Cantare

Not A Mainstream Evangelical

2011-11-15T05:17:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I wrote an article, on why I am not a Roman Catholic. I wish now to try to explain why I do not consider myself a typical "evangelical protestant". This is not to say that I reject all that is held by either. But I wish to be as honest about the apparent shortcomings of mainstream "evangelicalism" as the Church of Rome.

Let us begin at the root. For evangelicals, there is no authority other than the Bible. There is no "tradition" other than a lack of one. (1)To most evangelicals, what the early church believed is irrelevant because we have the Scriptures.

Now, that seems very reasonable. But, if two people of entirely different backgrounds come to the same text, read the same words- and arrive at two different conclusions, which one is correct?

In other words: Suppose the first person lived very shortly after the time of Christ; he reads the books in his own language, he is surrounded by the same cultures in which they were written, he is instructed by those who knew the Lord and His apostles- the "faithful men" to whom the Holy tradition was given.

And suppose the second was someone who lived well over a thousand years after Christ; he reads the books in someone's hopefully reliable translation, is in a totally different culture, is instructed by those who have "private interpretations", or whoever has an opinion.

Which of the two seems to have a better chance of correctly understanding what was intended?

Obviously the first person. And so I believe that the writings of the early church are better guides to the original, than much of what came out of the Reformation. The Reformation led to the questioning of more than the primacy of Rome- for many, it led to the questioning of everything.

Perhaps the Achilles heel of the evangelical position is that of Scripture. It is in large part because of the teachings of the early church that the current Canon was compiled. Thus, whether intentionally or not, evangelicals accept early church tradition as a real authority.

So- contemporary evangelicalism, in most of its guises, does not look to the early church, the most reliable human witnesses, to help them interpret Scripture.

(2) The early Church understood the relationship of works and faith in an entirely different way than most evangelicals. While neither they, the Orthodox- or Catholic churches ever have said that one can earn one's salvation, or obtain it without grace, they all have insisted that works DO play a part of completing salvation. "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone," (James 2:24) They are two sides of the same coin. Faith must work, or it is no faith at all.

(3) The gist of salvation for the evangelical tends to be primarily the forgiveness of sin, when one accepts Christ. The emphasis is on being saved from Hell- or being pardoned. While that is important, the Early Church emphasized "Regeneration": Faith in Christ; "saving baptism"(1 Peter 3:21); receiving the Holy Spirit; becoming "partakers of the divine nature"(2 Peter 1:4). In other words, the focus in evangelical settings is often on that onetime acceptance of Christ, forgiveness of sin, and getting others to do the same. In the early Church, the emphasis is on the new birth- but it does not stop there! It goes on, seeing that experience as the beginning, not the end. The goal of man, the early Church taught, is not simply to be forgiven, but to become like his Lord.

(4) As a result of a very low view of "tradition", any concept of Church authority is questioned. Christ said to Peter: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:19) Surely the apostles, as leaders and shepherds of the Church were given special authority. "the household of God, [was] built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:19, 20). It was typical of the heretics of the early church to reject authority- both of the Church and the Holy Scriptures.

(5) The evangelical mainstream has accepted the dress, culture, and music of the world. It has taken the fads of popular culture and tried to make them holy. There is something absolutely repulsive about the magnificent beauty and holiness of our Lord being communicated in the style of a seductive pop diva. The world is brought into the church.

(6) A profusion of Calvinistic tendencies, directly at odds with the writings of the early Church, and contrary to every ancient branch of Christendom.

(7) An unquestioning loyalty to pre-millenial eschatology. Again, a very modern idea that has become almost a doctrine.

(8) Very little regard for the concept of voluntary celibacy or poverty. Where is the St. Francis among evangelicals? Should it be surprising to us if Jesus should call men to sell all that they have and follow Him today?

These are the reasons why I do not consider myself a mainstream evangelical. There is much to appreciate in their concern for scripture, and emphasis on faith. But as with the Catholic Church, a reaction to one error often leads to another.

Greed, and OWS

2011-10-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

     Generally this blog has been the place that I have written about my theological quandaries and convictions. But I feel like discussing the recent developments regarding Occupy Wall Street.

     The stated target of Occupy Wall Street protesters seems to be "corporate greed". And to these people, anyone who has worked hard enough to earn a high standard of living, is greedy. They also believe that all poverty is entirely the fault of bankers, hedge fund managers, and CEO's.

     This is the modern left. Read their signs that call for the end of capitalism. That demand that another class be tarred and feathered. A movement of malcontents, would-be-socialists, and even anti-Semites.

     A group more greedy than the ones they target. A group of amazing ignorance. Who demand goods and services from "capitalists", whose end they announce. A group who hates banks, asking for money. A group dedicated to putting everyone in poverty, and simultaneously grumbling about unemployment. As far as I can tell, a mob of Marxists.

     What then is a Christian view?

     That greed is not defined by your tax bracket. That God calls the rich to charity, and so turn temporal blessing to eternal riches. That a man should earn his own wages, not demand a share of another's. That Christian poverty, like celibacy, is a choice for individuals, not a government program. That offering a good job is a better humanitarian project than offering a handout. That class warfare is a sin because it comes from greed and covetousness.

     I don't think Jesus would be a part of Occupy Wall Street. And I know I'm not...

Ignatius Epistle - Part II

2011-08-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

Here is the rest of Ignatius' letter:

Ignatius to the Smyrnaens - short version

I give you these instructions, beloved, assured that ye also hold the same opinions[as I do]. But I guard you beforehand from those beasts in the shape of men, whom you must not only not receive, but, if it be possible, not even meet with; only you must pray to God for them, if by any means they may be brought to repentance, which, however, will be very difficult. Yet Jesus Christ, who is our true life, has the power of[effecting] this. But if these things were done by our Lord only in appearance, then am I also only in appearance bound. And why have I also surrendered myself to death, to fire, to the sword, to the wild beasts? But,[in fact,] he who is near to the sword is near to God; he that is among the wild beasts is in company with God; provided only he be so in the name of Jesus Christ. I undergo all these things that I may suffer together with Him, He who became a perfect man inwardly strengthening me.

Some ignorantly deny Him, or rather have been denied by Him, being the advocates of death rather than of the truth. These persons neither have the prophets persuaded, nor the law of Moses, nor the Gospel even to this day, nor the sufferings we have individually endured. For they think also the same thing regarding us. For what does any one profit me, if he commends me, but blasphemes my Lord, not confessing that He was[truly] possessed of a body? But he who does not acknowledge this, has in fact altogether denied Him, being enveloped in death. I have not, however, thought good to write the names of such persons, inasmuch as they are unbelievers. Yea, far be it from me to make any mention of them, until they repent and return to[a true belief in] Christ's passion, which is our resurrection.

Let no man deceive himself. Both the things which are in heaven, and the glorious angels, and rulers, both visible and invisible, if they believe not in the blood of Christ, shall, in consequence, incur condemnation. "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." Let not[high] place puff any one up: for that which is worth all is a faith and love, to which nothing is to be preferred. But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God. They have no regard for love; no care for the widow, or the orphan, or the oppressed; of the bond, or of the free; of the hungry, or of the thirsty.

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that ye should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion[of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils.

See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is[administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude[of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.

Moreover, it is in accordance with reason that we should return to soberness[of conduct], and, while yet we have opportunity, exercise repentance towards God. It is well to reverence both God and the bishop. He who honours the bishop has been honoured by God; he who does anything without the knowledge of the bishop, does[in reality] serve the devil. Let all things, then, abound to you through grace, for ye are worthy. Ye have refreshed me in all things, and Jesus Christ[shall refresh] you. Ye have loved me when absent as well as when present. May God recompense you, for whose sake, while ye endure all things, ye shall attain unto Him.

Ye have done well in receiving Philo and Rheus Agathopus as servants of Christ our God, who have followed me for the sake of God, and who give thanks to the Lord in your behalf, because ye have in every way refreshed them. None of these things shall be lost to you. May my spirit be for you, and my bonds, which ye have not despised or been ashamed of; nor shall Jesus Christ, our perfect hope, be ashamed of you.

Your prayer has reached to the Church which is at Antioch in Syria. Coming from that place bound with chains, most acceptable to God, I salute all; I who am not worthy to be styled from thence, inasmuch as I am the least of them. Nevertheless, according to the will of God, I have been thought worthy[of this honour], not that I have any sense[of having deserved it], but by the grace of God, which I wish may be perfectly given to me, that through your prayers I may attain to God. In order, therefore, that your work may be complete both on earth and in heaven, it is fitting that, for the honour of God, your Church should elect some worthy delegate; so that he, journeying into Syria, may congratulate them that they are[now] at peace, and are restored to their proper greatness, and that their proper constitution has been re-established among them. It seems then to me a becoming thing, that you should send some one of your number with an epistle, so that, in company with them, he may rejoice over the tranquility which, according to the will of God, they have obtained, and because that, through your prayers, they have now reached the harbour. As persons who are perfect, ye should also aim at those things which are perfect. For when ye are desirous to do well, God is also ready to assist you.

The love of the brethren at Troas salutes you; whence also I write to The love of your brethren at Troas salutes you; whence also I write to you by Burrhus, whom ye sent with me, together with the Ephesians, your brethren, and who has in all things refreshed me. And I would that all may imitate him, as being a pattern of a minister of God. Grace will reward him in all things. I salute your most worthy bishop, and your very venerable presbytery, and your deacons, my fellow-servants, and all of you individually, as well as generally, in the name of Jesus Christ, and in His flesh and blood, in His passion and resurrection, both corporeal and spiritual, in union with God and you. Grace, mercy, peace, and patience, be with you for evermore!

I salute the families of my brethren, with their wives and children, and and the virgins who are called widows. Be ye strong, I pray, in the power of the Holy Ghost. Philo, who is with me, greets you. I salute the house of Tavias, and pray that it may be confirmed in faith and love, both corporeal and spiritual. I salute Alce; my well-beloved, and the incomparable Daphnus, and Eutecnus, and all by name. Fare ye well in the grace of God.

An Assignment

2011-08-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

Dear reader: I have an assignment for you.

It has been the claim of nearly every denomination that calls itself Christian, to say that they hold the "original" teachings of the Church.

Compare the Church of the first century to yours. You can do so by reading the writings of men like Polycarp, Ignatius, and Justyn Martyr. It will not read like a novel - but it will challenge you, and force you to think about some rather uncomfortable discrepancies between "mainstream" evangelicalism and the first generations of believers.

Perhaps the most interesting, and disconcerting (in a good way) is the lion of the early church- St. Ignatius. He was the third bishop of Antioch, and was martyred during 108 A.D, according to Eusebius. His writings are fiery, beautiful, and edifying.

Ignatius' Epistle to the Smyraeans - short version:

PART 1

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church of God the Father, and of the beloved Jesus Christ, which has through mercy obtained every kind of gift, which is filled with faith and love, and is deficient in no gift, most worthy of God, and adorned with holiness: the Church which is at Smyrna, in Asia, wishes abundance of happiness, through the immaculate Spirit and word of God.

I glorify God, even Jesus Christ, who has given you such wisdom. For I have observed that ye are perfected in an immoveable faith, as if ye were nailed to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, both in the flesh and in the spirit, and are established in love through the blood of Christ, being fully persuaded with respect to our Lord, that He was truly of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Son of God according to the will and power of God; that He was truly born of a virgin, was baptized by John, in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled by Him; and was truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, nailed[to the cross] for us in His flesh. Of this fruit we are by His divinely-blessed passion, that He might set up a standard s for all ages, through His resurrection, to all His holy and faithful[followers], whether among Jews or Gentiles, in the one body of His Church.

Now, He suffered all these things for our sakes, that we might be saved. And He suffered truly, even as also He truly raised up Himself, not, as certain unbelievers maintain, that He only seemed to suffer, as they themselves only seem to be[Christians]. And as they believe, so shall it happen unto them, when they shall be divested of their bodies, and be mere evil spirits.

For I know that after His resurrection also He was still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He is so now. When, for instance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, "Lay hold, handle Me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit." And immediately they touched Him, and believed, being convinced both by His flesh and spirit. For this cause also they despised death, and were found its conquerors. And after his resurrection He did eat and drink with them, as being possessed of flesh, although spiritually He was united to the Father.

(To be continued...)

Why I am Not a Roman Catholic

2011-07-03T18:45:00.000-07:00

In order to clarify my own thoughts, I am going to try to write a coherent explanation of my grounds for not accepting the claims of the Roman Church. In this discussion, I will so far as possible avoid unfair criticisms, although I will freely confess that coming from the Anabaptist tradition does make this at times difficult. Also I will try to use legitimate and recent Catholic sources.

Let us begin by pointing to the claim implied in the very title of the Catholic Church. The claim of "Catholicity" is the claim to be preservers of the faith that was delivered to the Apostles and the "faithful men" to whom they committed the tradition and rule of faith. Fundamental to the claim is the concept of Apostolic Succession, which can also be claimed by the Orthodox and Anglican Churches.

If the claim of Rome is true, it should follow that there be very little disagreement between the writings of the first centuries and the latest Catechism from the Vatican. Let us consider a few examples...

Here is a quote from the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church: "The Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, "the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype," and "whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it."70 The honor paid to sacred images is a "respectful veneration," not the adoration due to God alone:" (Part 3 Section 2 Article 1)

Here is a quote from Origen: "it is not possible at the same time to know God and to address prayers to images." (Origen, Against Celsus, Book 7, Chapter LXV)
Synod of Elvira: "There shall be no pictures in the church, lest what is worshipped and adored should be depicted on the walls." (c. 306 AD, Canon 36)

Augustine: "Does anyone worship or pray with his eyes fixed on the image, without being persuaded that the image is hearing his petition and without hoping that it will give him what he wants? Probably not. So thoroughly entangled do people become in such superstitions that they often turn their backs on the real sun and pour out their prayers to the statue they call Sun; or again, while the sound of the sea is battering them from behind they batter the statue of Neptune with their sighs as though it were conscious, that statue which they venerate as representative of the actual sea. What causes this error-almost forces the illusion on them, in fact-is the human likeness with all its bodily parts. The minds of the worshippers are accustomed to living with their own bodily senses, and so they judge that a body very similar to their own is more likely to be responsive than the sun's orb, or the wide waves, or any other object clearly not built on the same plane as the living creatures they are used to seeing.

6. It may be objected that we ourselves have many vessels and other accessories made of similar metals, which we use in the celebration of the sacraments. They are consecrated to divine service and are called holy in honor of him who is worshipped through their use for our salvation. Such vessels and implements are obviously the work of human hands: what else could they be? But do they have mouths that will never speak, or eyes that will never see? And does the fact that we make use of them to offer our supplications to God mean that we are begging anything from them? Of course not.

The principal cause of insane, blasphemous idolatry is this: a form resembling that of a living person- a form that by its lifelike appearance seems to demand worship- is more powerfully persuasive to the emotions of its wretched suppliants than the plain fact that it is not alive and ought to be scorned by anyone who is. The evidence of mouths, eyes, ears, nostrils, hands, and feet in the idols has more power to lead an unhappy soul astray than the evident inability on their part to speak, see, hear, smell, handle things, or walk has power to bring such a soul back to the truth."

John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., ed., The Works of Saint Augustine, Part 3, Vol. 19, trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B., Expositions of the Psalms, Psalms 99-120, Exposition 2 of Psalm 113.5 (Psalm 114) (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2003), pp. 315-316]. ~http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3874

(I) It is difficult to explain how this testimony of antiquity can be in agreement with the current teachings of Rome. How can such contradiction be simply a blossoming of the primitive doctrine?

On the question of oaths, here is the statement from the Catechism: "Following St. Paul, the tradition of the Church has understood Jesus' words as not excluding oaths made for grave and right reasons (for example, in court)." (Part 3, Section 2, Chapter 1, article 2).

However, Cyprian states without qualification: "That we must not swear." (Treatise XII, Book Three).

It also seems to me from Justin's Apology, that all partook of the Eucharist; It is now denied to the laity in the Roman Church.

Here is Justin's account of the weekly service:

"And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons."

(2) Then there is the apparent ignorance of the early writers of such contemporary teachings as prayers to saints, the Pope as infallible and the universal bishop, transubstantiation, and infant baptism. Now- in fairness, some of these may possibly be hinted at by a very few writers, but to claim that most in any sense would have endorsed the Roman version as Dogma, and fundamental articles of faith is preposterous. It is an argument from the silence of the witnesses!

If these doctrines are necessary to be a good catholic today, what will become of Ignatius and Clement?

Therefore, the Roman Catholic Church is absolutely chargeable with innovation in doctrine.

Now, we have only considered the Roman teachings as compared with the writings of the fathers of the Church. Perhaps the reader will say that we should have started with Holy Scripture, and argued only from them. But, it appears to me, that the claims of the Roman Catholic Church are founded on the grounds of Apostolic tradition. If the writings of the Church fathers are shown to be in clear disagreement, or even ignorant of such signal Roman beliefs as prayer to saints, transubstantiation, and involuntarily celibate clergy, the entire claim crumbles.

I am going to say that the concept of Apostolic Succession, is actually arguable from the very earliest writings of the Church. In the early centuries, this mattered significantly; it was a key point of being catholic (notice the lower-case "c").

As I understand it, the use of "Catholic" in the first centuries, and in the Creed, refers to the apostolic origin and doctrines of the Church.

