of towers and tongues

Going Dark

2009-07-03T15:34:00.006-05:00

I have decided to discontinue blogging on "of towers and tongues" indefinitely. I will remain on with "Called to Communion," at least in the capacity of an academic editor, and will probably contribute items on that site from time to time. But I think, for the foreseeable future, my time will better be spent in reading others, trying to learn some things, to grow a bit more, than it will be in assuming I've done enough of those things to write anything very interesting or helpful myself.

If I return to "of towers and tongues" at some point in the future, it will likely be out of a desire to share some devotional reflections or some points of biblical theology intended as fuel for devotion.

I will continue to pray daily for the reunification of Christ's Church, East and West, Catholic and Protestant, and for an increase in understanding and charity among all the baptized.

In the Peace of Christ,

Neal

Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle

Just Broke 300

2009-06-24T09:56:00.003-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post over at Called to Communion, entitled "Calvin on 'Self-Authentication.' I guess the stars must've been aligned or something, because it generated a whole host of really interesting Catholic/Protestant discussion. As of this morning there are over 300 comments! I feel like all important and stuff. You can check it out here.

Heh.

2009-06-23T11:53:00.003-05:00

Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.

This represents just one more point of agreement between Catholic and Reformed Christians - it would be hard to say which of us despises rockstarchristendomcoolculture more.

Feast of Corpus Christi (Again)

2009-06-14T17:51:00.009-05:00

Word made flesh, true bread of heaven
By His word made flesh to be;
From the wine His blood is taken,
Though our senses cannot see;
Faith alone which is unshaken
Shows pure hearts the mystery.
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Pange Lingua

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, and also the one-year anniversary of my baby girl's baptism. (The readings for today are also fully well placed - this is how the Church's living tradition and lectionary keep the bits and pieces of salvation/covenant history together.)

But along with the celebratory aspects, it's hard not to reflect on this solemn feast day that the fundamental "sign" of Christian unity is consumed by warring factions who refuse to be "in communion" with one another, even while wishing to remain "in communion" with Christ. We should pray for tender hearts here, and pray for the unity of the Church.

Lord, who at Your first Eucharist did pray

That all your Church might be for ever one,

Grant us at every Eucharist to say

With longing heart and soul, "Your will be done."

O may we all one bread, one body be,

Through this blest Sacrament of Unity.

For all your Church, O Lord, we intercede;

O make our lack of charity to cease;

Draw us nearer each to each we plead,

By drawing all to You, O Prince of Peace;

Thus may we all one bread, one body be,

Through this blest Sacrament of Unity.

We pray then, too, for wand'rers from Your fold;

O bring them back, good Shepherd of the sheep,

Back to the faith which saints believed of old,

Back to the Church that still that faith does keep;

Soon may we all one bread, one body be,

Through this blest Sacrament of Unity.

So, Lord, at length when sacraments shall cease,

May we be one with all Your Church above,

One with Your saints in one unending peace,

One with Your saints in one unbounded love;

More blessed still in peace and love to be

One with the Trinity in Unity.

- William H. Monk

Letter & Spirit Summer Institute

2009-06-06T09:56:00.021-05:00

Just got back from a truly amazing week in Steubenville, Ohio. (I bet that sentence has been uttered without even a shade of sarcastic irony a lot more than you'd initially think.)

I was there for the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology Letter and Spirit Summer Institute, and it was both exhausting and exhilarating. A synoposis of our daily schedule should indicate how it could manage to be both of these things all at once:

6am: Angelus/Morning Office with CFRs.
6:30-7:30am: Silent hour of meditation.
7:30-8:40am: Morning Prayer and breakfast.
8:40am: Leave for the Hahn's house (we were staying in his lakehouse)
9:15-10:30am: Seminar 1 (Hahn)
10:40-11:50am: Seminar 2 (Hahn)
12:05pm: Mass; Midday Prayer in chapel immediately following.
1:00pm: Lunch.
2:00-3:15pm: Seminar 3 (Hahn) and discussion.
3:45-4:45pm: Back to chapel for Holy Hour.
-Free time at Lakehouse-
6:30pm: Dinner.
7:30pm: Evening lecture (various participants) and discussion.
9:30pm: Night Prayer followed by Rosary.

Whew.

Because this year is dedicated to St. Paul, we studied the book of Romans all week. (We made it all the way to chapter 12.) This book has been either my favorite or one of my favorite canonical texts for a long time, but, even so, there were times at which I felt like I'd never even read it before. (Scripture has the effect of humbling you, doesn't it? And in more ways than one.) There's so much there I'd never seen, so much OT narrative substructure running beneath the surface I hadn't fully appreciated. Really, even after preparing for the week by looking through Wright's recent commentary and a slew of good articles on aspects of the letter, I still wasn't prepared for some of the bombshells that got dropped during S. Hahn's lectures.

This, I think, is a turning point of sorts; I hope and pray he's going to focus his main efforts on the academics, while letting us underlings try to disseminate the more popular work he's done so far. Because his commentary on Romans, if he eventually writes it, is going to be right up there next to Wright or Dodd or Fitzmyer or Moo or whatever. Just amazing stuff. (While we're awaiting the Romans commentary, let me commend to you Kinship by Covenant by way of preparation. This, along with the recent spate of journal articles he's done, is hopefully just the beginning of the wave I'm wanting to see come.)

Anyway, here's the whole motley crew (click to enlarge):

(First row, left to right: Matt Leonard, Me, Taylor Marshall, Scott Hahn, Jared Staudt, Br. Felix CFR; Second row, left to right: Bryan Cross, Scott's grad assistant, Br. Sebastian CFR, Br. Simon CFR, John Kincaid, Fr. Pio CFR, Rob Hartley, Matt Caes, David Wills, Br. Peter OP, Br. Paschal CFR.)

Here (above) are a few folks from Called to Communion - Bryan Cross, Me, Taylor Marshall, and John Kincaid, to whom we just extended an offer to join the CTC group. John, who came into the Church on Easter Vigil 2008, is a graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary (MDiv) and Duke Divinity School (ThM), and is currently pursuing his PhD in theology at Ave Maria. He's working mostly in Pauline studies, and he brings a lot of talent and godliness to the crew at Called to Communion. We're happy to have him!

Here (below) I am in the vineyard in Scott's backyard with Br. Simon; I probably spent more time with Br. Simon than any of the other Franciscans. He's amazing; he just exudes kindness and holiness, and we had some great discussions throughout the week. On the last day, he gave me some Franciscan/tau crosses for my girls and a beautiful rosary - right after I was praying, during Mass, that I could somehow take some of the spiritual blessings of that week back home to my wife and kids! (Help me pray for the Franciscan Friars for the Renewal in the Bronx, as they rebuild NY one homeless/hungry person at a time.)

Here's Br. Paschal, whose mendicant skills appear to have paid off handsomely at lunch.

