C.S. Lewis: “For Gods, like other creatures, must die to live”

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Here’s C.S. Lewis echoing some of the same ideas as Wallace (in my previous post):

The gods—and, of course, I include under this title that whole ‘hemisphere of magic fiction’ which flows indirectly from them—the gods were not to paganism what they are to us. In classical poetry we hear plenty of them as objects of worship, of fear, of hatred; even comic characters. But pure aesthetic contemplation of their eternity, their remoteness, and their peace, for its own sake, is curiously rare. There is, I think, only the one passage in all Homer; and it is echoed only by Lucretius [Odyssey, vi, 41 & Lucretius De Rerum Nat. iii, 18]. But Lucretius was an atheist; and that is precisely why he sees the beauty of the gods. For he himself, in another place, has laid his finger on the secret: it is religio that hides them. No religion, so long as it believed, can have that kind of beauty which we find in the gods of Titian, of Botticelli, or of our own romantic poets. To this day you cannot make poetry of that sort out of the Christian heaven and hell. The gods must be, as it were, disinfected of belief; the last taint of the sacrifice, and of the urgent practical interest, the selfish prayer, must be washed away from them, before that other divinity can come to light in the imagination. For poetry to spread its wings fully, there must be, besides the believed religion, a marvellous that knows itself as myth. For this to come about, the old marvellous, which once was taken as fact, must be stored up somewhere, not wholly dead, but in a winter sleep, waiting its time. If it is not so stored up, if it is allowed to perish, then the imagination is impoverished. Such a sleeping-place was provided for the gods by allegory. Allegory may seem, at first, to have killed them; but it killed only as the sower kills, for gods, like other creatures, must die to live.

The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1958 [1936]), p. 82.

h/t Nathan Schneider at Killing the Buddha. It’s a great blog, by the way.

 

God does not (not) exist

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Paul Wallace’s essay on negative theology and atheism offers much to ponder. He takes apart the immature atheism of Richard Dawkins by making use of negative, or apophatic theology, which begins with the notion that the only true statements one can make about God, are negative, saying what God is not. Negative theology has a long history in the Christian tradition, going back to Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite.

Wallace’s starting point is a statement by Denys Turner: “Atheists reject too little,” Turner writes, “This is why their atheisms lack theological interest. The routine principled atheist has but tinkered with religion.”

His essay put me in mind of a job candidate for a position in a department of religion some years ago, who when asked about his own religious commitments, said boldly, “I’m an atheist.” I thought at the time, and still do, that it seemed strange and immature coming out of a scholar of religion–not that I expect scholars of religion to be believers by any means, but I expect them to have developed an understanding of the complexity of religious ideas and practices which would preclude such simple, black and white statements.

 

Inviting Advent

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Inviting Advent

Jesus stands at the door knocking. In total reality, he comes in the form of the beggar, of the dissolute human child in ragged clothes, asking for help. He confronts you in every person that you meet. As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you.

That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us. Do you want to close the door or open it?

 

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
(Westminster John Knox Press; 2010)
Thanks to CREDO

St. John of the Cross–December 14

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St. John of the Cross was a Spanish mystic most known in the contemporary world for coining the phrase “dark night of the soul.” His biography is available on wikipedia.

Here is the beginning poem of the work that bears the title Dark Night of the Soul:

1. One dark night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
– ah, the sheer grace! –
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
– ah, the sheer grace! –
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
– him I knew so well –
there in a place where no one appeared.

5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

The full text is here.

From: THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, revised edition (1991).

Copyright 1991 ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included.

If God exists, what sort of God is God?

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There was another one of those conservative Christian tempests in a teapot last week. It was caused by Elizabeth Edwards’ last facebook post which seemed to conservatives to deny the existence of God:

“You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces–my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope,” she said in a statement on her Facebook page. “These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.”

One conservative wrote:

Clearly Elizabeth Edwards wants to put her faith in something, be it hope or strength or anything. But not God. I wonder if it’s just bitterness … At her death bed and giving what most folks are calling a final goodbye, Elizabeth Edwards couldn’t find it somewhere down deep to ask for His blessings as she prepares for the hereafter? I guess that nihilism I’ve been discussing reaches up higher into the hard-left precincts than I thought.