But, in the case of today's Roman Catholic Church, it is a legitimate question to ask if she exhibits the "four marks": Is she One? Is she Holy? Is she Catholic? Is she apostolic?

Tertullian prescribes this test:

"It remains, then, that we demonstrate whether this doctrine of ours, of which we have now given the rule, has its origin in the tradition of the apostles, and whether all other doctrines do not ipso facto proceed from falsehood."

How am I to believe, that the doctrines promulgated by the Council of Trent had their origins in the tradition of the apostles- and were never revealed until then?

Therefore the Roman Catholic Church requires faith in her own infallibility, without giving us solid grounds to form such convictions.

I believe the sacred Scriptures, because they are consistent with the world, and are more reliable than any other authority; and I believe in the Holy Trinity because it is taught in Scripture and held by all catholic (notice again the lowercase "c") Christians.

But I do not believe the claim of today's Roman Catholic Church.

2011-05-26T15:44:00.000-07:00

I am currently listening to Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, and most heartily recommend it. There is a quite good Librivox recording of it available (for free!).

The accounts of the martyrs are amazing. What devotion! What grace!
Those of us in the Protestant/evangelical community are missing a lot by ignoring the Church in its first centuries. We suffer from chronological snobbery, I fear.
The feats of these early "athletes of Christ" and their faithful brethren should be admired today. It is because such accounts as these that I cringe when people speak slightingly of the catholic (lower-case "c") Church in the days leading up to and during the days of Nicaea:

The Egyptians in Phœnicia.

1. THOSE of them that were conspicuous in Palestine we know, as also those that were at Tyre in Phœnicia. Who that saw them was not astonished at the numberless stripes, and at the firmness which these truly wonderful athletes of religion exhibited under them? and at their contest, immediately after the scourging, with bloodthirsty wild beasts, as they were cast before leopards and different kinds of bears and wild boars and bulls goaded with fire and red-hot iron? and at the marvelous endurance of these noble men in the face of all sorts of wild beasts?

2. We were present ourselves when these things occurred, and have put on record the divine power of our martyred Savior Jesus Christ, which was present and manifested itself mightily in the martyrs. For a long time the man-devouring beasts did not dare to touch or draw near the bodies of those dear to God, but rushed upon the others who from the outside irritated and urged them on. And they would not in the least touch the holy athletes, as they stood alone and naked and shook their hands at them to draw them toward themselves,—for they were commanded to do this. But whenever they rushed at them, they were restrained as if by some divine power and retreated again.

3. This continued for a long time, and occasioned no little wonder to the spectators. And as the first wild beast did nothing, a second and a third were let loose against one and the same martyr.

4. One could not but be astonished at the invincible firmness of these holy men, and the enduring and immovable constancy of those whose bodies were young. You could have seen a youth not twenty years of age standing unbound and stretching out his hands in the form of a cross, with unterrified and untrembling mind, engaged earnestly in prayer to God, and not in the least going back or retreating from the place where he stood, while bears and leopards, breathing rage and death, almost touched his flesh. And yet their mouths were restrained, I know not how, by a divine and incomprehensible power, and they ran back again to their place. Such an one was he.

5. Again you might have seen others, for they were five in all, cast before a wild bull, who tossed into the air with his horns those who approached from the outside, and mangled them, leaving them to be token up half dead; but when he rushed with rage and threatening upon the holy martyrs, who were standing alone, he was unable to come near them; but though he stamped with his feet, and pushed in all directions with his horns, and breathed rage and threatening on account of the irritation of the burning irons, he was, nevertheless, held back by the sacred Providence. And as he in nowise harmed them, they let loose other wild beasts upon them.

6. Finally, after these terrible and various attacks upon them, they were all slain with the sword; and instead of being buried in the earth they were committed to the waves of the sea.

Those in Egypt.

1. SUCH was the conflict of those Egyptians who contended nobly for religion in Tyre. But we must admire those also who suffered martyrdom in their native land; where thousands of men, women, and children, despising the present life for the sake of the teaching of our Savior, endured various deaths.

2. Some of them, after scrapings and rackings and severest scourgings, and numberless other kinds of tortures, terrible even to hear of, were committed to the flames; some were drowned in the sea; some offered their heads bravely to those who cut them off; some died under their tortures, and others perished with hunger. And yet others were crucified; some according to the method commonly employed for malefactors; others yet more cruelly, being nailed to the cross with their heads downward, and being kept alive until they perished on the cross with hunger.

~ Bk. 8, Chapter 7 and 8:

Easter

2011-04-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

Today is Easter... Chesterton puts it like this:

"They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body. There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepluchre and guarded by the authority of the Caesars. For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human. The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead."

"On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."

And how should we respond on this holy day - which has made every other day holy?

Easter

Rise, heart, thy lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him may'st rise:
That, as his death calcinèd thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and, much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art,
The cross taught all wood to resound his name
Who bore the same.
His stretchèd sinews taught all strings what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort, both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long;
Or, since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied
Oh let thy blessèd Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

~ George Herbert

We Are the Music Makers

2011-04-22T16:44:00.000-07:00

Well, well.

I am on a poetry kick again, and a collection of George Herbert is on the way.

Words and language are such sublime things!

In my constant search for quaility and free audio, I stumbled across a magnificent podcast: http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com.

Obviously not nearly all these poems reflect a Christian world-view, but there are many excellent classic works represented here. And, the reader is very good.

I especially recommend the Hopkins.

One of the poems that especially struck me was this one by Arthur O'Shaughnessy:

