Revealed in darkness; hidden in the light

The classic stance on the nature of God, one to which I have long subscribed now, is that He is totally transcendent, ultimately unknowable and inaccessible. The greatest spiritual leaders of the Christian tradition (John of Sinai, Gregory the Theologian, Pseud0-Dionysius, and Gregory of Nyssa all spring immediately to mind) conclude their great quests for knowledge and experience of God with the revelation that the closer one gets to God the more that person realizes that He is so very far away. Yet, as I read St. Serafim he seems to emphasize precisely the opposite, that is the accessibility of God for the truly devout man. It seems to me, and you be the judge, that his theology is reacting to the Enlightenment. It is expressed best in these two quotes:

"In our time because of the almost universal coldness toward the holy faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and because of our inattentiveness with regard to the acts of His Divine Providence concerning us, as well as to the communion of man with God -- because of all this -- we have reached a state in which we may be said to have withdrawn almost entirely from the true Christian life."

"Now some people say: '...Is it possible that men could see God thus clearly?' Yet there is nothing obscure here. The lack of understanding is attributable to the fact that we have strayed from the simple vision of the early Christians and, under the pretext of enlightenment, have entered such a darkness of ignorance that we consider inconceivable what the ancients grasped so clearly; even in their common talk, the idea of God appearing to men had nothing strange in it."

He provides a number of proof texts for his point of view, but more interesting to me is the connection I see to the Enlightenment. In an ancient world that had no aversion to the idea of the miraculous and revelation, the unkonwability of God was emphasized. As a reaction to a world that now rejects the miraculous, St. Serafim instead stresses that accessibility of God to the person of true faith, one living the "true Christian life." In fact, his whole theology centers on the acquisition of the Spirit of God as the purpose of the Christian life. God is something gained by the doing of good works in the name of Christ, and trading those good works for grace. In market language, he suggests that the Christian should "Gather up the capital of the blessed abundance of Christ's Grace, [and] deposit in the eternal bank at a rate of interest unmeasurable in earthly terms." God is not only accessible, but his blessings are commodities that can be traded at a favorable rate for the Holy Spirit.

It makes me think about two things. First, it strikes me as ironic that now, as we live in a time of darkness, God should be viewed as accessible, not only by St. Serafim, but by Pentecostals, Holiness churches, other charismatic groups, and anyone who conceives of God more as a friend and less as an untouchable monarch. Second, I wonder if perhaps, in his fervor, maybe St. Serafim hasn't quite gotten back to what "the ancients grasped so clearly," that even the most precise language cannot begin to grasp God, much less the crude language of modern economics.

Polygamy: The Bible as a Cautionary Tale

Polygamists have always been able to muster good biblical evidence for their lifestyle, much to the consternation of many Christian monogamists. In addition to the striking absence of any prohibition of polygamy or any positive command for monogamy, polygamists rally to their cause the great figures of Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon. One is left to wonder if Christians have any grounds for an ethical prohibition of polygamy, if monogamy really is ordained as the exclusive form of marriage. Nevertheless, a brief analysis of the relevant texts should prove more than adequate to demonstrate that even the Bible sees polygamy as an inferior marital system.

Abraham, the father of all patriarchs, is possibly the most notable example and consequently the one turned to most often. Yet, recalling the story, it is remembered that Sarah only gives Hagar to Abraham out of desperation and necessity for the procreation of children. (Note that the actor in this situation is the wife, thrusting the second wife on the husband.) As soon as this necessity passed, as soon as Sarah had a legitimate heir of her own womb, the bigamous marriage became the number one source for tension in the marriage. Sarah turns violently on Hagar and her son, demanding that Abraham exile them both – a command not so unreasonable in Sarah’s mind given her role as the instigator in the marriage. Abraham’s great precedent as a polygamist involves his wife compelling him to take a second wife and then later rescinding that order and driving the second wife away. His polygamy is little more than the capitulation to the frantic whims of his wife.

Two generations later, another of the greatest figures in Jewish history, the namesake for the nation will become a bigamist. How can this be held up as an example? Jacob’s intention all along is to marry only Rachel. He only marries Leah as a result of Laban’s trickery, and is forced to work an additionally seven years before he can marry the woman he truly desires. What’s more, the tumultuous tale of Jacob’s children is predicated on the dysfunctionality of his marriages. Just as Rachel had been favored (if such a weak word may be used to describe how one might feel if he was tricked into marrying the unattractive sister of the girl he loved) so too were her children. The marriage that should have been and the children that should have been receive the love that should be given to one’s children, prompting the disaffected children to perform the most despicable act contrary to fraternity since Cain killed Abel. This is the family dynamic the Bible depicts for polygamy.

