April 19, 2024

April 19, 2024 By
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Mark J. Ferrari: Frodo / Wikimedia Commons

Tolkien, examining what happened to Frodo, and how he failed in his mission, said that looking at Frodo only as a failure represented a simple engagement with The Lord Of The Rings. That is, while it was true on a rather simple examination of the story, there was and is much more we could and should gain from it if we used a different approach to engage The Lord of the Rings:

Frodo indeed ‘failed’ as a hero, as conceived by simple minds: he did not endure to the end; he gave in, ratted. I do not say ‘simple minds’ with contempt: they often see with clarity the simple truth and the absolute ideal to which effort must be directed, even if it is unattainable. Their weakness, however, is twofold. They do not perceive the complexity of any given situation in Time, in which an absolute ideal is enmeshed. They tend to forget that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgement (since it is present in the Divine nature). In its highest exercise it belongs to God. For finite judges of imperfect knowledge it must lead to the use of two different scales of ‘morality’. To ourselves we must present the absolute ideal without compromise, for we do not know our own limits of natural strength (+grace), and if we do not aim at the highest we shall certainly fall short of the utmost that we could achieve. To others, in any case of which we know enough to make a judgement, we must apply a scale tempered by ‘mercy’: that is, since we can with good will do this without the bias inevitable in judgements of ourselves, we must estimate the limits of another’s strength and weigh this against the force of particular circumstances.[1]

To be a failed hero one must first try to be a hero, that is, one must try to do something invaluable and extraordinary, and in doing so, be tested and find out the limits of their potential. Those who do not try to do anything heroic, those who let things be, might not fail to achieve their goals in life, but they will fail themselves and others because they never will accomplish anything significant.  Recognizing one’s failure, to be sure, is important, but so is recognizing one’s successes along the way, for those successes often prove the value of one’s actions even if one fails to achieve all that one hoped to do. This is one of many reasons why we should be merciful to those who try and fail to achieve greatness, because, even if they do not achieve all they planned to do, they likely will accomplish much more than those who don’t even try to do anything great. Indeed, for Tolkien, mercy is important, and one of the things Frodo learned along the way was its value, which is why, when he rendered mercy to Gollum, he established the means by which he, and the rest of the world, would be saved:

But at this point the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would certainly betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time.[2]

Grace perfects nature; it is capable of bringing to success that which we cannot accomplish by ourselves. However, to receive it, we need to acknowledge its need, not only in our lives, but in the lives of everyone. This means we will be merciful to others because we will see how and why we need mercy, and the grace which comes with it, for ourselves. We are expected to do what we can, to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, but, due to our own weakness, due to our own imperfections, we should be humble about it and accept that we cannot and will not attain perfection on our own. God will take what we offer and elevate it with grace. This is exactly what Tolkien saw happening with Frodo in The Lord of the Rings: what Frodo was able to accomplish was great, but not enough; like everyone else, Frodo could not attain perfection by himself, indeed, his limitations made it impossible for him to complete his mission to destroy Sauron’s Ring. That did not mean he should not have tried. It is because he tried, because of the struggles he faced and overcame along the way, he was able to accept who he was, including and especially, his weakness, and so do all he could do without letting despair get in the way. His acceptance of who he was, including his failure, made room for grace, for providence to take what he offered and bring to completion what he himself started, and in doing so, bring salvation to the world at large. Frodo became a vessel of grace despite his own personal imperfections. Thus, as Tolkien made clear, from the very beginning of his quest, Frodo was going to fail, but it is what he did, and how he engaged not only his own failure, but the failure of others, which allowed him to be saved, and even to have contributed to the destruction of the Ring:

If you re-read all the passages dealing with Frodo and the Ring, I think you will see that not only was it quite impossible for him to surrender the Ring, in act or will, especially at its point of maximum power, but that this failure was adumbrated from far back. He was honoured because he had accepted the burden voluntarily, and had then done all that was within his utmost physical and mental strength to do. He (and the Cause) were saved – by Mercy : by the supreme value and efficacy of Pity and forgiveness of injury.[3]

This is a lesson which we should all learn and embrace for ourselves. Even though we are imperfect, and do many things which we should not do, we can and do many things which we should, many good things which contribute to the good in the world. If we are open to God and God’s grace, God can and will take what we offer, even in the midst of our failures, and use them as a foundation for grace to come in and lead us to our ultimate perfection:

This is shown because there are six things which make every heart surge towards those near it, namely, goodness, kindness, piety, sweetness, charity, and readiness to forgive, which have disposed God’s heart to prepare this grace [for us]. For goodness is the communication and diffusion of itself to all, as Dionysius says. Kindness is the flowing river of good fire and of the heart continuously melted in all goodness. Now piety in itself is similar, as ever-melting affection. Sweetness according to the nature of unions is a continual flowing forth that holds in itself a pleasantness that is nothing other than the agreeable reception of flowing sweetness. Charity is a burning, a heart blazing and flaming so that it completely spends itself in the enjoyment of the beloved. Now readiness to forgive is being easily appeased; by it, no one is turned away from [giving] his benefits on account of the offenses committed against him. These are the things that made the most gracious heart of God prepare this grace for us. [4]

We find it far easier to forgive, to show kindness, mercy, love, to others, when we know ourselves and know our need for such things as well. We will understand the imperfection of others, and how it can and will lead them to fail, because we will see it in our own lives and how we fail to do those things which we want to do. We will also understand how and why such failure does not have to be the end of the matter. We can and should share with each other our burdens, helping to complete for each other, what we cannot do by ourselves. But, we should also realize, even when we come together, we are limited creatures, and so we can only do so much before we come to exhaustion. That means, we need help from God, whose infinite capacity means God can provide the grace which we need to overcome our limitations. Our limitations should not be seen as the end of the matter. God can and will take what we have given, both personally and communally, and elevate it, so that the greater, indeed, the greatest good can be achieved. This is exemplified well by what happened to Frodo. He had help, such as the help given to him by Samwise, or even Gollum, as he made his way to Mordor to destroy Sauron’s Ring. In the end, Frodo found the Ring was destroyed, not by his own doing, but yet in a way it would not have been destroyed if he had not taken on the quest to destroy it. This is how the greatest accomplishments in history will be achieved. Despite ourselves, despite our weaknesses, and the ways we fall into temptation along the way,  if we embrace mercy and grace, then they will be able to take what we have doe and bring them to fruition in a way which we cannot do ourselves. Indeed, not only will do so in temporal history, we will find, they will also do so, in a greater fashion, in the eschaton, where we will see the true outcome of history.

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Revised and Expanded Edition. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (Broadway, NY: William Morrow, 2023), 460-1 [Letter 246 to Mrs Eileen Elgar].

[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 339 [Letter 181 to Michael Straight].

[3] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 362 [Letter 191 to Miss J. Burn].

[4] St. Albert the Great, On the Body of the Lord. Trans. Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, OP (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2017), 35.

 

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February 11, 2024

February 11, 2024 By
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Gandalf’s Gallery: Kergoat’s Forgiveness / flickr

Alexander Pope gave us the famous dictum, “To err is human; to forgive is divine.” One of the central elements of the Christian faith is its teaching on forgiveness. First, it reveals to us that  God’s love is so great, God is willing to and able to forgive us, no matter what we have done. There is nothing which is unforgiveable so long as we embrace and accept forgiveness. But then it tells us, once we have been forgiven, we are expected to embrace forgiveness so much we make it a way of our being so that we not only receive it, but share it with others. We must truly take forgiveness to heart.

Everyone makes mistakes. Every does wrong. But those mistakes, those errors, the evils which we do, do not have to define us. With God’s forgiveness, and the grace which comes from it, we will change. We will become the person we are intended to be instead of the fallen, selfish individual who looks at all things in light of unenlightened self-interest. So long as we view the world in that fallen mode of being, with and through such unenlightened self-interest, we will be unwilling to forgive others. Certainly, sometimes it is easy to grant such forgiveness, while at other times, it will be extremely difficult. Indeed, if it were not for the grace we were granted, we would find it impossible. However, since forgiveness is granted to us by God, Pope is correct, and it is divine, as it is revealed as being one of the uncreated energies of God. When we truly attune ourselves to it, we will find the forgiveness we have accepted will transform us and help us become more and more like God; the more we take it in, the more we will find ourselves participating in the divine life as it relates to us, and so, we will find that such participation will grant us the ability to do what we would otherwise not be able to do, and grant forgiveness to everyone. Thus, with the grace we are given in our own forgiveness, we find it becomes possible to share forgiveness with others; when we deny forgiveness, however, we cut ourselves off from the uncreated energy of God’s forgiveness, and so cut ourselves off from the grace we need for our own forgiveness and our own perfection.

We need to learn to let go and forgive. This is not to say we should forget what was done and act as if nothing happened. That is not what forgiveness is about. All actions have consequences which must be dealt with and engaged. We must make sure whatever justice was lost can be and will be restored. What we need to realize is that it is impossible to do so if we let bitterness rule over our lives. We must, therefore, accept the role of forgiveness and mercy in connection with justice, and we must realize justice must be restorative not retributive, for all retribution does is makes things worse.