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

~~~~~~~

Recomendations

2011-04-04T17:31:00.000-07:00

One of the most powerful weapons in the Christian's arsenal is song. It is not only a great tool of the faith, but it is a clear command from our Creator. It has the ability of drawing our minds to Heaven during our very earthly pursuits. Sometimes the Master will remind us of a song of worship when we are the least focused on Him, for He is the active and pursuing Lover of our souls.

Along with the words of Holy Scripture, the testimonies of His saints, let us fill our minds with the music of Heaven. And when we are tempted, when we suffer, and even when we forget Him, He will call us to Himself...

Here are several CD's that I enthusiastically recommend:

The St. Olaf College Choir has recorded two CD's of "Great Hymns of Faith". Both are magnificent, with a delightful selection of the finest hymns of the Church. And the singing is gorgeous.

Also, the King's Singer's "Choral Essays" are very good. I have only the first volume, but if the rest are this good, get them all! (get a loan if you must...)

Epistle of Dionysius

2011-02-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

I am just finishing the writings of Dionysius the Great, Bishop of Alexandria during the third century. One cannot read these writings without being stirred by the complete devotion to Christ and concern for each other in the early church.

Here is an extract from an epistle from Dionysius to the Alexandrians:

1. To other men, indeed, the present state of matters would not appear to offer a fit season for a festival: and this certainly is no festal time to them; nor, in sooth, is any other that to them. And I say this, not only of occasions manifestly sorrowful, but even or all occasions whatsoever which people might consider to be most joyous. And now certainly all things are turned to mourning, and all men are in grief, and lamentations resound through the city, by reason of the multitude of the dead and of those who are dying day by day. For as it is written in the case of the first-born of the Egyptians, so now too a great cry has arisen. “For there is not a house in which there is not one dead.” And would that even this were all!

2. Many terrible calamities, it is true, have also befallen us before this. For first they drove us away; and though we were quite alone, and pursued by all, and in the way of being slain, we kept our festival, even at such a time. And every place that had been the scene of some of the successive sufferings which befell any of us, became a seat for our solemn assemblies,—the field, the desert, the ship, the inn, the prison,—all alike. The most gladsome festival of all, however, has been celebrated by those perfect martyrs who have sat down at the feast in heaven. And after these things war and famine surprised us. These were calamities which we shared, indeed, with the heathen. But we had also to bear by ourselves alone those ills with which they outraged us, and we had at the same time to sustain our part in those things which they either did to each other or suffered at each other’s hands; while again we rejoiced deeply in that peace of Christ which He imparted to us alone.

3. And after we and they together had enjoyed a very brief season of rest, this pestilence next assailed us,—a calamity truly more dreadful to them than all other objects of dread, and more intolerable than any other kind of trouble whatsoever; and a misfortune which, as a certain writer of their own declares, alone prevails over all hope. To us, however, it was not so; but in no less measure than other ills it proved an instrument for our training and probation. For it by no means kept aloof from us, although it spread with greatest violence among the heathen.

4. Certainly very many of our brethren, while, in their exceeding love and brotherly-kindness, they did not spare themselves, but kept by each other, and visited the sick without thought of their own peril, and ministered to them assiduously, and treated them for their healing in Christ, died from time to time most joyfully along with them, lading themselves with pains derived from others, and drawing upon themselves their neighbors' diseases, and willingly taking over to their own persons the burden of the sufferings of those around them. And many who had thus cured others of their sicknesses, and restored them to strength, died themselves, having transferred to their own bodies the death that lay upon these. Yea, the very best of our brethren have departed this life in this manner, including some presbyters and some deacons, and among the people those who were in highest reputation: so that this very form of death, in virtue of the distinguished piety and the steadfast faith which were exhibited in it, appeared to come in nothing beneath martyrdom itself.

5. And they took the bodies of the saints on their upturned hands, their eyes, and shut their mouths. And carrying them in company, and laying them out decently, they clung to them, and embraced them, and prepared them duly with washing and with attire. And then in a little while after they had the same services done for themselves, as those who survived were ever following those who departed before them. But among the heathen all was the very reverse. For they thrust aside any who began to be sick, and kept aloof even from their dearest friends, and cast the sufferers out upon the public roads half dead, and left them unburied, and treated them with utter contempt when they died, steadily avoiding any kind of communication and intercourse with death; which, however, it was not easy for them altogether to escape, in spite of the many precautions they employed.

"Behold, how they loved one another!"

2010-12-11T17:44:00.000-08:00

"I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church..."

I interpret this as referring to the Church Universal, not any single denomination, apostolic see, or sect. The body of Christ is one, for there is "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." We must understand the Creed spiritually.
This is not to minimize the importance of the visible church and its authority; that must not be given up. Any church sincerely following the Holy Scriptures, and accepting the doctrines of the Apostolic faith has valid authority.
It is my belief that the diversity within Christendom is much like the diversity of a field of roses: they are all roses... but none is exactly alike. In the same way, to One faith belong men as diverse as Augustine, Patrick, Spurgeon, Wesley, and Ignatius.

The consistency of the faith is clearer when one looks at its opposite. The stark difference between the earthly and Heavenly cities was well understood in the early church. It is the theme of Augustine's The City of God:

"Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, "Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head." In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength."And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God "glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise"- that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride-"they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things." For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, "and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever." But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, "That God may be all in all."

~ The City of God, Book 14, Trans. Dods

A Tribute

2010-11-16T17:52:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, one of the most powerful voices of our century was silenced. Henryk Gorecki, was a brilliant composer, with deep roots in the music of the past and a creator of startlingly original masterpieces. Over a million copies of his Third Symphony were sold in the 1990's, competing with best selling pop albums. This was the piece that made him famous, and it deserves to be more well-known... haunting, breath-taking, and human... Also well worth finding is his exquisite choral piece, "Miserere"... music of deep faith and beauty...

Rest in Peace, Gorecki.

The Lord's Prayer, Part 2

2010-10-29T17:24:00.000-07:00

Here at long last, is the second part of Cyprian's lengthy treatise:

...

18. As the prayer goes forward, we ask and say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And this may be understood both spiritually and literally, because either way of understanding it is rich in divine usefulness to our salvation. For Christ is the bread of life; and this bread does not belong to all men, but it is ours. And according as we say, “Our Father,” because He is the Father of those who understand and believe; so also we call it “our bread,” because Christ is the bread of those who are in union with His body. This passage is differently read as follows: “And according as we say Our Father, so also we call Christ our bread, because He is ours as we come in contact with His body.” And we ask that this bread should be given to us daily, that we who are in Christ, and daily receive the Eucharist for the food of salvation, may not, by the interposition of some heinous sin, by being prevented, as withheld and not communicating, from partaking of the heavenly bread, be separated from Christ’s body, as He Himself predicts, and warns, “I am the bread of life which came down from heaven. If any man eat of my bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” When, therefore, He says, that whoever shall eat of His bread shall live for ever; as it is manifest that those who partake of His body and receive the Eucharist by the right of communion are living, so, on the other hand, we must fear and pray lest any one who, being withheld from communion, is separate from Christ’s body should remain at a distance from salvation; as He Himself threatens, and says, “Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye shall have no life in you.” And therefore we ask that our bread—that is, Christ—may be given to us daily, that we who abide and live in Christ may not depart from His sanctification and body.

19. But it may also be thus understood, that we who have renounced the world, and have cast away its riches and pomps in the faith of spiritual grace, should only ask for ourselves food and support, since the Lord instructs us, and says, “Whosoever forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple.” But he who has begun to be Christ’s disciple, renouncing all things according to the word of his Master, ought to ask for his daily food, and not to extend the desires of his petition to a long period, as the Lord again prescribes, and says, “Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow itself shall take thought for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” With reason, then, does Christ’s disciple ask food for himself for the day, since he is prohibited from thinking of the morrow; because it becomes a contradiction and a repugnant thing for us to seek to live long in this world, since we ask that the kingdom of God should come quickly. Thus also the blessed apostle admonishes us, giving substance and strength to the stedfastness of our hope and faith: “We brought nothing,” says he, “into this world, nor indeed can we carry anything out. Having therefore food and raiment, let us be herewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many and hurtful lusts, which drown men in perdition and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which while some coveted after, they have made shipwreck from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

20. He teaches us that riches are not only to be contemned, but that they are also full of peril; that in them is the root of seducing evils, that deceive the blindness of the human mind by a hidden deception. Whence also God rebukes the rich fool, who thinks of his earthly wealth, and boasts himself in the abundance of his overflowing harvests, saying, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” The fool who was to die that very night was rejoicing in his stores, and he to whom life already was failing, was thinking of the abundance of his food. But, on the other hand, the Lord tells us that he becomes perfect and complete who sells all his goods, and distributes them for the use of the poor, and so lays up for himself treasure in heaven. He says that that man is able to follow Him, and to imitate the glory of the Lord’s passion, who, free from hindrance, and with his loins girded, is involved in no entanglements of worldly estate, but, at large and free himself, accompanies his possessions, which before have been sent to God. For which result, that every one of us may be able to prepare himself, let him thus learn to pray, and know, from the character of the prayer, what he ought to be.

21. For daily bread cannot be wanting to the righteous man, since it is written, “The Lord will not slay the soul of the righteous by hunger;” and again “I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.” And the Lord moreover promises and says, “Take no thought, saying, ‘What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed?’ For after all these things do the nations seek. And your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” To those who seek God’s kingdom and righteousness, He promises that all things shall be added. For since all things are God’s, nothing will be wanting to him who possesses God, if God Himself be not wanting to him. Thus a meal was divinely provided for Daniel: when he was shut up by the king’s command in the den of lions, and in the midst of wild beasts who were hungry, and yet spared him, the man of God was fed. Thus Elijah in his flight was nourished both by ravens ministering to him in his solitude, and by birds bringing him food in his persecution. And—oh detestable cruelty of the malice of man!—the wild beasts spare, the birds feed, while men lay snares, and rage!

22. After this we also entreat for our sins, saying, “And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” After the supply of food, pardon of sin is also asked for, that he who is fed by God may live in God, and that not only the present and temporal life may be provided for, but the eternal also, to which we may come if our sins are forgiven; and these the Lord calls debts, as He says in His Gospel, “I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me.” And how necessarily, how providently and salutarily, are we admonished that we are sinners, since we are compelled to entreat for our sins, and while pardon is asked for from God, the soul recalls its own consciousness of sin! Lest any one should flatter himself that he is innocent, and by exalting himself should more deeply perish, he is instructed and taught that he sins daily, in that he is bidden to entreat daily for his sins. Thus, moreover, John also in his epistle warns us, and says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, the Lord is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” In his epistle he has combined both, that we should entreat for our sins, and that we should obtain pardon when we ask. Therefore he said that the Lord was faithful to forgive sins, keeping the faith of His promise; because He who taught us to pray for our debts and sins, has promised that His fatherly mercy and pardon shall follow.

23. He has clearly joined herewith and added the law, and has bound us by a certain condition and engagement, that we should ask that our debts be forgiven us in such a manner as we ourselves forgive our debtors, knowing that that which we seek for our sins cannot be obtained unless we ourselves have acted in a similar way in respect of our debtors. Therefore also He says in another place, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” And the servant who, after having had all his debt forgiven him by his master, would not forgive his fellow-servant, is cast back into prison; because he would not forgive his fellow-servant, he lost the indulgence that had been shown to himself by his lord. And these things Christ still more urgently sets forth in His precepts with yet greater power of His rebuke. “When ye stand praying,” says He, “forgive if ye have aught against any, that your Father which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive you your trespasses.” There remains no ground of excuse in the day of judgment, when you will be judged according to your own sentence; and whatever you have done, that you also will suffer. For God commands us to be peacemakers, and in agreement, and of one mind in His house; and such as He makes us by a second birth, such He wishes us when new-born to continue, that we who have begun to be sons of God may abide in God’s peace, and that, having one spirit, we should also have one heart and one mind. Thus God does not receive the sacrifice of a person who is in disagreement, but commands him to go back from the altar and first be reconciled to his brother, that so God also may be appeased by the prayers of a peace-maker. Our peace and brotherly agreement is the greater sacrifice to God,—and a people united in one in the unity of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

24. For even in the sacrifices which Abel and Cain first offered, God looked not at their gifts, but at their hearts, so that he was acceptable in his gift who was acceptable in his heart. Abel, peaceable and righteous in sacrificing in innocence to God, taught others also, when they bring their gift to the altar, thus to come with the fear of God, with a simple heart, with the law of righteousness, with the peace of concord. With reason did he, who was such in respect of God’s sacrifice, become subsequently himself a sacrifice to God; so that he who first set forth martyrdom, and initiated the Lord’s passion by the glory of his blood, had both the Lord’s righteousness and His peace. Finally, such are crowned by the Lord, such will be avenged with the Lord in the day of judgment; but the quarrelsome and disunited, and he who has not peace with his brethren, in accordance with what the blessed apostle and the Holy Scripture testifies, even if he have been slain for the name of Christ, shall not be able to escape the crime of fraternal dissension, because, as it is written, “He who hateth his brother is a murderer,” no murderer attains to the kingdom of heaven, nor does he live with God. He cannot be with Christ, who had rather be an imitator of Judas than of Christ. How great is the sin which cannot even be washed away by a baptism of blood—how heinous the crime which cannot be expiated by martyrdom!

25. Moreover, the Lord of necessity admonishes us to say in prayer, “And suffer us not to be led into temptation.” In which words it is shown that the adversary can do nothing against us except God shall have previously permitted it; so that all our fear, and devotion, and obedience may be turned towards God, since in our temptations nothing is permitted to evil unless power is given from Him. This is proved by divine Scripture, which says, “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem, and besieged it; and the Lord delivered it into his hand.” But power is given to evil against us according to our sins, as it is written, “Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to those who make a prey of Him? Did not the Lord, against whom they sinned, and would not walk in His ways, nor hear His law? and He has brought upon them the anger of His wrath.” And again, when Solomon sinned, and departed from the Lord’s commandments and ways, it is recorded, “And the Lord stirred up Satan against Solomon himself.”

26. Now power is given against us in two modes: either for punishment when we sin, or for glory when we are proved, as we see was done with respect to Job; as God Himself sets forth, saying, “Behold, all that he hath I give unto thy hands; but be careful not to touch himself.” And the Lord in His Gospel says, in the time of His passion, “Thou couldest have no power against me unless it were given thee from above.” But when we ask that we may not come into temptation, we are reminded of our infirmity and weakness in that we thus ask, lest any should insolently vaunt himself, lest any should proudly and arrogantly assume anything to himself, lest any should take to himself the glory either of confession or of suffering as his own, when the Lord Himself, teaching humility, said, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak;” so that while a humble and submissive confession comes first, and all is attributed to God, whatever is sought for suppliantly with fear and honour of God, may be granted by His own loving-kindness.

27. After all these things, in the conclusion of the prayer comes a brief clause, which shortly and comprehensively sums up all our petitions and our prayers. For we conclude by saying, “But deliver us from evil,” comprehending all adverse things which the enemy attempts against us in this world, from which there may be a faithful and sure protection if God deliver us, if He afford His help to us who pray for and implore it. And when we say, Deliver us from evil, there remains nothing further which ought to be asked. When we have once asked for God’s protection against evil, and have obtained it, then against everything which the devil and the world work against us we stand secure and safe. For what fear is there in this life, to the man whose guardian in this life is God?

28. What wonder is it, beloved brethren, if such is the prayer which God taught, seeing that He condensed in His teaching all our prayer in one saving sentence? This had already been before foretold by Isaiah the prophet, when, being filled with the Holy Spirit, he spoke of the majesty and loving-kindness of God, “consummating and shortening His word,” He says, “in righteousness, because a shortened word will the Lord make in the whole earth.” For when the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, came unto all, and gathering alike the learned and unlearned, published to every sex and every age the precepts of salvation, He made a large compendium of His precepts, that the memory of the scholars might not be burdened in the celestial learning, but might quickly learn what was necessary to a simple faith. Thus, when He taught what is life eternal, He embraced the sacrament of life in a large and divine brevity, saying, “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” Also, when He would gather from the law and the prophets the first and greatest commandments, He said, “Hear, O Israel; the Lord thy God is one God: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” And again: “Whatsoever good things ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them. For this is the law and the prophets.”

29. Nor was it only in words, but in deeds also, that the Lord taught us to pray, Himself praying frequently and beseeching, and thus showing us, by the testimony of His example, what it behoved us to do, as it is written, “But Himself departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” And again: “He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.” But if He prayed who was without sin, how much more ought sinners to pray; and if He prayed continually, watching through the whole night in uninterrupted petitions, how much more ought we to watch nightly in constantly repeated prayer!

30. But the Lord prayed and besought not for Himself—for why should He who was guiltless pray on His own behalf?—but for our sins, as He Himself declared, when He said to Peter, “Behold, Satan hath desired that he might sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” And subsequently He beseeches the Father for all, saying, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.” The Lord’s loving-kindness, no less than His mercy, is great in respect of our salvation, in that, not content to redeem us with His blood, He in addition also prayed for us. Behold now what was the desire of His petition, that like as the Father and Son are one, so also we should abide in absolute unity; so that from this it may be understood how greatly he sins who divides unity and peace, since for this same thing even the Lord besought, desirous doubtless that His people should thus be saved and live in peace, since He knew that discord cannot come into the kingdom of God.

31. Moreover, when we stand praying, beloved brethren, we ought to be watchful and earnest with our whole heart, intent on our prayers. Let all carnal and worldly thoughts pass away, nor let the soul at that time think on anything but the object only of its prayer. For this reason also the priest, by way of preface before his prayer, prepares the minds of the brethren by saying, “Lift up your hearts,” that so upon the people’s response, “We lift them up unto the Lord,” he may be reminded that he himself ought to think of nothing but the Lord. Let the breast be closed against the adversary, and be open to God alone; nor let it suffer God’s enemy to approach to it at the time of prayer. For frequently he steals upon us, and penetrates within, and by crafty deceit calls away our prayers from God, that we may have one thing in our heart and another in our voice, when not the sound of the voice, but the soul and mind, ought to be praying to the Lord with a simple intention. But what carelessness it is, to be distracted and carried away by foolish and profane thoughts when you are praying to the Lord, as if there were anything which you should rather be thinking of than that you are speaking with God! How can you ask to be heard of God, when you yourself do not hear yourself? Do you wish that God should remember you when you ask, if you yourself do not remember yourself? This is absolutely to take no precaution against the enemy; this is, when you pray to God, to offend the majesty of God by the carelessness of your prayer; this is to be watchful with your eyes, and to be asleep with your heart, while the Christian, even though he is asleep with his eyes, ought to be awake with his heart, as it is written in the person of the Church speaking in the Song of Songs, “I sleep, yet my heart waketh.” Wherefore the apostle anxiously and carefully warns us, saying, “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same;” teaching, that is, and showing that those are able to obtain from God what they ask, whom God sees to be watchful in their prayer.

32. Moreover, those who pray should not come to God with fruitless or naked prayers. Petition is ineffectual when it is a barren entreaty that beseeches God. For as every tree that bringeth not forth fruit is cut down and cast into the fire; assuredly also, words that do not bear fruit cannot deserve anything of God, because they are fruitful in no result. And thus Holy Scripture instructs us, saying, “Prayer is good with fasting and almsgiving.” For He who will give us in the day of judgment a reward for our labours and alms, is even in this life a merciful hearer of one who comes to Him in prayer associated with good works. Thus, for instance, Cornelius the centurion, when he prayed, had a claim to be heard. For he was in the habit of doing many alms-deeds towards the people, and of ever praying to God. To this man, when he prayed about the ninth hour, appeared an angel bearing testimony to his labours, and saying, “Cornelius, thy prayers and thine alms are gone up in remembrance before God.”

33. Those prayers quickly ascend to God which the merits of our labours urge upon God. Thus also Raphael the angel was a witness to the constant prayer and the constant good works of Tobias, saying, “It is honourable to reveal and confess the works of God. For when thou didst pray, and Sarah, I did bring the remembrance of your prayers before the holiness of God. And when thou didst bury the dead in simplicity, and because thou didst not delay to rise up and to leave thy dinner, but didst go out and cover the dead, I was sent to prove thee; and again God has sent me to heal thee, and Sarah thy daughter-in-law. For I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels which stand and go in and out before the glory of God.” By Isaiah also the Lord reminds us, and teaches similar things, saying, “Loosen every knot of iniquity, release the oppressions of contracts which have no power, let the troubled go into peace, and break every unjust engagement. Break thy bread to the hungry, and bring the poor that are without shelter into thy house. When thou seest the naked, clothe him; and despise not those of the same family and race as thyself. Then shall thy light break forth in season, and thy raiment shall spring forth speedily; and righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of God shall surround thee. Then shalt thou call, and God shall hear thee; and while thou shalt yet speak, He shall say, Here I am.” He promises that He will be at hand, and says that He will hear and protect those who, loosening the knots of unrighteousness from their heart, and giving alms among the members of God’s household according to His commands, even in hearing what God commands to be done, do themselves also deserve to be heard by God. The blessed Apostle Paul, when aided in the necessity of affliction by his brethren, said that good works which are performed are sacrifices to God. “I am full,” saith he, “having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God.” For when one has pity on the poor, he lends to God; and he who gives to the least gives to God—sacrifices spiritually to God an odour of a sweet smell.

34. And in discharging the duties of prayer, we find that the three children with Daniel, being strong in faith and victorious in captivity, observed the third, sixth, and ninth hour, as it were, for a sacrament of the Trinity, which in the last times had to be manifested. For both the first hour in its progress to the third shows forth the consummated number of the Trinity, and also the fourth proceeding to the sixth declares another Trinity; and when from the seventh the ninth is completed, the perfect Trinity is numbered every three hours, which spaces of hours the worshippers of God in time past having spiritually decided on, made use of for determined and lawful times for prayer. And subsequently the thing was manifested, that 457these things were of old Sacraments, in that anciently righteous men prayed in this manner. For upon the disciples at the third hour the Holy Spirit descended, who fulfilled the grace of the Lord’s promise. Moreover, at the sixth hour, Peter, going up unto the house-top, was instructed as well by the sign as by the word of God admonishing him to receive all to the grace of salvation, whereas he was previously doubtful of the receiving of the Gentiles to baptism. And from the sixth hour to the ninth, the Lord, being crucified, washed away our sins by His blood; and that He might redeem and quicken us, He then accomplished His victory by His passion.