Very little is said about the wives of David except the manner by which he acquires them. Michal, the king’s daughter, is the prize of a particularly gruesome attempt by Saul to trick David into his own death. Abigail comes to be David’s wife after her secret rendezvous with David gives her first husband a heart attack. In the meantime, David has been estranged from Michal who was married off to another man. Later, David will demand her back from her husband who loves her enough to follow her on the road weeping at his loss only so that he may condemn her to a life of conjugal exile.

The example of Solomon should never be used as a defense for polygamy, and for my part I have never seen it employed such. Just because it paints the practice in a bad light, however, is no reason to exclude it from the discussion. Chapter 11 of 1 Kings begins “Now King Solomon love many foreign women…” What sounds at first like a list of sexual conquests that would put to shame even the most imaginative boys in high school locker rooms is in fact the basis for Solomon’s personal apostasy, the division of the nation, and ultimately the exile of God’s people. Solomon is reported to have more than outdone Joseph Smith having married 700 wives and 300 concubines (which, if you think about it, is more than enough women to have a different ménage á trios every night for well over a year). The text very bluntly states “his wives turned his heart away.” Certainly it was not the multiplicity alone that did it but the diversity. Nevertheless, the divided loyalties so prominent in the Jacob cycle have been extrapolated to their extreme level here: Solomon’s most important loyalties are ultimately divided as a product of his polygamous relationship.

There are others of course. The story of Elkanah leaps to mind, with one of his wives (described in the text as the other’s “rival”) brutalizing the other on account of her barrenness. What’s more, there are certainly positive supports for monogamy, such as the exclusivity of the archetypal marriage. After all, just as God didn’t make Adam and Steve, God didn’t make Adam and Eve and Lucinda. Thus, while the lack of direct prescriptive statements in the text about polygamy might prevent some (myself included) from classifying the practice as totally impermissible, the biblical exemplars for polygamy are less exemplary. It can be safely asserted that the ideal biblical view of marriage at all times (yes even in the times of the Patriarchs) is a monogamous one.

The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers

The first quote is St. Ephraem's prayer at the end of his Life of Saint Mary the Harlot. The rest are from the Apophthegmata Patrum:

Have mercy upon me, Thou that alone are without sin, and save me, who alone art pitiful and kind: for beside Thee, the Father most blessed, and Thine only begotten Son who was made flesh for us, and the Holy Ghost who giveth life to all things, I know no other, and believe in no other. And now be mindful of me, Lover of men, and lead me out of the prison-house of my sins, for both are in They hand, O Lord, the time that Thou shalt bid me go out from it elsewhere. Remember me that am without defence, and save me a sinner: and may Thy grace, that was in this world my aid, my refuge, and my glory, gather me under its wings in that great and terrible day. For Though knowest, Thou who dost try the hearts and reigns, that I did shun much of evil and the byways of shame, the vanity of the impertinent and the defence of heresy. And this not of myself, but of Thy grace wherewith my mind was lit. Wherefore, holy Lord, I beseech Thee, bring me into Thy kingdom, and deign to bless me with all that have found grace before Thee, for with Thee is magnificence, adoration, and honour, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

A certain brother while he was in the community was restless and frequently moved to wrath. And he said within himself, "I shall go and live in some place in solitude; and when I have no one to speak to or to hear, I shall be at peace and this passion of anger will be stilled." So he went forth for himself with water and set it on the ground, but it happened that it suddenly overturned. He filled it a second time, and again it overturned; and he filled it a third time and set it down, and it overturned again. And in a rage he caught up the jug and broke it. Then when he had come to himself, he thought how he had been tricked by the spirit of anger and said, "Behold, here I am alone, and nevertheless he has conquered me. I shall return to the community, for in all places there is need for struggle and for patience and above all for the help of God." And he arose and returned to his place.

A brother asked a certain old man, saying, "Would you have me keep two gold pieces for myself against some infirmity of the body?" The old man, seeing his thought, that he was wishful to keep them, said, "Even so." And the brother going into his cell was torn by his thoughts, saying, "Do you think the old man told me the truth or not?" And rising up he came again to the old man, in penitence, and asked him, "For God's sake tell me the truth, for I am tormented thinking on these two gold pieces." The old man said to him, "I saw that you were set on keeping them. So I told you to keep them; but indeed it is not good to keep more than the body's need. If you had kept the two gold pieces, in them would have been your hope. And if it should happened that they were lost, how should God have any thought for us? Let us cast our thoughts upon God; since it is for him to care for us."

