the traditional testimony of the church universal. Stating matter-of-factly, however, that God wants everyone to love everyone ergo gay marriage is moral misunderstands love just as much as Sister Campbell misunderstands relationship. The question of whether or not gay marriage is morally permissible is distinct from whether or not we should love homosexuals or establish relationships with them.

I, of course, have opinions on both issues which coincide neither with Sister Campbell nor Stephen Colbert's caricatured conservative. But those aren't really the point. The point is that the unthinking appeal to Jesus and the Gospel like a political slogan by both sides is shameful and, more importantly, unproductive. Jesus does not belong to a modern political party--just like he didn't belong to an ancient political faction--and the suggestion that Christianity endorses political positions is repugnant. At the very least, however, we should realize that God does not recognize the lines that we draw. Social liberals and social conservatives need to realize that they can both be Christians--flawed, finite, wrong more often than they're not Christians. When the Vatican says to its ecclesiastical subordinates, "You're not teaching what we believe" that is not sexism and it is not infidelity to the Gospel. It is a statement of fact. Meanwhile, when Sister Campbell says "We're faithful to the Gospel...that's all we do" it has all the grandiosity characteristic of self-delusion and unintentional falsehood.

Romans 13: Love, Vengeance, and Anarchy

The following is part of the Anarchy in May series which examines Christian anarchism and quotes prominent Christian anarchist thinkers. For a more detailed introduction and a table of contents, please see Anarchy in May: Brief Introduction and Contents.
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There are times when we all ought to lament the versification of Scripture. An innovation of the Middle Ages, biblical versification allows and even encourages readers to artificially divide what were originally single units of texts. At the level of single verses, Scripture often splits single sentences (and therefore single thoughts) right down the middle. More pernicious, perhaps, are the chapter divisions that allow us to consider fuller units of text as if they existed independently of those that came before. When you add to this the translators subheadings which appear in almost every English edition of the Bible, the reader is left with an almost overwhelming compulsion to read scripture in segments which may or may not reflect any genuine divisions on the part of the original author (and which may even ignore divisions that the authors did intend).

While there are numerous nuances which are glazed over by the versification of Scripture (and numerous pragmatic benefits to weigh against my admittedly one-sided criticisms), one text in which the chapter divisions have dramatically narrowed interpretations is Romans 13. This text has been marshaled for centuries, and especially since the rise of the Anabaptists, to legitimate civil authority and encourage lawful participation of Christians therein. Unfortunately, when it is offered as proof of the moral permissibility of civil participation, the message is normally begun at Romans 13:1, as if Paul has suddenly left off on his themes being a living sacrifice, existing in peace with everyone, and manifesting an ethos of love introduced beginning in 12:1--and indicated not by the new chapter but by the transitional term "therefore" and the shift to the hortatory tone--in order to talk about the unrelated theme of ruling authorities. In erasing the verse and chapter divisions, new themes and parallels begin to emerge which help to give a fuller picture of the meaning of Romans 13 and admit interpretations which are consonant with Christian anarchism (and alleviate what would otherwise be an irresolvable tension between Romans 12 and 13):

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written,

"Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

It should strike you as ironic, as it struck me only very recently, how closely the quintessential text used to legitimate civil authority and its bearing of the sword is to perhaps the greatest Pauline exhortation to pacifism that invalidates participation in government. The interplay extends beyond the text quoted above and there are numerous points of contact that could be examined. There are two essential features of the above text, however, which I contend are the cornerstone for a right interpretation of Romans 13, one that affirms Paul's command to submit to government without concluding simply (and uncritically) that Christians should therefore kill American Indians, Tories, Confederates, Nazis, communists, and Muslims in the name of God and Washington (if Christians still bother to make that distinction).

The first theme which unites the two passages is love, particularly a love which strives to live at peace with everyone. This is undoubtedly the focus of the beginning of Paul's discussion as he encourages Christians to live in a community of love. Initially this community seems to be primarily the Christian community, as Paul speaks of brotherly affection, but Paul quickly extends this exhortation to love to all men, whose common moral judgment Christians are to conform to and who Christians are to live at peace with. Paul extends the bounds of love even further to include even those who are outright evil, who persecute and curse Christians. Echoing the prescriptions of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Paul advises a radical love for one's enemies, a love that is not merely non-aggression but positive affection. It involves blessing those who hate us the most and providing for them even as they try to deprive Christians of their lives and property. The ultimate aim is clearly that of a self-sacrificial love, but Paul stresses peace in the community as an intermediate goal. Ultimately evil will be overcome by good--God's righteous judgement--but in the meantime Christians are to confront evil with their own divinely mandated goodness in an effort to be peacemakers in a world that refuses peace

One may question my inclusion of that final sentence in the above quote, because verse eight is typically shifted into the next paragraph (another modern feature of the text absent in the originals) away from the section on civil government, but it seems to fit very neatly in with the issue of what one owes and to whom it is owed: "Render to all what is due them...Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another." (The words are the same in Greek, "due" and "owe.") It also comes full circle back to the dominant theme of the outset of the quoted passage, a theme which Paul clearly never intended to leave. It is clear, when reading this text as a unit, that Paul never abandons his themes of love, goodness, and living at peace. Paul's first command is to be subject to the government, which he immediately repeats as a negative prohibition not to agitate against the government. Suddenly, this command becomes not a legitimation of civil authority as ultimately good but a repetition of the exhortation for Christians to live at peace so far as it is depends on them. Paul continues to explain that as long as Christians continue to live good lives, the government will leave them in peace. The picture Paul is painting then becomes clear: do not be the agent of agitation against governments, live such good lives that the government will not be agitators against you, and the peace which has been enjoined on you will prevail. Ultimately, this peaceful coexistence is an expression of the love which Paul reminds is the true and final duty of all Christians. You may owe the government taxes and the king honor, but your first and foremost owe everyone love, the kind of love that bless, feeds, and offer succor to our enemies--even inimical nation states.

It does seem clear, however, that in some sense Paul does recognize the right, even the divine duty, of civil government to bear the sword and punish evil as servants of God, which would seem to undermine the position of Christian anarchism. Here the second observation comes into play. I am not contesting that coercive force is the necessary function of civil government. In fact, the whole of Christian anarchism is predicated on the belief that all civil authorities exist only and inevitably by the use of such violence. Let's even say, for the sake of argument, that the use of such force is the result of divine approbation rather than exigency (which I don't believe it is, but that point is not necessary to my argument). When Paul's message is taken as a unit, it is clear that God's elect purpose for civil government and government's ordained means for achieving that purpose are incompatible with God's elect plan for the Christian community.