Forgiveness, therefore, is an important element in the Christian faith. We need forgiveness from God, but we also need it from others, even as others need it from us. We are in the world together. We need to find a way to embrace universal forgiveness. We also need to recognize when we go astray, we should do what we can to make amends for what we have done. We must do what we can to reform, and one of the most important ways we can do that, is to embrace mercy as a way of life. The more we embrace mercy and the forgiveness it offers, the more we will find ourselves transformed by it, becoming more and more like God, and so more and more like the person God wants us to be, a person who can and will have a share in the divine life itself. To do that, we must stop being judgmental, stop looking to others to judge and condemn them. When we render such judgment and condemn someone, we show we do not really forgive them, and if we are unwilling to forgive, we cut ourselves off from the uncreated energy of God’s forgiveness, risking that we will not experience the grace of forgiveness ourselves: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14-15 RSV). Sin does not have to have the final say, but if we are unwilling to accept the way of mercy, we let it have the final say over us; then, we will experience the end God has in store for sin and all that is attached to it.

“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:14 RSV). We are to put on Jesus, that is, to find ourselves united with him. Jesus is the light of the world. He offers the world God’s love, and so, if we put him on, if we act in relation to our union with him, we will not let ourselves be turned towards the darkness of hate which knows no mercy. We will be charitable towards others. We will not put our own likes and dislikes above them. We will not force everyone to  satisfy our inordinate “fleshy” desires. We will recognize people will be at different positions in their lives than we are, and to deal with that, we will try to make sure everyone gets the help they need instead of discouraging them with our condemnation, which is why Paul said:

As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions.  One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him.  Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand (Rom 14:1-4 RSV).

We should embrace God, what is  divine, and do what we can to be more like God. God is merciful. God is loving. God is kind. God offers forgiveness to all. We should be likewise. And, to be sure, while this is for the good of others, it is also for our own good. By forgiving others like God, we open ourselves to God, freeing ourselves to participate in uncreated energies of God and all the glory they can bring to us.

To err is human, especially when we think of humanity apart from God; to forgive is divine, but thanks to the incarnation, forgiveness is an aspect of the divinity which we can partake of and share in. We are called to do just that. The more we embrace the path of mercy and grace, the more forgiving we are, the more we reveal how much we have partaken of the uncreated divine energies of God and become like God. We will show we treasure God for, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21 RSV). If we treasure God and the divine life, we will treasure mercy and forgiveness, and others will see the fruit of it in our lives. If we, on the other hand, hold onto bitterness and resentment, we will be far from God and we will show our treasure is not with God, but ourselves.

 

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N.B.:  While I read comments to moderate them, I rarely respond to them. If I don’t respond to your comment directly, don’t assume I am unthankful for it. I appreciate it. But I want readers to feel free to ask questions, and hopefully, dialogue with each other. I have shared what I wanted to say, though some responses will get a brief reply by me, or, if I find it interesting and something I can engage fully, as the foundation for another post. I have had many posts inspired or improved upon thanks to my readers.

 

February 6, 2024

February 6, 2024 By
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Nheyob: : Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church (Dry Ridge, Ohio) – Stained glass, Eucharist/ Wikimedia Commons

Jesus offers himself in the eucharist as an act of love, giving us a chance to partake of him, and by doing so, find ourselves united with him and his life.  We are not meant to treat the eucharist as some sort of magical talisman which helps us achieve our petty desires, nor as something which reinforces our selfish, egotistical mode of engagement with the world, but rather, as a gift of love which helps us to become what we eat. That is, when we receive communion, we are to join in and share with the rest of creation the self-giving love we receive in the eucharist.

Due to Jesus’ presence in the eucharist, a presence which is sacramental, not physical, it is understandable we can and will revere him in it, but that was not why Jesus instituted the eucharist. He was clear at the Last Supper: we are to take, eat and drink, and by doing so, find ourselves receiving him and all that he is (God, man, creator, creature) into ourselves. While we can explore the eucharist in a variety of ways, from the symbols being presented to us by the way Jesus employed bread and wine as the vessels for communion, to what it means to talk about the real presence, we must not do so if it would have us ignore its primary purpose. Those who would do so most likely have misunderstood the mystery of the eucharist itself, and in doing so, as Fr. George Maloney warned us, end up objectifying what is not meant to be objectified (because the eucharist is Jesus, a divine person giving himself to us in an act of love, and not some object for us to control and manipulate):

If we fail to understand the mystery of the Eucharist as the fullness, not only of God’s self-emptying love for us, but as the fullness of the building up and completion of the entire plan of God’s salvation, then we truly do not understand the Eucharist and the communion of saints. We can easily “objectivize” the Eucharist as a form of presence in a “place” where Jesus became present to individuals who receive Him in a space and a time where Jesus is present in “this” host or inside that tabernacle “over there.” And we will miss the full mystery of the Eucharist and the Body of Christ.[1]

The eucharist is food, and we are meant to eat it. Just as we might store food for times of need, so some of the eucharist can be and will be reserved, and as it is revered, it can be and will be venerated. But, again, the reason why we reserve it is to be able to supply spiritual food to those who need it outside of the liturgy (such as those who are sick and shut in). It is the bread of life, Jesus himself, and by receiving Jesus, we enter into communion with him and all those he is in communion with: “It is also called communion because it makes us have communion with all the saints, so that what is lacking in one may be supplied from the common bounty of all the saints.” [2] When we try to place the eucharist apart from everyone else, and turn it into a thing only to be worshiped, or a thing meant for only a limited few people, we abandon the original purpose of the eucharist and by doing so, risk losing all that Christ intends us to have through it. The eucharist is given to us so that we can be built up by Christ, who will, through it, help us build connections with everyone else who is in the body of Christ.

We are called to be one body, that is, one “living organism” so to speak, which is not other than the body of Christ in history (that is, the church). As this organism has a place in history, it will have a beginning, and it will find its consummation at the end of the world. Until then, it will live and thrive as all organisms, do, which is, to change, dealing with the needs of the times. During every age of its existence, we will see it changing; if we did not, then the organism could no longer be said to be alive:

Still more because ‘my church’ was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history – the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the ‘mustard-seed’ and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is pan of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred. The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree.[3]

The eucharist, with Christ giving himself to us, is what brings us together; it gives us life so that through it, the church which it establishes can continue to thrive in history, changing in some aspects to meet the tides of time while remaining one and the same. It does so, not just because it brings us the personal presence of the God-man in history, nor because we find ourselves one with him, but also in and through him, we find ourselves partaking of the eternal life of God:

The first and greatest effect of the Eucharist is to bring us into a oneness of the trinitarian community of love. Through the intensification of our union with the risen Jesus, the Holy Spirit brings us into a new awareness of our being, also, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. [4]

This awareness should change us. When we experience and participate in divine love, we should find it working in and through us so that we become personal reflections of that love. Our lives will become more and more like Christ, revealing the self-emptying love of God to others. If we circumvent that change, if we try to counter what is being offered in the eucharist, participation in the divine life itself, and turn it into something which separates the divine life from the world by trying to transform the eucharist into the objectified presence of Christ which we keep to ourselves and use for our own selfish gain, we end up denying the full reality of the eucharist itself. This is why it is important for us to get the eucharist right, to reflect upon it in a way beyond the objectified manner which many treat it, so that we and everyone else can receive the eucharist in the right spirit, in the spirit of love. If not, we risk receiving the eucharist in an unworthy manner, in a manner which is contrary to love, and in doing so, risk all the consequences that follow when divine love meets our unlove and our attempt to justify our unlove through a misappropriation of the eucharist itself. That is, we will meet the consuming fire of God’s love which consumes all that us unlove, and experience the loss which it brings.

[1] George A. Maloney, SJ, Communion of Saints (Hauppauge, NY: Living Flame Press, 1988), 123.

[2] St. Albert the Great, On the Body of the Lord. Trans. Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, OP (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2017), 269.

[3] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Revised and Expanded Edition. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (Broadway, NY: William Morrow, 2023), 553 [Letter 306 to Michael Tolkien].

[4] George A. Maloney, SJ, Communion of Saints, 126

 

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N.B.:  While I read comments to moderate them, I rarely respond to them. If I don’t respond to your comment directly, don’t assume I am unthankful for it. I appreciate it. But I want readers to feel free to ask questions, and hopefully, dialogue with each other. I have shared what I wanted to say, though some responses will get a brief reply by me, or, if I find it interesting and something I can engage fully, as the foundation for another post. I have had many posts inspired or improved upon thanks to my readers.

December 27, 2023

December 27, 2023 By
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Sailko: Jonah As Depicted At The Vatican /  Wikimedia Commons

The book of Jonah demonstrates the difference between human conceptions of justice and how it influences the way people believe God’s justice should be like with the way God actually acts and promotes justice. We tend to expect retributive not restorative justice, while God always acts for the greater good, helping to restore, with mercy and grace, the justice or goodness which humans have denied. This difference is played out with Jonah; he thought his purpose was merely to condemn Nineveh, to tell them they were about to face God’s wrath for their sins and there was nothing they could do to prevent their destruction. The people of Nineveh heard what Jonah had to say, but hoped and thought their doom was not necessary if they changed their ways. They did penance, showing God their willingness to change their ways, asking God to give them another chance, that is, to be merciful towards them. God heard their pleas. Jonah had accomplished what God wanted him to accomplish, which was to effect such change, but Jonah did not understand, which is why he was upset with God:

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.  And he prayed to the LORD and said, “I pray thee, LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil. Therefore now, O LORD, take my life from me, I beseech thee, for it is better for me to die than to live.”  And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”  (Jonah 4:1-4 RSV).