A certain old man dwelt in the desert, and his cell was far from water, about seven miles; and once when he was going to draw water, he flagged and said to himself, "What need is there for me to endure this toil? I shall come and live near the water." And saying this, he turned about and saw one following him and counting his footprints; and he questioned him, saying, "Who are you?" And he said, "I am the angel of the Lord, and I am sent to count your footprints and give you your reward." And when he heard him, the old man's heart was stout, and himself more ready, and he set his cell still farther from that water.

The abbot Cyrus of Alexandria, questioned as to the imagination of lust, made answer: "If you have not these imaginings, you are without hope. For if you do not have imagination thereof, you have the deed itself. For he who fights not in his own mind against sin, nor gainsays it, sins in the flesh. And he who sins in the flesh, has no trouble from the imagination thereof."

An old man saw one laughing, and said to him, "In the presence of Heaven and earth we are to give account of our whole life to God; and you laugh?"

Athanasius of holy memory sought the abbot Pambo to come down from the desert to Alexandria; and when he had come down, he saw there a woman that was an actress, and he wept. And when those who stood by asked him why he had wept, he spoke. "Two things," said he, "moved me. One, her perdition; the other, that I have not so much concern to please God as she has to please vile men."

Cultural Particularlism vs. Occasional Particularism

The beautiful and problematic thing about modern biblical exegesis is that it has been molded, formed, beaten, and contorted so thoroughly into conformity with the principles of linear logic and scientific empiricism that there is little mystery left to the academic reader of the New Testament. Exegetical quibbles have been reduced to just that, largely meaningless arguments over the minutest points of grammar and syntax. One would think that with such substantial agreement on the original intent of the text among exegetes (that is those who think such an intent can even be determined with any degree of certainty) that unity would be the natural outgrowth of this uniformity.

Yet the weight of division has now shifted to hermeneutics, where the force of enduring meaning now lies. Where before the argument was "How can any rational man understand this any other way?" the problem now is "Given that we all see this the same way, how do we justify our differing applications of it?" The postmodern question is no longer "What does the Bible say about X?" but "How do we apply what it says about X?" (Or, from my admittedly cynical viewpoint, "How do we contort what it says about X so that it conforms to what we have already decided to do?")

Growing up, the most common hermeneutical method I encountered (and shamefully even employed myself) was cultural particularism. What the Bible said had to be strained through the filter of culture to uncover the kernel of enduring truth. When Peter wrote about submission to one's government, it was only his particular cultural catalyst that caused him to make the statement (i.e. the perception of Christians as treasonous promoters of civil unrest). When Jesus commanded the rich to sell their possessions and give them to the poor, this had to be understood primarily in terms of a culture where the rich became rich by unchecked exploitation of the poor (totally unlike today). It would be unconscionable to think that the American Revolution might have violated Peter's injunction to submission or that rampant Western materialism was diametrically opposed to Jesus' very strict teachings on earthly possessions. Somewhere in those cultural commands were glimmers of eternal principles that could be held to, if only nominally, without interfering with the progress of modern man.

This approach effectively made the Gospel socially and (to some degree) ethically impotent. Every command was a cultural command, and therefore could be explained away to some extent by the social milieu of the time. The socio-ethical demands of Jesus and the apostles had only as much force as could be retained if every cultural aspect was stripped away. The theology remained, but the practical implications of that theology were completely up for interpretation. As long as the Greco-Roman culture was never perfectly replicated, the plain sense of the New Testament had no command force for Christians. (Curiously, this led some to try to seize parallels between modern culture and Roman culture as a basis for simple interpretation of Scripture. This was something taught to me even still as an undergraduate, and while the ends are noble in my opinion, the means fall into the same specious logic they are trying to correct.)

I have noticed, however, a shift from this hermeneutic of cultural particularism to one of occasional particularism. The recognition (or dare I say over-recognition) of the ad hoc nature of biblical writings has caused the culture in which the documents were written has been reduced to secondary interpretive status and the occasion surrounding them made primary. Prohibitions against homosexuality which had been countered with references to a society that rejected the practice (something which is categorically false) are now ignored on the grounds that Paul was undoubtedly talking about rampant cult prostitution in the given church and therefore opposing paganism, not homosexuality. Regulation of women to subordinate roles in worship in 1 Timothy 2 which had previously been sneered at as vestiges of a lost, patriarchal time are now upheld as necessary - but nonetheless irrelevant - counters to a situations where the gynecocracy of the Artemis cult had spilled into the church. Now, it is no longer necessary to reproduce the entire culture of the Greco-Roman world in order to directly and plainly apply the Scriptures. Now only a similar occasion must arise for the text to once again have plain, normative force. Thus has the text of Scripture been saved for modern application.