Consider the linguistic parallel. "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God...for [the government] does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil." Within the span of a few short sentences--placed on opposite sides of a theological chasm by a big, bold number thirteen separating them--Paul says to Christians, do not take revenge but leave room for God's wrath, which, by the way, He is executing through the police power of the state. It is hard to be more clear that Paul sets up the moral duties of the church and the state in contradistinction to one another. The church is the place in which participants are governed by a law of love which forgives sins, blesses foes, promotes peace, and gives aid and comfort to the enemy (to borrow military language). Meanwhile, the state is the organ by which God chooses to punish sins, suppress foes, declare war, and destroy the enemy--though not always in ways which are just.

This, meanwhile, has always been the Christian anarchists understanding of civil government: that it is a sinful institution using a sinful means to punish sinful people in an effort to order a sinful world. When Paul declares that God uses civil government to punish evil through violent suppression, he is by no means legitimizing that behavior (the behavior that will be turned on him and his Christian community in a short time), much less commending it to Christians whom he has just instructed to never punish evil through violent suppression but to confront it with blessings, peace, and charity. Quite the contrary, he is building on a tradition of looking at civil authority entirely distinct from our own laudatory praise of the enlightened modern means of governance. For him, to say that Rome is the servant of God is not like Rick Santorum saying America was a Christian nation; he draws instead on the rich Old Testament tradition of God using evil authorities to work providential ends through violent means and then punishing them for their sinfulness. Consider Isaiah 10:

Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger
And the staff in whose hands is My indignation,
I send it against a godless nation
And commission it against the people of My fury
To capture booty and to seize plunder,
And to trample them down like mud in the streets.
Yet it does not so intend,
Nor does it plan so in its heart,
But rather it is its purpose to destroy
And to cut off many nations.
For it says, “Are not my princes all kings?
“Is not Calno like Carchemish,
Or Hamath like Arpad,
Or Samaria like Damascus?
“As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols,
Whose graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
Shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images
Just as I have done to Samaria and her idols?”

So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness.”

Like Babylon countless nations before it and like countless nations after it--including Rome, of which Paul is speaking, and America, of which I am typically speaking--Assyria does in fact act in service of God and is therefore God's servant. This does not mean that Assyria acts consciously in an effort to conform to the will of God; it was not a Jewish nation or even a righteous nation. It is merely a nation who unwittingly and unrighteously was employed by God for His righteous ends. This does not exculpate Assyria nor would it have exculpated the Jews if they had allied themselves to Assyria in her dastardly but ordained purpose. It merely recognizes, as Paul does, that no one can even pretend authority unless God permits it to happen and that God uses (though by no means necessarily approves of) the sinful means by which sinful man has attempted to order a sinful world in order to accomplish His righteous purposes. (One need only look at the cross as the ultimate testimony to the divine modus operandi.)

The conclusion then is a reevaluation of the meaning of Romans 13 when the context is brought to bear on its meaning. No longer can Christian blithely cite this verse and declare that government is good, its use of the sword is good, and Christian participation in either or both is therefore equally good. Instead, we see the flow of Paul's argument that stresses the Christian commitment to love and peace not only in the community of believers and with enemies who may arise but with society as a whole. Christians can hope for the ultimate accomplishment of divine justice through wrath poured out on evil, and in the meantime take heart that God is working through the mechanism of the state to curb the influence of evil in ways which are not available to Christians who are called to be holier than the world of violence and exigency they inhabit.

Have Prophecies Ceased: Exposition of 1 Cor. 13

I recently promised someone a face-to-face on the subject of cessationism but was unfortunately unable to follow through on that promise. It is my hope that a series of posts in this venue will suffice as an alternative.

Cessationism, the belief that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit have ceased since the times described in the New Testament, is biblically justified almost exclusively with reference to 1 Corinthians 13:

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I quote the full chapter rather than just verses 8-10 because the context is so very critical. The verses on the cessation of spiritual gifts are too frequently treated in isolation, which allows for a radically broad interpretation of what “the perfect” is. Christians, and even non-Christians, are largely familiar both with Paul’s definition of love (i.e. “Love is patient…”) and the triumvirate of Christian virtues (i.e. “So now faith, hope, and love abide…”). In the wake of Pentecostalism, Protestants--particularly those groups with a penchant for controversy--are equally familiar with the promise that speaking in tongues will cease. What seems to be entirely forgotten is that the prediction of cessation is sandwiched neatly in between Paul’s two most memorable statements about love. The verse about tongues-speaking and prophecy are not out of place. It is intimately related to Paul’s argument here, and the true meaning of these verses about cessation are wrapped up in precisely what that argument is.

Paul is writing in 1 Corinthians to a church that is perhaps more troubled than any other represented at length in the New Testament. In Corinth, they prefer human names to the name of Christ (Chapter 1), they prefer wisdom to divine folly (Chapter 2), they prefer libertinism to holiness (Chapter 5), they prefer “justice” to forgiveness (Chapter 6), and in this chapter Paul is dealing with their preference for spiritual gifts over the fruits of the Sprit (if I may subtly propose an intertextual relationship between 1 Cor. 13 and Gal. 5). The purpose in this chapter is neither merely to define love in a list of primary Christian virtues nor to stamp an expiration date on spiritual gifts. Paul’s aim is to show the superiority of love to spiritual gifts.

Paul achieves this aim in three broad strokes that roughly correspond to the paragraph divisions that we see in our modern English translations. First, Paul insists that love is what constitutes the value of the Christian life. Spiritual gifts, knowledge, charity, and even faith (which, incidentally, ought to qualify any valid understanding of sola fide) without love as their primary content and motive are all worthless.

Next, Paul gives an exposition of how love appears when it is manifest. The qualities which are listed are not so subtle jabs at the way the Corinthians have been treating one another. In fact, let’s break it down to see just how Paul’s description of love links back in to Paul’s earlier teachings in the same book:

• Love does not boast.


• Love is not arrogant.


• Love is not self-seeking.


• Love keeps no record of wrongs.


• Love does not delight in evil.

In all this it becomes quite clear that the point Paul is trying to get at is that love is characterized by behaviors and dispositions quite contrary to what the Corinthians are presently practicing. Notably, he once again elevates love even above both faith and hope by saying that love both believes (the verb is “πιστευει”) and hopes all things.

Finally, Paul concludes that--though all things are contingent on love, even faith and hope--love is contingent on nothing, not even time. “Love never ends,” and with this phrase Paul introduces the part of his argument that includes the reference to cessation. The spiritual gifts which the Corinthians are delighting in and allowing to disrupt their services, these things are ultimately transient. There was a time when they began; there will be a time when they end. Love, however, is without end. Ben Witherington has noted that even here love supersedes faith and hope, which both become obsolete eventually. In the final analysis, faith becomes sight and hope is fulfilled. Love only ever increases into eternity.