Jonah was angry. Before God’s demonstration of mercy, he felt God’s pathos, God’s “outrage” for Nineveh’s sins. He felt called to preached to the people of Nineveh, to speak against their evils, and yet he didn’t want to do so; he struggled against his calling, but God  intervened, making sure he would not reject his calling. It is easy to understand why Jonah was angry. He felt that he had been duped by God. When he accepted his calling, he preached to the people of Nineveh, telling them that God’s judgment was about to bring about their destruction. He felt their doom was certain, and yet, what he preached did not seem to come to pass.

Jonah misunderstood the prophetic call; he was called to preach, and he was inspired by God’s pathos, but he did not understand the full pathos of God which included God’s love for all humanity. He did not comprehend God, but he thought he did, and so turned his apprehension into an absolute which it was not. He did not understand what he was doing was providing a conditional warning, indicating what would come to pass if things did not change; he assumed, as many assume with many similar types of prophecies in Scripture, it was not conditional but a necessary forgone conclusion. Christians continue to make the same kind of mistake when they read warnings about eternal perdition in Scripture, assuming that they represent what must come to pass instead of being a potential outcome for history. Prophetic warnings must be understood as conditional, indicating what will come to pass if things do not change; if they were not conditional, it would seem as such statements are a kind of gloating, an action contrary to the nature of God.

It would have been useless for Jonah to preach if Nineveh’s doom was certain. But, since it was conditional, God was able to use Jonah to change the situation. The people of Nineveh did not have to face  “karmic retribution” for what they had done because they repented and pleaded for God’s mercy, mercy which they received. That mercy gave them the grace they needed so they could be transformed into something better.  And, responding to Jonah, God revealed that God is looking to the world with great care and concern, as God loves everyone, and seeks every possible reason to show them mercy:

But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night.  And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:9-11 RSV).

God loves the world and those within it; it is through such love God made the world, and it with such love that God acts for the good of all creation. God’s love and mercy lies behind all of God’s interactions with the world. And as God is one, all of God’s actions, can be and should be seen as interconnected and one in such a way that, as Walter Kasper explained, “Mercy, of which we have just spoken, stands in an indissoluble inner connection with God’s other attributes, especially holiness, justice, fidelity, and truth.” [1] Denial of mercy is a denial of true justice, even as a denial of mercy leads to a denial of the absolute truth. For we know, it is love, not sacrifice, which God desires from us: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6 RSV). Taking up these words, Jesus indicated what they mean:

But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, `I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12-13 RSV).

Sadly, many Christians have ignored this; they read Scripture with a legalistic hermeneutic. Like Johan, they end up thinking God’s justice has little to no room for mercy or grace. They focus on sins, and how and why sins are condemned, making them desire to see sins condemned for their sin. They hate sin for a legalistic reason. They do not understand why God hates sin, which is simple: because sin hurts those whom God loves. Condemnations of sin in Scripture must not be read outsider of the greater mercy God intends to bestow upon sinners. God intends to bless them with grace so that they can find themselves being restored to what they should have been like instead of being destroyed, for in their destruction, sin, not God, wins. Condemnations are given as a foundation for restorative justice, and so must be understood in the same was as Jonah’s mission to Nineveh is to be understood: they are to help people see the ways they have strayed from true justice, to accept, that is, the judgment of God’s justice, so that they are open to and willing to change. Then, they will be ready to receive the grace they need. That is, the purpose of such condemnation is never the condemnation itself. This is exactly the point God is making in and with the story of Jonah, as J.R.R. Tolkien realized:

Incidentally, if you ever look at the Old Testament, and look at Jonah, you’ll find that the ‘whale’  — it is not  really said to be a whale but a big fish – is quite unimportant. The real point is that God is much more merciful than ‘prophets’, is easily moved by penitence, and won’t be dictated to even by high ecclesiastics whom he has himself appointed.[2]

Those who would use their authority to undermine mercy and grace, even if the authority is legitimate, even if what they say is based upon some element of the truth (like Jonah and his apprehension of some of God’s pathos), end up undermining the absolute truth because they reject God’s mercy.  Ecclesiastical authorities, just like the prophet Jonah, might possess some sort of legitimate authority, but that authority should be used to help them be pastors, looking for the good of everyone. But, as we also see with Jonah, God can and will work for the good of everyone even through flawed ministers, which is one of the reasons why Donatism leads to the wrong conclusions about the sacraments. God will not be controlled or dictated by those who try to isolate some portion of the truth and use it to reject the greater, absolute truth. Mercy will not be denied, no matter how much some would like to limit it. And, as the sign of Jonah is the sign of Jesus’ ministry, we must understand it is the sign of mercy and hope: no matter how much it seems some might be destined to perdition, God’s mercy will always be ready to offer a way out of it, so that everyone has a chance to be saved :

For our Lord and Savior willed to illuminate all places in order to have mercy on all. He came down from heaven to earth in order to visit the world.  He went down further to the lower world in order to illumine those who were being held in the lower world, in accordance with the statement of the prophet who said, “You who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, a light has arisen for you” [Isa 9:2]. [3]

God is willing to pardon to everyone so easily, which St. Isaac the Syrian (apropos of Nineveh), beautifully stated:

But we possess a greater sense of God and we have an elevated knowledge of Him. Indeed, we know Him as one who pardons, who is good, who is humble. Even for one good thing <done>, if only in thought or compunction, He pardons the sins of many years. And the sins of others He does not remember, lest they be associated <with ours>. But even those who have died in their sins and passed over already, He rends asunder the greater part of their sins by means of His mercy. [4]

Mercy, indeed, is greater than God’s condemnation, as it will always be. This is why, if someone embraces mercy, that mercy will bring them grace and salvation:

But since “mercy will be exalted over condemnation” and the gifts of clemency will surpass any just compensation, all the lives led by mortals and all different kinds of actions will be appraised under the aspect of a single rule. No charges will be brought up where, in acknowledgment of the Creator, works of compassion have been found. [5]

Those mercilessly judge and condemn others risk having their own judgment brought back against themselves. This is not to say they will be condemned for eternity. God’s mercy is for all, and those who repent, even those who once did not give or show it to others, can receive it, but in receiving it, they will change and become merciful themselves. Restorative justice can embrace anyone and help them become the person God intended them to be. This is not to say the process of becoming what God wants anyone to be will be easy; it will not. They will have to become purified as if through a trial of fire, but in the process, their every defilement will be cleansed and they will become pure at heart and ready for the beatific vision. The story of Jonah, the sign of Jonah, therefore is the sign of mercy, and those who are upset when they see mercy is being offered to others should consider the words God gave to Jonah. They should remember that God is always at work, trying to restore the fallen world so that it, and all those in it, can be made fit for the kingdom of God.

[1] Walter Kasper, Mercy. Trans. William Madges (New York: Paulist Press, 2013), 88-9.

[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Revised and Expanded Edition. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (Broadway, NY: William Morrow, 2023), 370 [Letter 196a to Michael George Tolkien].

[3] St. Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermons and Tractates on Matthew. Trans. Thomas P. Scheck (New York: Newman Press, 2018), 60 [Sermon 16].

[4] St. Isaac the Syrian, “The Third Part.” Trans. Mary T. Hansbury in An Anthology of Syriac Writers From Qatar in the Seventh Century. Ed. Mario Kozah, Abdulrahim Abu-Husayn, Saif Shaeen Al-Murikhi and Haya Al Thani (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2015), 387 [XI.5].

[5] St Leo the Great, Sermons. Trans. Jane Patricia Freeland CSJB and Agnes Josephine Conway SSJ (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1996), 47 [Sermon 11].

 

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July 14, 2023

July 14, 2023 By
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St. John of the Cross: Christ On The Cross / Wikimedia Commons

One of the most difficult elements of Christianity for us to understand, thanks to the way we have been led to think and consider ourselves as mere individuals in modern times, is the way Jesus, the incarnate God-man, is said to have made atonement for our sins. That is, we have a problem understanding his substitutionary atonement for us. It is not possible in a short space to properly respond to all the concerns people can and do bring up. However, it is possible to point to a particular framework which can and does help deal with the questions which can and do arise. That is, a brief response can be given which, if considered, should hopefully lead people to consider things on their own, to discern their own insights, and perhaps, give their own answers.

There are two types of questions Christians and non-Christians tend to ask about Christ’s atoning work. The first asks why, exactly, does God need to act in and through the incarnation, and with it the death of Jesus on the cross, in order to provide us forgiveness; can’t God just forgive us?  The second asks, if God, for some good reason, wants us to deal with the consequences of our actions, especially, therefore, our sins, why would God send Jesus to do so in our place? That is, God wants us to make amends for what we have done, why, then, do we find God circumventing that by having Jesus make those amends for us?

The second question often arises due to the way Christianity answers the first question. God has given us free will, and God wants to preserve our freedom. It would be rendered meaningless if our actions do not have consequences, that is, if God comes in and instantly undermines any particularly negative consequence for our actions. Freedom comes with responsibility, and so, by giving us freedom, God also gives us a great responsibility. That responsibility includes more than just experiencing the “karmic” result of our action. It means we should also bear the burden of dealing with and fixing whatever harm we have caused thanks to our actions. God could have easily forgiven us, taking care of the harm which we have caused, but that would render our choices, our lives, meaningless because we would be shown to have no moral responsibility of our own. God could have made it that there would be no karmic-like response to bad choices,  that we could cause harm in the world without being responsible for it, but that would have undermined all sense of justice in the world.