35. But for us, beloved brethren, besides the hours of prayer observed of old, both the times and the sacraments have now increased in number. For we must also pray in the morning, that the Lord’s resurrection may be celebrated by morning prayer. And this formerly the Holy Spirit pointed out in the Psalms, saying, “My King, and my God, because unto Thee will I cry; O Lord, in the morning shalt Thou hear my voice; in the morning will I stand before Thee, and will look up to Thee.” And again, the Lord speaks by the mouth of the prophet: “Early in the morning shall they watch for me, saying, Let us go, and return unto the Lord our God.” Also at the sunsetting and at the decline of day, of necessity we must pray again. For since Christ is the true sun and the true day, as the worldly sun and worldly day depart, when we pray and ask that light may return to us again, we pray for the advent of Christ, which shall give us the grace of everlasting light. Moreover, the Holy Spirit in the Psalms manifests that Christ is called the day. “The stone,” says He, “which the builders rejected, is become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing; and it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us walk and rejoice in it.” Also the prophet Malachi testifies that He is called the Sun, when he says, “But to you that fear the name of the Lord shall the Sun of righteousness arise, and there is healing in His wings.” But if in the Holy Scriptures the true sun and the true day is Christ, there is no hour excepted for Christians wherein God ought not frequently and always to be worshipped; so that we who are in Christ—that is, in the true Sun and the true Day—should be instant throughout the entire day in petitions, and should pray; and when, by the law of the world, the revolving night, recurring in its alternate changes, succeeds, there can be no harm arising from the darkness of night to those who pray, because the children of light have the day even in the night. For when is he without light who has light in his heart? or when has not he the sun and the day, whose Sun and Day is Christ?

36. Let not us, then, who are in Christ—that is, always in the light—cease from praying even during night. Thus the widow Anna, without intermission praying and watching, persevered in deserving well of God, as it is written in the Gospel: “She departed not,” it says, “from the temple, serving with fastings and prayers night and day.” Let the Gentiles look to this, who are not yet enlightened, or the Jews who have remained in darkness by having forsaken the light. Let us, beloved brethren, who are always in the light of the Lord, who remember and hold fast what by grace received we have begun to be, reckon night for day; let us believe that we always walk in the light, and let us not be hindered by the darkness which we have escaped. Let there be no failure of prayers in the hours of night—no idle and reckless waste of the occasions of prayer. New-created and newborn of the Spirit by the mercy of God, let us imitate what we shall one day be. Since in the kingdom we shall possess day alone, without intervention of night, let us so watch in the night as if in the daylight. Since we are to pray and give thanks to God for ever, let us not cease in this life also to pray and give thanks.

2010-10-05T04:43:00.000-07:00

One of the most powerful passages of Holy Scripture is the Lord's Prayer, in which the Word Himself teaches His disciples to pray. Every phrase is packed with meaning. In Cyprian we have a very capable expositor.

Here is part one of his treatise On the Lord's Prayer :

1. The evangelical precepts, beloved brethren, are nothing else than divine teachings,—foundations on which hope is to be built, supports to strengthen faith, nourishments for cheering the heart, rudders for guiding our way, guards for obtaining salvation,—which, while they instruct the docile minds of believers on the earth, lead them to heavenly kingdoms. God, moreover, willed many things to be said and to be heard by means of the prophets His servants; but how much greater are those which the Son speaks, which the Word of God who was in the prophets testifies with His own voice; not now bidding to prepare the way for His coming, but Himself coming and opening and showing to us the way, so that we who have before been wandering in the darkness of death, without forethought and blind, being enlightened by the light of grace, might keep the way of life, with the Lord for our ruler and guide!

2. He, among the rest of His salutary admonitions and divine precepts wherewith He counsels His people for their salvation, Himself also gave a form of praying—Himself advised and instructed us what we should pray for. He who made us to live, taught us also to pray, with that same benignity, to wit, wherewith He has condescended to give and confer all things else; in order that while we speak to the Father in that prayer and supplication which the Son has taught us, we may be the more easily heard. Already He had foretold that the hour was coming “when the true worshippers should worship the Father in spirit and in truth;” and He thus fulfilled what He before promised, so that we who by His sanctification have received the Spirit and truth, may also by His teaching worship truly and spiritually. For what can be a more spiritual prayer than that which was given to us by Christ, by whom also the Holy Spirit was given to us? What praying to the Father can be more truthful than that which was delivered to us by the Son who is the Truth, out of His own mouth? So that to pray otherwise than He taught is not ignorance alone, but also sin; since He Himself has established, and said, “Ye reject the commandments of God, that ye may keep your own traditions.”

3. Let us therefore, brethren beloved, pray as God our Teacher has taught us. It is a loving and friendly prayer to beseech God with His own word, to come up to His ears in the prayer of Christ. Let the Father acknowledge the words of His Son when we make our prayer, and let Him also who dwells within in our breast Himself dwell in our voice. And since we have Him as an Advocate with the Father for our sins, let us, when as sinners we petition on behalf of our sins, put forward the words of our Advocate. For since He says, that “whatsoever we shall ask of the Father in His name, He will give us,” how much more effectually do we obtain what we ask in Christ’s name, if we ask for it in His own prayer!

4. But let our speech and petition when we pray be under discipline, observing quietness and modesty. Let us consider that we are standing in God’s sight. We must please the divine eyes both with the habit of body and with the measure of voice. For as it is characteristic of a shameless man to be noisy with his cries, so, on the other hand, it is fitting to the modest man to pray with moderated petitions. Moreover, in His teaching the Lord has bidden us to pray in secret—in hidden and remote places, in our very bed-chambers—which is best suited to faith, that we may know that God is everywhere present, and hears and sees all, and in the plenitude of His majesty penetrates even into hidden and secret places, as it is written, “I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off. If a man shall hide himself in secret places, shall I not then see him? Do not I fill heaven and earth?” And again: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” And when we meet together with the brethren in one place, and celebrate divine sacrifices with God’s priest, we ought to be mindful of modesty and discipline—not to throw abroad our prayers indiscriminately, with unsubdued voices, nor to cast to God with tumultuous wordiness a petition that ought to be commended to God by modesty; for God is the hearer, not of the voice, but of the heart. Nor need He be clamorously reminded, since He sees men’s thoughts, as the Lord proves to us when He says, “Why think ye evil in your hearts?” And in another place: “And all the churches shall know that I am He that searcheth the hearts and reins.”

5. And this Hannah in the first book of Kings, who was a type of the Church, maintains and observes, in that she prayed to God not with clamorous petition, but silently and modestly, within the very recesses of her heart. She spoke with hidden prayer, but with manifest faith. She spoke not with her voice, but with her heart, because she knew that thus God hears; and she effectually obtained what she sought, because she asked it with belief. Divine Scripture asserts this, when it says, “She spake in her heart, and her lips moved, and her voice was not heard; and God did hear her.” We read also in the Psalms, “Speak in your hearts, and in your beds, and be ye pierced.” The Holy Spirit, moreover, suggests these same things by Jeremiah, and teaches, saying, “But in the heart ought God to be adored by thee.”

6. And let not the worshipper, beloved brethren, be ignorant in what manner the publican prayed with the Pharisee in the temple. Not with eyes lifted up boldly to heaven, nor with hands proudly raised; but beating his breast, and testifying to the sins shut up within, he implored the help of the divine mercy. And while the Pharisee was pleased with himself, this man who thus asked, the rather deserved to be sanctified, since he placed the hope of salvation not in the confidence of his innocence, because there is none who is innocent; but confessing his sinfulness he humbly prayed, and He who pardons the humble heard the petitioner. And these things the Lord records in His Gospel, saying, “Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood, and prayed thus with himself: God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, unjust, extortioners, adulterers, even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. But the publican stood afar off, and would not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner. I say unto you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the Pharisee: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and whosoever humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

7. These things, beloved brethren, when we have learnt from the sacred reading, and have gathered in what way we ought to approach to prayer, let us know also from the Lord’s teaching what we should pray. “Thus,” says He, “pray ye:—

“Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven so in earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And suffer us not to be led into temptation; but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

8. Before all things, the Teacher of peace and the Master of unity would not have prayer to be made singly and individually, as for one who prays to pray for himself alone. For we say not “My Father, which art in heaven,” nor “Give me this day my daily bread;” nor does each one ask that only his own debt should be forgiven him; nor does he request for himself alone that he may not be led into temptation, and delivered from evil. Our prayer is public and common; and when we pray, we pray not for one, but for the whole people, because we the whole people are one. The God of peace and the Teacher of concord, who taught unity, willed that one should thus pray for all, even as He Himself bore us all in one. This law of prayer the three children observed when they were shut up in the fiery furnace, speaking together in prayer, and being of one heart in the agreement of the spirit; and this the faith of the sacred Scripture assures us, and in telling us how such as these prayed, gives an example which we ought to follow in our prayers, in order that we may be such as they were: “Then these three,” it says, “as if from one mouth sang an hymn, and blessed the Lord.” They spoke as if from one mouth, although Christ had not yet taught them how to pray. And therefore, as they prayed, their speech was availing and effectual, because a peaceful, and sincere, and spiritual prayer deserved well of the Lord. Thus also we find that the apostles, with the disciples, prayed after the Lord’s ascension: “They all,” says the Scripture, “continued with one accord in prayer, with the women, and Mary who was the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren.” They continued with one accord in prayer, declaring both by the urgency and by the agreement of their praying, that God, “who maketh men to dwell of one mind in a house,” only admits into the divine and eternal home those among whom prayer is unanimous.

9. But what matters of deep moment are contained in the Lord’s prayer! How many and how great, briefly collected in the words, but spiritually abundant in virtue! so that there is absolutely nothing passed over that is not comprehended in these our prayers and petitions, as in a compendium of heavenly doctrine. “After this manner,” says He, “pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven.” The new man, born again and restored to his God by His grace, says “Father,” in the first place because he has now begun to be a son. “He came,” He says, “to His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His name.” The man, therefore, who has believed in His name, and has become God’s son, ought from this point to begin both to give thanks and to profess himself God’s son, by declaring that God is his Father in heaven; and also to bear witness, among the very first words of his new birth, that he has renounced an earthly and carnal father, and that he has begun to know as well as to have as a father Him only who is in heaven, as it is written: “They who say unto their father and their mother, I have not known thee, and who have not acknowledged their own children; these have observed Thy precepts and have kept Thy covenant.” Also the Lord in His Gospel has bidden us to call “no man our father upon earth, because there is to us one Father, who is in heaven.” And to the disciple who had made mention of his dead father, He replied, “Let the dead bury their dead;” for he had said that his father was dead, while the Father of believers is living.

10. Nor ought we, beloved brethren, only to observe and understand that we should call Him Father who is in heaven; but we add to it, and say our Father, that is, the Father of those who believe—of those who, being sanctified by Him, and restored by the nativity of spiritual grace, have begun to be sons of God. A word this, moreover, which rebukes and condemns the Jews, who not only unbelievingly despised Christ, who had been announced to them by the prophets, and sent first to them, but also cruelly put Him to death; and these cannot now call God their Father, since the Lord confounds and confutes them, saying, “Ye are born of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. For he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” And by Isaiah the prophet God cries in wrath, “I have begotten and brought up children; but they have despised me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel hath not known me, and my people hath not understood me. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with sins, a wicked seed, corrupt children! Ye have forsaken the Lord; ye have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” In repudiation of these, we Christians, when we pray, say Our Father; because He has begun to be ours, and has ceased to be the Father of the Jews, who have forsaken Him. Nor can a sinful people be a son; but the name of sons is attributed to those to whom remission of sins is granted, and to them immortality is promised anew, in the words of our Lord Himself: “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the son abideth ever.”

11. But how great is the Lord’s indulgence! how great His condescension and plenteousness of goodness towards us, seeing that He has wished us to pray in the sight of God in such a way as to call God Father, and to call ourselves sons of God, even as Christ is the Son of God,—a name which none of us would dare to venture on in prayer, unless He Himself had allowed us thus to pray! We ought then, beloved brethren, to remember and to know, that when we call God Father, we ought to act as God’s children; so that in the measure in which we find pleasure in considering God as a Father, He might also be able to find pleasure in us. Let us converse as temples of God, that it may be plain that God dwells in us. Let not our doings be degenerate from the Spirit; so that we who have begun to be heavenly and spiritual, may consider and do nothing but spiritual and heavenly things; since the Lord God Himself has said, “Them that honour me I will honour; and he that despiseth me shall be despised.”
The blessed apostle also has laid down in his epistle: “Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear about God in your body.”

12. After this we say, “Hallowed be Thy name;” not that we wish for God that He may be hallowed by our prayers, but that we beseech of Him that His name may be hallowed in us. But by whom is God sanctified, since He Himself sanctifies? Well, because He says, “Be ye holy, even as I am holy,” we ask and entreat, that we who were sanctified in baptism may continue in that which we have begun to be. And this we daily pray for; for we have need of daily sanctification, that we who daily fall away may wash out our sins by continual sanctification. And what the sanctification is which is conferred upon us by the condescension of God, the apostle declares, when he says, “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor deceivers, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such indeed were you; but ye are washed; but ye are justified; but ye are sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God.” He says that we are sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God. We pray that this sanctification may abide in us and because our Lord and Judge warns the man that was healed and quickened by Him, to sin no more lest a worse thing happen unto him, we make this supplication in our constant prayers, we ask this day and night, that the sanctification and quickening which is received from the grace of God may be preserved by His protection.

13. There follows in the prayer, Thy kingdom come. We ask that the kingdom of God may be set forth to us, even as we also ask that His name may be sanctified in us. For when does God not reign, or when does that begin with Him which both always has been, and never ceases to be? We pray that our kingdom, which has been promised us by God, may come, which was acquired by the blood and passion of Christ; that we who first are His subjects in the world, may hereafter reign with Christ when He reigns, as He Himself promises and says, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” Christ Himself, dearest brethren, however, may be the kingdom of God, whom we day by day desire to come, whose advent we crave to be quickly manifested to us. For since He is Himself the Resurrection, since in Him we rise again, so also the kingdom of God may be understood to be Himself, since in Him we shall reign. But we do well in seeking the kingdom of God, that is, the heavenly kingdom, because there is also an earthly kingdom. But he who has already renounced the world, is moreover greater than its honours and its kingdom. And therefore he who dedicates himself to God and Christ, desires not earthly, but heavenly kingdoms. But there is need of continual prayer and supplication, that we fall not away from the heavenly kingdom, as the Jews, to whom this promise had first been given, fell away; even as the Lord sets forth and proves: “Many,” says He, “shall come from the east and from the west, and shall recline with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” He shows that the Jews were previously children of the kingdom, so long as they continued also to be children of God; but after the name of Father ceased to be recognised among them, the kingdom also ceased; and therefore we Christians, who in our prayer begin to call God our Father, pray also that God’s kingdom may come to us.

14. We add, also, and say, “Thy will be done, as in heaven so in earth;” not that God should do what He wills, but that we may be able to do what God wills. For who resists God, that He may not do what He wills? But since we are hindered by the devil from obeying with our thought and deed God’s will in all things, we pray and ask that God’s will may be done in us; and that it may be done in us we have need of God’s good will, that is, of His help and protection, since no one is strong in his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God. And further, the Lord, setting forth the infirmity of the humanity which He bore, says, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;” and affording an example to His disciples that they should do not their own will, but God’s, He went on to say, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” And in another place He says, “I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” Now if the Son was obedient to do His Father’s will, how much more should the servant be obedient to do his Master’s will! as in his epistle John also exhorts and instructs us to do the will of God, saying, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of life, which is not of the Father, but of the lust of the world. And the world shall pass away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever, even as God also abideth for ever.” We who desire to abide for ever should do the will of God, who is everlasting.

15. Now that is the will of God which Christ both did and taught. Humility in conversation; stedfastness in faith; modesty in words; justice in deeds; mercifulness in works; discipline in morals; to be unable to do a wrong, and to be able to bear a wrong when done; to keep peace with the brethren; to love God with all one’s heart; to love Him in that He is a Father; to fear Him in that He is God; to prefer nothing whatever to Christ, because He did not prefer anything to us; to adhere inseparably to His love; to stand by His cross bravely and faithfully; when there is any contest on behalf of His name and honour, to exhibit in discourse that constancy wherewith we make confession; in torture, that confidence wherewith we do battle; in death, that patience whereby we are crowned;—this is to desire to be fellow-heirs with Christ; this is to do the commandment of God; this is to fulfil the will of the Father.

16. Moreover, we ask that the will of God may be done both in heaven and in earth, each of which things pertains to the fulfilment of our safety and salvation. For since we possess the body from the earth and the spirit from heaven, we ourselves are earth and heaven; and in both—that is, both in body and spirit—we pray that God’s will may be done. For between the flesh and spirit there is a struggle; and there is a daily strife as they disagree one with the other, so that we cannot do those very things that we would, in that the spirit seeks heavenly and divine things, while the flesh lusts after earthly and temporal things; and therefore we ask that, by the help and assistance of God, agreement may be made between these two natures, so that while the will of God is done both in the spirit and in the flesh, the soul which is new-born by Him may be preserved. This is what the Apostle 452Paul openly and manifestly declares by his words: “The flesh,” says he, “lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: for these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adulteries, fornications, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, murders, hatred, variance, emulations, wraths, strife, seditions, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in times past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, magnanimity, goodness, faith, gentleness, continence, chastity.” And therefore we make it our prayer in daily, yea, in continual supplications, that the will of God concerning us should be done both in heaven and in earth; because this is the will of God, that earthly things should give place to heavenly, and that spiritual and divine things should prevail.

17. And it may be thus understood, beloved brethren, that since the Lord commands and admonishes us even to love our enemies, and to pray even for those who persecute us, we should ask, moreover, for those who are still earth, and have not yet begun to be heavenly, that even in respect of these God’s will should be done, which Christ accomplished in preserving and renewing humanity. For since the disciples are not now called by Him earth, but the salt of the earth, and the apostle designates the first man as being from the dust of the earth, but the second from heaven, we reasonably, who ought to be like God our Father, who maketh His sun to rise upon the good and bad, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust, so pray and ask by the admonition of Christ as to make our prayer for the salvation of all men; that as in heaven—that is, in us by our faith—the will of God has been done, so that we might be of heaven; so also in earth- that is, in those who believe- God’s will may be done, that they who as yet are by their first birth of earth, may, being born of water and of the Spirit, begin to be of heaven.

~ A.D. 252

A Call To Arms

2010-08-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

The atheist Christopher Hitchens likes to quote the words of Christ, "I come not to bring peace, but a sword" in order to portray the believer as a sinister threat to the safety of those who disagree.

It is true that the Christian has always been in conflict, and will always be fighting... But the real battle the Church has fought for 2000 years is not a battle of swords or spears: "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (II Cor. 10:5)

It was to this warfare that Cyprian called his flock- a warfare where the highest honor was to die.

1. Cyprian to the people abiding at Thibaris, greeting. I had indeed thought, beloved brethren, and prayerfully desired—if the state of things and the condition of the times permitted, in conformity with what you frequently desired—myself to come to you; and being present with you, then to strengthen the brotherhood with such moderate powers of exhortation as I possess. But since I am detained by such urgent affairs, that I have not the power to travel far from this place, and to be long absent from the people over whom by divine mercy I am placed, I have written in the meantime this letter, to be to you in my stead. For as, by the condescension of the Lord instructing me, I am very often instigated and warned, I ought to bring unto your conscience also the anxiety of my warning. For you ought to know and to believe, and hold it for certain, that the day of affliction has begun to hang over our heads, and the end of the world and the time of Antichrist to draw near, so that we must all stand prepared for the battle; nor consider anything but the glory of life eternal, and the crown of the confession of the Lord; and not regard those things which are coming as being such as were those which have passed away. A severer and a fiercer fight is now threatening, for which the soldiers of Christ ought to prepare themselves with uncorrupted faith and robust courage, considering that they drink the cup of Christ’s blood daily, for the reason that they themselves also may be able to shed their blood for Christ. For this is to wish to be found with Christ, to imitate that which Christ both taught and did, according to the Apostle John, who said, “He that saith he abideth in Christ, ought himself also so to walk even as He walked.” Moreover, the blessed Apostle Paul exhorts and teaches, saying, “We are God’s children; but if children, then heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.”

2. Which things must all now be considered by us, that no one may desire anything from the world that is now dying, but may follow Christ, who both lives for ever, and quickens His servants, who are established in the faith of His name. For there comes the time, beloved brethren, which our Lord long ago foretold and taught us was approaching, saying, “The time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things they will do unto you, because they have not known the Father nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them.” Nor let any one wonder that we are harassed with constant persecutions, and continually tried with increasing afflictions, when the Lord before predicted that these things would happen in the last times, and has instructed us for the warfare by the teaching and exhortation of His words. Peter also, His apostle, has taught that persecutions occur for the sake of our being proved, and that we also should, by the example of righteous men who have gone before us, be joined to the love of God by death and sufferings. For he wrote in his epistle, and said, “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, nor do ye fall away, as if some new thing happened unto you; but as often as ye partake in Christ’s sufferings, rejoice in all things, that when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached in the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the name of the majesty and power of the Lord resteth on you, which indeed on their part is blasphemed, but on our part is glorified.” Now the apostles taught us those things which they themselves also learnt from the Lord’s precepts and the heavenly commands, the Lord Himself thus strengthening us, and saying, “There is no man that hath left house, or land, or parents, or brethren, or sisters, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive sevenfold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.” And again He says, “Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and shall separate you from their company, and shall cast you out, and shall reproach your name as evil for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy; for, behold your reward is great in heaven.”

3. The Lord desired that we should rejoice and leap for joy in persecutions, because, when persecutions occur, then are given the crowns of faith, then the soldiers of God are proved, then the heavens are opened to martyrs. For we have not in such a way given our name to warfare that we ought only to think about peace and draw back from and refuse war, when in this very warfare the Lord walked first—the Teacher of humility, and endurance, and suffering—so that what He taught to be done, He first of all did, and what He exhorts to suffer, He Himself first suffered for us. Let it be before your eyes beloved brethren, that He who alone received all judgment from the Father, and who will come to judge, has already declared the decree of His judgment and of His future recognition, foretelling and testifying that He will confess those before His Father who confess Him, and will deny those who deny Him. If we could escape death, we might reasonably fear to die. But since, on the other hand, it is necessary that a mortal man should die, we should embrace the occasion that comes by the divine promise and condescension, and accomplish the ending provided by death with the reward of immortality; nor fear to be slain, since we are sure when we are slain to be crowned.