In the final rendering then, Paul is concerned first and foremost with the perfect nature of love in contrast not only to spiritual gifts, but to the knowledge that the Corinthians professed to have and to the childish behaviors that they have been exhibiting. When Paul speaks of the cessation of miraculous gifts, it is not as a passing statement of fact meant simply to inform the church at Corinth that their prophecies had a "best by" date on them. It was to illustrate that even these great gifts which they had would one day pass away, but love never would. Love, therefore, is the proper object of pursuit, the proper quality for boasting and pride (except that love does not boast and is not proud). There is nothing to glory in except love which is an all-sufficient and eternal glory.

Though I believe this analysis will be fruitful in time, the above does not really immediately solve the problem of precisely when spiritual gifts like prophecy and tongues-speaking will cease. The only thing that seems self-evident to me is that every Christian ought to be in some sense a cessationist. There will be a time when prophecies cease. The only thing left to decide is exactly when that time is.

Osama bin Laden is dead.

Osama bin Laden is dead. That is clearly old news at this point, but to be quite frank I didn't care much about the fact that he was killed. Tens of thousands of people have died in our crusade to kill this one man. Their deaths collectively seem to merit more attention to me. (For example, more people should really be asking the question: is any man worth it?) We did, however, stay up the night it was announced to see what exactly the president had to say. When Geraldo broke the news to us that the announcement was about bin Laden's death, we went to sleep.

What interests me more than his death is the response that came in the wake of his death. Geraldo was positively giddy, delighted in a way that would have put any school girl to shame. In addition to seeming unprofessional, it struck me as inappropriate that anyone should be so very delighted about the death of another human being no matter how "evil" he may have been. Unfortunately, Geraldo was not alone. The whole country seemed to be elated at the idea that this one man had finally been killed, as if our whole national consciousness had no greater aim in the decade since the September, 11 attacks. It was unnerving. After weeks of believing that I was largely alone in my distaste of this shameless reveling in death, a poll has shown that a majority of American Christians (albeit a slim majority) believe that the response to bin Laden's death was inconsistent with biblical teachings:

Americans are more conflicted over whether Christian values are consistent with the raucous celebrations that broke out after bin Laden was killed. About 60 percent of respondents—ranging from seven in 10 minority Christians to just over half of white mainline Protestants—believe the Bible’s message, “Do not rejoice when your enemies fall,” applies to the death of bin Laden.

I was relieved to find that so many others were uneasy, so many other recognized the blatantly inconsistency between the way Jesus tells us to treat our enemies and the way the American people reacted to bin Laden's death. That relief was, however, immediately met with a new round of disappointment when the same poll revealed that some eighty percent of Evangelicals believe that bin Laden is at this moment burning eternally in hell. Why are we bothering to take a stand on his eternal resting place at all? Are we in the judgement seat? I wonder if perhaps what this poll really reveals is that 80% of evangelicals are too concerned about the eternal disposition of the souls of others and not concerned enough about their own.

In other, even more disturbing, findings:

-- A slim majority (53 percent) of Americans say the U.S. should follow the Golden Rule and not use any methods on our enemies that we would not want used on our own soldiers—down from 2008, when 62 percent agreed.

Support for the Golden Rule principle was strongest among minority Christians, Catholics and religiously unaffiliated Americans (all with majorities above 52 percent), but less so among evangelicals (47 percent) and mainline Protestants (42 percent).

-- Younger Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 (69 percent) are more likely to believe the Bible passage about not celebrating “when your enemies fall” applies to bin Laden than do those age 65 and older (47 percent).

-- Religiously unaffiliated Americans (57 percent) are significantly more likely than Christians to say the use of torture against suspected terrorists can never be justified. Catholics, at 53 percent, are the Christian group most likely to say torture can never be justified.

-- Majorities of white evangelicals (54 percent) and minority Christians (51 percent) believe God had a hand in locating bin Laden, compared to only a third of white mainline Protestants and 42 percent of Catholics.

-- A slim majority (51 percent) of Americans believe God has granted America a special role in human history, led by two-thirds of evangelicals and nearly as many (63 percent) minority Christians, compared to 51 percent of Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

Prothero said he was most surprised by the Golden Rule responses, which indicate that half the country is willing to disregard Christianity’s most commonly expressed teaching—at least, when it comes to wartime.

The Wisdom of Bill Maher?

I feel immediately compelled to qualify this post by stating explicitly that I am not only not a devotee of Bill Maher's but that I am, as always, quite thoroughly opposed to Christian involvement in politics in the tradition of David Lipscomb, among others. This clip which I am posting I happened upon while channel surfing in a hotel room the other night. Maher's tirade involves the stance of Chrisitanity toward torture, something which obviously interests me very much. While his style is obviously comedic and irreverant (and the video I managed to find on YouTube is odd in itself), the basic point seems to me to be so plain in its accuracy that it boggles my mind how many Chrisitans can blatantly ignore it. The gift for human rationalization is astounding. A few days before seeing this segment while listening to the news, my wife turned to me in the car and said, "I feel like that's just the most basic thing: Christians should be against torture." In the video, Maher expresses the same sentiment more colorfully:

And not to put too fine a point on it, but nonviolence was kind of Jesus’ trademark, kind of his big thing. To not follow that part of it is like joining Green Peace and hating whales. There’s interpreting and then there’s just ignoring. It’s just ignoring if you’re for torture, as are more evangelical Christians than any other religion.

It is startling to me how readily Christians can reconcile in their mind the command to love our enemies and a secular, political imperative for security through force.

With all that out of the way, let me add this final disclaimer. Though it should go without saying, Bill Maher is not a Christian. What he has to say and the way he says it will undoubtedly be offensive to many of you (as it was at times to me). If, however, it is the very suggestion that to be a Christian is to eschew violence in favor of love that offends you, I propose that the problem is not with Maher at all.

The video can be found here.

A Confession of Faith Against a Confession of Faith Against Ecumenism

It has perhaps been foolish to try to understand the Orthodox spirit merely by reading Lossky, Meyendorff, and others of their ilk. One could no more correctly grasp the spirit of 18th century congregationalists by studying Jonathan Edwards. Certainly the theologians to whom I gravitate represent a position within the Orthodox Church, even a vocal and prominent position, but they are no means representative of the Orthodox Church universal. There is an equally vocal dissenting group (perhaps even a dissenting majority) that espouse ideas quite opposed to the more temperate positions of many of the Orthodox authors I read. I have encountered these voices more and more, the more I detach myself from the lofty literature appearing in periodicals and collecting dust on the library shelves.