We bear responsibility for our actions and we should strive to make amends for whatever harm we have caused in the world. The problem is we often cannot fix what we have broken (as the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty indicates). This is not to say we should not try. We should do all that we can. But, in the end, we need help. We can’t heal all the wounds we have caused. We can’t fix the world all by ourselves. Thankfully, we are not in this world all by ourselves. We are in this together. We often can and do help each other with our particular skills and abilities.  What one of us cannot do by ourselves, we can with the help of another.  Contrary to what modern individualism suggests, our existence in the world is of an interdependent relationship with each other (and the rest of creation). What one person does will not only affect themselves, but will have an effect on everyone. This is why we can help each other, because we are interdependent; we are not monads out of reach from each other. Similarly, then, as we are interdependent with each other, we form a whole together, and through this, we actually bear the responsibility of making amends for what humanity, as a collective whole, has done wrong. Despite how much we have divided ourselves from each other, trying to set ourselves up as independent individuals, we are never going to be completely independent; we are persons in relation with each other, sharing a common heritage, a common nature, and we bear the burdens of each other thanks to our connections with each other.

Because we share in a common nature, we share with each other the burden of what humanity has done in and to the world (as exemplified by the notion of original sin). Similarly, what one person does in which serves to benefit the world, can and will provide something of positive value for the whole of humanity as well. We benefit from the good which we all do, even as we suffer from the evil which we all do. This line of thought leads us to the best way to engage and understand Christ’s “atoning sacrifice.” Jesus, the God-man, assumed human nature, and in doing so, shared with the rest of us our burdens, our responsibilities. He was able to take upon himself all that we cannot do, and thanks to the fact he is also a divine person, he is able do it for us. He wants us to share in the work, to cooperate with him, and so make amends the best we can, but then he offers the grace which we need to supplement and perfect our actions, to fulfill what we cannot fulfill ourselves. This is how he was able to take upon himself all the consequences of sin and bring them to their proper end. That accomplishment is represented to us in his resurrection from the dead; sin, and the consequences of sin, are shown to be transcended by him, and we are called to share in that transcendence in the eschatological resurrection from the dead. Thus, as Walter Kasper explains:

The idea of substitutionary atonement can be understood only in the context of this corporate understanding. On the basis of this common entanglement in sin and common subjection to death, no individual can brag about being able to pull him- or herself out of the morass with his or her own two hands. First and foremost, as mere mortals we are not able to restore life by our own power. [1]

This, then, provides the insight we need to understand the idea of substitutionary atonement. It is not that Jesus merely does something in our place, as if there were no connection between him and us. Rather, we must understand Jesus, in assuming human nature, takes on the common heritage and burden of humanity. The actions and value of human history is affirmed, and it is affirmed in the greatest way possible, as it is assumed by the divine person of God-the Son as he unites himself with us, taking the human condition upon himself and making it and its one with his person. And in doing so, he connects us with himself, allowing us to become one with him, so that his actions become, therefore, the actions of humanity, just as much as ours are; his work becomes our work, even as our work and actions, and feelings, become a part of his own person. Indeed, through our unity with him, our words and feelings can be transferred to him and spoken by him, which is one way to understand some of the words he spoke while on the cross:

Hence it is that our Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, transforming all the members of his body into himself, cried out amid the punishment of the cross (assuming the persona of those redeemed), saying what on one occasion he had uttered in the psalm: “My God, My God, look at me. Why have you abandoned me?” This expression, dearly beloved, represents a teaching, not a complaint. [2]

Thus, the key to understanding the atoning sacrifice, the key to understanding how Jesus can make satisfaction on our behalf, is interdependence. We are not entirely separated from each other. Rather, everyone, indeed, everything in creation, is interdependent with each other, and through that interdependence, form one collective whole, one participated unity.  It is a participated unity because it does not undermine the relative distinctions found in it, including, and especially, the personal distinctions of subjects found within that whole. That is, the unity of creation must not be understood as some sort of monistic unity which reduces everything and everyone down to one by annihilating all distinctions. With that as the foundation, we should understand the atonement better. The incarnation provides a way for God to help humanity, to engage the burdens of humanity, to offer grace, without subverting the value of creation itself because God does not do so in any way which renders our freedom meaningless. God wants to preserve our freedom, and with it, the freedom to act in such a way that our actions have meaning and significance. God works with humanity to make amends for what humanity has done together in the world, for the bad decisions and bad actions which we have taken upon ourselves throughout history. Our freedom, therefore, is not only preserved, but the responsibility which comes from it is not undermined, but rather, reinforced by the incarnation, even as we are provided a way by which we can truly repair the harm which we have caused instead of suffering unending trials and tribulations trying to fix which we cannot fix on our own.

To give our lives meaning by making our actions have real impact in the way they shape history and the world around us is important. But it is also important that we are given the opportunity to make amends and make reparations for whatever harm we cause to others (or even ourselves).  It is fitting, then, that with the assumption of humanity, the God-man, Jesus, is able to fulfill our responsibility for us, that is, confirm that what justice expects of us as a whole can and will be fulfilled by us. God joins in and acts in and with us, as a human, the whole of human history, indeed, due to the interdependent nature of humanity with creation, the whole of created history. He makes amends as one of us, not because God is angry and wants to punish us for our sins, but because God loves us and wants the best for us, including, the preservation of our freedom while also having a way to make reparations for that freedom itself.

[1] Walter Kasper, Mercy. Trans. William Madges (New York: Paulist Press, 2013), 74.

[2] St Leo the Great, Sermons. Trans. Jane Patricia Freeland CSJB and Agnes Josephine Conway SSJ (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1996), 295 [Sermon 67].

 

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June 9, 2023

June 9, 2023 By
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Lawrence OP : The Divine Name / flickr

Many Christians say that anyone who has a different understanding of God than the one they have must worship or follow a different God. To make that point, they ask how could people believe in the same deity if they say different, indeed, contradictory things about God. This is a bad line of argument. If that line of reasoning was valid, it would end up leading to all kinds of similar conclusions, such as, historians who believe in two different, indeed, contradictory things about George Washington must not really be talking about the same man. We can believe something false about someone or something; in doing so, we are still talking about a particular subject or object, even when we end up being wrong about it. Similarly, if a different belief or conception about a particular subject or object means that it is ultimate a different subject or object being discussed, then, ultimately, there would be no way for anyone to be wrong when talking about various subjects.

If we must have the same conception of God to have the same God, no one will have the same God. Everyone has their own unique experience with God, and with it, all kinds of unique understandings about God which no one else will have. Our apprehension of God grows in relation to our experience of God’s work in our lives or what we see of God’s work in the world. Each of those works, in their own way, represents a way we can come to name God. Each of those names indicates a way we have come to know God (in a relative, not absolute manner).

God is transcendent. God’s essence must not to be confused with the energies or works of God, though that essence is proven to exist in and through those energies, which is why in and through them, we can know something about God and what we could call God’s character. Nonetheless, the more we apprehend God, the more we should realize how transcendent God is, and so, how much God transcends what it is we have apprehended. We must accept that the transcendental essence of God will only be comprehended by God – that is, “none know God with innermost knowledge save God.”[1] Only God will know God in the absolute sense, and so, if one must have the same, and correct, conception of God in order to believe in God, only God can believe in and know God.

Our experience, our lives, our ability to interpret that experience, can and will lead us to all kinds of interpretations of God. Some understandings will be better than others. Some, perhaps, will be quite terrible, especially if what they use to understand God is mostly the reified statements others make of God. And yet, behind all such conceptions of God, even those which are bad or even erroneous, there are apprehensions of God, apprehensions, if we can ascertain them, which will help us better understand God. Each apprehension of God, while it might need some purification to discern it, can be used together with every other apprehension of God, serving as complements to each other. Together, they can better point to the absolute truth of God (through a kind of triangulation). Thus, even those which seem to contradict each other, when misunderstood, can be seen to work together and help us approach God better. It is like taking two different people at different parts of the United States, one on the West Cost, one on the East, asking them where to find Chicago. They would point in different directions, and yet both would be correct. If we took the answer to lie in the pointer, and not where they were pointing to, we would have to claim there was a contradiction, but if we understood their response properly, we would be able to see how they work together and point to the same place. Thus, when studying and learning from others about God, we must understand the context to better appreciate what they have to tell us, but also, to see how different statements about God which seem contradictory could end up working together and end up being not so contradictory after all. Each discussion about God represents an attempt to come to know God, and though what is said can be different in each discussion, they can still end up talking about the same God, for they are all attempts to point to and represent the ultimate truth, the ultimate reality, which is found in and with God, indeed, which is God.

Thus, while the fullness of revelation is disclosed to us in and through Jesus Christ, we can still discern God’s work with others, and through them and what they tell us about God, learn about God. Even if we believe they are mistaken about many things about God because they have not engaged or believed the fullness of revelation of God which we received, that doesn’t mean what they are talking about is another God. After all, have we not, in our own spiritual life, found ourselves coming to know God differently, realizing many times we were mistaken about God? Did we believe in a different God when we did so? No.