And here's Fr. Pio with Br. Peter, our lone-Dominican-in-a-sea-of-Franciscans, taking in an evening lecture at the lakehouse. (I think it was Taylor's captivating presentation on St. Paul as priest - we hope to have a podcast of this talk up on Called to Communion soon.)

Breaking bread in the non-Eucharistic sense. (Though I've always considered that this should be categorized as at least a little-s sacrament.)

So what's next? Well, I've got a lot of philosophy-stuff to deal with over the summer, but I think I'm going to dedicate the next few months to a sustained study of Romans in any case. And I think there's a good bit of material on redemptive suffering in chapter 8 that will be of help to me as I try to grapple with some facets of the problem of evil that I've been thinking about, so it could be that it'll overlap with some of my other research, too. (More later, perhaps.). And the CFRs helped me get back into praying the hours, a discipline I kind of petered out on after Lent - (how's that for being a typical Catholic?) - so I definitely want to keep riding that wave.

What a week. I have no idea what I did to deserve it - indeed, I know well it was purely undeserved. (Hard to read Romans for a week and walk away thinking you somehow deserve anything, really.) But man, am I grateful to God for it all.

I stinkin' love being Catholic. It's the best way to be a Christian, hands down.

Chris Donato

2009-05-27T17:06:00.004-05:00

Scott Hahn once remarked to me that whereas he used to view his library as his "arsenal," he now views it as his "grocery store." Chris Donato hasn't ever said anything like that to me, but I'm pretty sure he looks at his library the same way. That's what it seems like when you read things Chris Donato says.

Chris is an editor for Tabletalk magazine, a Reformed periodical of sorts. And he's got a blog called Growing Grace-full. I like reading this blog, especially when I'm sick of reading blogs and writing things on blogs. (I'm sort of in the sick-of-blogs state right now, which partially explains why I haven't much been blogging. The other thing that explains why I haven't been blogging is that (i) I've been wrapped up in the philosophy thing lately, and (ii) I guess I don't have anything interesting to say right now.)

To explain: When I get on a blog-kick, I usually run around the web and catch up on the stuff I missed when I wasn't on a blog-kick. This eventually makes me tired of blogs again, because I guess I get tired of some of the disputations and I just want to go and read good commentaries or something. Debate doesn't really feed the soul. That's why I like reading Chris' blog, when I'm not on a blog kick. It doesn't tire me out and make me want to do something else. Even when he's being critical of a person's position he doesn't do it in that typical blog-disputation way, and that really is a trick, learning how to do that.

I think Chris has the right blend of smarts, honesty, insight, and just milk-of-humankindness-ness. If he ever writes a book, I shall purchase it and, upon purchasing, read. I commend his blog to you. Tolle lege.

"I Learned the Covenant" - Weird; but Exceptionally Cool

2009-04-29T22:07:00.004-05:00

So you know that my daughter, Madeline, had her first Communion last week.

Since then she has done or said a few things that have really taken me aback, and have really made me very proud.

For example. My son Aidan has recently decided to start throwing things out of the girls' second-story window. Not too sure why he's doing that. As some of you know, he's autistic, and he likes to replay or re-enact things he sees on TV. So I'm thinking that he's got a scene from Toy Story in mind, in which some of the toys in the movie end up falling out of their owner's window. In any case, he decided to throw out of the girls' window Madeline's new jewelry box, which contained (among other things) her new first-communion rosary, her new children's missal and prayer book, and (she thought) her pink New Testament.

When I recovered these things (to which no real harm was done, thankfully) she was just ecstatic. She said, "Oh, I'm so happy you got them Daddy! These are my very favorite things! I like them so much better than my toys!" Music to my ears. That night, I was able to show her how she could look up the Scripture references in her missal/prayer book in her pink New Testament, all by herself. She thought that was the coolest thing since pockets on shirts.

Here's another cool thing, which shows (I'm afraid) how much further along Madeline is in her spiritual walk than I am. Last Saturday night, after we had gone to the evening service (the "Vigil Mass") I was tucking her into bed, and she asked me if we were going to church tomorrow. I told her that - get this - because we went to the Saturday evening service, we "didn't have to" go to the Sunday morning service. Her reply: "But just because we went on Saturday night, that doesn't mean we don't get to go on Sunday too, does it? We've gone on Saturday before, and then gone the next day. Can't we still go?"

Think about my: "we don't 'have to' go," in contrast to her: "we still 'get to' go." Who's got the better orientation about the Christian life and worship here?

One last thing. I was helping the girls clean up their room last night, and came across a couple of rough sketches Madeline had drawn. (She draws and colors things constantly.) There were two rough pictures I found, both of which had the same basic design: a chalice with a circular host above it. (Similar to what was on the banner she made, pictured below.) One of these pictures had these words written above the chalice: "I Learned the Covenant."

I have no earthly idea where she got that. We do "Bible story time" every night, and we talk about God and the things of God pretty much regularly throughout the day. So of course the notion of the "covenant" is going to start setting in. But I mean, jeepers, I wasn't prepared for her to write something that deep. "This is the New Covenant in My Blood," says Jesus. It doesn't just represent that covenant, or remind us of that covenant, or whatever. It "is" that covenant.

I don't remember ever, ever, saying anything like this to Madeline. Weird; but exceptionally cool.

First Communion

2009-04-26T11:55:00.025-05:00

At last night's Vigil Mass we celebrated my oldest kid's first Communion. Here are some pictures of the evening. (Click to enlarge.)

Madeline and Dad, waiting for everyone else to get a move on.

Ready to head to church.

At church.

Here's Madeline's poster. (All the kids made posters like this. Her three wishes: (1) that God would heal Aidan, (2) that God would give Mommy another baby, (3) that we could go to Disneyworld.)

Madeline's banner. (All the kids made banners to decorate the parish with. This one was Madeline's design and, for the most part, Madeline's execution.)

Waiting in the V.I.P. section.

Madeline's RE/First Communion class.

Madeline's first Eucharist.

Madeline with Fr Ray.

The family.

Madeline with friend Christina and our sponsors, Linda and Ken.

Some gifts from well-wishers. (My parents sent her a

very grown-up jewelry box containing a very grown-up

gold necklace and a beautiful cross. She liked it.)

At the after-service party, hanging out with baby-sister, Lillian.

My big girls.

On the Sixth Day It Was Finished

2009-04-10T08:38:00.012-05:00

Bread of Heaven

2009-04-09T10:45:00.005-05:00

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day on which Christ gave his apostles the mandatum to celebrate the sacrifice of the New Covenant in perpetuity.

Especially during this Lenten season, it turns our minds upon the impending exodus Christ's death and resurrection brought about, and, together with it, our own collective pilgrimage, or our own wilderness wandering.

"Give us this day our daily bread" is a prayer not just for daily material sustenance, but also for the spiritual sustenance the pilgrim Chruch needs as she wanders through her own wilderness, after her own exodus, and before her full and final realization of the city of promise.