Specifically, I came across a particularly disturbing document recently which seems to have substantial support. A Confession of Faith Against Ecumenism is a vitriolic denouncement of the Orthodox participation in ecumenical dialogues, meetings, and activities. I do not intend to restate the entire document here. Instead, I will give five points which I found especially unsettling, and leave others to be unsettled by the rest should they so choose:

• Straying dangerously close to Donatism, the authors suggest that all the sacraments of the Catholics and Protestants are utterly devoid of grace on the basis of their errors. Curiously, they are willing to accept unity on the grounds of baptism, provided the baptism is a triple-immersion performed by a legitimate priest (which exist only in the Orthodox Church): "One enters the church, however, and becomes Her member, not just with any baptism, but only with the 'one baptism,' that uniformly performed baptism, officiated by Priests who have received the Priesthood of the Church."
  


• So certain are these Orthodox of their own correctness and of the depravity into which the rest of us have sunk, that they refuse to pray with other "Christians," even in private: "As longa s the heterodox continue to remain in their errors, we avoid communion with them, especially in common prayer...not only common officiating and common prayer in the temple of God, but even ordinary prayers in private quarters." I have been blessed in my encounters with the Orthodox never to be confronted with this attitude, but I cannot imagine my response if an Orthodox person refused to pray with me because of the insufficiency of my single-immersion baptism.
  


• The document is surprisingly alarmist, all of it coated with a thick layer of fear-mongering. For example, it is suggested that if we make the audacious suggestion that there are Christians outside the Orthodox Church then we might as well call Buddhists Christians: "This inter-Christian syncretism has no expanded into an inter-religious syncretism, which equates all the religions with the unique knowledge of and reverence for God and a Christ-like way of life--all revealed from on high by Christ."
  
  
• The authors seem to describe to the kind of cold, formal conservatism that so many of the authors I read have vocally rejected: "We maintain, irremovably and without alteration, everything that the Synods and the Fathers have instituted. We accept everything that they accept and condemn everything that they condemn; and we avoid communication with those who innovate in matters of the Faith. We neither add, nor remove, nor alter any teaching." Contrast this attitude--that the Orthodox have held fast without addition or alteration to the historical statements of the Church--to the sentiments of Archimandrite Lazarus Moore: "The true traditionalist is not a person who lives in the past, but one who is open and alert to the voice and activity of the Spirit today…[Tradition] is not the sum of past experience, but a living experience of God’s action today." Equally unnerving is the self-deluded senseof nostalgia that accompanies the formal conservatism. If only we could go back to better times, earlier times..."Up until the beginning of the 20th century, the Church has steadfastly and immutably maintained a dismissive and condemnatory stance towards all heresies..." Sure it has.
  
  
• Perhaps most disturbing of all is how convinced the authors (and signers) of this document are that whatever they say and however they say it may be wrapped in a banner of "tough love." Love, apparently, gives the Orthodox carte blanche to be as hateful as they like, to--in their own words--wage war on the rest of us: "The Church's strict stance toward the heterodox springs from true love and sincere concern for their salvation, and out of Her pastoral care that the faithful be not carried away by heresy...There is such a thing as a good war and a bad peace."

Some, certainly, will not object to some of those points. In particular, I have in mind the readiness of the Churches of Christ to condemn as invalid all baptisms which do not take place by immersion or baptisms of children. (Ironically, members of the Churches of Christ might be pleased to see the Roman Catholic Church blamed in the Confession of Faith for the introduction of instruments into worship.) Of course, there are undoubtedly also things to which others will object that I do not. Which is fine. Just so long as we all find something objectionable in this mess.

Language and the Corruption of Meaning

It is interesting (which is, in this particular context, a euphemistic way of saying “tragic”) the way the dynamic and cultural nature of language can completely transform the meaning of words. Specifically it is “interesting” how Christians have been able to constantly reinterpret the Bible and the rich theology therein—at times under the conscious aegis of contemporary contextualization but more often entirely unconsciously and thus uncritically—with a ceaselessly shifting cultural lexicon. Words which have a very specific meaning have crossed time and language, arriving at the present only semantically equal to the original with the meaning totally lost. The form persists while the function is obscured. There would be little cause for alarm if, as many seem to think, the problem could be solved merely by opening a dictionary of ancient words. In truth, the dictionary only compounds the problem: explaining ancient words with modern glosses or, at best, drawing tenuous parallels to modern concepts.

That is perhaps all too vague to be much of a complaint. An example: Vladimir Lossky has suggested to some acclaim that the formula “one substance in three persons” has been corrupted by the modern understanding of personality. Speaking of the Father, Son, and Spirit as “persons” was filtered (and thus altered) immediately into Latin where the term carried with it a connotation of “mask” that is entirely absent in the Greek. The concept was further altered in the West as culture embraced a radical form of humanism in the Renaissance and, even more dramatically, in the Enlightenment. Western culture (and this embraces the Eastern Church) now understands the person in terms of radical individualism, the thing which makes the “me” actually “me” and not “you.” Contemporary culture lacks not only the appropriate language to speak about the hypostases of God but lacks the appropriate concepts to grasp the personhood in theology. The solution for generally embraced in theological discourse is to abandon the corrupted terms (something that the preceding sentence demonstrates that I am guilty of as well). Instead of the three “persons,” English theology reverts to a transliterated form of the Greek: “hypostasis.” This by no means solves the problem. Simply changing the word to more nearly resemble the original does not automatically attach to it the original concepts. Even as theologians strain to unravel the mystery of the original terminology, how the ancients conceived of hypostases is continually colored by how moderns conceive of personhood. In its extreme form, this tendency produces literature like The Shack where God is depicted as three people with different voices, different senses of humor, different tasks, and different interests, in short, different personalities. This, for Lossky and later for David Bentley Hart, represents a fundamental reversal of the way conceptual transformation ought to work. Christians are constantly allowing the changes in the concepts conveyed by language to alter the original concepts: modern personhood explains theological personhood. Hart suggests that rather than altering the language (i.e. using “hypostasis” instead of “person”), people ought to be rethinking the concept of modern personhood. A true understanding of theological personhood ought to have radical effects on how Christians conceptualize human personhood. In the most basic terms possible, instead of thinking that God is persons in the way humans are persons, people ought to understand how they are persons by thinking about how God is persons.