God is one, and is always at work in the world. That is, God is at work with everyone. God is engaging humanity in its history, interacting with all the nations of the world, providing the means to each of them to interact with and learn from God’s engagement with them. We can find people within every culture, within every religious tradition, seeking after and engaging God, though each are doing so in a different way, some, obviously, better than others. If we ignore God’s work with them, if we try to make God exclusive to ourselves, that is exclusive to Christianity, not only will it be able to be proven we are wrong about God (as  Scripture consistently shows God is at work throughout all creation), our understanding of God will end up being deficient, as Roger Bacon understood:

For this reason the philosophizing Christian can unite many authorities and various reasons and very many opinions from other writings besides the books of the unbelieving philosophers, provided they belong to philosophy, or are common to it and theology, and must be received in common by unbelievers and believers. If this be not done, there will be no perfecting, but much loss. [2]

Indeed, it can be said that the philosophers from various cultural traditions helped their people come to a better understanding of God, making sure they got away from some of the errors found in their own cultural or religious traditions, especially the kind of errors which develop when cultural myths are misunderstood and overly literalized. The philosophers, and of course, the religious traditions which they inherited and refined, show us one way humanity has always been working with and seeking to understand one and the same God.  They also warn us not to reify our current understanding of God in such a way to put a limit on God, a limit which cuts God from divine transcendence. If we don’t do that, we end up falling for idolatry. The sin of idolatry lies in the way it transforms human apprehension of God to a claim of comprehension, and in doing so, ends up limiting and undermining the divine nature. That is, it turns God, who is the absolute, universal good into some particular, limited good. And the error which creates for such idolatry, as Henry of Ghent explained, comes by the way we predicate such limiting notions to God as being absolutes when we hear the name God invoked:

Hence, the fact that idol worshipers among the people claimed that God is something by his essence and in actuality, did not come from some knowledge that they had about God’s essence or existence, but from the faith they had in the philosophers, who knew that about God through arguments from creatures, as was stated above. They also had form them a notion of what is expressed by this name “God.” And, therefore, they erred in the determination of what they understood by the name. For each of them claimed that God is that which he preferred to other things –some the sky, others the sun, still others the moon – and in that way different people spoke in different ways, as Augustine says in book three of On Christian Doctrine. They would never have done this if they had truly known something about whether God is. For whatever of the divine nature is known to be, its being is not known except by knowledge that it surpasses everything that is found in a creature. [3]

It is important to recognize the transcendence of God, and to keep that transcendence at the forefront of our engagement with God. What we say about God can be said to be true when we keep it on the level of a relative truth based upon our apprehension of God through God’s works or energies, but it becomes erroneous when we try to turn that relative truth into the absolute truth itself. All such relative truths are true insofar as they participate and is one with the absolute truth which transcends it. When we recognize the relative truth as relative truth, we can speak about the truth through its relative presentation because of its connection to the absolute truth. And, this is important, because the absolute truth is something which we cannot comprehend, yet the relative truth often is something which we can, and so it explains how we can have some comprehension of the truth even if we cannot comprehend the absolute truth itself. Similarly, this connection between the two is necessary, for by recognizing how the relative truth relates to the absolute truth we stop ourselves from falling for relativism because there is an ultimate truth which lies behind and connects all relative truths, an ultimate truth which also can be used to show how some claims about the truth are false.  It is also this connection which allows us to engage different apprehensions, different experiences, about God and use them to work together to bring about a better understanding of God.  For God is at work in and throughout the world. Different people engage God differently. They have different levels or kinds of revelation or apprehension of God which they use to discus God, and if we can correlate them properly, we can better understand God and how God is at work in the world and keep us away from the idolatrous error of exclusivism which denies God’s universal work with the world.  God’s work with others them means they have something to share us, something which we can learn from, and with it, come to understand God just that much better, even as then they can learn from us and come to know God better as well. Indeed, though the fullness of revelation lies in the incarnation, the incarnation brings us together as one humanity, showing that it is by coming together we will best understand and appreciate that revelation.

 

[1] Al-Ghazālī, The Niche of Lights. Trans. David Buchman (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1998), 17.

[2] Roger Bacon, Opus Majus. Part I. trans. Robert Belle Burke (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), 74.

[3] Henry of Ghent, Henry of Ghent’s Summa: The Question on God’s Existence and Essence (Articles 21 – 24). Trans. Jos Decorte and Roland J Teske, SJ (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 203 [Art 24 Q3].

 

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May 7, 2023

May 7, 2023 By
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Schuppi: St. Photina From Scripture / Wikimedia Commons

One of the ways early Christians looked at Scripture was for the way it should be read, not as mere positive history, not as some simple text to be read literally, but as a text which gives us all kinds of theological truths through various symbols inserted into the narratives themselves. That is, they did not take Scripture as a simple history book. They did not believe that everything which was written down happened exactly in the way it was described; they understood, indeed, that various contradictions in historical narratives indicated that this was not meant to be the way it was viewed. This, of course, was normal in the ancient world, not just for Christians, but for ancient historians in general. As many particular details were unavailable to them, they had to be supplied by the writers themselves. Thus, history was more about giving a general presentation of what happened funneled by the historian’s creative attempt to reconstruct the event. What they wrote about was, in general, were believed to have happened, but just not in the precise way the historians recorded those events. The historian, therefore, often interpreted the events and used their own interpretation in creating their narratives, hoping to lead their audience to understand the meaning of history the same way they did. Scripture often followed the same methodology; thus, if what is written is not entirely factual, it was not because the writers were intending to deceive their reader, but rather, they wanted to present various truths, especially theological truths, by their reading of history. This makes what they wrote more akin to myth than it is empirical history. This is why they wrote histories with symbols and with dialogues which might not have been engaged the way they were written down; what the writers were interested in doing is given a broad outline of the events and then supplying the means to find the truth which can be discerned through the event itself. We can read the story of the Samaritan woman (St Photina) as being an example of this.

St. Photina, the early Christians recognized, was a real woman, and beyond what was described in Scripture, she had an important role in the early Christian community. And while it is true that we can see, even in the apostolic times, women were slowly being sidelined, that their voice was being more and more ignored (if not outright suppressed), the way they had been lifted up and promoted by Jesus made sure they could not be quickly silenced. Thus, we find that they had a more vital role in the early community than they would have just a few centuries later. The trajectory of their subjugation and silence began during the apostolic era, but it would not be at its worst until much later. This is why we can find many important women, like St. Photina, capable of having a role in evangelization, even preaching. The fact that she held such a role should not have us ignore the way she, and other women, found themselves being sidelined, as if they were second class citizens in the church (despite the way Paul said differences in gender should not be seen in Christ). Nonetheless, while all of this is true, Scripture does not tell us her later story, only the way she first met Christ. How Scripture explains that meeting is full of symbols, so much so, that it is obvious it is meant more to express theological truths than it is to elevate the status of Photina:

There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:7-14 RSV).

The theological truths connected to her meeting with Christ were often emphasized by early commentators as they saw her representing the way fallen humanity was often trapped by seeking after and embracing mere material sensations. The Samaritan woman’s five husbands which were really not husbands were often believed to represent the five senses and the way our souls have been seduced by them so as to ignore our spiritual heritage. We can see an example of this tradition in St. Augustine’s Tractates on John:

But since we are hemmed in by what follows, “And he whom you now have is not your husband,” it appears to me that we can more easily take the five senses of the body to be the five former husbands of the soul. For when one is born, before he can make use of the mind and reason, he is ruled only by the senses of the flesh. In a little child, the soul seeks for or shuns what is heard, and seen, and smells, and tastes, and is perceived by the touch. It seeks for whatever soothes, and shuns whatever offends, those five senses. At first, the soul lives according to these five senses, as five husbands; because it is ruled by them. But why are they called husbands? Because they are lawful and right: made indeed by God, and are the gifts of God to the soul. The soul is still weak while ruled by these five husbands, and living under these five husbands; but when she comes to years of exercising reason, if she is taken in hand by the noble discipline and teaching of wisdom, these five men are succeeded in their rule by no other than the true and lawful husband, and one better than they, who both rules better and rules for eternity, who cultivates and instructs her for eternity. For the five senses rule us, not for eternity, but for those temporal things that are to be sought or shunned. But when the understanding, imbued by wisdom, begins to rule the soul, it knows now not only how to avoid a pit, and to walk on even ground — a thing which the eyes show to the soul even in its weakness; nor merely to be charmed with musical voices, and to repel harsh sounds; nor to delight in agreeable scents, and to refuse offensive smells; nor to be captivated by sweetness, and displeased with bitterness; nor to be soothed with what is soft, and hurt with what is rough. For all these things are necessary to the soul in its weakness.[1]

While John was telling us about an event in Jesus’ life, it was understood that he wrote it to highlight theological truths, not mere facts. The readers were meant to understand not everything was to be taken literally. He was writing with symbols, symbols they were meant to interpret so as to discern the transcendent truth(s) revealed in Photina’s meeting with Jesus. He expected his audience to wrestle with the text, and not take it at its face value. When we do as John wanted, we will probably see that there are a wide variety of interpretations which we can come up from what he wrote. Perhaps that is also the point, especially here. We are told we should be seeking living water, that is the Spirit, and the Spirit is not going to be trapped by the mere letter of the text; trying to impose only one interpretation upon the narrative is to make the mistake that those who engage a simple literal take of Scripture makes. That is, we would limit what the Spirit can and will reveal through the text itself. We should expect there will be many complementary interpretations of the text, each using the carefully crafted telling of the story to lead us to transcendent truths which cannot be fully put into words. This highlights why the text is best understood as being mythic and not positive history, for myth always is about serving as a revelation of the truth in a way which transcends a simple literal reading of the tale. Early Christians understood this, which is why they were focused more on the allegorical interpretation of Scripture than its literal meanings.