Or has it...

As lacking as the system of cultural particularism was, it had one thing that occasional particularism does not: a solid common base for discussion. While the basic contours of Greco-Roman culture and history are more or less canonized in the minds of historians, the particular occasions of the New Testament documents are not. While there is objective grounds on which one can argue about the social perceptions of homosexuality in the first century, there is no consistent way to address what precisely comprised the Colossian heresy. Hermeneutics has moved from dismissing the normative force of Scripture on the basis of concrete historical facts to dismissing it on the basis of imaginative reconstructions of particular situations. The whole process is logically unsound. We use X (which we don't understand by our own admission) to determine the content of Y (about which there is no concrete external evidence) so that we can use our theory of Y to understand X. If the mathematical analogy seems convoluted, it is because it is.

Let me propose something radical. A canonical Christianity (that is any Christianity which has respect for the normative force of the Bible as it stands) requires a belief in the enduring nature of its commands. While I respect and employ both methods of cultural and occasional interpretation, I recognize that the Bible was formed as such because it contained eternal commands normative for the church centuries after the documents were written. If the occasion is the defining hermeneutical principle, why did the church select these documents to represent their canon of faith centuries after these occasions were completely forgotten? If the culture is the defining hermeneutical principle, why did rural Gauls, urban Alexandrians, Judeans, Romans, and Greeks all unify around this corpus of literature in a time when its particular culture had been lost to the memories of their ancestors? If the Bible is defined primarily by its culture and occasion then it never exists (which I imagine is fine for those who use these hermeneutics to get out from under the Bible's authority). Rather than saying "What was the culture or occasion of this document so that I can rightly apply it?" I propose the new question "How can I honestly apply this text in spite of the fact that I am not in that occasion or culture."

The Bible has not acted as normative for two millenia in the Church because it has had a static culture (in any respect) or because there has been a convenient recycling of relevant occasions. It has endured because its lays out the eternal principles of faith and practice. A hermeneutic that embraces this fact is a hermeneutic I can embrace.

Jesus: Jewish Hero Par Excellence

In working my way through Robert Alter's Art of Biblical Narrative for class, I came across a proposal of his that I found striking, though not for the reasons Alter intended it to be. He proposes that there are in the Old Testament a number of narrative type-scenes, literary motifs which are repeated so often that there repetition must be deliberate. These scenes, according to him, were so ingrained in the literary tradition that their inclusion was expected, their alteration suggestive, and their omission telling. He enumerates these six recurring motifs:

• Epiphany in a field
• Betrothal scene at a well
• Annunciation to a barren mother
• The initiatory trial
• Danger in the desert and the discovery of a well/sustenance
• The testament of the dying hero
  

In reading that list, I was struck by how clearly those motifs seem to be incorporated into the Gospel narrative. Alter alludes to this with regard to at least one of his type-scenes (or perhaps more...I admit I'm not finished reading the book yet), and I imagine that someone has written extensively on this. I have not, however, seen or interacted with that literature. So forgive me as a I fly blindly and try to work through just how I see these conventions of the heroic literature of Israel's past being incorporated and reworked into the story of Jesus to depict him as the Jewish hero par excellence.

In The Art of Biblical Narrative, Alter alludes to the Christian appropriation of the annunciation theme, but does not go into detail about how it is employed or what it might mean.

Throughout the Hebrew literature, the scene is extremely familiar, even to the casual reader of the Old Testament. In Gen 11:30 we learn that Sarah is barren. In Gen 18, God appears to Abraham in the form of three men. There He announces to him that Sarah will have a child, despite being nearly 100 years old. In Gen 25, Rebekah is barren, but when Isaac prays to God, she becomes pregnant with twins. God speaks to her, explaining the fate of her two sons. 1 Sam 1 tells of Hannah's childlessness and oppression. While praying, she is approached by God's representative and who blesses her before she finally conceives Samuel. The motif spills over into Luke 1 where Elizabeth is both aged and barren, but an angel prophesies the birth of her son.

In each case, the barren mother is miraculously with child, and not only a child but one who will be a great hero in Israel's history. Alter notes earlier in his book, not in connection with these type-scenes, how even the story of Judah and Tamar can be understood as a woman taking her childlessness into her own hands. She overcomes and gives birth to a progenitor of David. Isaac, the child of promise, Jacob, the namesake of Israel, Samuel, the greatest judge of Israel and the anointer of David, and even David in a radical revision of the motif. The greatest heroes of Israel's history are conceived through the greatest miracles of God, against all odds. They are unique even before their birth.