The problem is not restricted to the esoteric fields of theology proper and anthropology, nor is that my primary concern in arguing this point. In fact, the specific problem which is the catalyst for this thought was actually inspired in part (heaven help me) by the pope and in part by the Jars of Clay song, “Love Song for a Savior.” The pope, several weeks ago, warned a group of children that the “love” which was being peddled on the Internet and in popular culture was not really love at all. I agree, but, while the pope may recognize (at least in speeches) that “love” as expressed in the contemporary idiom is not love in the true sense, in the Christian sense, the secular definition of love has crept into our religious thought and corrupted our understanding of love as God intends it or as the biblical authors mean it. Case and point is the aforementioned Jars of Clay song, the first verse of which describes a girl in a rosy haze thanking Jesus for flowers, running into his arms, and singing over and over: “I want to fall in love with you.” This picture of “true love” is contrasted to those people who sit in church and ignore the sermon. Someday, they too will sing the young girl’s chorus: “I want to fall in love with you…my heart beats for you.”

It could not be more evident (to me at least) that this is a clear permeation of the secular idea of love into what ought to be a truer, more theologically sound conception of love. Jars of Clay is by no means the lone, or even the most egregious, offender. This idea of Christians “loving” Jesus and God “loving” us has seeped into our hymnography, into Christian pop music, into sermons, and into the popular consciousness. The idea is pervasive that the way God loves mirrors in some way the sentimentality of the contemporary understanding of love and that we should, therefore, reciprocate that “love” in kind. The statement “I love Jesus” is more likely to denote nothing more than a positive affection for the Savior than it is to suggest any concrete reality that aligns itself with biblical or historical theological perspectives on love. The affirmation that God loves us is likewise diluted beyond the point of substantial meaning such that God might just as easily be caricatured as our Heavenly Father who carries pictures of all His children in his wallet.

It may be alarmist of me, but I would suggest that the contemporary contextualization (which is, in this particular context, a euphemistic way of saying “rape”) of the meaning of “love” is the root of a number of significant theological problems. I wonder, for example, if the “faith alone” mentality which understands faith as the mere desire of Jesus to “come into my heart” is possible with a more concrete, less romantic view of what it is to love God and be loved by Him. More certainly, this false idea of love stands behind the overwhelming majority of objections to Christianity which begin, “How can a loving God” and end with a description of behavior which we would never permit from our spouses or relatives or friends—as if that were some kind of objective measure of love. Still more troubling are the manifold “loveless” marriages that people are stuck in. Love, rightly considered, is not something that is fallen into our fallen out of so much as it is something which the lover consciously chooses to express to the beloved through certain behaviors and dispositions. If God could fall out of love with humanity, then we would all be quite doomed. For just this reason, I object to the language of Jars of Clay about wanting to “fall in love” with Jesus, not—as with Dr. John Stackhouse—because it gives me the “homoerotic creeps” but because loving Jesus is not something which I fall into anymore than love (properly so-called) is something which I fall into with my wife.

The problem is not, as I said, so much with the words. We have preserved the right language. God should be spoken of as three persons and our basic stance toward Him ought to be described as love. The problem is the direction of meaning transformation for our words. Rather than allowing love rightly understood through divine guidance to determine how we ought to love both God and neighbor, we allow how we love apart from divine guidance to influence what we think is expected of us in the greatest commands. Human personhood ought to be defined relative to divine personhood, and human love ought to be define relative to divine love. In reversing these, our “contemporary contextualization” of meaning has led us into an unbelievably “interesting” modern problem.

And now, a public service announcement from the Pope and Patriarch:

The month of October saw two interesting announcements from, arguably, the world’s two most influential spiritual leaders.

On Saturday October 30th, the pope, the spiritual head of over one billion Christians, spoke to 100,000 Catholic children assembled from all corners of Italy in St. Peter’s Square. The seems to have had a number of lighter moments when the pope reminisced about his childhood, his dreams, and the desire to be taller. There was, however, a darker side to his speech, one which was tinged with no small amount of fear. Pope Benedict XVI urged the children to be wary of the kind of love that is peddled on the Internet and in the media. That kind of love is “incapable of chastity and purity,” and encourages people to “get used to love that's reduced to merchandise for barter.” The pope promised children that embracing the image of love which is propagated in popular culture would lead ultimately to unhappiness.

Certainly the pope’s message is not without merit. The pornographic paradigm for love that is uncritically received by everyone, not merely children, from popular culture (especially the Internet) stands in desperate need of correction. It does, however, seem strangely inappropriate for the pope to be warning people about love received from the Internet when what most people fear, in fact, is the kind of love being received in Belgian churches. Aged though the pope may be, he could hardly have let the matter of the hundreds of reported cases of sexual abuse perpetrated on children by his priests. After all, the Vatican had just summarily denied those abuse victims the right to hold a rally in St. Peter’s Square. It is perhaps unfortunate that the pope should be preoccupied with the troubles of a post-Christian culture when his own eye is plagued with an even more burdensome plank of patently unChristian behavior.

A little over a week earlier, the Ecumenical Patriarch - spiritual spokesman of a meager and curiously obscure three hundred million Christians - wrote an article for CNN in which he addressed issues of the Christian duty to the environment. In it he expresses the strongly positive message that creation has a unitive effect which transcends doctrinal differences, even between atheists and Christians. This world is entrusted to humanity, either through divine prerogative or through simple circumstance. Regardless, concern for the environment has a truly universal appeal and thus the ability to truly universally unite humanity in action toward a positive goal. Whatever elements of fear appeared in the course of Patriarch Bartholomew's message were tempered with a hope: "We are optimistic about turning the tide; quite simply because we are optimistic about humanity's potential. Let us not simply respond in principle; let us respond in practice. Let us listen to one another; let us work together; let us offer the earth an opportunity to heal so that it will continue to nurture us."

There is a great deal to commend the Patriarch's message. Specifically noteworthy is the positive theology which he presents to justify his environmentalism:

Nature is a book, opened wide for all to read and to learn, to savor and celebrate. It tells a unique story; it unfolds a profound mystery; it relates an extraordinary harmony and balance, which are interdependent and complementary. The way we relate to nature as creation directly reflects the way we relate to God as creator.

The sensitivity with which we handle the natural environment clearly mirrors the sacredness that we reserve for the divine. We must treat nature with the same awe and wonder that we reserve for human beings.

Creation is no less a work of the Creator than human beings are, whatever dispositional distinctions we make between humanity and creation relative to the divine. This earth is no less God's handiwork, and the respect which Christians in particular show for it reveals the respect we have for God's work.