Today, we might not be as interested in allegorical interpretations of Scriptural texts as many ancient Christians were; we might be more interested in positive history, that is, in discerning the historical facts behind the narrative, but we must not let ourselves become trapped by such an interest, thinking it can provide all that we should ever want to learn from the texts themselves. If we do so, we will find ourselves struggling to find out what the text could provide us, how it can lead us to the living water which we need, the nourishment which satisfies our spiritual needs. What is important are the theological truths which can be apprehended in and from the texts. Discerning the historical facts which helped in the creation of the story certainly can offer us one means to do so, to be sure, but it does so only to a limited degree. Every interpretive scheme has much to offer, but they work better in unison than apart. This is why modern Biblical criticism and its questions should not be ignored, just as ancient ways of engaging Scripture should also not be ignored.

While Scripture does not merely give us a presentation of empirical facts, we should not take that to mean the text is pure fiction. Rather, we must understand Scripture to be historical myth, where history is used to create narratives which point to those great, transcendent truths which will help nourish the soul. Biblical criticism will help us discern the history, and other interpretative schemes will be able to point out the truths the Spirit can and will provide us from the text if we but let it

[1] St. Augustine, Tractates on John in NPNF1(7): 104 [Tractate XV.21]

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N.B.:  While I read comments to moderate them, I rarely respond to them. If I don’t respond to your comment directly, don’t assume I am unthankful for it. I appreciate it. But I want readers to feel free to ask questions, and hopefully, dialogue with each other. I have shared what I wanted to say, though some responses will get a brief reply by me, or, if I find it interesting and something I can engage fully, as the foundation for another post. I have had many posts inspired or improved upon thanks to my readers.

December 9, 2021

December 9, 2021 By

Mr.TinDC: Constitution In The National Archives /flickr

Two different, but similar, temptations turn us away from the needs of the present moment. One is to have us dream about some utopian future, thinking we can and will produce the perfect society. Such futurism, of course, is denied by those who feel the world and everything in it is falling apart, becoming worse by the day, so that instead of looking to the future, such people look to the past for their ideal society, creating a romantic vision of what they believe things were like, saying that we should find a way to return to the past if we want social perfection.  Both temptations turn us away from the present moment, from the good found in it, so that we either look forward or backward to find solutions to the problems at hand, of ideals which we think we can enact instead of dealing with them with realistic expectations. While both temptations have elements of truth involved with them, so that we can and should expect some of our problems to be solved (after all, we have seen how science has cured many diseases), and we can learn from the wisdom of the past and how they dealt with similar problems, we must recognize that the root problems of the human situation such as selfishness and greed will remain with us until the end of time.  Any belief we can do away with them  is pure fantasy. It seems to me that it is the temptation to reconstruct the past and use that reconstruction to impose upon the present an unreal expectation which is the most common of the two temptations; futurists which look to and ponder the future with hope at least understand such purity has yet to exist and realize if it is to exist, it will require evolutionary change to get there, making them less likely to expect that they can instantly turn the present into their ideal society. It is this temptation, this desire for some ideal past, that can also create the greatest harm in the present, because the present has situations and contexts which could not and would not be understood by the way things were in the past. This means that those who try to recreate the past will end up demolishing and destroying the present and all those situations which cannot neatly fit with the past they want to recreate, and in doing so, there is likely to be much violence, both from those who try to impose their order as well as those who resist it knowing that it cannot and will not work in the present. This is exactly the problem which lies with those, either in religion, or in politics, try to impose some sort of “originalism” or false “tradition” as the means by which  religious or political decisions are to be engaged.

J.R.R. Tolkien understood the problem of originalism in religion. His criticism of those who try to appeal to some form of primitivism in the faith and impose it upon others applies to those who try to follow the same sort of primitivism in secular society. The past is always going to be a construct, and so how we interpret the past will not be the past as it really was, but the past filtered through our own desires. This means that we are projecting ourselves and our wishes upon the past, using the past as a cover to hide that fact. But, as Tolkien also pointed out, even if we could properly reconstruct what things were in the past, it is never good to try to impose the way things were in the present situation because our context is much different. Thus, he said, the church is like a tree; it has its foundation as a seed, but now it grown with a trunk and limbs; it would be wrong to try to take the tree back to its origin,  to compare the tree as it is now as with the way it was in its foundation and demand us to become as it was when it was just a seed:

The ‘protestant’ search backwards for ‘simplicity’ and directness – which, of course, though it contains some good or at least intelligible motive, is mistaken and in vain. Because ‘primitive Christianity’ is now and in all spite of all ‘research’ will ever remain largely unknown; because ‘primitiveness’ is no guarantee of value, and is and was in great part a reflection of ignorance. Grave abuses were as much an element in Christian ‘liturgical’ behaviour from the beginning as now. (St. Paul’s strictures on eucharistic behaviour are sufficient to show this!). Still more because ‘my church’ was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history – the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the ‘mustard-seed’ and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is a part of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred. The wise may know it began with a seed, but it is vain to try to dig it up, for it is no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now resides in the Tree. [1]

It is not, of course, Protestants alone who fall for the temptation to seek after an ideal “primitive” church; it is the root problem of so many so-called “traditionalists,” Catholic and Orthodox alike, who do not understand the living dynamic of tradition. The church has always been changing to deal with the context in which it is found; in doing so, there will always be good which it produces, and bad which will cause  it problems, bad which will need to be excised as the church continues to develop until  the end of time. Tradition, and the teachings and wisdom found in it, can and should be engaged, but it should be engaged with prudence, looking to see how it works within the present context, how it can be adapted while remaining true to itself. This is what keeps tradition from being legalism.

The problems which prevent us from finding an original, pure form of the faith which can be imposed upon the faithful today are the same problems which underlie those who claim to follow “originalism” in a political context, such as those who embrace “originalism” in the United States legal community. Once again, they try to create an ideal past, an ideal, original “interpretation,” of the texts which they claim to follow and use; but the reality is, there was no one interpretation, no one original intent; one can find a diversity of beliefs, practices, wishes and desires for the United States by the so-called “founding fathers” and no matter how one can try to do so, their diversity cannot be simplified to one single position, one single interpretation to use in judgments. Likewise, it is clear that many of the “founding fathers,” like Jefferson, did not think the United States should limit itself in its understanding based upon what they said and did, but understood things would evolve, and interpretations and legislations would have to change, so much so, they even believed that the Constitution would have to be rewritten. Originalism, therefore, ignores and rejects many of the opinions and understandings of the “founding fathers,” and in doing so, shows itself to be self-contradictory, similar to the way “sola scriptura” is self-contradictory because the principle of “sola scriptura” is not found in Scripture. What those who follow “originalism” do is exactly the same as those who try to recreate a pristine primitive version of the church to follow: they ignore all counter-evidence to their own interpretation so that they can impose upon the present their own desires.

Originalism, in its religious form (so-called “traditionalism” which tries to reify tradition through an overly-simplified and imaginary interpretation of it) as well as in its secular form (such as found in American conservative circles) is a farce; it is a rhetorical device which hides the truth from those who use it, that is, the truth that they are imposing on their own present ideology upon society while falsely claiming its source is to be found in the past instead of themselves. They can and will cite examples from tradition to support their view, but they will do so ignoring the greater, more complex tradition, and often they will do so through equivocation (because the meaning of words have changed, and they will forget that as they interpret what was written in the past). Thus, Michael Dorf was right in saying, “ In the most hotly contested cases that come before the Supreme Court, arguments rooted in original meaning typically serve a rhetorical function. Justices invoke them to justify decisions taken on other, ideological, grounds”.[2] Indeed, it can be said that it was a racist ideology which served as the foundation for present day American “originalism.” Social justice developments in the twentieth century angered many of those in power, and so, as a response to Supreme Court decisions, they created their originalism as a response to deny what the Supreme Court decided. Thus, as Stern pointed out, originalism was formed by racists upset that their racist policies were no longer supported by the Supreme Court:

All of which raises an important question: Where, exactly, did originalism come from? Its proponents frequently assert that it is a reaction to freewheeling liberal judicial activists imposing their own views on the Constitution through an approach often called “living constitutionalism.” In a groundbreaking article published in American Political Science Review, however, University of Chicago Ph.D. candidate Calvin TerBeek argues that modern originalism arose out of the backlash to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision prohibiting public school segregation. TerBeek’s research—which spanned 14 archival collections, thousands of newspapers and magazines, and interviews with key players—all points in one direction: Originalism has fundamentally racist roots.[3]

And so, through his analysis of how originalism formed, and how originalism works, Stern noted that it continues to be a subjective theory used to justify the ideological desires of various conservatives:

The politics of it never change. You can go from original intent to original public meaning, but the same politics are always driving the bus. It’s not an objective theory. It’s a deeply, inherently political one. And what that move did more than anything else, theoretically, was give conservatives a wider terrain of space to have a more proactive originalism, one that was not simply interested in cutting down Brown and the Warren court but also laying the groundwork for a more muscular, proactive conservative jurisprudence. [4]

This is why we find ourselves in a dangerous situation in the United States when so many Supreme Court Justices claim to be originalists. At best, they are trying to recreate a past which did not exist, falling for the failure of all those who engage some sort of primitive idealism, but at worst, they are nihilistic relativists who know that originalism is self-defeating but use it as an excuse to justify their own rejection of the authentic, living tradition of the state. Certainly, we have to take what they say with as much charity as possible, so we must respond to the way they describe their originalism, when they do so, such as when Amy Coney Barrett explained what it meant for her:

Barrett, who declared herself a “constitutional originalist” had no trouble answering: “In English that means that I interpret the Constitution as a law, and that I interpret its text as text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. So that meaning doesn’t change over time and it’s not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it.”[5]

The problem of Barrett’s originalism is that it leaves us with a hermeneutical problem; the context she comes from is vastly different from the past, so her reading will never be the same as those who read the texts when they were produced. She is infusing her own views upon the past, just as so-called “traditionalists” impose their readings of tradition to justify their own ideological perspectives and reject the church and its leaders when  they do not follow their ideology. Thus, there was no one meaning for the Constitution when it was ratified, just as there was no one reading and understanding of Scripture by the saints, and so what she, and others like her, do is selectively read the past, take what they want from it, and use it to justify their desired conclusion. And as so many so-called “traditionalists” do not understand the hermeneutic problem and the way they project their views unto the past, it is quite possible, indeed, probable Barrett meant what she said, but she is not conscious of what is going on in her readings of the past. It is an ignorance of the past which allows for this, the ignorance which Tolkien said lies in those who try to follow some form of primitivism. This is why many who respond to Barrett, and other so-called originalists, just as those who respond to so-called traditionalists, will follow their own example and respond to them in kind, showing them the tradition and interpretations they have ignored. Harry Litman says, within the American legal system, this means everyone has become, in some sense, an “originalist”:

The terms of the battle will be the determinative sense of “original meaning.” I expect that we will see Kagan and others on the left battle with the majority on the originalist playing field, but with arguments, derived from cases such as Bostock, that highlight the evolved social understanding of the import of fixed constitutional terms such as equal protection and due process. Those terms, it is commonly agreed, set out unchanging principles; but social understanding progresses over time in a way that necessarily alters our best judgments—and a court’s—of which practices those terms reach. A court must apply original meaning, the Constitution’s unchanging principles. Yet it can’t ignore changes—or to use a dreaded term, evolutions—in social understanding of what those principles require in practice. So we may all be originalists now, but not in the way many originalists themselves might imagine it.[6]

Litman is wrong in trying to equate those who respond to the originalists with being originalists themselves. Responding to them in kind, showing how faulty their originalism is, only serves to overcome their ideology. This is because it shows that their interpretation and conclusions do not necessarily follow what they claim to hold, that is, the original opinions of those who established the Constitution. By doing this, their critics are not embracing originalism, but offer its repudiation through deconstruction, just as those who engage the full diversity of religious tradition and learn from it are not to be confused with the so-called “traditionalists.” The critics of originalism and so-called “traditionalism” do not disagree with the interest in and examination of the original context and interpretation, but they see and understand, when that is done, the original context itself denies itself as being a limit to be imposed upon future generations. Those who accept the way things change and develop follow tradition because the origin of all tradition came from such change and development, while those who try to halt such development in the name of tradition end up being its ultimate critic and denier. This is why originalism (and so-called “traditionalism”) is a farce, for it must reject the method and mode of engaging the world found in tradition to form its reified presentation of tradition itself. But this is also why those who do this kind of criticism are not originalists themselves (just as others who embrace tradition are not “traditionalists”), because by following the method and expectation of the past, they allow for proper development and change, to make sure that the needs of the present are met instead of cutting them off because they could not have been seen or understood in the past.

[1] J.R..R. Tolkien, “Letter 306: To Michael Tolkien” in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 394.

[2] Michael C. Dorf, “A Question By Justice Thomas During The Second Amendment Argument Inadvertently Exposes A Weakness Of His Originalist Philosophy” in Verdict (11-10-2021).

[3] Mark Joseph Stern, “The Conservative Movement’s Favorite Legal Theory Is Rooted In Racism” in Slate (4-06-2021).

[4] Mark Joseph Stern, “The Conservative Movement’s Favorite Legal Theory Is Rooted In Racism.”

[5] Mark Ira Kaufman, “Trust Me…. I’m An Originalist” in Daily Kos (12-05-2021).

[6] Harry Litman, “Originalism, Divided” in The Atlantic (5-21-2021).

 

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November 17, 2021

November 17, 2021 By

Cbrenner21: Field Hospitals From World War I / Wikimedia Commons

The church is full of the spiritually sick and infirm, that is, sinners. As Pope Francis explained, it can be and should be seen as a field hospital. We are its patients. The church, with the graces given to it, has the spiritual draught that not only can heal us, but give us strength to become better than before. However, our sickness is not just our own. When we are sick, we can infect others with our spiritual disease. It can form a spiritual pandemic, leading to many suffering from the same malady as we do. Indeed, just as with physical illness, those who come in contact with the sick can find themselves infected by the illness they have come to cure. Even doctors can get sick, and sometimes, even though they are sick, their patients need them so much they still continue their work despite their illness.

Within the church, many of those who have been given a special charism to serve the needs of the community, and so have been granted special authority in order to make sure they can fulfill their role, not only are sick themselves, but often, their illness is worse than others because of the way they abuse the authority given to them. Priests and bishops can be great sinners. Nonetheless, the medicine they have to offer can still help those who receive it because it does not rely upon the character and quality of those who offer it to be effective. But yet, when such doctors are spiritually sick, that is, when they are great sinners, it should not surprise us that many will flee from them and seek aid elsewhere. This is a problem older than the institutional church itself. We find throughout history that those who have been given some spiritual authority, those who have been given various elements of grace to share with others, often are the ones who need it most. Instead of taking it in, cooperating with it, they resist it themselves. Thus, many today who have what we need are the cause of many of our problems, as their sin, their sickness, spreads quickly throughout the church, causing many to follow after them in their sickness, leading many astray, hurting everyone as a result of their sin. This is why we must be cautious. We must respect the charism and grace which is offered, but we must not do so in such a way as to fall for clericalism. This is why Jesus, when dealing with spiritual leaders of his day, acknowledged their charism, but warned his audience not to be like them:

Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;  so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.  They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long,  and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues,  and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men” (Matt. 22:1-7 RSV).

Jesus, in saying this, has shown us the proper response to Donatism. We do not have to ignore the problems which exist within the institutional church. We can and should recognize that many ecclesiastical authorities are causing trouble for the church itself. However, we should also realize that the grace of God is greater. God is still at work in and through them, offering us the spiritual medicine which we need. God, of course, is not bound by those gifts and the normative ways in which they come, that is, God is not bound by the sacraments. However, we can and should recognize that if we receive them, we will receive grace, despite the character of those who give them to us. We do not have to worry about grace. Those who cause scandal and turn people away because of what they say or do will find that the words Jesus said concerning the spiritual leaders of his day applies to them as well:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.  You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (Matt. 22:23-4 RSV).

Law, justice, mercy and faith should be what is promoted by those who have been given the spiritual charism which places them in positions of authority in the institutional church. The law should be the greater law, the law of love, the law which tells us to love God and to love everything and everyone through our love for God. Justice should promote harmony, a harmony which promotes, as it were, the middle path between extremes; if we truly love God, we would work for such justice, and find ourselves praising God in and through our promotion of justice:

St Dionysios the Areopagite says that God is praised through justice. This is true, for without justice all things are unjust and cannot endure. Justice is sometimes called discrimination: it establishes the just mean in every undertaking, so that there will be no falling short due to over-frugality, or excess on account of greed. For even if over-frugality and greed appear to be opposites, the one below and the other above justice, yet they both push us in some way towards injustice. Whether a line is convex or conclave, it still deviates from what is straight; and to whichever side the balance tilts, that side gets the better of the other side. [1]

Mercy, of course, works with the law of love and justice, making sure that those who want to overcome their sins, overcome their injustice, will have the grace needed to do so. For without such grace, without such mercy, many who would otherwise repent would feel so burdened by their sins that they will be overcome by despair. Then, thinking they can do nothing to fix the problems they have created, they will not try to do so. Mercy, and the forgiveness which comes with it, allows them to see that their efforts can be fruitful, that they can indeed repent and change their ways and work for justice; they will be shown that even if they are not capable of doing it all themselves, they will find that grace will supply what is necessary so that their work for justice, their work for reparation, can lead to their own justification.