The prayer for bread has its historical background in the provision of manna in the wilderness. God’s daily gift, following the people’s grumbling, became the stuff of legend. Jesus’ actions in the feeding miracles alluded to the wilderness stories, as the evangelists (especially John) suggest. In the context of the Lord’s Prayer, this clause aligns the followers of Jesus with the wilderness generation and their need to know God’s daily supply of not only literal bread but also of all that it symbolized.

Manna was not needed in Egypt. Nor would it be needed in the promised land. It is the food of inaugurated eschatology, the food that is needed because the kingdom has already broken in and because it is not yet consummated. The daily provision of manna signals that the Exodus has begun, but also that we are not yet living in the land...

The Lord’s Prayer takes its place ... alongside baptism and the Eucharist. Both are thought of in Exodus terms in the New Testament, not least in 1 Corinthians 10. It is, therefore, appropriate that praying the Lord’s Prayer should take place corporately and publicly within the liturgies for both baptism and the Eucharist. But it is also the case that the Lord’s Prayer will be most fully understood and most fully “meant” within those Exodus-based narratives, which are symbolically and dramatically acted out in their new Christ-centered form. These sacraments are precisely among those moments when — within the inaugurated eschatology through which alone Christianity makes sense — both past and future, heaven and earth, are brought together in one dramatic action. (N.T. Wright)

The Eucharist is thus the Manna of the baptized, our bread from heaven, which sees us through our own wilderness temptation, even as it gives us a foretaste of the heavenly banquet that awaits us in the life of the world to come - in the communal wedding feast of the Lamb to which the Church is ordained as its end. The Eucharist thus unites us with past and future, pulling both into the present in one actualization of our eternal salvation. "This is the New Covenant in My Blood."

St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10, reminds us that both baptism and Eucharst were prefigured by the exodus from Egypt - in which Israel was baptized into Moses through the sea - and their wilderness wandering - where they drank from the spiritual Rock which was Christ, and fed upon the bread from heaven. These things find their fulfillment in the sacraments of the New Covenant, as Paul and Jesus show us.

Yet St. Paul reminds us - the pilgrim Chruch, on which the end of the ages has come - that these things about Israel were "written for our instruction." By "these things" he means not only the types of baptism and Eucharist which are in evidence as we read the old exodus and wandering narratives. Rather, St. Paul reminds us that many who wandered in the wilderness, after experiencing liberation through the sea, and while eating and drinking the nourishment that is Christ - fell away. With many of them, God was not pleased. So they never made it to the promised land.

1For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3and all ate the same spiritual food, 4and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

6Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. 7Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." 8We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. 9We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, 10nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. 11Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. 12Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 13No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Why are these things written for our instruction? We are to take them as a warning: baptism into Christ is immeasurably more powerful than baptism into Moses; so too, our spiritual food and spiritual drink is the reality, of which the manna and the water from the rock were merely the prefiguing signs. Thus, if we turn away and test the Lord during our own wilderness wandering - post resurrection but pre consummation - we fall from that much greater a height:

4For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. 7For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

The warning of Hebrews 6 is real, not merely 'conditional' on something that never actually can happen. To be enlightened (baptism) and taste of the heavenly gifts (Eucharist) so as to experience the power of the age that is to come, and then to fall back to the old ages that are even now fading away, is immeasurably worse than turning back to the golden calf.

But if the warning is real, the promise is just as real, and that is what we are to grasp hold of on Maundy Thursday: on our own, it isn't possible for us to make it through the time of testing. Thus we ask that the Lord would lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from the final test. And we ask, most especially, for day-by-day bread, the "hidden Manna" of Christ, which sustains and nourishes us on our way. For apart from Him we can do nothing; but if He abides in us, and we in Him, nothing will be impossible for us, for "He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him" (John 6:56).

Have a blessed Easter Triduum, all.

Benedictus Qui Venit: Tell it to the Daughter of Zion

2009-04-05T09:14:00.011-05:00

Tell ye the daughter of Sion: Behold thy king cometh to thee, meek and sitting upon an ass and a colt, the foal of her that is used to the yoke. - St. Matthew 21.5

Let us go together to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives. Today he returns from Bethany and proceeds of his own free will toward his holy and blessed passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation. He who came down from heaven to raise us from the depths of sin, to raise us with himself, we are told in Scripture, above every sovereignty, authority and power, and every other name that can be named, how comes of his own free will to make his journey to Jerusalem. He comes without pomp or ostentation. As the psalmist says: He will not dispute or riase his voice to make it heard in the streets. He will be meek and humble, and he will make his entry in simplicity.

Let us run to accompany him as he hastens toward his passion, and imitate those who met him then, not by covering his path with garments, olive branches or plams, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before him by being humble and by trying to live as he would wish. Then we shall be able to receive the Word at his coming, and God, whom no limits can contain, will be within us.

In his humility Christ entered the dark regions of our fallen world and he is glad that he became so humble for our sake, glad that he came and lived among us and shared in our nature in order to raise us up again to himself. And even though we are told that he has now ascended above the highest heavens - the proof, surely, of his power and godhead - his love for man will never rest until he has raised our earthbound nature from glory to glory, and made it one with his own in heaven.

So let us spread before his feet, not garments or soul-less olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but ourselves, clothed in his grace, or rather, clothed completely in him. We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before him. Now that the crimson stains of our sins have been washed away in the saving waters of baptism and we have become white as pure wool, let us present the conqueror of death, not with mere branches of palms but with the real rewards of his victory. Let our souls take the place of the welcoming branches as we join today in the children's song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel.

Saint Andrew of Crete, bishop (d. circa 740)

One Week Out

2009-04-04T10:19:00.001-05:00

One Week Out

2009-04-03T14:08:00.002-05:00

Taking Scripture at its Word

2009-04-01T14:16:00.016-05:00

In his book Evangelical Is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament, Thomas Howard spends the first chapter describing with great affection and fondness the evangelical tradition in which he was born and bred. I could certainly relate to what he said about the evangelical tradition and mindset from my own upbringing, and especially from my first years as a serious Christian (both in the southern Baptist tradition and then in the southern Presbyterian pockets of evangelicalism).

In this chapter Howard said something that has stuck with me: “Evangelicalism’s first and last instinct is to take the Bible at face value.” Now the reason this description of the evangelical tradition and mindset has stuck with me is that I remember thinking, as soon as I read it, that this description of evangelicalism is partly true, and partly false.

It is true in this sense: no evangelical would ever think of denying the truth of the Bible. An evangelical would not say, “Well, I realize that the Bible teaches X, but I don’t believe X. I disagree with the Bible about X.” A liberal protestant might say this, but not an evangelical.