The Patriarch's statement was not without detractors, members of the Orthodox community who for one reason or another met the article with palpable scorn. Some comments are beneath notice (e.g. "If he continues on this path I would not be surprised if, a couple of years from now, we’ll hear from the EP that Salvation will come through some UFO saviors") except perhaps for the purpose of gentle mockery, but other comments have some legitimacy. The Patriarch quite clearly did not get the memo that much of the scientific literature on global warming has been challenged (though notably vindicated within its own circles). More importantly, the question is raised as to whether or not this is the appropriate focus for the Ecumenical patriarch. Certainly no one would deny that environmental ethics is out of bounds for religious discussion, but is it really the place of the Ecumenical Patriarch with all his duties and responsibilities to weigh in on hot button political issues? Consider, for example, this accusation:

Most disturbing however is the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s subordination of human freedom to the fashionable fundamentalism of the environmental movement. Orthodox Christians have not forgotten the 2004 visit of Patriarch Bartholomew to Havana that saw His All Holiness praise Fidel Castro as an environmentalist while showing indifference to the regime’s laundry list of crimes and personally neglecting Cuba’s dissidents. How is it that the souls imprisoned by one of history’s great butchers are not worthy of pastoral concern?

More crucially, the Patriarch bestowed on the communist leader the Order of St. Andrew in a move which greatly angered many Orthodox worldwide. Yet the Patriarch action was justified - as part of his explanation for his entire visit - thus: "[the Patriarch comes] bringing the same message that Jesus Christ brought 2,000 years ago. It’s the same message of peace, the message of reconciliation.” The church the Patriarch had come to consecrate had been paid for in part by a Cuban government that has been increasingly tolerant in its religious policy.

One may rightly ask if peace and reconciliation are the appropriate course, just as one could easily argue that the pope gains nothing by dwelling on the sex abuse scandal. Yet, it is hard to avoid the feeling that, in a time when the community of faith is truly in dire need of spiritual leadership, Christian leaders of the highest order are two engrossed with personal denial and pet projects to respond to the needs of the people. Then again, if they could get their act together, would Christians even still listen?

True Love

There are two conditions of true love which run contrary to the popular perception of love. Love is, in its truest expression, conditional and intolerant. Certainly each of those assertions will require some explanation and qualification so as not to offend the sensibilities of anyone who might read them. But with any luck, even after they are explained, I may yet offend some readers.

Love is conditional. That is not to say that the lover loves conditionally based on some quality in the beloved. Instead, love is conditional in that it must meet conditions of authenticity. It is not love merely because we label it so; it is love because it meets the conditions of love, conforms to the objective criteria of love. Love admits no relativism in its expression, making any sentiment like “I love you, but…” irrelevant. Love permits not coexistence between love and an unloving act, because the condition of love is act. All behavior therefore either expresses love or it does not and thus logically precedes any profession of love. This reverses the traditional conception of conditionality. It is no longer “I love you because…” (which would imply that love exists because of some behavior of the beloved) but becomes “Because I love you…” (which requires the behavior of the lover to verify the existence of the love). Thus love is conditional, with the actions of the lover rather than the loved as the condition.

Love is intolerant. Not only this, but love is belligerently intolerant, because true love admits not fault in the beloved. This is not out of some warped delusion about reality, nor of some fantastic and unrealistic appraisal of the beloved. Instead it is out of unwillingness to accept anything but the best on behalf of the beloved. Certainly it tolerates no affront to the beloved from evil sources, but it also tolerates no belittling of the beloved from the beloved. When the beloved acts against her own interests, the lover responds naturally and rightly with an intolerant hatred. Elie Wiesel has quite rightly said, “The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.” If the ultimate lovelessness is apathy than love must be the ultimate pathos, coupling paradoxically in itself the most supernal joys and the most repugnant rages. Both express the underlying reality that love is supremely intolerant. The sentiment that “If you love me, you’ll accept me as I am” expresses the polar opposite of love. It is inimical to love, corrosive to it. G. K. Chesterton reminds that “Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”

Thus, I suggest that it is not only appropriate but ultimately necessary to understand love as conditional and intolerant. A love which is unconditional and tolerant is a contradiction in terms. The love which does not require anything of the lover (unconditional) or the beloved (tolerant) is no love at all. It is a superlative mutual apathy, the darkest of all possible human relations.

Hell and the Love of God

I read something wonderful the other day in Stanley Grenz's Theology for the Community of God about the nature of hell:

The final outworking of the rejection of God's love is a never-ending experience of the wrath of the eternal Lover. Hell, therefore, is not the experience of the absence of God's love. God loves his creation with an eternal love. Therefore God's love is present even in hell. But in hell people experience the presence of the divine love in the form of wrath.

Most of my life I have had the reality of hell justified to me on the basis of God's justice or holiness or righteousness but never on the basis of His love. It isn't to say that God's justice or righteousness or holiness would be insufficient to explain hell, it is just that the standard emotion-laden argument against hell sounds something like, "But how can a loving God condemn people to hell!" Justice and holiness in response to this became ways to explain away hell as an unfortunate necessity not incompatible with God's love but not expressive of it either. Hell took on the character of a necessary evil.

In Grenz's understanding hell is not only compatible with God's love but - given a correct understanding of hell and love - is actually the necessary expression of a loving God. Grenz notes (in a way similar to G. K. Chesterton) that true love is not expressed only in a kind of rosy, bubbly haze of joy. Instead, he writes:

Genuine love, therefore, is positively jealous. It is protective, for the true lover seeks to maintain, even defend, the love relationship whenever it is threatened by disruption, destruction, or outside intrusion. Whenever another seeks to injure or undermine the love relationship, he or she experiences love's jealousy, which we call "wrath." When this dimension is lacking, love degenerates into mere sentimentality.

God's love for His creation is expressed as much in His wrath as in His kindness. When the beloved spurns the love and seeks to sever the bond love is not experienced in casual acceptance of that alienation but in intense "jealousy."

Seeing hell explained in this way was exciting, but the excitement was somewhat abated when I read that Vladimir Lossky had already drawn much the same conclusion in his Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church

The love of God is an intolerable torment for those who have not acquired it within themselves.

Worse still, Lossky quoted from St. Isaac the Syrian in defense of this proposition.

...those who find themselves in gehenna will be chastised with the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo greater sufferings than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God...but love acts in two different ways, as suffering in the reproved, and as joy in the blessed.

It would appear (again like Chesterton) that I went seeking something new and, when I found it, was shocked and encouraged to find that it was in fact old. If the doctrine of hell as the full and necessary expression of love has been lost in modern times, I hope we can recover it.