4. Nor let any one, beloved brethren, when he beholds our people driven away and scattered by the fear of persecution, be disturbed at seeing the brotherhood gathered together, nor the bishops discoursing. All are not able to be there together, who may not kill, but who must be killed. Wherever, in those days, each one of the brethren shall be separated from the flock for a time, by the necessity of the season, in body, not in spirit, let him not be moved at the terror of that flight; nor, if he withdraw and be concealed, let him be alarmed at the solitude of the desert place. He is not alone, whose companion in flight Christ is; he is not alone who, keeping God’s temple wheresoever he is, is not without God. And if a robber should fall upon you, a fugitive in the solitude or in the mountains; if a wild beast should attack you; if hunger, or thirst, or cold should distress you, or the tempest and the storm should overwhelm you hastening in a rapid voyage over the seas, Christ everywhere looks upon His soldier fighting; and for the sake of persecution, for the honour of His name, gives a reward to him when he dies, as He has promised that He will give in the resurrection. Nor is the glory of martyrdom less that he has not perished publicly and before many, since the cause of perishing is to perish for Christ. That Witness who proves martyrs, and crowns them, suffices for a testimony of his martyrdom.

5. Let us, beloved brethren, imitate righteous Abel, who initiated martyrdoms, he first being slain for righteousness’ sake. Let us imitate Abraham, the friend of God, who did not delay to offer his son as a victim with his own hands, obeying God with a faith of devotion. Let us imitate the three children Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, who, neither frightened by their youthful age nor broken down by captivity, Judea, being conquered and Jerusalem taken, overcame the king by the power of faith in his own kingdom; who, when bidden to worship the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had made, stood forth stronger both than the king’s threats and the flames, calling out and attesting their faith by these words: “O king Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. For the God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and He will deliver us out of thine hands, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, that we do not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” They believed that they might escape according to their faith, but they added, “and if not,” that the king might know that they could also die for the God they worshipped. For this is the strength of courage and of faith, to believe and to know that God can deliver from present death, and yet not to fear death nor to give way, that faith may be the more mightily proved. The uncorrupted and unconquered might of the Holy Spirit broke forth by their mouth, so that the words which the Lord in His Gospel spoke are seen to be true: “But when they shall seize you, take no thought what ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” He said that what we are able to speak and to answer is given to us in that hour from heaven, and supplied; and that it is not then we who speak, but the Spirit of God our Father, who, as He does not depart nor is separated from those who confess Him, Himself both speaks and is crowned in us. So Daniel, too, when he was required to worship the idol Bel, which the people and the king then worshipped, in asserting the honour of his God, broke forth with full faith and freedom, saying, “I worship nothing but the Lord my God, who created the heaven and the earth.”

6. What shall we say of the cruel tortures of the blessed martyrs in the Maccabees, and the multiform sufferings of the seven brethren, and the mother comforting her children in their agonies, and herself dying also with her children? Do not they witness the proofs of great courage and faith, and exhort us by their sufferings to the triumphs of martyrdom? What of the prophets whom the Holy Spirit quickened to the foreknowledge of future events? What of the apostles whom the Lord chose? Since these righteous men were slain for righteousness’ sake, have they not taught us also to die? The nativity of Christ witnessed at once the martyrdom of infants, so that they who were two years old and under were slain for His name’s sake. An age not yet fitted for the battle appeared fit for the crown. That it might be manifest that they who are slain for Christ’s sake are innocent, innocent infancy was put to death for His name’s sake. It is shown that none is free from the peril of persecution, when even these accomplished martyrdoms. But how grave is the case of a Christian man, if he, a servant, is unwilling to suffer, when his Master first suffered; and that we should be unwilling to suffer for our own sins, when He who had no sin of His own suffered for us! The Son of God suffered that He might make us sons of God, and the son of man will not suffer that he may continue to be a son of God! If we suffer from the world’s hatred, Christ first endured the world’s hatred. If we suffer reproaches in this world, if exile, if tortures, the Maker and Lord of the world experienced harder things than these, and He also warns us, saying, “If the world hate you, remember that it hated me before you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” Whatever our Lord and God taught, He also did, that the disciple might not be excused if he learns and does not.

7. Nor let any one of you, beloved brethren, be so terrified by the fear of future persecution, or the coming of the threatening Antichrist, as not to be found armed for all things by the evangelical exhortations and precepts, and by the heavenly warnings. Antichrist is coming, but above him comes Christ also. The enemy goeth about and rageth, but immediately the Lord follows to avenge our sufferings and our wounds. The adversary is enraged and threatens, but there is One who can deliver us from his hands. He is to be feared whose anger no one can escape, as He Himself forewarns, and says: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.” And again: “He that loveth his life, shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal.” And in the Apocalypse He instructs and forewarns, saying, “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of His indignation, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torments shall ascend up for ever and ever; and they shall have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image.”

8. For the secular contest men are trained and prepared, and reckon it a great glory of their honour if it should happen to them to be crowned in the sight of the people, and in the presence of the emperor. Behold a lofty and great contest, glorious also with the reward of a heavenly crown, inasmuch as God looks upon us as we struggle, and, extending His view over those whom He has condescended to make His sons, He enjoys the spectacle of our contest. God looks upon us in the warfare, and fighting in the encounter of faith; His angels look on us, and Christ looks on us. How great is the dignity, and how great the happiness of the 350glory, to engage in the presence of God, and to be crowned, with Christ for a judge! Let us be armed, beloved brethren, with our whole strength, and let us be prepared for the struggle with an uncorrupted mind, with a sound faith, with a devoted courage. Let the camp of God go forth to the battle-field which is appointed to us. Let the sound ones be armed, lest he that is sound should lose the advantage of having lately stood; let the lapsed also be armed, that even the lapsed may regain what he has lost: let honour provoke the whole; let sorrow provoke the lapsed to the battle. The Apostle Paul teaches us to be armed and prepared, saying, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers, and the princes of this world and of this darkness, against spirits of wickedness in high places. Wherefore put on the whole armour, that ye may be able to withstand in the most evil day, that when ye have done all ye may stand; having your loins girt about with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one; and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

9. Let us take these arms, let us fortify ourselves with these spiritual and heavenly safeguards, that in the most evil day we may be able to withstand, and to resist the threats of the devil: let us put on the breastplate of righteousness, that our breast may be fortified and safe against the darts of the enemy: let our feet be shod with evangelical teaching, and armed, so that when the serpent shall begin to be trodden and crushed by us, he may not be able to bite and trip us up: let us bravely bear the shield of faith, by the protection of which, whatever the enemy darts at us may be extinguished: let us take also for protection of our head the helmet of salvation, that our ears may be guarded from hearing the deadly edicts; that our eyes may be fortified, that they may not see the odious images; that our brow may be fortified, so as to keep safe the sign of God; that our mouth may be fortified, that the conquering tongue may confess Christ its Lord: let us also arm the right hand with the sword of the Spirit, that it may bravely reject the deadly sacrifices; that, mindful of the Eucharist, the hand which has received the Lord’s body may embrace the Lord Himself, hereafter to receive from the Lord the reward of heavenly crowns.

10. Oh, what and how great will that day be at its coming, beloved brethren, when the Lord shall begin to count up His people, and to recognise the deservings of each one by the inspection of His divine knowledge, to send the guilty to Gehenna, and to set on fire our persecutors with the perpetual burning of a penal fire, but to pay to us the reward of our faith and devotion! What will be the glory and how great the joy to be admitted to see God, to be honoured to receive with Christ, thy Lord God, the joy of eternal salvation and light—to greet Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles, and martyrs—to rejoice with the righteous and the friends of God in the kingdom of heaven, with the pleasure of immortality given to us—to receive there what neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man! For the apostle announces that we shall receive greater things than anything that we here either do or suffer, saying, “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come hereafter which shall be revealed in us.” When that revelation shall come, when that glory of God shall shine upon us, we shall be as happy and joyful, honoured with the condescension of God, as they will remain guilty and wretched, who, either as deserters from God or rebels against Him, have done the will of the devil, so that it is necessary for them to be tormented with the devil himself in unquenchable fire.

11. Let these things, beloved brethren, take hold of our hearts; let this be the preparation of our arms, this our daily and nightly meditation, to have before our eyes and ever to revolve in our thoughts and feelings the punishments of the wicked and the rewards and the deservings of the righteous: what the Lord threatens by way of punishment against those that deny Him; what, on the other hand, He promises by way of glory to those that confess Him. If, while we think and meditate on these things, there should come to us a day of persecution, the soldier of Christ instructed in His precepts and warnings is not fearful for the battle, but is prepared for the crown. I bid you, dearest brethren, ever heartily farewell.

~ Cyprian, Epistle LV

An Epistle of Cyprian

2010-07-28T19:13:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting of the early Church Fathers was Cyprian. His talent as a writer was ignited by his love for Christ and His Church, producing some of the most inspiring testimonies to the faith of the early Christians.

Here is the Epistle to Moyses and Maximus, and the rest of the Confessors:

1. Cyprian to Moyses and Maximus, the presbyters and the other confessors, his brethren, greeting. Celerinus, a companion both of your faith and virtue, and God’s soldier in glorious engagements, has come to me, beloved brethren, and represented all of you, as well as each individual, forcibly to my affection. I beheld in him, when he came, the whole of you; and when he spoke sweetly and often of your love to me, in his words I heard you. I rejoice very greatly when such things are brought to me from you by such men as he.

In a certain manner I am also there with you in prison. I think that I who am thus bound to your hearts, enjoy with you the delights of the divine approval. Your individual love associates me with your honour; the Spirit does not allow our love to be separated. Confession shuts you up in prison; affection shuts me up there. And I indeed, remembering you day and night, both when in the sacrifices I offer prayer with many, and when in retirement I pray with private petition, beseech of the Lord a full acknowledgment to your crowns and your praises.

But my poor ability is too weak to recompense you; you give more when you remember me in prayer, since, already breathing only celestial things, and meditating only divine things, you ascend to loftier heights, even by the delay of your suffering; and by the long lapse of time, are not wasting, but increasing your glory. A first and single confession makes blessed; you confess as often as, when asked to retire from prison, you prefer the prison with faith and virtue; your praises are as numerous as the days; as the months roll onward, ever your merits increase. He conquers once who suffers at once; but he who continues always battling with punishments, and is not overcome with suffering, is daily crowned.

2. Now, therefore, let magistrates and consuls or proconsuls go by; let them glory in the ensigns of their yearly dignity, and in their twelve fasces. Behold, the heavenly dignity in you is sealed by the brightness of a year’s honour, and already, in the continuance of its victorious glory, has passed over the rolling circle of the returning year. The rising sun and the waning moon enlightened the world; but to you, He who made the sun and moon was a greater light in your dungeon, and the brightness of Christ glowing in your hearts and minds, irradiated with that eternal and brilliant light the gloom of the place of punishment, which to others was so horrible and deadly. The winter has passed through the vicissitudes of the months; but you, shut up in prison, were undergoing, instead of the inclemencies of winter, the winter of persecution. To the winter succeeded the mildness of spring, rejoicing with roses and crowned with flowers; but to you were present roses and flowers from the delights of paradise, and celestial garlands wreathed your brows.

Behold, the summer is fruitful with the fertility of the harvest, and the threshing-floor is filled with grain; but you who have sown glory, reap the fruit of glory, and, placed in the Lord’s threshing-floor, behold the chaff burnt up with unquenchable fire; you yourselves as grains of wheat, winnowed and precious corn, now purged and garnered, regard the dwelling-place of a prison as your granary. Nor is there wanting to the autumn spiritual grace for discharging the duties of the season. The vintage is pressed out of doors, and the grape which shall hereafter flow into the cups is trodden in the presses. You, rich bunches out of the Lord’s vineyard, and branches with fruit already ripe, trodden by the tribulation of worldly pressure, fill your wine-press in the torturing prison, and shed your blood instead of wine; brave to bear suffering, you willingly drink the cup of martyrdom. Thus the year rolls on with the Lord’s servants,—thus is celebrated the vicissitude of the seasons with spiritual deserts, and with celestial rewards.

3. Abundantly blessed are they who, from your number, passing through these footprints of glory, have already departed from the world; and, having finished their journey of virtue and faith, have attained to the embrace and the kiss of the Lord, to the joy of the Lord Himself. But yet your glory is not less, who are still engaged in contest, and, about to follow the glories of your comrades, are long waging the battle, and with an unmoved and unshaken faith standing fast, are daily exhibiting in your virtues a spectacle in the sight of God. The longer is your strife, the loftier will be your crown. The struggle is one, but it is crowded with a manifold multitude of contests; you conquer hunger, and despise thirst, and tread under foot the squalor of the dungeon, and the horror of the very abode of punishment, by the vigour of your courage.

Punishment is there subdued; torture is worn out; death is not feared but desired, being overcome by the reward of immortality, so that he who has conquered is crowned with eternity of life. What now must be the mind in you, how elevated, how large the heart, when such and so great things are resolved, when nothing but the precepts of God and the rewards of Christ are considered! The will is then only God’s will; and although you are still placed in the flesh, it is the life not of the present world, but of the future, that you now live.

4. It now remains, beloved brethren, that you should be mindful of me; that, among your great and divine considerations, you should also think of me in your mind and spirit; and that I should be in your prayers and supplications, when that voice, which is illustrious by the purification of confession, and praiseworthy for the continual tenor of its honour, penetrates to God’s ears, and heaven being open to it, passes from these regions of the world subdued, to the realms above, and obtains from the Lord’s goodness even what it asks.

For what do you ask from the Lord’s mercy which you do not deserve to obtain?—you who have thus observed the Lord’s commands, who have maintained the Gospel discipline with the simple vigour of your faith, who, with the glory of your virtue uncorrupted, have stood bravely by the Lord’s commands, and by His apostles, and have confirmed the wavering faith of many by the truth of your martyrdom? Truly, Gospel witnesses, and truly, Christ’s martyrs, resting upon His roots, founded with strong foundation upon the Rock, you have joined discipline with virtue, you have brought others to the fear of God, you have made your martyrdoms, examples. I bid you, brethren, very brave and beloved, ever heartily farewell; and remember me.

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July 4

2010-07-04T18:38:00.000-07:00

Today we commemorate the founding of our nation: a nation built on the premise that all men are made by God and endowed with certain unalienable rights. The principles of fairness, justice, and freedom are noble ideals. And America has been a very noble country when it embraced them.

As Christians, we are commanded to be obedient citizens. We are also commanded to pray for all men in authority. And we are to honor our leaders.

I thank God for a country with such freedom, and I am grateful to those who gave so much to preserve it.

But even a great nation will not endure forever. The kingdom of Christ will remain when every empire has vanished. And of His kingdom there shall be no end. I cannot put it better than Malcolm Muggeridge:

We look back upon history, and what do we see? Empires rising and falling. Revolutions and Counterrevolutions. Wealth accumulated and wealth disbursed. Shakespeare has written of the rise and fall of great ones, that ebb and flow with the moon. I look back upon my own fellow countrymen, once upon a time dominating a quarter of the world, most of them convinced, in the words of what is still a popular song, that the God who made them mighty, shall make them mightier yet.

I've heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a Reich that would last a thousand years. I have seen an Italian clown say he was going to stop and restart the calendar with his own ascension to power. I've heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin, acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka.

I have seen America, wealthier and in terms of military weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people so desired, they could have outdone a Caesar, or an Alexander in the range and scale of their conquests.

All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running our of those precious fluids that keeps their motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these solemn supermen, and self-styled imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one, because of whom, by whom, in whom and through whom alone, mankind may still have peace: The person of Jesus Christ.

2010-06-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

In these times of ecumenical dialogue between groups of professing Christians, it is even more important that we know the basic tenets by which a group can be called Christian or not.

From the beginning of Christendom, in the inspired words of Scripture and in the confession of the Church, there is one clear teaching given as the ultimate test of doctrine. This is the doctrine of the Word and His incarnation; The true divinity and the true humanity of our Lord.

The early heretics attacked the very core of the Church's message when they denied that Christ derived His flesh from Mary or that He truly suffered. The divine Person and work of Christ are the fundamental teachings by which the others stand.

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One of the most beautiful doctrines of the Church is that of the Trinity. It is also one of the most ridiculed.

I remember reading an article in a church paper that described the Muslim view of Christianity: that Christians believe in three Gods, God the Father, Jesus, and Mary. In the response to this (very absurd) criticism from the Mohammedans, it is overly common to stress the oneness of God to the exclusion of the Three-fold being of God. The character of Islam is well illustrated by the character of Allah: He is a distant being who rules alone, having no love for his servants and hatred for his enemies.

In Christian teaching, God exists in three Persons, distinct, yet inseparable; of one divine substance, differing in their roles.

An early heretic, Praxeas, taught that Christ was the Father, and that God is one person. Addressing similar opinions, the blessed Hippolytus (born 170 A.D.) wrote a short, and eloquent treatise Against the Heresy of One Noetus, in which he brilliantly defended the orthodox doctrine.

Here is the powerful conclusion:

17. These testimonies are sufficient for the believing who study truth, and the unbelieving credit no testimony. For the Holy Spirit, indeed, in the person of the apostles, has testified to this, saying, “And who has believed our report?” Therefore let us not prove ourselves unbelieving, lest the word spoken be fulfilled in us. Let us believe then, dear brethren, according to the tradition of the apostles, that God the Word came down from heaven, (and entered) into the holy Virgin Mary, in order that, taking the flesh from her, and assuming also a human, by which I mean a rational soul, and becoming thus all that man is with the exception of sin, He might save fallen man, and confer immortality on men who believe on His name.

In all, therefore, the word of truth is demonstrated to us, to wit, that the Father is One, whose word is present (with Him), by whom He made all things; whom also, as we have said above, the Father sent forth in later times for the salvation of men. This (Word) was preached by the law and the prophets as destined to come into the world. And even as He was preached then, in the same manner also did He come and manifest Himself, being by the Virgin and the Holy Spirit made a new man; for in that He had the heavenly (nature) of the Father, as the Word and the earthly (nature), as taking to Himself the flesh from the old Adam by the medium of the Virgin, He now, coming forth into the world, was manifested as God in a body, coming forth too as a perfect man. For it was not in mere appearance or by conversion, but in truth, that He became man.

18. Thus then, too, though demonstrated as God, He does not refuse the conditions proper to Him as man, since He hungers and toils and thirsts in weariness, and flees in fear, and prays in trouble. And He who as God has a sleepless nature, slumbers on a pillow. And He who for this end came into the world, begs off from the cup of suffering. And in an agony He sweats blood, and is strengthened by an angel, who Himself strengthens those who believe on Him, and taught men to despise death by His work. And He who knew what manner of man Judas was, is betrayed by Judas. And He, who formerly was honoured by him as God, is contemned by Caiaphas. And He is set at nought by Herod, who is Himself to judge the whole earth. And He is scourged by Pilate, who took upon Himself our infirmities. And by the soldiers He is mocked, at whose behest stand thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads of angels and archangels. And He who fixed the heavens like a vault is fastened to the cross by the Jews.

And He who is inseparable from the Father cries to the Father, and commends to Him His spirit; and bowing His head, He gives up the ghost, who said, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again;” and because He was not overmastered by death, as being Himself Life, He said this: “I lay it down of myself.” And He who gives life bountifully to all, has His side pierced with a spear. And He who raises the dead is wrapped in linen and laid in a sepulchre, and on the third day He is raised again by the Father, though Himself the Resurrection and the Life. For all these things has He finished for us, who for our sakes was made as we are. For “Himself hath borne our infirmities, and carried our diseases; and for our sakes He was afflicted,” as Isaiah the prophet has said. This is He who was hymned by the angels, and seen by the shepherds, and waited for by Simeon, and witnessed to by Anna. This is He who was inquired after by the wise men, and indicated by the star; He who was engaged in His Father’s house, and pointed to by John, and witnessed to by the Father from above in the voice, “This is my beloved Son; hear ye Him.” He is crowned victor against the devil.

This is Jesus of Nazareth, who was invited to the marriage-feast in Cana, and turned the water into wine, and rebuked the sea when agitated by the violence of the winds, and walked on the deep as on dry land, and caused the blind man from birth to see, and raised Lazarus to life after he had been dead four days, and did many mighty works, and forgave sins, and conferred power on the disciples, and had blood and water flowing from His sacred side when pierced with the spear. For His sake the sun is darkened, the day has no light, the rocks are shattered, the veil is rent, the foundations of the earth are shaken, the graves are opened, and the dead are raised, and the rulers are ashamed when they see the Director of the universe upon the cross closing His eye and giving up the ghost. Creation saw, and was troubled; and, unable to bear the sight of His exceeding glory, shrouded itself in darkness. This (is He who) breathes upon the disciples, and gives them the Spirit, and comes in among them when the doors are shut, and is taken up by a cloud into the heavens while the disciples gaze at Him, and is set down on the right hand of the Father, and comes again as the Judge of the living and the dead. This is the God who for our sakes became man, to whom also the Father hath put all things in subjection. To Him be the glory and the power, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, in the holy Church both now and ever, and even for evermore. Amen.

And There Was Light

2010-05-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

Painting is one of my occasionally pursued interests. I am by no means a serious/capable or even semi-serious/capable painter myself, but I love seeing great works by excellent artists.

Lately I have been spending my time trying to familiarize myself with this art form. In truth, all of the arts connect with each other: what could be more like the paintings of Sisley or Monet than the music of Debussy and Arnold Bax?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The painters of the Hudson River School, the Impressionists, and the able (if not over-rated) Kinkade are all preoccupied with light.
Light is an incredible symbol. It is the great image used by Tertullian to describe the relationship of the Father to the Son in his Treatise Against Praxeas, and the Council to describe our Lord: "God of God; Light of light; very God of very God..."
..."God is Light."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is recorded in the Creation account that God made man "in His image". It is certain that this relates to the soul and intellectual part of man- his ability to commune with God, his unfettered free will, and his ability to make art and dogmas. This is the wonder of our being made in "Imago Dei"- this is what it means to be human.

Jesus said "I am the Light of the world." And in the sermon on the mount, He told his followers "Ye are the light of the world."
The "light" of the Christian is the illumination of the Spirit within: "We all, with unveiled faces, are reflecting the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit." (II Cor. 3:18)

The perfect illustration of this would be the illumination of a beautiful stained glass window. The Master Artist who has formed our soul and its "tabernacle" also pervades our entire being with his truth and beauty. His own glory reveals the splendor of his work. In a similar vein, here is a poem by the Anglican priest and fascinating poet George Herbert:

The Windows

Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?
He is a brittle crazy glasse:
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.

But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy story,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy Preachers ; then the light and glory
More rev'rend grows, & more doth win:
Which else shows watrish, bleak, & thin.

Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe : but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the ear, not conscience ring.