However, it is not true in another sense. There are lots – lots and lots – of things in the Bible that the evangelical refuses to accept at face value. And the reason for this is that there are statements in the Bible that you just cannot accept at face value if you hold on to what the evangelical tradition tells you you’re supposed to believe. This is not to say that evangelicals self-consciously deny Biblical passages: they do not say, “I don’t think the Bible is correct.” It is just to point out the obvious: everybody follows a tradition of some kind – whether it tells them to baptize their babies or to “dedicate” them – and everybody relies upon their tradition when they read the Bible.

So, if the evangelical’s tradition (the evangelical tradition) tells him one thing, and the Bible seems to say something else, the evangelical may well end up denying what the Bible says in favor of what his tradition says, even though he doesn’t realize this is what he’s doing. At least, this much is certainly true: the evangelical will – the evangelical must – reject what the Bible says “at face value” in lots of different spots, because what the Bible says in those spots does not jive with evangelical tradition.

For example, evangelicals do not believe in going to confession. They don’t believe that priests have the God-given authority to absolve you of your sins as representatives of Christ, when you confess them with true contrition and seek forgiveness. (Curiously, they do believe that pastors have the authority to declare you to be “one flesh” with your spouse “by the power vested in” them, but they do not believe that marriage is a sacrament, and they do not believe that ordained ministers really have the authority to do anything else. This is somewhat confusing; but still, these things are not part of the evangelical tradition; there are no priests in this tradition.)

It does not matter to evangelicals that they are breaking with 2,000 years of Christian history on this point, and it does not matter to them that the great majority of Christians alive today (and through history) disagree with them about this. This is so because (1) they claim to go by the Bible alone, and (2) they claim not to find any basis for “confession” or the priestly forgiveness of sins in the Bible.

But the problem is that if evangelicals really did take the Bible at face value, then they really would believe in confession and priestly authority to forgive sins. Because this is what the Bible says at face value. But since the evangelical tradition tells them that they can’t believe this, they deny the face value meaning of the Bible, and they claim that the Bible must mean something else, even if they are not really sure what else it could mean.

Where does the Bible say this at face value? Well, I guess the clearest – not the only, just the clearest – passage that shows this is in John 20:19-23. In this passage, the resurrected Jesus appears to His disciples, commissions them to go out into the world as His representatives, grants them the Holy Spirit so that they have the authority and ability to act as His representatives, and then tells them that they can forgive or not forgive sins in His Name:

On the evening of this day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

Now, as an evangelical, I couldn’t accept any of this. I was not allowed to believe it. We did not believe that there were priests, or that priests had been granted any special authority by Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, or that priests could forgive (still less retain!) sins as Christ’s earthly representatives. No way. The Catholics, of course, can accept all of this at face value. And they do. But we did not believe in any of these things because they did not fit with our tradition. Our tradition said that only God forgives sins – which the Catholics agree with – and that, therefore, no human being can forgive sins as a minister or representative of God – which both the Catholics and the Bible disagree with.

So, we had to say things like: “When Jesus says ‘if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven’, He does not really mean it. He means something else….” And then we would try to figure out something else it could mean, and we’d always make it mean pretty much nothing. What looked like a very solemn occasion – in which the newly raised Son of God breathed the Holy Spirit into His apostles, sending them into the world with an authority coming from God Himself – we would say was nothing more than Jesus telling them to go off and get people to ask Jesus into their hearts.

Speaking honestly, I was never really satisfied with this as an evangelical. I knew I was denying the plain sense of the Bible, and I felt like I was being sneaky and unfair. (Especially because I insisted that I always did go by the plain sense of Scripture!) On the other hand, as I saw even back then, the Catholic “interpretation” made a lot more sense and didn’t warp the text beyond recognition. The Catholics pointed out that only God can forgive sins, and that, since Jesus is the Son of God, sent from Father to earth for the forgiveness of sins, that means that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” And they reminded us that Jesus proved He could forgive sins by performing a miracle – miraculously healing the paralytic (Luke 5:24).

The Catholics then went on to point out that Jesus invests the disciples with this same divine authority: (1) Jesus says, “as the Father sent Me, now I’m sending you.” He then (2) gives them the authority and power to go out into the world as the Son of God’s representatives, by ordaining them for this ministry through the gift of the Holy Spirit – which in the Old Testament always signified divine authority to rule, or to perform some special task. Then, after He finishes this, (3) He tells them that they now have the authority to forgive sins – just like Jesus, who was Himself also sent from God to forgive sins – and gives them the ability to perform miracles in His Name, which was a proof of the authority to forgive sins that He just gave to them.

That was all pretty clearly the “face value” reading of Scripture. Nothing fancy, no funny business about it. And the rotten thing was, I knew I had to just deny it. That made me feel a little nervous, of course, but what was the alternative? I could not agree with the Catholics, because my evangelical tradition already told me that the Catholics were wrong. So, if the Bible agreed “at face value” with the Catholics, because I could not say the Bible was wrong, my only option was to try to make the Bible say something else instead. And if I couldn’t figure out any alternative reading that sounded very reasonable, I would just say: “I don’t know what that means, but the Catholics aren’t right about it. Period.” Where I got this information, I could not say, because I didn’t realize at the time that I was just saying whatever my evangelical tradition told me to say.

Now as I remember, a few evangelical friends would admit that the “face value” reading of the Bible here really does mean that the apostles could forgive sins in Jesus’ Name. So they were prepared to agree that the Catholics were at least right about that. And of course, this also meant that the early Christians could go to the apostles and confess their sins and be forgiven, just like Jesus (and the Catholics!) said. (Why, after all, would He give the apostles authority to forgive sins, if He didn’t want anybody to confess their sins to them? What would be the point?) But what these evangelicals would say is that this all changed when the last apostle died. For some reason, Jesus wanted Christians to confess their sins when the apostles were alive, but after they died Jesus didn’t want them to do that anymore. It wasn’t any longer necessary. (And then, for some reason or other, it took Christians about 1,500 years to figure this out.)

On the face of it, this is a weird thing to think. The reason that evangelical tradition says it’s wrong to believe in confession, or in the ability of a human being to absolve us as God’s representative, is because the evangelical tradition says that since only God can forgive sins we must only go to God, and therefore we should not go to any human being. (The idea is that if you go to a human being, then you couldn't also be going to God at the same time. I am not sure why we thought that. When we evangelicals sang a bunch of verses of "Just As I Am" until someone finally walked the aisle, we did not think they were going to the pastor up front instead of going to Jesus, or that Jesus could not hear them pray the "Sinner's Prayer" unless they said it in front of the pastor. We thought the pastor was just a minister to bring people to Jesus. But for some reason, we would not allow Catholics to believe the same things about their priests.)