The Wisdom of G. K. Chesterton (Excursus 1)

I have heard the argument so often that it nauseates me to see it now, "That if God really loved us then He wouldn't make us follow some arbitrary rule book." There is embedded in this nonsense the idea that somehow love means acceptance and toleration. In reading G. K. Chesterton, I have found the words to reject this very common fallacy. Love is not the thing that leaves us as we are. Love is the thing that insists we change. Love is what tears us down into rubble because what we were was already a trash heap. Love destroys us and then forces us to sprout anew and better. Chesterton's words are, quite expectedly, more pointed and more memorable than mine:

"Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."

"The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises--he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things."

"A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else."

"My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty...Before any cosmic act of reform we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance...We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself."

This is love, the kind of love that God has for us. It is not a love that says, "Because I love you, I will let you do whatever you feel is best regardless of what is actually best." That, quite frankly, is no love at all. God's is a love that draws on His infinite wisdom to say, "I know what is best for you, and, because I love you, I will not content myself with anything less than that." We not only ought to recognize that love in God but emulate it among ourselves. If we love each other, we cannot be content with each other so long as we are all mired by sin.

A Century of Love in a Day, Pt. 3

3-4. When we misuse the soul’s powers their evil aspects dominate us. For instance, misuse of our power of intelligence results in ignorance and stupidity; misuse of our incensive power and of our desire produces hatred and licentiousness. The proper use of these powers produces spiritual knowledge, moral judgment, love and self-restraint. This being so, nothing created and given existence by God is evil.
It is not food that is evil but gluttony, not the begetting of children but unchastity, not material things but avarice, not esteem but self-esteem. This being so, it is only the misuse of things that is evil, and such misuse occurs when the intellect fails to cultivate its natural powers.

8. …A man dominated by self-love is dominated by all the passions.

10. If a man loves someone, he naturally makes every effort to be of service to that person. If, then, a man loves God, he naturally strives to conform to His will. But if he loves the flesh, he panders to the flesh.

14-15. Do not compare yourself with weaker men but rather apply yourself to fulfilling the commandment of love. For by comparing yourself with the weak you will fall into the pit of conceit, but by applying yourself to the commandment of love you will reach the height of humility.
If you totally fulfill the command to love your neighbor, you will feel no bitterness or resentment against him whatever he does. If this is not the case, then the reason why you fight against your brother is clearly because you seek after transitory things and prefer them to the commandment of love.

17-18. There are three things which produce love of material wealth: self-indulgence, self-esteem, and lack of faith…the self-indulgent person loves wealthy because it enables him to live comfortably; the person full of self-esteem loves it because through it he can gain the esteem of others; the person who lacks faith loves it because fearful of starvation, old age, disease, or exile, he can save it and hoard it. He puts his trust in wealth rather than in God, the Creator who provides for all creation, down to the least of living things.

21-2. God knows himself and He knows the things He has created. The angelic powers, too, know God and know the things He has created. But they do not know God and the things He has created in the same way that God knows Himself and the things He has created. God knows himself through know His blessed essence. And the things created by Him He knows through knowing His wisdom, by means of which and in which He made all things. But the angelic powers know God by participation, though God Himself transcends such participation; and the things He has created they know by apprehending that which may be spiritually contemplated in them.

45. The virtues exist for the sake of the knowledge of creatures; knowledge of the sake of the knower; the knower, for the sake of Him who is known though unknowing and who is beyond all knowledge.

54. …The Son teaches us, “Do not judge so that you may not be judged;” “Do not condemn, so that you may not be condemned.” St. Paul likewise says, “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes;” and “By judging another you condemn yourself.” But men have given up weeping for their own sins and have taken judgment away from the Son. They themselves judge and condemn one another as if they were sinless. Heaven was amazed at this and earth shuddered, but men in their obduracy are not ashamed.

55. He who busies himself with the sins of others, or judges his brother on suspicion, has not yet begun to repent or to examine himself so as to discover his own sins, which are truly heavier than a great lump of lead…That is why, like a fool who walks in darkness, he no longer attends to his own sins but lets his imagination dwell on the sins of others, whether these sins are real or merely the products of his own suspicious mind.

58. Just as parents have a special affection for the children who are the fruits of their own bodies, so the intellect naturally clings to its own thoughts. And just as to passionately fond parents their own children seem the most capable and most beautiful of all – though they may be quite the most ridiculous in every way – so to a foolish intellect its own thoughts appear the most intelligent of all, though they be utterly degraded. The wise man does not regard his own thoughts in this way. It is precisely when he feels convinced that they are true and good that he most distrusts his own judgment. He makes other wise men the judges of his thoughts and arguments --- lest he should run, or may have run, in vain – and from them receives assurance.

79. A true friend is one who in times of trial calmly and imperturbably suffers with his neighbor the ensuing affliction, privations, and disasters as if they were his own.

82. The person who truly wishes to be healed is he who does not refuse treatment.

98. A soul is perfect if its passible aspect is totally oriented towards God.

99. A perfect intellect is one which by true faith and in a manner beyond all unknowing supremely knows the supremely Unknowable…

A Century of Love in a Day, Pt. 2

7. Whatever a man loves he inevitably clings to, and I order not to lose it he rejects everything that keeps him from it. So he who loves God cultivates pure prayer, driving out every passion that keeps him from it.

10. …prefect love presupposes that you love all men equally.

29. …the Divinity is divided but without division and is united but with distinctions. Because of this both the division and the union are paradoxical…

36. In everything that we do God searches out our purpose to see whether we do it for Him or for some other motive.

42. When a trial comes upon you unexpectedly, do not blame the person through whom it came but try to discover the reason why it came, and then you will find a way of dealing with it. For whether through this person or through someone else you had in any case to drink the wormwood of God’s judgment.

43. As long as you have bad habits do not reject hardship, so that through it you may be humbled and eject your pride.

49. …To be spontaneously disposed to do good to those who hate you belongs to perfect spiritual love alone.

54. A monk is a man who has freed his intellect from attachment to material things and by means of self-control, love, psalmody, and prayer cleaves to God.

63. Let no one deceive you…with the notion that you can be saved wile a slave to sensual pleasure and self-esteem.

66. No sinner can escape future judgment without experiencing in this life either voluntary hardships or afflictions he has not chosen.

68. Just as the intellect of a hungry man imagines bread and that of a thirsty man water, so the intellect of a glutton imagines a profusion of foods, that of a sensualist the forms of women, that of a vain man worldly honour, that of an avaricious man financial gain, that of a rancorous man revenge on whoever has offended him, that of an envious man how to harm the object of his envy, and so on with all the other passions. For an intellect agitated by passions is beset by impassioned conceptual images whether the body is awake or asleep.

