Jesus whispers. He speaks dark and hidden parables. But He instructs His disciples to shout out His words on the housetops (Matthew 10:26-27). This is the history of the church in a nutshell. A Pharisee traveling to Damascus is throne from his horse and Jesus speaks to Him, and the mission to the Gentiles begins. A wealthy young man hears a sermon about giving up earthly goods, hears the call of Jesus, sells everything, and soon he’s surrounded by disciples... Read more
Matthew 10: I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. As we saw in the sermon this morning, Jesus distinguishes His disciples from the leaders of Israel as sheep from wolves. The Jewish leaders prey on the people, but the Twelve are supposed to take their place among the sheep, allowing themselves to be devoured rather than devouring. They are supposed to follow the example of Jesus, the Good Shepherd who does not flee when the wolves... Read more
We often think about mission as the thing that happens after all the really important stuff is over and done. Jesus died, rose again, ascended, and gave the Spirit, and now that everything is finished, we start the mission. Mission is announcing what has already happened. There’s some truth to that, but the word “mission” points us in a different direction. “Mission” comes from the Latin “missio,” which connotes “sending.” The church is a mission because the church is a... Read more
In a summary of the theology of Matthias Scheeben, von Balthasar notes that he “proposes a Christian theology of sacrifice which strongly rejects the Baroque theory of ‘destruction’ and returns to the wholly personal and spiritual concept of sacrifice of the Fathers, especially of Augustine.” Sacrifice is not essentially “destruction” but “transfiguration through love: the outpouring of the gloria Dei over the whole substance of the creature, which by sacrificing and surrendering itself makes room in itself for the divine... Read more
Pelagius agreed with Augustine that sin cannot be a substance, since God doesn’t create evil. For Pelagius, this meant that sin cannot corrupt or wound or weaken human nature since “how could that which lacks substance have weakened or changed human nature.” Augustine’s response is to quote Scripture (Psalm 40), and to point out that absences – such as the absence of food – can affect our existence. Rusty Reno points out that Augustine’s argument implies a new Christian ontology:... Read more
Jesus observes that Israel wanders like sheep without a shepherd, so He sends the Twelve to be shepherds to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In the next breath, He says that the Twelve go out as “sheep in the midst of wolves.” So which are they? Sheep or shepherds? (more…) Read more
“Be wise as serpents,” Jesus says. The first wise serpent in the Bible is a deceiver. Is Jesus encouraging His disciples to use deception to protect themselves? In part, the answer is a tentative Yes. Paul escaped the ethnarch Aretas in a basket let down through a window in the wall of Damascus, and we can be certain that he didn’t inform Aretas of his plans beforehand. Deception is a tactic of war, and the apostles were at war. But... Read more
Martin Amis’s 2001 collection of criticism was entitled The War Against Cliche . Now he comes out with The Second Plane: September 11: 2001-2007 . According to Marjorie Perloff (in the TLS), it’s mostly cliche. There are religious cliches. Though the age of ideology in the last century was bad, the age of religion that’s a-dawning is far worse: “an ideology is a belief system with an inadequate basis in reality; religion is a belief system with no basis in... Read more
Clever move by the McCain campaign: A scandalous piece in the NYT becomes an opportunity to rally the right to McCain’s side. The piece and the campaign’s well-organized and long-anticipated response puts the anti-McCain right into a bind: If they jump in against McCain, they’re in bed with Media Enemy #1; if they jump in with the campaign to defend McCain, they help the man who’s destroying the Republican party. Read more
Rahner says, “if the ordination [toward the supernatural] cannot be detached from nature, the fulfillment of the ordination from God’s point of view is exacted.” Reno explains, “this obligatory or necessary fulfillment violates the logic of love. There can be no ‘must’ of this sort in the relationship of self-giving.” Sed contra. There is no external must in love, but a love without an intrinsic must – a must of continuing love, of faithfulness, of endurance toward consummation – is... Read more
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