Of course, the Catholics also believe that only God can forgive sins. It’s just that the Catholic also recognizes that God has ordained representatives – ministers of reconciliation, as Paul calls himself – to whom God has entrusted this authority. So even though God alone can and does forgive us, according to Catholics, He obviously wants us to go to His ordained ministers for the help and healing we need. This, of course, runs all the way through the Bible – from the Old Testament to the New. And if the evangelical sees this continuing on with the apostles, by explicit command of Jesus, it is weird to think it would all fizzle out in a few years. Why should it? Where, exactly, does it say that it'll all fizzle out in the Bible?

But the main thing is this: if the evangelical is ready to accept the “face value” of the Bible text here, and accept that people were absolved of their sins by the apostles acting as God’s representatives on earth, then there is no longer any reason to think that you’re not supposed to go to one of God’s ministers to confess your sins. (This helps explain why the great majority of evangelicals decide instead to just deny the face value meaning of John 20.)

But the Catholic can do better than that. He can show that the “ministry of reconciliation,” given to the apostles by Jesus, was also conferred to the priests under the apostles. And he can point to another “face value” Bible text to show this – another text I couldn’t accept the face value meaning of as an evangelical:

Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders [Gk - the word we get 'priest' from] of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. (James 5:14-16)

Here again, as an evangelical I saw in this text a bunch of Catholic stuff that I just couldn’t accept. Priests anoint you with oil, you confess your sins, and your sins are forgiven you? I don't think so. This didn’t fit in with my evangelical tradition on several levels.

For one thing, we didn’t believe you had to “call in the priests” to get absolved of your sins, as noted. But, as noted, even those evangelicals who admitted that Jesus gave the apostles authority to forgive sins, were not willing to say that the apostles themselves could hand this authority on to anyone. But if the local priests can anoint and pray over you, with the result that your sins are forgiven, as James says, then it clearly follows that the apostles not only could but did pass this authority on to the priests.

Yet we could not accept this, because that is what the Catholics believed, and it wasn’t part of our tradition. So we said, “When James says confess your sins, have the priests anoint you with oil, and you’ll be forgiven and healed, he does not really mean any of that. Instead, he means something else; he means….” And then we would try to think of something he might mean, and we would once again make it into nothing important, nothing meaningful. “They just thought oil was good medicine back then,” etc.

Incidently, another problem we had with this passage was this: we did not like using physical things like oil. We didn’t really think that water, or bread, or wine, or oil, could be important, because we thought the “spiritual” things were the most important things, and so we figured that the spiritual things were the only things that mattered. This is one reason we distrusted anything that looked like religious ritual, and it helps explain why we did not bow, or kneel, or let the pastors dress in any “holy attire,” or anything like that when we were at church on Sundays. It did not matter that the Bible said to do these things: they were not part of our tradition, so we did not do them, and we were suspicious of people who did do them. Indeed, we looked down on people who did them.

Same thing with the oil. I have been a Catholic for less than a year, and I have already seen sick persons anointed and prayed over by the priest on at least three separate occasions. Growing up in the evangelical tradition, I never saw this happen once. Not once, not ever. The first time in my life I ever saw it was about three months after I came into the Church.

This is, again, part of the irony of Howard's claim that evangelicals always take the Bible at face value. Not so. Not when it conflicts with evangelical tradition. That is why I had to reject the “face value” meaning of John 20 and James 5 (among many other things), and it is also why I would accuse Catholics of traditionalism or ritualism or superstition when they went to confession or when they were anointed with oil. All this despite the fact that the Catholics were simply accepting the face value of Scripture, believing it, and doing what it said to do. I did not do this, because of my evangelical tradition. I let my tradition dictate what the Bible could and could not say, and what I could and could not do. And all the while, I would accuse Catholics of following an unbiblical tradition, and insist that I just went by what the Bible said to do!

Don't misunderstand. Tradition is, of course, inescapable. Everyone’s got one, and everyone lives by it. Nothing wrong with that at all. That's how we are built; it is how we learn, and it is how Christianity lives on. But I am grateful that now, as a Catholic, I can comfortably accept the face value meaning of the Bible in so many places where, as an evangelical, I was not allowed to. More than anything, I’m grateful that I’m now a part of, and can transmit to my children, the ancient Tradition of the Christian Church – the one that takes Scripture at its word, and lets the Bible breathe.

Funniest Footnote I've Read in a While

2009-03-26T13:09:00.010-05:00

Technically it was an endnote: #3 in Kevin Diller's recent article, "Are Sin and Evil Necessary for a Really Good World? Questions for Alvin Plantinga's Felix Culpa Theodicy," Faith and Philosophy 25.1 (2008), 87-101:

"For further inspirational reading on the topic, see the treatment of Winnie-the-Pooh's fall from a tree into a gorse bush, in C.L.J. Culpepper, "'O Felix Culpa!' the Sacramental Meaning of Winnie-the-Pooh," in The Pooh Perplex, a Student Case-Book: in Which it is Discovered That the True Meaning of the Pooh Stories is Not as Simple as is Usually Believed, but for Proper Elucidation Requires the Combined Efforts of Several Academicians of Varying Critical Persuasions, ed. Frederick C. Crews (London: Robin Clark, 1963)." (p. 97.)

O certe necessarium Adae peccatum: quod Christi morte deletum est.
O Felix Culpa: quae talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem!

O truly needful sin of Adam, which was blotted out by the death of Christ.

O happy fault, that merited so great a Redeemer!

Proof-Text for Option 3

2009-03-22T20:03:00.006-05:00

Ya'll know I'm not much for prooftexting. But as I was reading what is quite possibly the coolest thing anyone's ever written (that'd be St. Paul's letter to the Romans) earlier it occurred to me that Rom. 6:20-23 provides a nice little prooftext for the third option delineated two posts down in "Salvation by Grace Alone."

The "third option" consists in this claim: if we cooperate with God's grace in our salvation, that does not mean that salvation is no longer by grace alone; sola gratia is consistent with our actively cooperating with divine grace. (Why is this "the third option?" You'll have to read my post to see.) So here is Romans 6:20-23; pay special attention to vv. 22-23:

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end [telos] of these things is death. But now that you been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification [hagiasmos] and its end [telos], eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Notice: (1) the "end" or "outcome" to which sanctification is ordered is "eternal life," just as the "end" or "outcome" to which sin/sinfulness is ordered is death; and (2) eternal life (the telos or end or result of sanctification) is a "free gift of God."

From (1) it follows that, in Paul's thinking, sanctification (or personal holiness or purification) is the thing that leads finally to eternal life. (This obviously does not exclude 'justification'.) From (2) it follows that, in Paul's thinking, eternal life is wholly a free gift (wholly "of grace").

Now remember that on the Reformed scheme, sanctification or personal holiness is not the same thing as justification, but sanctification is still required for eternal life (as we saw in my earlier post). Moreover, and most importantly, sanctification involves the infusion of God's grace and an active response from the individual believer, who performs those "good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10).