75. Some of the things given to us by God for our use are in the soul, others are in the body and others related to the body. In the soul are its powers; in the body are the sense organs and other members; relating to the body are food, money, possessions and so on. Our good or bad use of these things given us by God, or of what is contingent upon them, reveals whether we are virtuous or evil.

83. In its natural state, the human intelligence is subject to the divine intelligence and itself rules over the non-intelligent element in us. Let this order be maintained in all things, and there will be no evil among creatures nor anything which draws us towards evil.

To Arms! To Arms!

Source

A Malaysian magazine has apologized for upsetting Christians after it published an article researched by two Muslims who pretended to be Roman Catholics and took Holy Communion in a church.

The apology aims to ease tensions with religious minorities who feel that overzealous government authorities and clerics are trying too hard to champion the interests of Islam and ignoring the rights of non-Muslims.

The Al Islam monthly magazine, which focuses on issues affecting Malaysian Muslims, acknowledged in a statement on its publisher's Web site last week that the article had "unintentionally hurt the feelings of Christians, especially Catholics."

The article, published in May last year, was meant to investigate rumors that Muslim teenagers were being converted in churches. The article said its two reporters had found no evidence supporting those claims.

The apology came after Archbishop Murphy Pakiam, who heads the Catholic Church in peninsular Malaysia, criticized government authorities earlier this week for not prosecuting the two magazine researchers. Pakiam, however, said that church leaders would be satisfied if the magazine issued a formal apology.

The men had spat out the Eucharist and took a photograph of a partially bitten one. Communion is a sacrament for baptized Catholics in good-standing. The church teaches that the Eucharist is transformed into the body of Christ by the priest during Mass.

Does everybody remember the Jyllands-Posten incident where a dozen cartoons incited commercial boycotts, death threats, and calls to the UN for sanctions? I'd like to believe that the gross disparity both in the nature of the crime and in the intensity of the response are a product of the ethos of love that undergirds Christianity.

A Century of Love in a Day

The following are from Maximus the Confessor's Four Hundred Texts on Love. The work is organized into four "centuries," that is collections of one hundred related texts, which correspond in some sense (even if only in their fourfold nature) to the four Gospels. These selections are from the first century on love. The numbers to the left of each quote are "verse" citations. I have only included about a fourth of the texts from the century. Though I would have liked to include more, I'm already afraid that I'm dancing on the edge of copyright infringement.*

1. Love is a holy state of the soul, disposing it to value knowledge of God above all created things. We cannot attain lasting possession of such love while we are still attached to anything worldly.

2. Dispassion engenders love, hope in God engenders dispassion, and patience and forbearance engender hope in God; these in turn are the product of complete self-control, which itself springs from fear of God. Fear of God is the result of faith in God.

4. The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly.

11. All the virtues co-operate with the intellect to produce this intense longing for God, pure prayer above all. For by soaring towards God through this prayer the intellect rises above the realm of created beings.

12. When the intellect is ravished through love by divine knowledge and stands outside the realm of created beings, it becomes aware of God’s infinity. It is then, according to Isaiah, that a sense of amazement makes it conscious of its own lowliness and in sincerity it repeats the words of the prophet: “How abject I am, for I am pierced to the heart; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts” (Isa 6:5)

13. The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself…

17. Blessed is he who can love all men equally.

19. Blessed is the intellect that transcends all sensible objects and ceaselessly delights in divine beauty.

22. He who forsakes all worldly desires sets himself above all worldly distress.

24. He who gives alms in imitation of God does not discriminate between the wicked and the virtuous, the just and the unjust, when providing for men’s bodily needs. He gives equally to all according to their need…

31. Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of spiritual knowledge in the soul.

41. He who loves God neither distresses nor is distressed with anyone on account of transitory things…

43. If a man desires something, he makes every effort to attain it. But of all things which are good and desirable the divine is incomparably best and the most desirable. How assiduous, then, we should be in order to attain what is of its very nature good and desirable.

50. When the intellect associates with evil and sordid thoughts it loses its intimate communion with God.

60. Silence the man who utters slander in your hear. Otherwise you sin twice over: first, you accustom yourself to this deadly passion and, second you fail to prevent him from gossiping against his neighbor.

63. We carry about with us impassioned images of the things we have experienced. If we can overcome these images we shall be indifferent to the things which they represent. For fighting against the thoughts of things is much harder than fighting against the things themselves, just as to sin in the mind is easier than to sin through outward action.

69. …If you are offended by anything, whether intended or unintended, you do not know the way of peace, which through love brings the lovers of divine knowledge to the knowledge of God.

70-71. You have not yet acquired perfect love if your regard for people is still swayed by their characters – for example, if, for some particular reason, you love one person and hate another, or if for the same reason you sometimes love and sometimes hate the same person. Perfect love does not split up the single human nature, common to all, according to the diverse characteristics of individuals; but, fixing attention always on this single nature, it loves all men equally. It loves the good as friends and the bad as enemies, helping them, exercising forbearance, patiently accepting whatever they do, not taking the evil into account at all but even suffering on their behalf if the opportunity offers, so that, if possible, they too become friends. If it cannot achieve this, it does not change its own attitude; it continues to show the fruits of love to all men alike. It was on account of this that our Lord and God Jesus Christ, showing His love for us, suffered for the whole of mankind and gave to all men an equal hope of resurrection…

72. If you are not indifferent to both fame and dishonour, riches and poverty, pleasures and distress, you have not yet acquired perfect love. For perfect love is indifferent not only to these but even to this fleeting life and to death.

90. Just as the physical eye is attracted to the beauty of things visible, so the purified intellect is attracted to the knowledge of things invisible…

95. When the sun rises and casts its light on the world, it reveals both itself and the things it illumines…

[And your apophatic moment for the day:]

100. When the intellect is established in God, it at first ardently longs to discover the principles of His essence. But God’s inmost nature does not admit such investigation, which is indeed beyond the capacity of everything created…and the very fact of knowing nothing is knowledge surpassing the intellect.

As a concluding not, I would like to point out the rich irony which is played out in this text. Maximus begins (and I have in mind here 4 in particular, but also 1) by saying that the pursuit of the knowledge of God is the most holy and righteous aim of man. Yet, he concludes with the familiar and definitive statement that knowledge of God must ultimately conclude that man exists in almost total ignorance of God. In view of my recent musings on paradox as the foundation of Christian belief, it seems particularly fitting to me that Maximus (and I with him) should affirm that the greatest task of the Christian is the quest to know a God that we affirm is unknowable.

*Consequently, let me cite my source here to somewhat alleviate my conscience. Maximus the Confessor. "Four Hundred Texts on Love." In The Philokalia. Translated and edited by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. New York: Faber and Faber, 1981.