And yet Jesus is greater. A named messenger comes to Mary and announces to her that she will give birth to the greatest of Israel's heroes, the Messiah. As had been the case with Sarah, as had been the case with Elizabeth, Mary answers with doubt. After all, she is a virgin. But the angel reminds her that the power of God overshadows all else. The God who has proved in the past that He needs neither fertility nor youth to create will prove once and for all that He alone is the Creator. In a way that was truly unprecedented, God would overcome an impediment greater than had been overcome with Isaac and Jacob and Samuel. From before his birth, the very conception of Jesus is shown to be in the line of great Jewish heroes, and yet a cut above the rest. The revision of the "barren mother" motif serves to punctuate to totality of God's power and foreshadow an epic career that would transcend any other. The virgin birth is not merely a scientific oddity, no matter how the modern mind would like to reduce it to that, but an organic link between Jesus and the heroes of Israel's past as well as a definitive statement about his place in the pecking order.

Like I said, the observation is almost certainly not novel, and doubtless you can already see the other motifs threading through the Old Testament into the story of Jesus. Nevertheless, I intend to pick this up again in another post at another time. Until then...

An Earnest Prayer For Taking the Eucharist

"You have vouchsafed me, O Lord, that this corruptible temple, my human flesh, should be united to your holy flesh, that my blood should be mingled with yours, and henceforth I am your transparent and translucent member. I am transported out of myself. I see myself such as I am to become. Fearful and at the same time ashamed of myself I venerate you and tremble before you." -- St. Symeon the New Theologian

The Wisdom of Helmut Thielicke

A Little Exercise for Young Theologians is one of the most insightful and convicting works that I have ever managed to read in less than an hour. Weighing in at a meager 41 pages (in my edition), Thielicke has nevertheless squeezed a wealth of wisdom into his work. The quotations I'm going to provide by no means do the whole book justice. I recommend this "exhortation to spiritual hygiene" to every aspiring theologian and every lay person who has a distrust of scholarship or theology.

"Theological thinking can and ought to grip a man like a passion."

True theologians "think within the community of God's people, and for that community, and in the name of that community."

"Dialectic and paradoxes are the way a law-abiding church's thought overcomes the most monstrous frictions."

Overzealous theologians "have smothered the first little flame of a man's own spiritual life and a first shy question with the fire extinguisher of their erudition."

"Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am therefore more than the other man who does not know this and that. I have greater possibilities and also greater temptations. Anyone who deals with truth - as we theologians certainly do - succumbs all too easily to the psychology of the possessor. But love is the opposite of the will to possess. It is self-giving. It boasteth not itself, but humbleth itself."

Of the proper use of theology when correcting another: "The purpose of his action was not to impart to the other man some understanding of what we theologians are driving at, or to lead him gently beyond the stage of his previous knowledge, but to render him helpless - this person who because of his previous education could not be equal to this literature set before him - and to suffocate his perhaps very simple objection to the historical-critical study of the Bible by throwing over them an overbearing and imposing blanket of arguments. Here truth is employed as a means to personal triumph and at the same time as a means to kill, which is in the starkest possible contrast with love."

"...history reconstructed apart from faith cannot possibly be the foundation of faith..."

"To express this in another way, theology can never "prove" preaching, but it has the same outlook as preaching; it is also a witness, only with other methods and means."

"Esoteric concealment on the perfidious ground that "I can't expect the people to be equal to this" could even lead to that offense against those least, for which Jesus coined the momentous picture of the millstone."

"My plea is simply this: every theological idea which makes an impression upon you must be regarded as a challenge to your faith. Do not assume as a matter of course that you believe what ever impresses you theologically and enlightens you intellectually."

"I don't believe that God is a fussy faultfinder in dealing with theological ideas. He who provides forgiveness for a sinful life will also surely be a generous judge of theological reflection. Even an orthodox theologian can be spiritually dead, while perhaps a heretic crawls on forbidden bypaths to the sources of life."

"Before the young freshman has really looked at the cornerstone of the Biblical story of salvation, for example, the story of Creation, and the account of the Fall, before he has come to know the Alpine peaks of divine thoughts in their majesty, he is made familiar with the mineralogical analyses of that stone. But anybody who studies geological formations on maps and graphs, and learns mineralogical formulae from a set of tables before he ever climbs the Alps, is hardly in a position to comprehend at all what the Alps are."