Since sanctification necessarily involves our active cooperation with God's infused grace, it follows that the end result of our sanctification also necessarily depends on our active cooperation with God's infused grace. But the "end" of sanctification, as St. Paul teaches, is "eternal life." Therefore, "eternal life" depends upon our active cooperation with God's grace working in us. (I.e., it depends on "works" as well as "faith.") Nevertheless, according to (2), salvation is still "a free gift from God" (cf. Eph. 2:8-10).

Therefore, according to St. Paul, there is no conflict between our actively cooperating with God's grace (in "works" for which we were created in Christ) so as to receive "eternal life," on the one hand, and our "eternal life" being a "free gift of God" on the other. Therefore, Reformed Protestants have both a confessional reason and a prooftext reason to accept the third option: salvation is by grace alone, even though it necessarily depends on our responding with grace-wrought "works." Therefore, if Reformed Protestantism doesn't rule out salvation by grace alone, neither does Catholicism.

"Harvard Prof Defends Benedict XVI on Condoms and Aids"

2009-03-22T17:47:00.002-05:00

Presumably, the novelty of such a thing isn't the implicit concession that the Pope might after all have been right, nor that there may after all be intellectually respectable reasons to think that condom distribution won't fix AIDS, but rather that a well placed academic on the East Coast thinks these things are true. You can read about it over at Father Z's, by clicking here.

Salvation by Grace Alone

2009-03-22T09:56:00.008-05:00

It is sometimes alleged that Catholics cannot accept sola gratia, understood as the doctrine that our salvation is by grace alone. Here I will explain why Catholics can accept the doctrine as long as (Reformed) Protestants can. If Catholics cannot accept the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, however, then it is only because (Reformed) Protestants cannot accept it either.

The reason Catholics are charged with denying salvation by grace alone is this: Catholics insist that we must cooperate with God's grace in our salvation (that is, in our justification and sanctification, or growth in holiness). However, according to some Reformed Protestants, if we actively cooperate with God, then it follows that we are adding something to our own salvation, so that it isn't entirely God's doing after all. Such "works" rule out "grace," because grace and works are opposed in this sense: whatever I contribute is a "work" of mine and therefore not of "grace," or at least not of grace alone.

Will Corduan gives voice to this conviction in a recent article about Catholicism, when he suggests the following as a good rule of thumb: "if God does it, it is grace; if we do it, it is not grace; calling something that we do God’s grace is not God’s grace." Thus, if we do anything in the salvation process, that contribution of ours is not God's doing, and therefore is not of grace. It follows that, since Catholics insist that we contribute in our salvation by actively cooperating with God's grace, Catholics cannot believe in salvation by grace alone.

If this is the argument against the idea that Catholics can believe in sola gratia, then the Reformed Protestant must also reject the idea that salvation is by grace alone. More precisely: they must either (1) reject the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, (2) become antinomians, or (3) give up the argument that Catholics cannot believe in the doctrine of salvation by grace alone.

Why do I say this? It's of first importance to distinguish salvation proper from justification. According to Reformed thought, justification must not be "confused" with sanctification. Justification is a one-time decree of God's, wherein He declares you "righteous" on the basis of Christ's righteousness imputed to you, or legally reckoned to your account. This is an act of God: He causes belief in you, and then declares you righteous.

Sanctification, on the other hand, involves more than God declaring certain things about you or extending a favorable verdict toward you. It involves the infusion of God's grace, which brings about an interior renovation within you, by which you grow in personal holiness with the help of God's grace. Sanctification is thus a process (not a one-time decree) that is synergistic (not monergistic), in the sense that the believer freely cooperates with God's grace as they grow in sanctification.

Notice, however, that for the classical Reformed Christian, salvation includes both justification and sanctification. More precisely, "final salvation" requires "progressive sanctification." What this means is that we cannot stand before a Holy God, and enjoy full communion and happiness in His presence, unless we are made perfectly (inwardly) holy. It is not enough to be "called" or "reckoned" holy in order to enter in to heaven; we must really be holy (in addition to forgiven and "declared" holy), if we are to stand before the Lord.

This fact is eloquently underscored in chapter 13 of the Westminster Confession of Faith (to say nothing of the Biblical passages that teach it):

1. They, who are once effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them: the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified; and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice
of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

2. This sanctification is throughout, in the whole man; yet imperfect in this life, there abiding still some remnants of corruption in every part; whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war, the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.

3. In which war, although the remaining corruption, for a time, may much prevail; yet, through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome; and so, the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God...

Antinomians maintain, that believers are sanctified only by the holiness of Christ being imputed to them, and that there is no inherent holiness infused into them, nor required of them. This is a great and dangerous error; and, in opposition to it, our Confession asserts, that believers are really and personally sanctified. Their sanctification includes “the mortification of sin
in their members.” It includes also “the fruits of the Spirit, as love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”–Gal. v. 22. These are personal things; they are wrought in the hearts of believers, and produced in their tempers and lives. It is absurd to say they are in Christ, and imputed to believers; they are the effects of the Holy Spirit imparted to us, whose operations are compared, by Christ himself, to “a well of water within us, springing up unto everlasting life” ...

Holiness, though it cannot give us a title to heaven, is indispensably necessary. It is necessary by a divine and unalterable constitution; for “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.”–Heb. xii. 14. God has enacted it as an immutable law, that nothing which defileth shall enter into the heavenly city.–Rev. xxi. 27. It is necessary, also, as a preparative for heaven. It is the evidence of our title, and constitutes our meetness for enjoying the pleasures and engaging in the work of the heavenly world. “Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.”–Matt. v. 8.

Since "salvation" includes both justification and sanctification, since it involves both 'imputation' of Christ's righteousness and 'infusion' of God's grace, by which we become personally and really righteous, it follows that "salvation" is a broader category than justification - so long, that is, as justification is construed in such a way that it does not involve any interior change or sanctification of the individual.

Now, return to the argument against Catholicism above: since Catholics think we must cooperate actively with God's grace in our salvation, that means we are adding something to our salvation, and therefore that our salvation isn't by grace alone. You can see how this same argument works against the Reformed position:

(1) Salvation includes sanctification as an essential component.

(2) Sanctification involves our active cooperation with God's grace.

(3) If we actively cooperate with God's grace, then the outcome is not by grace alone.

(4) Therefore, sanctification is not by grace alone. (From 2 and 3)

(5) Therefore, salvation is not by grace alone. (From 1 and 4)

It follows that if Catholics cannot affirm salvation by grace alone because of premise (3), then neither can Reformed Protestants.

I see a couple of different options here, by way of response. The first is to say that salvation is equivalent to justification. Then, because we do not cooperate in our justification (according to Reformed Protestantism), that means that our justification (and therefore our salvation) can be by grace alone. The problem with this response is that it makes sanctification, or personal holiness, completely irrelevant to our salvation - it makes our salvation simply a legal matter, where God decrees certain things about certain people, but without making any difference in their lives. This runs counter to the Bible, and also the Westminster Confession of Faith.