~~~~~~~~~

"The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but Jehovah will be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." (Isaiah 60:19)

Reductionist Religion

2010-05-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

Several days ago I encountered a phrase that is the embodiment of the general mood of Christendom. It is the modern contempt of rigid beliefs, practices, and traditions- but from the believer. It is the very fashionable statement that Christianity is a relationship- not a religion, which while being rather witty compared to most modern statements, is hardly accurate.

It is the nature of all religions that they contain a system of beliefs about the nature of the universe, its origins, and the meaning of human existence. Religion does not merely dictate prayer; it is the foundation of existence. Religion is as involved in my view of sacraments, as my view of sunsets; of original sin, as much as dandelions.

The Christian believes that God is personal; he believes also that He is Three. The Christian believes in prayer; he also believes in baptism. He believes that God is love; he also fears 'the fire that shall not be quenched and the worm that shall not die.' He really believes that Christianity is about relationship, and that it is why he embraces the religion, with all of its rites, dogmas, and paradoxes.

We cannot allow 'The Way' to be reduced. This modern doctrinal skittishness is a weak attempt to escape the disgust (sometimes reasonable) against all things institutional, religious, and dogmatic. But we are not allowed that luxury. God asked Abraham to give up his son; and our relationship with Him demands that we give up the fashionable dogma of the badness of dogmas.

To say that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, is like saying that Shakespeare's sonnets are poems, not literature. We are called not to be "pals" with God: we are called to 'taste and see' the goodness of "God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; And the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified..."

In Praise of the Creed

2010-03-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

It goes back to the heretics of the second century, and ultimately to the serpent in the garden: "Did God really say?"

From what else does heresy originate?

Truth always precedes error. The early church not only countered the dissenters with Scripture- they rejected the authority of the heretics in using them. The Prescription Against Heretics by Tertullian is consistent with the approach of the Apostolic churches in dealing with error: confronting error with the truths handed down from the blessed Apostles themselves- and claiming Apostolic authority. He expressly says, "Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. [...] From what and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule, by which men become Christians? For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, there likewise the true Scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions."

This concept is fundamental to the Nicene creed. We are given the Scriptures penned by the apostles with the authority of Christ; we have the writings of the early church to help us understand their application; and we have the Spirit to guide us in truth.

In the Nicene Creed, the foundational belief of the Apostolic Faith are outlined. They are the terse, emphatic concepts that the fathers of the Church preserved from its founding- the Church "whose designer and builder is God."

Authority is not popular. That may explain why the "emergent church" is. Tertullian says, "Nowhere is promotion easier than in the camp of rebels..."

Scripture is the final test of all teaching; for interpreting scripture we have the guidance of the Spirit, and the writings of the early Church.

And in the creed, we have been given the rule of the Faith of our fathers.

"Let us nobly strive in the arena of truth, the holy word being the judge, and the Lord of the universe prescribing the contest." - Clement of Alexandria

St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

On this day of the celebration of the Celtic spirit, we ought to focus on the Saint who devoted his life to the Irish, and turned a warring people to the Prince of Peace. Here is a link to the Confession:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/patrick/confession.toc.html

Here is a beautiful poem to end this hasty post:

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

~ Joseph Mary Plunkett

O World Invisible

2010-02-04T19:34:00.000-08:00

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and
his understanding no one can fathom." (Isaiah 40:28)

I have been reading the writings of the Ante-Nicene fathers recently, and am impressed by the emphasis they placed on the incomprehensibleness of God. It is certain that we can understand God- but only in a very limited fashion. But in the same way that even from years of working with, being friends with, and admiring other people, we will never really know them as they truly are, we will certainly never know God as He really is. The greatest intellect and the deepest love could never give Him the honor and adoration that is due the Three that are One- who really is. Here is a passage from Justin's Hortatory Address to the Greeks:

"For God cannot be called by any proper name, for names are given to mark out and distinguish their subject-matters, because these are many and diverse; but neither did any one exist before God who could give Him a name, nor did He Himself think it right to name Himself, seeing that He is one and unique, as He Himself also by His own prophets testifies, when He says, “I God am the first,” and after this, “And beside me there is no other God.” On this account, then, as I before said, God did not, when He sent Moses to the Hebrews, mention any name, but by a participle He mystically teaches them that He is the one and only God. “For,” says He; “I am the Being;” manifestly contrasting Himself, “the Being,” with those who are not, that those who had hitherto been deceived might see that they were attaching themselves, not to beings, but to those who had no being. [...] On this account He said to Moses, “I am the Being,” that by the participle “being” He might teach the difference between God who is and those who are not."

I was reminded of that when I read this from a treatise by Theophilus of Antioch:

"You will say, then, to me, “Do you, who see God, explain to me the appearance of God.” Hear, O man. The appearance of God is ineffable and indescribable, and cannot be seen by eyes of flesh. For in glory He is incomprehensible, in greatness unfathomable, in height inconceivable, in power incomparable, in wisdom unrivalled, in goodness inimitable, in kindness unutterable. For if I say He is Light, I name but His own work; if I call Him Word, I name but His sovereignty; if I call Him Mind, I speak but of His wisdom; if I say He is Spirit, I speak of His breath; if I call Him Wisdom, I speak of His offspring; if I call Him Strength, I speak of His sway; if I call Him Power, I am mentioning His activity; if Providence, I but mention His goodness; if I call Him Kingdom, I but mention His glory; if I call Him Lord, I mention His being judge; if I call Him Judge, I speak of Him as being just; if I call Him Father, I speak of all things as being from Him; if I call Him Fire, I but mention His anger. You will say, then, to me, “Is God angry?” Yes; He is angry with those who act wickedly, but He is good, and kind, and merciful, to those who love and fear Him; for He is a chastener of the godly, and father of the righteous; but he is a judge and punisher of the impious."

Too many of us have lost the wonder of our Lord. Most of us do not reverence icons or honor images, but is it possible that American evangelicals are in need of the reproof of Clement? "You have turned Heaven into a stage; the Divine has become a drama; and what is sacred you have acted in comedies..."

"Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” (Heb. 12: 28,29)

The City of God

2010-01-19T19:50:00.000-08:00

"But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel." (Heb. 12:22-24)

_________________________________________________

I am finishing Augustine's Confessions and must say that it is one of the most powerful books I have ever read. It boggles the mind in its philosophy, but the beautiful poetic and devotional parts make it a very rewarding read. I was especially struck by the following passages:

