Avdat

Seasonal atonement theories

What seems like forever (but was only two months) ago I (re)read Anselm's Cur Deus Homo? in my Medieval Church seminar. What struck me this time around was that God rewards Jesus Christ for his sinless life and death on the cross. But Jesus Christ is the Son of God. God from God; Light from Light, and all that. The quintessential Man Who Has Everything. What need of a reward does Jesus have? None at all. So he shares the reward with us. Because we desperately need some rewards. Especially immortality.

So you know what this makes Jesus?

A regifter.

I'm not a big fan of Singing Christmas Trees. They tend to be put on by Baptist churches, and the climax is always the singers rearranging themselves into a cross. C'mon, can't we do without the blood for just one evening? But maybe Satisfaction Atonement has some weird resonance with one of the quirks of this great annual Potlatch we're about to celebrate.

Might be a good sermon illustration. Just sayin.'

Calling all Thomists

In the spirit of the best way to learn something is to teach it, I led a Church History section on Thomas Aquinas' Summa yesterday. We discussed Part One, Questions 1 & 2, which deal with the nature and extent of Christian doctrine, and the existence of God.

In these first two questions, Thomas is trying to prove that Christian theology meets Aristotle's three criteria for a science: 1. Its first principles are secured; 2. It proceeds by deductive syllogisms, and 3. It's comprehensive.

Now one might object that Theology is not a science because not everyone believes; thus its first principles aren't secured. Thomas replies that a science's first principles can be secured in themselves, like mathematics, or they can be secured in a higher science, like music, which is a science because it's applied math. So then, Christian theology is a science in the way that music is. It's first principles aren't secured in itself, but in Divine Revelation, which is even more secure than any human science.

One student wasn't impressed by this argument because it appeared to her that Thomas is begging the question. Thomas hasn't yet demonstrated any reasonable proof that God exists. That comes in Question 2. Does he have a right to appeal to revelation so early in his argument?

Does anybody have a reply to this? I didn't.

P.S. Of all the proofs for God's existence, I like this one, which trades on the distinction between necessary and contingent creatures. Everything that exists in nature, says Thomas, didn't have to exist. We're all contingent creatures. Now, given an infinite amount of time, all possibilities for the coming into existence or not coming into existence of contingent creatures would be exhausted, including the possibility that none of us came into existence. Now if that had ever happened, nothing would exist even to this day because a contingent creature can't create himself. Obviously that didn't happen. So there has to be a necessary being to call the rest of us contingent beings into being. "And by this everyone takes it to mean God."

Itn't that great?

Hermeneutical coincidences

Strange coincidence: Yesterday I turned in a paper on patristic hermeneutics, specifically on the role of history in the interpretive strategies of Origen and Antiochene exegetes. The same day Thomas J. Bridges posted some thoughts on the same topic at An und fuer sich. So this has emboldened me to post my paper here now, which is probably unwise since it hasn't been graded and returned to me yet!

More coincidences. Tomorrow the Theology Discussion Group is going to discuss a few songs, including Crash Test Dummies' God Shuffled His Feet, which I guess is the perfect Antiochene retort to the allegorists: people want answers and all you give them are pretty little stories!

A bit of Christology: communication of attributes

In The Nature of Doctrine George Lindbeck put forth a novel argument regarding in what sense Christian doctrines are true. Doctrines are not true in a first order sense, that is, they don't tell us anything directly about God's nature. Rather, doctrines are second order speech about God. They reflect on the proper use of Christian scriptures, liturgy and prayer. Doctrines, Lindbeck argues, are a kind of grammar of faith. Just as the rules of grammar make no sense isolated from the language they regulate, Christian doctrines don't make any sense apart from the scriptures and liturgy they regulate.

This understanding of doctrinal truth allows for seemingly contradictory dogmatic assertions from competing religions to stand as true. The doctrine of the Trinity or the Muslim Shahada are true or false, not in relationship to each other, but in relationship to the communities whose speech they're trying to regulate.

Lindbeck cites Athanasius's extensive writings on the Nicene Creed as support for his argument. Indeed, you can boil down a lot of what Athanasius writes to one basic point: taken properly, the Father-Son metaphor means "like begets like," and not, as the Arians took it to mean, that one Person is prior to the Other.

But I think that where you get this in spades is in the next century and the Christological controversy. It's fascinating to me that the Church hammered out its final answer on the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ by arguing over whether you can call the Virgin Mary "The Mother of God."

So, without further ado, this is what I wrote up about said controversy and the communication of attributes, that is, the idea that one can attribute human predicates like suffered and died to the divine subject, the Son of God...

On turning the other cheek

According to Walter Wink, the interpretive key to Matthew 5:39 is that Jesus specifies being struck on the right cheek. Why the right cheek? In a right-handed world, the only way that one could strike a person on the right cheek is by delivering a back-handed slap, like a master would to his slave. Thus Jesus is counseling the relatively powerless among his hearers on how to assert their equality. Offering the other cheek isn't a way to avoid getting hit again, but his time, he'll have to punch you like you're an equal. It's an appealing interpretation because it provides exegetical validation to the techniques of a variety of non-violent social change movements.