The second option is for the Reformed Christian to maintain the distinction between salvation and justification, to affirm that justification is by grace alone, but to deny that salvation is by grace alone. I suppose some people might be willing to take this option, but I doubt many Reformed people would be attracted to it. On this view, it would be the Catholics who get to say that salvation is by grace alone (at least according to their own lights), whereas the Protestants would have to deny that salvation is by grace alone. This, I think, will sound backward to many Protestants; and I think they will not like the implication that salvation isn't purely a matter of God's grace in any case.

The third option is to reject premise (3), and maintain that even if we cooperate with God's grace in our sanctification, that does not render God's grace null and void. This is so because the "works" we perform by Christ and in the Spirit are wrought in us by the Lord, for we work out our salvation in fear and trembling while God works in us. Thus, since all of our sanctifying "works" are graced-works, or grace-wrought works, that means that all of our sanctification depends upon God's grace: without Him we could do nothing; with Him and by His grace we can grow. This is precisely what St. Augustine has in mind, when he tells us that "grace is for grace, as if remuneration for righteousness, in order that it may be true, because it is true, that 'God will reward every man according to his works'" (cf. Grace and Free Will 18-20).

This is, far and away, the best option for the Reformed Christian to take, I think. However, the cost is that the Reformed Christian can no longer accuse Catholics of denying salvation by grace alone. Nor, indeed, can the Catholic be accused of denying justification by grace alone, inasmuch as the argument for this claim would be structurally parallel to the argument above, and would face a host of additional problems.

Therefore, if the Reformed Christian can agree that the third option is the best to take, the doctrine of salvation by grace alone does not consistute an authentic point of division between Catholics and Reformed Protestants: both parties accept this doctrine. On the other hand, if the Reformed Christian wishes to deny that Catholicism teaches salvation by grace alone, then they must be prepared to accept the conclusion that Reformed Protestantism does not teach salvation by grace alone either.

Easy Yokes and Horsey Rides

2009-03-20T18:31:00.008-05:00

So I'm still a pretty new Catholic, relatively speaking, and I'm not too sure whether my confessor is normal or weird. (Weird in the genius kind of way.) The idea I had when I was still outside the Church was that you went to confession and the priest told you that you had to say 2 and a half Hail Marys for every pecadillo or some such, and then that took care of that: it somehow balanced out the cosmic scales and made God okie-dokie with you again.

Of course, all due respect to the Blessed Virgin (whom I can't hail enough), that's a silly caricature of the sacrament of confession, and it manifests confusion on a whole bunch of different levels. And after going to confession quite a few times over the past year, I'm happy to say that what I came to understand theoretically about confession (as to its purpose and effects) has been borne out in practice with great consistency, in this crucial respect: the penance you get assigned - at least if you go to my confessor - isn't in the least arbitrary, and it certainly isn't some mechanically derived sum you get by inputting your list-o-iniquities into that Ratio-of-Hail-Mary-to-Sins-Calculator that the priest is supposed to keep in his breast pocket.

No, my confessor's got a great gift for listening carefully to my "list" of sins, and then diagnosing a unifying root cause or condition that I need to work on. The penance he then assigns is targeted at uprooting these underlying causes of my sins and helping me along in my sanctification. And that's the point; that's how it's supposed to work. (Another bonus: I really do get forgiven by Jesus through that priest, speaking in persona Christi.) So for me, anyway, practice matches theory quite nicely when I go to my confessor.

Penances depend. Usually I'm given a passage of Scripture, relevant to what I just confessed, that I am supposed to meditate and pray over. I'm also usually given specific things to pray about, and usually these are outward-looking, in the sense that I'm meant to pray for other people (most of whom I don't know) as well as myself. And I'm usually given some activity or other to do, to make restitution and get me back on the right track again.

So for example, if I said something insensitive or churlish to my wife (a purely hypothetical case, you understand), I'm expected not just to meditate on what it means to love Janice like Jesus loves His Bride, but I'm told that I need to pray for all married couples and all persons preparing for the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and then I'm supposed to figure out something special to do for my wife. (And then I have to do the special thing I figured out.)

Today, after spending about 15 minutes talking with my confessor, I was assigned a penance that consisted in these 4 steps: (1) Lie down on the floor. (2) Let all of my children climb on top of me. (3) Roll around on the floor with said children. (4) Play whatever they ask you to play with them. (I've been a little distracted around the kids lately. I trust I'm not breaking the covenantal bond of silence by mentioning that.)

I am, right now, very tired of giving little people horsey rides. My back hurts. I think I'm getting a slight headache. And the air I breathe in feels so clean.

Lenten Reflection: Job, the Body, and the Head

2009-03-20T09:20:00.005-05:00

St. Augustine once remarked that Christ's agony in the garden foreshadows the martyrs who would join their own sufferings to Christ, in imitation of His passion: the blood His body sweated that night signified the impending bloody sacrifice that the members of His Body would make not too long down the road.

This theme - the theme of sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and making up what is lacking in them for the sake of His Body, the Church - is a theme we meet with repeatedly in the great mystics and doctors of the Church. On this Friday of Lent, I want to commend for your devotions a slightly different typological reflection - on the sufferings of Job, as they relate to Christ and the vocation of His Body to make known, through our words and our lives, the mystery of our redemption. Here is Pope St. Gregory the Great:

Holy Job is a type of the Church. At one time he speaks for the body, at another for the head. As he speaks of its members he is suddenly caught up to speak in the name of their head. So it is here, where he says: I have suffered this without sin on my hands, for my prayer to God was pure.

Christ suffered without sin on his hands, for he committed no sin and deceit was not found on his lips. Yet he suffered the pain of the cross for our redemption. His prayer to God was pure, his alone out of all mankind, for in the midst of his suffering he prayed for his persecutors: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Is it possible to offer, or even to imagine, a purer kind of prayer than that which shows mercy to one's torturers by making intercession for them? It was thanks to this kind of prayer that the frenzied persecutors who shed the blood of our Redeemer drank it afterward in faith and proclaimed him to be the Son of God.

The text goes on fittingly to speak of Christ's blood: Earth, do not cover over my blood, do not let my cry find a hiding place in you. When man sinned, God had said: Earth you are, and to earth you will return. Earth does not cover over the blood of the Redeemer, for every sinner, as he drinks the blood that is the price of his redemption, offers praise and thanksgiving, and to the best of his power makes that blood known to all around him.

Earth has not hidden away his blood, for holy Church has preached in every corner of the world the mystery of its redemption.

Notice what follows: Do not let my cry find a hiding place in you. The blood that is drunk, the blood of redemption, is itself the cry of our Redeemer. Paul speaks of the sprinkled blood that calls out more eloquently than Abel's. Of Abel's blood Scripture has written: The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the earth. The blood of Jesus calls out more eloquently than Abel's, for the blood of Abel asked for the death of Cain the fratricide, while the blood of the Lord has asked for, and obtained, life for his persecutors.