When love, mercy, grace, and justice are promoted, people will have a reason for their faith; those priests who follow these principles,  therefore, are among those who help us keep our faith despite whatever sickness is currently infecting the institutional church. This was J.R.R. Tolkien’s understanding; he said that all the experience he had with bad priests was overcome by the charity of one imperfect priest,  Fr. Morgan:

I have met snuffy, stupid, undutiful, conceited, ignorant, hypocritical, lazy, tipsy, hardhearted, cynical, mean, grasping, vulgar, snobbish, and even (at a guess) immoral priests “in the course of my peregrinations’; but for me one Fr. Francis outweighs them all, and he was an upper-class Welsh-Spaniard Tory, and seemed to some just a pottering old snob and gossip. He was – and he was not. I first learned charity and forgiveness from him; and in the light of it pierced even the ‘liberal’ darkness out of which I came, knowing more about ‘Bloody Mary’ than the Mother of Jesus – who was never mentioned except as an object of wicked worship by the Romanists. [2]

Tolkien did not discount all the evils found within the church; he knew and understood how the failures of priests and bishops, and others with spiritual authority, have caused many to lose their faith. He did not disagree with those who were critical of such abuses; he only thought that we must look beyond them and look for those who best represent the faith in action, those who follow justice and mercy, because it is in and through them we see the full reality of Christ’s teachings and what they have to offer if they are properly lived out. Tolkien, in this instance, was in agreement with Dorothy Day:

What I feel about the institutional church for instance. For me it is the place in the slum, in our neighborhood, where it is possible to be alone, to be silent, to wait on the Lord. The sacraments mean much to me. The daily bread we ask for is there. To sit in the presence of the Sun of Justice is healing, though I have to force myself to remain in fatigue and fullness and misery often. But the healing is there too. No matter how corrupt the Church may become, it carries within it the  seeds of its own regeneration. To read the lives of the saints has always helped me. We’ve had corrupt popes and bishops, down through the ages, but a St. Francis, a St. Benedict, a St. Vincent de Paul, a Charles de Foucauld will keep on reminding me of the primary of the spiritual. Peter Maurin used to tell us to study history through the lives of the saints. [3]

The reform of the church is always to be found within the seeds of grace which have been given to, or placed within the church. Those who cooperate with grace will seek to constantly reform themselves and the institutional church. They will become the saints of the present age, the saints needed for the present day. Through them, we will see that the charisms given to the church can be effective, for through them, we see many great sinners become great saints, doing work which transcends our expectations. When we come in contact with such saints, we will see the value of grace, for we see the practical effect of such grace in their lives. That is, when we see their transformation, it will be impossible for us to deny the effectiveness of the spiritual medicine which is offered by the church. We need the spiritual food which it offers. And so, even though many within the institutional church will cause scandal, because what the church offers is grace, and grace is greater, grace will offer us the means to transcend such scandal and work to make sure the church itself is put back on track. We are all called by the grace given to us to do this. We are all called to be saints. We might now be sick, but hopefully, when we come to the field hospital, we will receive the medicine we need so that, with it, we will not only become better, but we will also be able to help others, in and outside of the church, receive the grace which they need for their own spiritual health.

[1] St. Peter of Damaskos, “Twenty Four Discourses” in in The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Volume Three. Trans. G.E.H. Palmer, Philipp Sherrard and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), 258-9 [Discourse XX: Justice].

[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, “Letter to Michael  George Tolkien. January 6, 1965” in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 354.

[3] Dorothy Day, “Letter to Karl Meyer. August 13, 1981” in All The Way To Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day. Ed. Robert Ellsberg (New York: Image Books, 2010), 491-2.

 

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September 29, 2020

September 29, 2020 By

Gausanchennai Beautiful Peacock Fathers / Wikimedia Commons

St. Basil the Great tells us to glorify God as the “Master Craftsman,” for he created a wonderful, indeed, beautiful, world for us to live in. When we glorify him this way, we can be led from the beauty found in creation to the transcendent glory of God himself:

Let us glorify the Master Craftsman for all that has been done wisely and skillfully; and from the beauty of visible things let us form an idea of Him who is more than beautiful; and from the greatness of these perceptible and circumscribed bodies let us conceive of Him who is infinite and immense and who surpasses all understanding in the plentitude of His power.[1]

Goodness, truth, and beauty are the three great transcendental. All of them have God as their source.  Because God establishes them, through his actions, he can be described by them, so that he can labeled as  the Good, the Truth, and the Beautiful. Thus, as St. Gregory Palamas explains,  even though God’s essence transcends all the categories of human thought rendering it is incomprehensible, we know God through his energies, through his actions, and we can use such actions and what they tell us about God to talk about God.

God’s beauty is made manifest in the beauty of his creation; the beauty we see around us participates in the beauty of God:

From the beauty of the limited creature, God makes known his own beauty that is in no way limited, so that the human being can return to God by these very same vestiges by which he turned away from him, in order that, because he turned himself away from the form of the Creator through love of the beautiful creature, he might return back again through the beauty of the creature to the beauty of the Creator.[2]

Just as limited goods participate in the  Good, so that we should not undermine the Good by preferring lesser goods to it (which evil tempts us to do), so limited beauty participates in Beauty, and we should not undermine Beauty by preferring limited forms of beauty to it. Beauty, by nature, is attractive. Lesser forms of beauty have their attractions, so that someone of lesser character can use such beauty to lead people astray. That is, though beauty is something to be cherished, just like we should cherish whatever good we find, we should cherish it in proper fashion. For just as the good can be subverted as someone becomes inordinately attached to a lesser good, treating it as a greater good than it is, making the actions of those who do so “evil,” so beauty can be subverted as someone inordinately attaches themselves to its lesser form apart from its proper, holistic place in Beauty. This is not to say, when someone does this, the beauty fades away. Just as attachment to a lesser good does not remove that good, so attachment to lesser beauty does not diminish the beauty which is being embraced. But what is not embraced, what is rejected, is where ugliness or evil can be found. Evil is the absence of a good which should be there, so ugliness is the absence of the harmony which should be found in beauty.

While Beauty and the Good can be said to be one, because they are one in God, and so what is beautiful is good, we can attribute our relationship with beauty as being either good or bad based upon what we do with it. Those charmed by some beauty can be led to do all kinds of evil out of hope of taking control and possessing that beauty for themselves, while others, looking into the world, and the harmony presented by beauty, can be inspired to seek after what is good and just and indeed, work for the salvation of the world. Understanding this, S.L. Frank suggested, when considering beauty on its own, we can see it as something “neutral;”  by itself, it will not save the world:

Beauty as such does not save him from the destructive forces of evil or from the tragic nature of human life. Beauty as such is neutral. In a sense it is indifferent to good and evil. Symbolizing some potential harmony of being, it peacefully co-exists with actual disharmony. Furthermore, according to Dostoevsky’s profound insight, beauty combines itself in the “divine” and the “demonic,” for wherever we are seduced by deceitful appearances, there we have dealing with the demonic. This lack of concord between beauty – esthetic harmony – and the genuine reconciling, redeeming essential harmony of being was manifested concretely with astonishing persuasive force in the tragic life-experiences of such artists as Botticelli, Gogol, and Tolstoy. We can say that beauty is a sign of the potential harmony of being, of the possibility of actual, fully realized harmony. And if the world were perfectly beautiful, it would be perfectly harmonious, in inner accord, free of tragic duality. Therefore the dream of the ultimate transfiguration of the world is a dream of the complete triumph of beauty in the world. But it is precisely only a dream, which is opposed by the bitter reality of the inner discord and duality of being. Beauty is only a reflection of “paradise,” of the ontological rootedness of all reality in divine total unity.[3]

Thus, there is the potential for demonic beauty, even as there is potential for angelic beauty. We can make a beauty which will impose fear and dread upon others as they look into it, using it to manipulate and control them. Tolkien, in the Lord of the Rings, represented this potential in the way Galadriel was tempted by the Ring – if she took its power, she would use it to lead the world with her beauty, but the world would be enslaved by it, enslaved by her and her charm:

And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair.[4]

Galadriel understood the goodness of beauty, but also the dangers contained within it. We seek after paradise, but we can easily become subverted by a pale imitation of it. If we try to establish and hold onto such an illusory form of beauty, we will find ourselves lacking much of what is found in paradise, and in that lack, we will find evil. Those desperate to hold onto a form of beauty instead of to be penetrated and participate in the fullness of beauty will create a shallow illusion, one which is charming and yet without hope, without the joy which we expect from beauty itself.

This danger with beauty, however, applies only insofar as our attachment remains with a lesser beauty, whether it is some external lesser beauty, or our own internal beauty, which we enjoy because of the glory we think we already possess. The beauty that is there, insofar as it is there, is good, but it should remind us of the source and foundation of all beauty. We must not confine ourselves to that lesser beauty but seek after the source of beauty. When we do so, we will find that the beauty we had, the beauty we liked, was itself a part of the presence of that greater beauty, so that like Augustine we can end up saying:

Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so action and so new, late have I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within and I was without. I was looking for Thee out there, and I threw myself, deformed as I was, upon the well-formed things which Thou hast made. Thou wert with me, yet I was not with Thee. These things held me far from Thee, things which would not have existed had they not been in Thee. Thou didst call and cry out and burst in upon my deafness; Thou didst shine forth and glow and drive away my blindness; Thou didst send forth Thy fragrance, and I drew in my breath, and now I pant for Thee; I have tasted and now I hunger and thirst; Thou didst touch me, and I was inflamed with desire for Thy peace.[5]

Beauty is good and glorious, but our use of it is not always such. We should find the goodness in beauty. We should find out how it points to the source and foundation of all beauty, God and use it to direct us to God to find and attain that beauty which we love and desire, not just in its lesser forms,  but in its greatest form, one which is with God and so eternal. Therefore, let us glorify God, taking the beauty we find and use it to lift us up to the infinite  beauty and goodness found with God, a beauty so sublime, so great, we will never attain its limits and so it will always give us the hope and joy which we need to truly thrive.

[1] St. Basil the Great,  “Hexaemeron” in Saint Basil: Exegetic Homilies. Trans. Agnes Clare Way, CDP (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1963), 19.

[2] St. Isidore of Seville, Sententiae. Trans. Thomas L. Knoebel (New York: Newman Press, 2018),40.

[3] S. L. Frank, The Unknowable: An Ontological Introduction To The Philosophy of Religion. Trans. Boris Jakim (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2020), 196.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), 381.

[5] St. Augustine, Confessions. Trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1953; repr. 1966), 297.

 

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