But is Wink correct? Yesterday I was reading On First Principles by Origen, and he chalks up the right cheek detail to one of those absurdities that litter the scriptures which demand a deeper, spiritual, non-literal interpretation:

What could be more unreasonable than the command which simple minds think the Savior gave to his apostles: "Salute no one on the road" [Luke 10:4]? The saying about the right cheek being struck [Matt. 5:39; Luke 6:29] is also most unlikely, for anyone who strikes would strike the left cheek with the right hand unless he happened to suffer from an unnatural condition.

Now Origen, a third century Alexandrian, is as far away from Jesus of Nazareth as I am from the War of 1812. But he is a lot closer to the Sermon on the Mount in time and space than Walter Wink is. If Jesus is speaking directly to the plight of a slave humiliated by a back-handed slap, then it seems like Origen would have recognized the context of that detail immediately.

What gives?

Another question: has anyone written a book on the history of the interpretation of "turning the other cheek?" I'm not familiar with one, but I'd be shocked if there weren't one out there. Seems like that'd be some low-hanging fruit for any number of people eager to get published.

A bit of Gnosticism

Gnostic scriptures are as esoteric as advertised. But the wild ride they take you on is worth the tedious struggle of making sense of them! Unfortunately, Irenaeus's rejoinder to the Gnostics, that our hope is in the renewal of creation, not in our escape from it, seems lost on many contemporary Christians. A lot of people who got all bent out of shape at The Da Vinci Code are, ironically, crypto-Gnostics without realizing it. My paper on one Gnostic text, The Gospel of Truth, is below the fold:

Church and state in the high middle ages

Periodically I have to write 4-5 page papers on my seminar readings. The purpose of these papers is to jump-start the seminar conversation. One seminar has me doing a bunch of these shorter papers instead of a final term paper, so that's what I've spent much of my fall composing. Not blog posts. But since I'm one of these bloggers who, A. Gets anxious when I'm not posting a lot, and B. Doesn't have time to blog a lot, I've decided to put some of these class papers up here. This one, on Church-State issues, is where this earlier post about wrestling over the mantle of John Howard Yoder came from. These might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if they suit, you are welcome, as usual, to comment.

Marathons and other secular ascetic regimes

You know, studying the awesome lengths our ancestors in faith went to punish their bodies for the Lord is one of the more inspiring aspects of studying medieval history. I know; I know, you're wondering, So what's it going to be, Marvin? Bricking yourself up in the wall of a church? Corporal punishment for sneezing in worship? Naw, I decided to run a marathon instead.

The Richmond Marathon is a great event. Patrick Henry himself came out with a bullhorn to cheer us on. I grunted "Give me liberty or give me death" at him, and he said that he liked the sound of that that so much he'd have to remember it. A great gospel choir was singing where the course ran by Virginia Union. The race organizers add a few junk food stops to the usual water/gatorade stands. Gummy bears. Coke. Krispy Kreme donuts. Best of all, at mile 22, there were dudes out in the median of Fauquier Avenue handing out shots of Yuengling. You guys were my guardian angels!

I preach sermons

While Pastor Janet is at Iona, I pinch hit for her at The Gayton Kirk this morning. Version 1.0 of this sermon is still up at The Ivy Bush.

What the Shortest Verse in the Bible Means

November 1, 2009/Year B, All Saints

Isaiah 25: 6-9; John 11: 32-45

    The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35, a friend to every memory-challenged child who ever darkened the door of a Sunday School classroom. Alas, the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible changed the tense, from “Jesus wept,” to “Jesus began to weep,” and doubled the length of the verse. What will the kids do now?
    A better question is, “What are those tears for?” Take a look at this interpretation of the raising of Lazarus by the Dutch master Rembrandt. What does his body language, left hand raised, right hand gathering his robe into a fist at his hip, say about Jesus’s mood?
    I showed this etching to the congregation I served in North Carolina, and asked them that same question. One of our teenagers said that she thought Jesus was “coppin’ an attitude” in this work of art. That seemed to resonate with the adults on hand that evening, no doubt because they’d seen that kind of body language before, from their own teenagers. That “talk to the hand” pose.
    Interestingly, “coppin’ an attitude” may come closer to the original Greek than the English translation you just heard. In English we read that Jesus was “deeply moved” at the sight of the mourners and “greatly disturbed” as he approached Lazarus’s tomb. But the Greek for “greatly disturbed” really conveys anger and displeasure. As a verb it can mean to scold or rebuke. Occasionally the word is used to describe the snort of a horse who doesn’t like the feel of the bit in its mouth. “Jesus snorted,” an even more memorable sentence than “Jesus wept!”

Irritated

Reading this Ross Douthat column on Rome's latest overture to disaffected Anglicans makes me wanna go all Barthian-existentialist on the man. "No, Sir! Christianity's most enduring and impressive foe is Christ. Not Islam."