If the sacrament of the Lord's passion is to work its effect in us, we must imitate what we receive and proclaim to mankind what we revere. The cry of the Lord finds a hiding place in us if our lips fail to speak of this, though our hearts believe in it. So that his cry may not lie concealed in us it remains for us all, each in his own measure, to make known to those around us the mystery of our new life in Christ.

Edwards and Irenaeus on the Goal of Creation

2009-03-19T14:50:00.003-05:00

Just put up a post comparing Jonathan Edwards and St Irenaeus on the purpose of creation, together with a discussion of how Catholics understand the logic of glory and grace. You can find it at Called to Communion, here.

Calvin and Aquinas on the Providence of God

2009-03-13T09:50:00.003-05:00

I have just published a post on Calvin's arguments against the Libertines, with a comparison between his formulations of providence and those of Aquinas', on our new website, Called to Communion. Check it out here.

St Paul for Everyone: Wright on Philemon, Onesimus & Just About Everything Else

2009-03-07T12:23:00.009-06:00

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke.
- Isaiah

Dear brothers and sisters, as in early times, today too Christ needs apostles ready to sacrifice themselves. He needs witnesses and martyrs like St Paul. Paul, a former violent persecutor of Christians, when he fell to the ground dazzled by the divine light on the road to Damascus, did not hesitate to change sides to the Crucified One and followed him without second thoughts. He lived and worked for Christ, for him he suffered and died ...

- Pope Benedict XVI

What better way to spend 45 minutes of this Lenten day, during this Year of St Paul, than listening to this all-in-one address of N.T. Wright. Among the highlights: Philemon, Galatians, the Gospel, ecumenism, Christian freedom, love, and all the stuff that makes Wright such a lovable old bishop to listen to when he talks about the beloved Apostle. You can find it here.

Really. Just take 45 minutes; Lost and (even) The Simpsons can wait.

Lenten Reflection: Leithart, Isaiah, Gregory I

2009-03-01T14:37:00.011-06:00

Lent is a season for taking stock and cleaning house, a time of self-examination, confession and repentance. But we need to remind ourselves constantly what true repentance looks like. “Giving up” something for Lent is fine, but you keep Lent best by making war on all the evil habits and sinful desires that prevent you from running the race with patience.

Going through the motions of Lent without turning to God and putting our sins to death is hypocrisy, and few things rile our God so much as hypocrisy. “Rend your hearts and not your garments,” Joel says.

So: During this season, don’t just give up soft drinks; mount a concerted campaign against impatience. Don’t just put aside your favorite TV show; subdue your anger. Don’t just fast; kill your self-centeredness.

This doesn’t make Lent a season for gloominess and defeat. On the contrary, during this season we celebrate the victorious suffering and death of Jesus, and we should enter the season trusting in the Spirit of Jesus, who subdues our flesh and molds us to the image of Christ.

Lent is a season for joy also because it is a motif in a larger composition. The rhythm of the church year follows the rhythm of the Lord’s day service. Each week, we pass through a small “Lenten” moment in our liturgy, as we kneel for confession. But we don’t kneel through the whole service, and in the same way we don’t observe the fast forever.

Jesus tells us to fast with washed faces and anointed heads, that is, to fast as if prepared for a feast. We fast properly when we fast not only in humility but in hope; we keep the fast when we fall before God full of repentance but also full of confidence that our Great King will raise us up.

- Peter Leithart

Thus says the Lord God:

Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; tell My people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins.

They seek Me day after day, and desire to know My ways, like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God; they ask Me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God. "Why do we fast, and you do not see it? afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?"

Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits and drive all your laborers; yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw. Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!

Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: that a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your would shall quickly be healed; your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; then the Lord will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be lie a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails.
- Isaiah 58:1ff.

The glory of these forty days/We celebrate with songs of praise;/For Christ, by Whom all things were made,/Himself has fasted and has prayed.

Alone and fasting Moses saw/The loving God Who gave the law;/And to Elijah, fasting, came/The steeds and chariots of flame.

So Daniel trained his mystic sight,/Delivered from the lions’ might;/And John, the Bridegroom’s friend, became/The herald of Messiah’s Name.

Then grant us, Lord, like them to be/Full oft in fast and prayer with Thee;/Our spirits strengthen with Thy grace,/And give us joy to see Thy face.

O Father, Son, and Spirit blest,/To thee be every prayer addressed,/Who art in threefold Name adored,/From age to age, the only Lord.

- Pope St Gregory the Great [click to sing along!]

Lenten Reflection: Pope St Leo the Great

2009-02-26T10:39:00.005-06:00

Last night my wife told me how much she'd been looking forward to Lent. She reminded me that last year the Lenten season was a time of much happiness, simplicity, grace and peace for us, that the "aroma" of our home was one of contentment and joy -- even, and perhaps especially, when we hadn't had quite enough to eat. Do yourselves the good of participating in Lent this year.

Dear friends, at every moment the earth is full of the mercy of God, and nature itself is a lesson for all the faithful in the worship of God. The heavens, the sea and all that is in them bear witness to the goodness and omnipotence of their Creator, and the marvelous beauty of the elements as they obey him demands from the intelligent creation a fitting expression of its gratitude.

But with the return of that season marked out in a special way by the mystery of our redemption, and of the days that lead up to the paschal feast, we are summoned more urgently to prepare ourselves by a purification of the spirit.

The special note of the paschal feast is this: the whole Church rejoices in the forgiveness of sins. It rejoices in the forgiveness not only of those who are then reborn in holy baptism but also of those who are already numbered among God's adopted children.

Initially, men are made new by the rebirth of baptism. Yet there is still required a daily renewal to repair the shortcomings of our mortal nature, and whatever degree of progress has been made there is no one who should not be more advanced. All must therefore strive to ensure that on the day of redemption no one may be found in the sins of his former life.

Dear friends, what the Christian should be doing at all times should be done now with greater care and devotion, so that the Lenten fast enjoined by the apostles may be fulfilled, not simply by abstinence from food but above all by the renunciation of sin.

There is no more profitable practice as a companion to holy and spiritual fasting than almsgiving. This embraces under the single name of mercy many excellent works of devotion, so that the good intentions of all the faithful may be of equal value, even where their means are not. The love that we owe both God and man is always free from any obstacle that would prevent us from having a good intention. The angels sang: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth. The person who shows love and compassion to those in any kind of affliction is blessed, not only with the virtue of good will but also with the gift of peace.

The works of mercy are innumerable. Their very variety brings this advantage to those who are true Christians, that in the matter of almsgiving not only the rich and affluent but also those of average means and the poor are able to play their part. Those who are unequal in capacity to give can be equal in the love within their hearts.
- Pope St Leo the Great