"O house full of Light and splendor! 'Lord, I have loved the habitation of Your house, and the place where Your glory dwells." In my wandering let me sigh for You. I ask this of He who made you, that He would also possess me in you, seeing that He made me as well. 'I have gone astray like a lost sheep,' but on the shoulders of my Shepherd, I long to be brought back to the house of God."

~~~~~

"I will remember Jerusalem, my mother, with my heart uplifted to her and to You O God, Ruler of the source of Light, its Father, Guardian, and Husband. You, O God, are its pure and strong delight, its solid joy and all its goods inexpressible- and all of this at the same time, since You are the one supreme and true Good!"

The Goodness of Creation

2010-01-09T16:58:00.000-08:00

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

The natural world is too varied to be caused by Fate and yet to organized to be the result of Chance. In the determinist view, the necessary automatically paralyzes variation; In the Chance view, we must not expect any order, and call clearly demonstrated natural "laws" coincidences with no meaning.

The exhilarating variety of creation is a testament to the greatness of our Lord: "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."

It is, I believe one of the most hellish heresies, espoused by the Gnostics of the second century and the Cathars in the thirteenth, that either calls God the author of "evil" (matter), or would set up two gods, one of matter and one spiritual.

It is true that we live in a world corrupted by sin, but it is not rightfully the property of Satan; It is the work of God, and redemption is really, in Chestertonian language, a revolution- a return to what man had before, and most truly requires: fellowship with God- who created grass, and green, and put them together.

On the Nativity

2009-12-27T19:56:00.000-08:00

I meant to post several days ago, but was rather side-tracked.

One of the finest books I have ever read is The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton. This passage is an excellent summary of the awesome mystery of the Incarnation:

"No other birth of a god or childhood of a sage seems to us to be Christmas or anything like Christmas. It is either too cold or too frivolous, or too formal and classical, or too simple and savage, or too occult and complicated. Not one of us, whatever his opinions, would ever go to such a scene with the sense that he was going home. He might admire it because it was poetical, or because it was philosophical, or any number of other things in separation; but not because it was itself. The truth is that there is a quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on human nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a mere legend or the life of a great man."
"It does not exactly in the ordinary sense turn our minds to greatness; to those extensions and exaggerations of humanity which are turned into gods and heroes, even by the healthiest sort of hero-worship. It does not exactly work outwards, adventurously, to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth. It is rather something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal part of our being; like that which can some times take us off our guard in the pathos of small objects or the blind pieties of the poor."
"It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It is as if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed him into good. It is not made of what the world would call strong materials; or rather it is made of materials whose strength is in that winged levity with which they brush us and pass. It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness that is there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become a strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more human than humanity."

And the quest for the One who is Truth, the One who is “God with Us”, born in a stable over 2,000 years ago, we share with the magi of Nativity story:

_____The Wise Men_____

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly…it has hailed and snowed…
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(…We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly, humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain.
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.

~G. K. Chesterton

Seeking the Face of God

2009-12-16T17:58:00.000-08:00

"...Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search
for me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:13

This is the ringing message of the Confessions of St. Augustine: That our real desire for truth, beauty, and love can only be found in the Person who is the great Scource of all good. And the Confessions is Augustine's story of seeking and finding the One that is "Unchangeable, yet changing all things; always working, yet ever at rest..."

Augustine sought Truth. He did not find it in the numerous perversions of Christianity that were popping up throughout Roman world. It was the theology of the established Church, that gave him solid understanding of God. It is highly instructive in regards to the "emergent church" that doctrine and church authority did not stifle the religious life of Augustine. His relationship with Christ was directly related to his theology.

His longing for God is the pervading theme of this earliest true autobiography: "Where, beyond heaven and earth, could I go that there my God might come to me, He who said, 'I fill heaven and earth?'"

This constant directing of the soul to the Master, this all-consuming search for the only true Rest might also be called the Practice of the Presence of God...

As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us.[...] We are far too easily pleased."

In his wonderful book, The Four Loves, Lewis describes the good and beautiful earthly things we admire as little glimpses of the ultimate Good and the ultimate Beauty:

"All that was true love in them was, even on earth, far more His than ours, and ours only because His. In Heaven, there will be no anguish and no duty of turning away from our earthly beloveds. First, because we will have turned already; from the portraits to the Original, from the rivulets to the fountain, from the creatures He made loveable to Love Himself. But secondly, because we shall find them all in Him. By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do."

The Church of today, if it will be effective, will say with Augustine, "I long for You, O Righteousness and Innocence so beautiful and appealing to all virtuous eyes. I long for You, Lord, with insatiable gratitude. With You alone is perfect rest and unchanging life. He who enters into You, enters into the joy of his Lord."

The Prayer of Saint Patrick

2009-12-03T18:17:00.000-08:00

I had been wanting to post this for some time, but thought it was rather long. But, since I am not full of brilliant thoughts of my own, I shall borrow some from the great missionary to Ireland.

When Patrick brought the Gospel to the Celts, he brought their natural mysticism and love for the created world firmly into his "new" Christianity, the first "de-romanized" realization of the creed.

Not only was he one of the earliest missionaries to go beyond the world of Rome, but he was perhaps the earliest voice to explicitly condemn slavery, which in the "civilized" world, was essentially a matter of course.

When the Irish gave up enslaving and killing each other, they adopted an entirely new culture, in which slavery became unthinkable, and battle was reserved for "wheighty causes".

Many of the Irish converts chose "the green martyrdom", of devoting themselves to study of scripture, the evangelism of their neighbors, and establishment of numerous monasteries. These monks carried not only the message of Christ to unreached peoples, but also literacy, which outside of the Romanized world was a rarity.

It was these wandering monks, and their monasteries that preserved the learning of the Latin literature, even as the great cities were overrun by barbarians looting art and burning libraries.

The work of Patrick not only brought about a "de-Romanized" Christianity that transformed an entire nation, but it indirectly preserved much of the learning of the Classical world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following is attributed to Patrick; it is entirely consistent with his faith, and Irish to the core...

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through the confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the Judgment Day.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of demons,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.

- St. Patrick

Issues Atheism Cannot Adress

2009-11-16T18:10:00.000-08:00

~1~ Atheism cannot give a coherent account of the origin of the cosmos. It cannot be eternal because there is no new energy being created, and it is constantly being used. Aquinas has not been refuted.

~2~ The skeptic Kant said, "Of two things I will always be in awe: the heavens above, and the moral law within." The nonbeliever may have high moral standards, but he cannot logically insist that others adhere to them.

Some insist that traditional morality was a result the "herd instinct". However, society rarely praises those who violate basic right and wrong as if they were heroes overcoming an evolutionary tendency; rather they are imprisoned or killed.

Only with a theistic world-view, can a legitimate discussion of right and wrong take place. Thus the argument, how can a good God allow evil? (1)assumes that there is good and evil, (2)that there is a moral law by which they are ascertained, (3)which requires a Moral Law-Giver.

~3~ Without God, life loses its meaning. The cynics of the last century, like Tenessee Williams, shewed us the horror of the human heart. They have shewn us the evil of which we are capable, the deceitfulness of materialism, and they insist that God is dead.

The contrast between this and genuine Christianity is profound.

We have an answer for Origins: every man or woman is of intrinsic worth, being made in the image of God; The world was created for us to enjoy, not abuse; The physical world is not in reality "secular"- it is the work of our great Father.

We have an answer for Morality: God has placed in man the knowledge of what is right and wrong, and we are free to choose; We are held responsible for our individual choices.

Our lives have genuine meaning: We are saved from the power of sin, by accepting the work and unique claims of Christ; we are cleansed by His blood, and enter His new covenant in baptism; we are brought thus into fellowship with the Indescribable and Holy God who created all things; and, like Augustine, we say, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."

A Coleridge Excerpt

2009-10-31T06:43:00.000-07:00

It is a very dreary and damp day, perfect for fresh coffee, perhaps a very little bit of Jack Benny, some Coleridge, and a Gregorian Chant.

I think perhaps the second point of my last post was perhaps a bit incoherent. I only meant that the distaste for tradition and historical Christianity is extremely unhelpful. The interpretation of Scripture by the Church Fathers, and sincere Christians of the past does not need to be ignored. Christianity does not need to be remade.

As Chesterton said, when something 'is here to stay', it will usually be replaced in a couple years. The same is true of fads in philosophy and theology. The real foundation of Christianity is that outlined in the Nicene Creed, and it is as dynamic and refreshing today as it was in the fourth century.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .... ... ... ...

Anyways, I have been slowly progressing in the writings Coleridge. "The Picture" is a masterpiece.

Here is a beautiful passage from "Dejection: An Ode"...

"All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze- and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimm'd, but always seen;
Yon crescent Moon, as fix'd as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel how beautiful they are!"

~ ... ... ... ... ... ~

Two Modern Myths

2009-10-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

There are two concepts, both of them encountered in "evangelical" circles, that I find very disturbing.

(1) An incorrect perception of "spiritual things". It is sometimes implied that those things which are physical and solid are themselves evil or harmful, and that that which pertains to the spiritual or inhuman is by nature good.

This is primarily the result of confusing the things that pertain to the Holy Spirit with the spiritual world in general. Things are not good or bad by virtue of being physical or spritual. The greatest sins are spiritual sins.

While it is true that the "Creation groans under the curse", and has been corrupted by man's rebellion, it is the work of God, not of demons. Only God can create.
"God saw all that He had made, and it was very good."

We do not cease to enjoy friendship, poetry, and music as believers; rather, our "friendship with God" allows us to more deeply love poetry and music. The leaves in October and the dry joke with a friend are more beautiful and hilarious when the they are recognized as the gifts of a loving Heavenly Father. Indeed, humor is funnier to a Chesterton than it ever could be to a Tennessee Williams. Our friendships and Art itself are to become channels for the Divine.

(2) Either because of a hangover from the 'sixties or the Reformation, Christians are desperately trying to avoid historical Christendom. Abuses like the Crusades, the brutal persecution of Anabaptists by Catholics and Protestants, and numerous Religious wars have made people queasy at the thought of all organized religion. It is a very sad mistake.

Anything must have organization if it is to work well. Thus the Church must have organization. It is no good throwing out religion because it can be a curse; it is no good throwing out Church history because some churchmen were madmen. None of the enemies of religious organization would suggest governments be abolished (who unlike the Church does bear the sword) for the horrors they have inflicted.

A quiet Christianity, a faith so personal that it cannot submit to a community of believers is horribly inconsistent with scripture, and the writings of the Church Fathers. The modern church is not in its current mess because it has too much structure or from being too "traditional"; It is because the church has bent over backwards to appeal to those who want comfortable religion, do not want to be bothered with having "the mind of Christ", and only want warm, fuzzy feelings.

We need the world wishing to have what the Church does, not a church that can hardly be distinguished from the world.

Revival does not come from throwing out the Faith of our Fathers. It is the old hymns, the Creed, and the old stories of great men of God that are really new. Because, the God that inspired them Is; He is unchanging; And He is all that is really new and living.

Modern Christendom is weak- not from Orthodoxy, but because God has become a boring entity.

Surprised by Joy

2009-10-06T16:58:00.000-07:00

At long last I am posting again. And, like usual I have nothing remarkable to say.

Nevertheless, I feel very compelled to plagiarize a paragraph from C. S. Lewis...

As anyone can deduce from my previous posts, I admire him very much: a brilliant mind, excellent writer, and one of the most humble christians you will come across.

The account of his conversion to Theism is an excellent picture of the "Hound of Heaven":

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not see what is now the most shining and obvious thing: the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore the Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation."

~ from Surprised by Joy

In all due respect to Lewis, I would not describe conversion as "compulsion", being rather perturbed at elements of Calvinism.

Also, to return to the the Francis Thompson reference above, here is Tolkien:

"Not for me the Hound of Heaven, but the never-ceasing silent appeal of Tabernacle, and the sense of starving hunger." ~ from a letter to Michael Tolkien

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Orthodoxy II

2009-09-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

Well, well.

The weekend of obstacle courses and softball (and a few discussions) is over.

One of the issues that arose (in very short discussions) was that of reading. Something that most people do very little of. It is very unfortunate really, considering the amount of excellent literature to be read.

One excellent book mentioned a while ago on here is Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

I was convinced to read Chesterton by his impact in the conversion of C. S. Lewis, and also because of the regard that Ravi Zacherias has for his work. The latter had much to do with Ravi quoting the conclusion of Orthodoxy, which follows. Hopefully this will convince all of you to get this book (and read it).

Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

~ G. K. C.

An Entirely Un-original Post

2009-09-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

........................................................................................

We praise Thee, O God, our Redeemer, Creator,
In grateful devotion our tribute we bring;
We lay it before Thee, we kneel and adore Thee,
We bless Thy holy Name, glad praises we sing.

We worship Thee, God of our fathers, we bless Thee;
Through life’s storm and tempest our guide You Thou been;
When perils overtake us, escape Thou will make us,
And with Thy help, O Lord, our battles we win.

With voices united our praises we offer,
To Thee, great Jehovah, glad anthems we raise.
Thy strong arm will guide us, our God is beside us,
To Thee, our great Redeemer, forever be praise.

~ Julia Cory

That is a great song. Like many of the other great hymns that churches are trading for annoyingly shallow CCM choruses...

Effusions

2009-09-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

The coherence and energy of Beethoven at his best have to my knowledge never been surpassed. The freedom of imagination, and at the same time, the almost flawless structure are always gripping. He was the ultimate synthesis of what we love in the Romantic and the Classical artist: the emotion and the mind.

It is only because of Beethoven that we have Bruckner and Brahms. And probably Carl Nielsen, a man who was not such a chronological snob as some more contemporary composers.

For most people, including me, the summary of the symphonic style is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; and for me, one of the greatest statements of music and faith is the Missa Solemnis.
This is music as great if not greater than Handel's Messiah, but it is much less well known.

There are wonderful alternatives to CCM and popular music in general. Great instrumental music such as Beethoven's Ninth; Great choral music like the Missa Solemnis- and the great hymns of the Church.

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I have begun reading Samuel Coleridge, the great Romantic thinker and poet. (Great poets were often great thinkers)

Here is one of his finest poems- a real wonder of Romanticism...

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Tolkien on Lewis

2009-08-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

First, let me withdraw my praise of M. W. Smith several long posts ago. I actually have heard more of his music, and was not exactly filled with awe. I do not want to attack him because I believe he probably is sincere, and does have talent; nonetheless, the Contemporary Christian Music genre is utterly beyond my sympathy. It is frequently very low on substance, both the lyrics and the music. Endless repetition of both, and primarily driven by a percussion loop that is detracting, if not irreverent.

Rock music, according to its creators and popularizers, is primarily about rebellion. It was and remains symbolic of hatred of traditional morality.

It is absolutely bizarre to me how a music culture focused on rebellion is to fit into the Church of Christ. Even when the words are meaningful and God-honouring, there is a nagging incongruity with the message of the words and the music- and usually the music overrides the words.

Music is powerful. And like all good things, it can be perverted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is fascinating to read Tolkien's thoughts about C. S. Lewis after 'the apparition of Charles Williams' and the subsequent cooling of their freindship. One gets the impression that Tolkien was keenly fond of C. S. L. and admired him a great deal- as long as he stuck to the right subjects. (Actually, I agreed with his position that That Hideous Strength didn't fit with the earlier books of the Space Trilogy very well). I was especially struck by the things he wrote after Lewis' death:

'[...] We owed each a great debt to the other, and that tie with the deep affection that it begot, remains. He was a great man of whom the cold-blooded obituaries only scraped the surface [...]'

(November or December 1963 from a letter to Michael Tolkien)
______

'C. S. L. of course had some oddities and could sometimes be irritating. He was after all and remained an irishman of Ulster. But he did nothing for effect; he was not a professional clown, but a natural one, when a clown at all. He was generous-minded, on guard against all prejudices, though a few were too deep-rooted in his native background to be observed by him.

'Well of course I could say more, but I must draw the line. Still, I wish it could be forbidden that after a great man is dead, little men should scribble over him [...]'

(30 August 1964, from a letter to Anne Barrett, Houghton Mifflin Co.)

Tapestry

2009-08-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

I am by no means an expert on choral music. Thus, anything I say in the next paragraph probably is suspect.

Well, the singing was (in my ever so humble opinion) very good. The music was very good. Especially "Our Father" by Grechaninov. However, there was a nagging wish for more volume (at appropriate places). Of course, I was very fond of Concordia's version of the piece (Our Father) and it would be difficult to better it. In spite of the high temperatures and the crowded seating, it was a very fine evening. It is wonderful to know that there are Mennonites with such talent and especially wonderful when they use it.

I am fond of choral music. But I sometimes think Bruckner's symphonies are almost as much inspired by christian devotion as some of our hymns. I will admire both.

________________________

Here is another poem- whether you like it or not:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck His rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black west went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

(1918 Gerard Manley Hopkins)

I first met this poem in either perspectives or English Lit., but I just ran across it and thought it would be very worth posting. Hopkins was a fascininating poet. Although, it is hard to get used to garbled syntax (although reading this blog would require one to get used to it).

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Chesterton and Tolkien

2009-08-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

I realize it has been a very long time since I posted last. Many things have happened since:

1. finished the Everlating Man by G. K. C. and thought it quite good, as apparently C. S. Lewis did. (forgive another quote...)

'If [Christianity] were an error, it seems as if the error could hardly have lasted a day. If it were a mere ecstasy, it would seem that such an ecstasy could not endure for an hour. It has endured for nearly two thousand years; and the world within it has been more lucid, more level-headed, more reasonable in its hopes, more healthy in its instincts, more humorous and cheerful in the face of fate and death, than all the world outside. For it was the soul of Christendom that came forth from the incredible Christ; and the soul of it was common sense. Though we dared not look on His face we could look on His fruits; and by His fruits we should know Him. The fruits are solid and the fruitfulness is much more than a metaphor; and nowhere in this sad world are boys happier in apple-trees, or men in more equal chorus singing as they tread the vine, than under the fixed flash of this instant and intolerant enlightenment; the lightning made eternal as the light.'

(from the conclusion)

2. I have finished the Lord of the Rings. Very moving. Have begun reading The Letters of Tolkien. (forgive another quote...)

'And all of a sudden I realized what it was: the very thing that I have been writing about and trying to explain- in that fairy-story essay that I so much wish you had read that I think I shall send it to you. For it I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears [...] And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives [...] that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest Fairy Story - and it produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in love. Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest.'

(To Christopher Tolkien 7-8 November 1944)

3. I had my last piano lesson for the present. Very sad.

4. New computer. Runs Finale quite well...

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Oh! Was quite surprised by the following comments by Tolkien:

'Priscilla has been wading through The Ballad of the White Horse for the last many nights; and my efforts to explain the obscurer parts to her convince me that it is not as good as I thought. The ending is absurd. The brilliant smash and glitter of the words and phrases (when they come off, and are not mere loud colours) cannot disguise the fact that G. K. C. knew nothing whatever about the 'North', heathen or Christian.'

I had thought it a fine poem, especially this, from book two...

Last of a race in ruin--
He spoke the speech of the Gaels;
His kin were in holy Ireland,
Or up in the crags of Wales.

But his soul stood with his mother's folk,
That were of the rain-wrapped isle,
Where Patrick and Brandan westerly
Looked out at last on a landless sea
And the sun's last smile.

His harp was carved and cunning,
As the Celtic craftsman makes,
Graven all over with twisting shapes
Like many headless snakes.

His harp was carved and cunning,
His sword prompt and sharp,
And he was gay when he held the sword,
Sad when he held the harp.

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

G. K. C.
~~~~~~~

An Unexpected Post

2009-07-19T18:42:00.000-07:00

Hello, hello.

One might surmise from the title that I was reading The Hobbit; if so you are entirely wrong. I am actually working on the Lord of the Rings.

It is very like any really good book in that re-reading does not become boring, but more meaningful. There is great richness in Tolkien's work:

'Are these magic cloaks?" asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder.

'I do not know what you mean by that,' answered the leader of the elves. 'They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make [...]'

That would be precisely the reason that I find the Lord of the Rings more moving now than ever. The plot and story lines are not startling anymore, but I can enjoy more of the details- the poetry of Middle-Earth. Tolkien's love of poetry, epic, language, history, nature, and what Chesterton called 'The Strangest Story Ever Told', all shaped his world.

I am surprised people sometimes consider the Lord of the Rings allegorical. It is certainly not strict allegory. It is simply a brilliant story, filled with references to Tolkien's faith and love of early English literature. In fact, it probably has more to do with the poet of Gawain and the Green Knight than with German Empire.

However, to say that it is not allegorical, does not negate the symbolism in some passages:

'You are our captain and our banner. The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they ... He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads.'

And finally, I shall add two of the finest poems:

(a song of Galadriel)

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:

Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.

Beyond the sun, beyond the moon, the foam was on the sea,

And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden tree.

Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone,

There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,

While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears.

O Lorien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;

The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.

O Lorien! Too long I have dwelt upon this hither shore

And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor.

But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,

What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?

~ ...Farewell to Lorien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2

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(of Eorl the Young)

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?

Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?

Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?

They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;

The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.

Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,

Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

~ ...The King of the Golden Hall, the Two Towers, Book 3

The Everlasting Man

2009-06-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

I previously mentioned my interest in Chesterton; the result of Lewis' admiration for him. I have finally gotten to the book I originally was curious about- The Everlasting Man.

It is really an excellent book. There are fewer wanderings than Chesterton sometimes makes. It is engaging in just the way that some popular Christian writing is not: it makes you think, not simply feel.

If you really want some excellent reading that will challenge your understanding of pagan and church history, as well your vocabulary, I highly recommend you read this book. Of course, you must be quite careful to avoid turning Catholic...

I am going to quote a very long passage or two; I only do so because this is Chesterton at his best:

"The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones; and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them. Criticism is only words about words; and of what use are words about such words as these? What is the use of word-painting about the dark garden filled suddenly with torchlight and furious faces? 'Are you come out with swords and staves as against a robber? All day I sat in your temple teaching, and you took me not.' Can anything be added to the massive and gathered restraint of that irony; like a great wave lifted to the sky and refusing to fall? 'Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children.' As the High Priest asked what further need he had of witnesses, we might well ask what further need we have of words. Peter in a panic repudiated him: 'and immediately the cock crew; and Jesus looked upon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly.' Has anyone any further remarks to offer? Just before the murder he prayed for all the murderous race of men, saying, 'They know not what they do'; is there anything to say to that, except that we know as little what we say? Is there any need to repeat and spin out the story of how the tragedy trailed up the Via Dolorosa and how they threw him in haphazard with two thieves in one of the ordinary batches of execution; and how in all that horror and howling wilderness of desertion one voice spoke in homage, a startling voice from the very last place where it was looked for, the gibbet of the criminal; and he said to that nameless ruffian, 'This night shalt thou be with me in Paradise'? Is there anything to put after that but a full stop? Or is anyone prepared to answer adequately that farewell gesture to all flesh which created for his Mother a new Son?"

"There were solitudes beyond where none shall follow. There were secrets in the inmost and invisible part of that drama that have no symbol in speech; or in any severance of a man from men. Nor is it easy for any words less stark and single-minded than those of the naked narrative even to hint at the horror of exaltation that lifted itself above the hill. Endless expositions have not come to the end of it, or even to the beginning. And if there be any sound that can produce a silence, we may surely be silent about the end and the extremity; when a cry was driven out of that darkness in words dreadfully distinct and dreadfully unintelligible, which man shall never understand in all the eternity they have purchased for him; and for one annihilating instant an abyss that is not for our thoughts had opened even in the unity of the absolute; and God had been forsaken of God.

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body. There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepulture and guarded by the authority of the Caesars. For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human. The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."

-G.K.C.

________________________________
I suppose I should mention that I have finally got a metronome and my own copy of the Lord of the Rings. Yip, yip, Yahoo:).
That's it for now... good night folks...

The New Heretics

2009-06-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

First, I really must apologize to any readers horrified by my last post. I did not mean that we should all believe in river gods; or even elves. My goal was to attack modernity: the insistence on naturalism and the denial of all things that cannot be studied under a microscope. Modern skepticism cannot give us a sound reason for any really moral system. Science is an excellent thing, in its proper place, but it is a dangerous god. The twentieth century saw the greatest leaps in technology and knowledge; it also saw six million Jews killed in a diabolic social experiment.

The horrors that await humanity are much grimmer if morality is sacrificed to "science" than the horrors produced by the perversion of Christianity in the Inquisition.

Our academic system has institutionalized atheism; our society claims acceptance of all points of view, and silences the exclusivist; political leaders can separate their public life from their private lives; media and entertainment preach moral relativism. The only natural progression is to throw out morality altogether.

The world had enough moral courage to stand up to Hitler in the last century; but the holocaust denying dictator of Iran is allowed to speak at an American university in ours.

What is to prevent another Himmler?

A world view that leaves the deepest questions of life to imperfect science will not.

____________________________________________________________

The last book of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, is an excellent work dealing with the rejection of morality and godless science.

Oh, by the way, this might seem less weird if you were reading Chesterton and Lewis (and the last post might require Tolkien's On Fairy-Stories).

We have Found Common Things

2009-05-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

A truly brilliant writer is someone who can make the commonplace dramatic; A truly enviable person is someone who can be enthralled by the sight of a butterfly.

In short, our world is really too sensible. We have dismissed Faery, we have dismissed the supernatural, we have denied the possibility of miracles; and the fact that we exist to deny them is a miracle. We have no more great kings like Arthur, no heroes like Alfred; we have no nymphs and fairies. And what have our modern writers given us to replace them? A literature with no hope, with no wonder, with no God.

We have advanced, we have circled the globe, we have conquered the air, we have penetrated space; and we have made our world small. If we wish to be amazed at the world, we will study our own garden; If we want to lose whatever wonder the moderns have left us, we will reach for the stars and ignore our own enchanted forests.

Let us champion those great writers, men like Charles Dickens, who could find poetry in the lives of the poor; Tolkien, who has given us a dazzling and rich world that can enchant our own; Lewis, who can make a lamp post magical; and Chesterton, who could write an entire essay "On the Advantages of Having One Leg" or "A Piece of Chalk".

Here is the forward to The Man Who Was Thursday, one of Chesterton's finest works- an uncommon and at times nightmarish apostraphe to common things.

A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,

Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.

Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;

The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;

Round us in antic order their crippled vices came --

Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.

Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,

Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.

Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;

The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.

They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:

Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.

Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;

When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us

Children we were -- our forts of sand were even as weak as eve,

High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.

Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,

When all church bells were silent our cap and beds were heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled;

Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.

I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings

Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;

And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass,

Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;

Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain --

Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.

Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey,

Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.

But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms.

God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:

We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved --

Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,

And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells --

Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,

Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.

The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand --

Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?

The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,

And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain.

Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;

Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.

We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed,

And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.

-G. K. C.

Orthodoxy

2009-05-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

After reading Surprised by Joy, I have developed a curious fascination with G. K. Chesterton. You can read most of his stuff online, and I assure you his work is worth reading. Here is a passage from "Orthodoxy", a book Ravi Zacherias calls one of the finest volumes he's ever read:

This is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism and Christianity; that for the Buddhist or Theosophist personality is the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God, the whole point of his cosmic idea. The world-soul of the Theosophists asks man to love it only in order that man may throw himself into it. But the divine centre of Christianity actually threw man out of it in order that he might love it. The oriental deity is like a giant who should have lost his leg or hand and be always seeking to find it; but the Christian power is like some giant who in a strange generosity should cut off his right hand, so that it might of its own accord shake hands with him. We come back to the same tireless note touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies are chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls. But according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God and man is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to love him. All those vague theosophical minds for whom the universe is an immense melting-pot are exactly the minds which shrink instinctively from that earthquake saying of our Gospels, which declare that the Son of God came not with peace but with a sundering sword.

How to Deal with Somali Pirates

2009-04-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

With a wave of the political wand, the democrats have fixed all of our problems. The oceans have begun to recede; the former unemployed are now employed by ACORN and Code Pink.

But, in spite of their unprecedented abilities in the federal takeover of banks and firing CEO's, they seem to have no knack for dealing with piracy.

Now, I would have thought that these must certainly be the most brilliant people in the world. And, obviously, Barack Obama is THE most brilliant.

However, since they cannot seem to come up with a response to these terrorists who have hijacked a cargo ship, and are threatening to murder the captain if they don't receive $2 million- I will give them a suggestion.

This is the only way to deal with the situation: Give the pirates their $2 Million, from the TARP fund. And, then, Chris Dodd will certainly support a 93% retroactive tax on all ransom money. This would effectively limit the pay of these inexcusable fat-cat pirate executives.

What? Stevenson? Or, "I am a pirate king, and it is, it is a glorious thing to be a pirate king!"

__________

Hmmmm... Die Walkure anyone?

More Tennyson

2009-04-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

I suppose your eyes have glazed over already. If they haven't already, they probably will soon.

When in Guatemala (mere weeks ago) I had the bitter-sweet realization that I am nearing the conclusion of the volume of Alfred Tennyson's poetry. There is so much thought and so much beauty in his finest work. Unfortunately, the modern Mennonite mind generally considers this sort of writing arcane. As a matter of fact, many of the greatest works of literature will never be read except by a few strange homo sapiens.

I probably missed something by not being fascinated by science or math during school; however, not everyone will pursue the excellent education of great reading (Like Paul, I do not consider myself to have apprehended...)

A Tale of Two Cities, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Lord of the Rings trilogy- perhaps they are not exactly practical, but reading great literature is one of the best ways to understand the nature of human behavior; it is an indispensable means to find the thought that drives man; and, the thoughts of a man direct every facet of his being.

[If you are already bored to tears, perhaps you should go listen to Mr.Gibbs for a while...]

For the relative handful of readers (actually, I probably don't even have a handful anymore) who are also readers of Tolkien, the "Battle of Brunanburh" is from a translation of a tenth-century Old English poem. It is very similar to parts of the Lord of the Rings; is it any wonder that the writer of the epic battles of Middle Earth was also one of the most important scholars of Beowulf?

I find the connection between the Tolkien mythology and the Anglo-Saxon art and culture fascinating.

Anyways, without further ado, here are several sections from the "Battle of Brunanburh":

Athelstan King,

Lord among Earls,

Bracelet-bestower and

Baron of Barons,

He with his brother,

Edmund Atheling,

Gaining a lifelong

Glory in battle,

Slew with the sword-edge

There by Brunanburh,

Brake the shield-wall,

Hew'd the linden-wood,

Hack'd the battle-shield,

Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.

Theirs was a greatness

Got from their grandsires-

Theirs that so often in

Strife with their enemies

Struck for their hoards and their hearts and their homes.

Bow'd the spoiler,

Bent the Scotsman,

Fell the ship-crews

Doom'd to the death.

All the field with blood of the fighters

Flow'd, from when the first great

Sun-star of morning-tide,

Lamp of the Lord God

Lord everlasting,

Glowed over earth till the glorious creature

Sank to his setting.

A Great Ending to a Great Book

2009-03-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

While in Guatemala, I began reading C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. It is written in a very 'popular' style, but the ideas are remarkably potent. It is a great deal different than The Problem of Pain or Miracles, where he uses very scholarly language. Maybe this is one of the reasons for the continued popularity of his work: an amazing ability to communicate effectively- to the scholar and theologian, and the layman.

I thought the conclusion was well worth quoting here:

"Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of yourself in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look to Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

There.

And yes, the Idylls of the King were very good. As was the rest of the trip. And it was great hanging out with Eldon and Nathan.

So... Until next month, farewell... Ahem...

PS. I am rediscovering Sibelius :)

Nothing Much

2009-03-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

Greetings my loyal readers.

At least if I still have any.

I am currently transferring my very unprofessional photos from Santa Rosita onto my very unreliable laptop.

While there, I got a great deal of reading done - including the Idylls of the King, with the exception of the Passing of Arthur. That will occupy me if I get to horribly bored here (Guatemala City).

I did do other things at Santa Rosita. Mostly taking pictures and trying to be at least semi-helpful. And, doing my best not to be a nuisance, which occupied the majority of my time.

I hope to update sometime before next winter.

Gratze...

Of Tennyson

2009-02-05T15:46:00.000-08:00

In my last post I mentioned my perusal of Tennyson. This is from "The Princess", a very long, and unique work.

The splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story;

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O, hark, O hear! how thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O, sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river;

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

I thought the 'horns of elfland faintly blowing' sounded strangely "lewisian". And after googling them was surprised to see that that line was referenced in Surprised by Joy.

I also found that Lewis wrote that in a conversation with J. R. R. Tolkien “We agreed that for what we meant by romance there must be at least the hint of another world – one must ‘hear the horns of elfland’.

______________________________

On a completely different subject...

I have for a long time been an antagonist of the CCM movement.

It used to be that music discussions within our church were basically a question of traditional church music or contemporary worship; It used to be that we would compare hymns to Casting Crowns, Jars of Clay, and Michael W. Smith.

I suppose I am not such a hard-headed ideologue as I was then, but my distaste for that style of music has not been wholly lost.

That was a respectable debate. There were good arguments made on both sides.

But...

That was then. Now there are some Mennonite youth (and children) that unashamedly listen to completely secular pop music.

In the past, CCM devotees told us to "listen to the words". Perhaps some people should.

As I said in an earlier post, I do not necessarily object to secular music. But, when so much of today's pop music is driven by hedonism and perverted sensuality, is this the influence we need in our churches?

If people like 'the sound' of such music, there is undoubtedly some CCM imitation of it with at least semi-respectable lyrics.

How very sad that Christians cannot all be happy with Bach, Bruckner, and yes, Wesley.

There. I hope (in all sincerity) that I did not offend any of the very small number of people that read this blog. I am not trying to attack anyone- I am just very concerned and bothered.

______________

Let's hope that the Obama "porkulus" bill dies very soon. Personal and government debt were a large part of our economic problems, and putting America almost a trillion dollars further into debt will only create larger problems later.

Economic socialism can never work. Government is incapable of causing real economic growth; it can only stifle it through high taxes and unnecessary regulation.

Obama is hoping that if his giant spending bill passes (which it very likely will), the economy will recover in spite of this ridiculousness. Then he will say that government, his favorite entity, solved our problems; and then we get the wonders of nationalized and rationed health care.

Sigh.

Post Poetical

2009-01-27T21:06:00.000-08:00

For some odd reason, I have begun reading poetry again.

I am currently working my way through a rather substantial (and intimidating) book of Tennyson. It is a "Norton Critical Edition", and the warning about typos in the Amazon review was quite accurate: "many a women acanthus wreath divine" (!). Much like Hannity telling one of his callers "hang your head high".

There are several things that especially stand out about this wonderful poet (Alfred, not Sean). He was remarkably smart, very eloquent, and very honest. His poetry exudes romanticism (artistically, lest you misunderstand) guided by Christian principles.

Indeed, that is what one of my heroes, C.S. Lewis argued for. A revival of art among Christians- lasting art that reflects our beliefs.

It is a fitting response of creatures created and redeemed by God, to in turn "create" art that honors Him- whether it be a painted canvas, a piece of music, a poem- or as Tolkien did, a complete mythology that reflects the ultimate and true "myth" (another matter, for another post). There's something in the first measures of a Bruckner Symphony that echoes the very first verse of Scripture. (Okay, maybe that is slightly exaggerating).

_____________

I somehow think that Tennyson and Tolkien might have gotten along famously:

From Ulysses:

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

(...)

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we may touch the Happy Aisles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,-

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

A.T.

Matters Political

2009-01-16T20:16:00.000-08:00

My, my.

Soon PEBO will be our president.

November's election came after one of the most fascinating campaigns I can remember. Of course, I was paying much more attention this cycle.

Some of the memorable events and non-events from the last year or two:

1. Reverend Jeremiah Wright (Obama's wacky but very entertaining former pastor of twenty years) sings Handel's Messiah, "Deep River", and "Nobody Know the Trouble I've Seen" at NAACP; Discusses Classical music and pentatonic scales; and says "I come from a religious tradition that gives God the glory, and the Devil the blues."

2. At the Saddleback Forum, when asked when life begins, Barack Obama says: "That is above my paygrade." He also personally attacks Clarence Thomas, basically questioning the competence of one of our finest Supreme Court Justices.

3. Obama: "A light will shine down from somewhere. It will light upon you. You will experience an epiphany. And you will say to yourself, 'I have to vote for Barack.'"

4. During the primaries, Clinton mocks Obama's grandiose speeches: "I could stand here and say, let's just get everybody together, let's get unified – the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect..."

5. During the Republican primaries, Romney and Huckabee trade insults about LDS teachings and the proper way to eat chicken in the south.

6. The best of all the candidates, Duncan Hunter, gets nowhere.

7. Rush Limbaugh launches the uproarious Operation Chaos. Hillary Clinton tells Stephanopoulos, "He's always had a crush on me."

Well, well.

The election of Barack Obama was not America at its best. But stories like that of U.S. Airways flight 1549 convince me that She still has a lot going for her. We have problems, certainly, but we live in an amazing country.

And we shall certainly miss George Bush. A very honorable man, even if he was totally wrong about immigration.

Clarifications and Comedians

2009-01-05T20:08:00.000-08:00

We have just entered a new year (some of us were running a little behind schedule and just got here).

I was lucky enough to catch the New Year's Day from Vienna concert. Every year I let myself listen to this concert of nothing but waltzes and polkas.

It seems that my late rant could have used some clarifications.

Thus: I do not have some sort of major qualm with syncopation. As a matter of fact, a great deal of classical music uses it.

The fundamental problem with much popular music (I am including CCM since it is the same stylistically) is a constant emphasis on rhythm - to the point of ignoring matters of harmony and meaningful lyrics, etc.

I believe lighter music (I hate to put the Newsboys and Strauss together) has a place. In moderation. Actually, the 'Blue Danube' almost could be called serious.

The key is balance. Great music is interesting melodically, harmonically, and rhythmically.

A perfect example would be the Berlioz Requiem. In the Lacrymosa we have oodles of syncopation, even harsh at times (I don't think Charles Rosen would have put it that way). But there are pages of melting pianissimo that surround it- and the apacolyptic, unforgettable Dies Irae. This is truly great music: Rhythm, Melody, and, of course any text sounds good in Latin.

__________________________________

On a political note, these democrats are really talented in scandal. Between Blagojevich and Richardson, they are really keeping the Clinton era fresh in our minds.

And Al Franken in the Senate is nothing to laugh about.

An Odd Question

2008-12-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

Dom Claude said, concerning the printing press and architecture, "the one will kill the other". As the master art, the most important documentation of the beliefs and creativity of man, the printed word has displaced the monument. Unfortunately, Gilbert Morris seems to have displaced Victor Hugo.

My question is- ahem- will popular music destroy classical music?

Considering that great music is more demanding, it is possible, if not likely. If it dies, it will be partly the fault of the common perception that it is 'pretty', 'aristocratic', and 'dull'. Music that requires percussion loops to 'work', that does more to stimulate foot-tapping than the intellect, will probably not survive beyond the career of the artist. And I sincerely hate to say so, but a great deal of the 'Christian' music industry is involved in peddling it.

It is strange that the faith that produced the 'Messiah', the 'Missa Solemnis', and the Symphonies of Bruckner is now offering us every ridiculous blend of the most absurd pop, rap, and metal with words that make e. e. cummings sound like Milton.

Please don't misunderstand me. There are very talented people in the CCM industry that have admirable intentions. Michael W. Smith is certainly gifted- more as a composer than as a vocalist...

... ... ... ... ...

And if Claude Frollo means nothing to you, perhaps you are reading to much 'Christian' romance.

[Ahem]

(Did I step on enough toes?)

(Oh- I am so very sorry... [Ahem!])

... ... ... ... ...

Dear me- I never got around to Blago.

Theological

2008-12-16T20:41:00.000-08:00

I did not mention my Christian denomination in my profile. I dislike hyphenating Christianity or hyphenating Americans.

As for differences in practice between churches (and differing opinions within them), here is a passage from the Screwtape Letters: (chapter 16) (Screwtape writing to Wormwood)

"I think I warned you before that if your patient can't be kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it. I don't mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better. And it isn't the doctrines on which we chiefly depend for producing malice. The real fun is working up hatred between those who say 'mass' and those who say 'holy communion' when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker's doctrine and Thomas Aquinas', in any form which could hold water for five minutes. And all the purely indifferent things- candles and clothes and what not- are an admirable ground for our activities. We have quite removed from men's minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials- namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples. You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the 'low' churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his 'high' brother should be moved to irreverence, and the 'high' one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his 'low' brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility."

But, in some cases distinctions must be drawn...

I am from a relatively conservative Anabaptist-rooted church. Thus, I embrace the scriptures from largely literal understanding. My more liberal brethren are quick to appeal to metaphor and differences in culture.

The Anabaptist movement was a revolt (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively) against lifeless ritual and several major doctrinal flaws in the Roman Church. But something went terribly wrong.
Today, many of the descendents of these great leaders (I do not mean that all those that broke with Catholicism, ie. the Munsterites, were) have lost not only the scriptural symbols (foot-washing, headship veiling, etc.) but also their intended meaning. And liberal theology attacking the very inspiration of scripture, the divinity of Christ, and a literal Heaven and Hell has made inroads in nearly every liberal protestant, anabaptist, and evangelical community.

Anyway, apologies for a long and rambling post.

C. S. Lewis Excerpt

2008-12-08T18:01:00.000-08:00

"When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disintersted', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'Lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artists love for his work, and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for his child, jelous, inexorable, exacting as love between man and woman."

(from the Problem of Pain)

Lewis could present what we too easily consider dull theology with incredible richness and power.