For a more thoughtful perspective, read this article from Politics Daily.

For a longer perspective, here’s Michael Shermer on Einstein’s God. He concludes the essay with a quotation from a letter Einstein wrote in 1949:

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

The call for humility is even more necessary, and less heeded, than it was sixty years ago.

 

Some poetry for Tuesday in the Third Week of Advent

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First, from The Guardian comes an article by Carol Rumens on David Wheatley’s “St. Brenhilda on Sula Sgeir.”

Then, Robert Pinsky on sonnets by John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins that refer to Jeremiah 12:1: “Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?” (KJV).

Donne concludes his sonnet with an image of a forgetful God. It’s a notion I’ve been coming back to often in the past few months. It definitely challenges common assumptions about God, but is of great consolation, too.

Waiting for God: A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent, Year A

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Grace Episcopal Church

December 12, 2010

Today’s readings

There’s one of those British comedies that is often re-run incessantly on Public Television called “Waiting for God.” Set in what we would call a retirement community, it tells the stories of the antics of several irascible elderly people who fight against the community’s administration, their fellow residents, and injustice in their small town. The humor relies on the indomitable spirit of characters caught in situations over which they have no control. The title says it all. “Waiting for God” implies that their lives are over and they are only passing the time until they die.

Waiting for God may be a metaphor for people nearing the end of their lives, but it is also an appropriate image for the Season of Advent. We are waiting for the coming of Christ, and as we wait, we prepare in all kinds of ways for that coming.

In today’s gospel, we encounter John the Baptist, who like those characters in the sit-com, is waiting for the end of his life. Imprisoned by Herod, he must know that he will soon be executed. But he is waiting for God in another way. Having proclaimed the coming of the Reign of God, and the coming of the Messiah, John must be wondering whether his message was the correct one, whether he should be waiting for God.

Today’s gospel reading is one of the most interesting in all of Matthew. In the middle of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is confronted by several of John the Baptizer’s disciples. John has sent them to Jesus to ask a question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Matthew puts this episode at in interesting point in his gospel. It’s one of those places where we see the gospel writer at work, very carefully shaping his image of Jesus. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ public ministry begins with a series of healings and miracles. While Mark provides a summary of Jesus’ preaching message, he does not give any detail, or show Jesus teaching in his first chapter. By contrast, Matthew moves directly from Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the wilderness to Jesus’ preaching. The first public event of Jesus’ ministry is the Sermon on the Mount which extends from chapters 5 through 7. Only after that, does Matthew show Jesus healing people.

These healings are very carefully constructed as well. There are three sets of three in chapters eight and nine. First, Jesus heals a leper, the centurion’s servant, then Peter’s mother-in-law. Then he crosses the lake, where he stills the storm, casts out a demon and heals a paralyzed person. After calling Matthew, there are three more healings. Jesus raises a girl from the dead, restores sight to two blind men, and gives speech to someone who is mute.

Only then do John’s disciples come with their question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

It’s a puzzling, even surprising question. After all, if anyone should know that Jesus is the Messiah, it ought to be John the Baptizer. According to the gospel of Luke, John and Jesus are cousins, nearly the same age, John is six months older than Jesus. So like any good cousins, they had to have played together as children. Probably, since John’s parents were so old at his birth, they probably even shipped him off to Joseph and Mary during school vacations and summers so they could get some much needed rest.

Then, of course, he baptized Jesus, and according to the Gospel of Matthew, identified him as the Messiah, he saw the dove and heard the voice from heaven announcing, “This is my beloved son.” So how is it that after all of that, John still wonders whether Jesus is the one who is to come? If anyone ought to know who Jesus is, if anyone ought to know that Jesus is the Messiah, surely it’s John the Baptizer. Nonetheless, it is he who poses the question of Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

This little episode, hardly noticeable in the gospel accounts is very revealing. In spite of everything John the Baptizer knows, he retains some uncertainty. And in spite of everything John the Baptizer should know, Jesus addresses John’s questions directly. He does not ridicule his uncertainty, he does not respond as he so often responds to those who misunderstand him or misinterpret him. He does not say, “Oh ye of little faith!” No he answers the question directly: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

In other words, Jesus clearly answers the question and relates it back to the prophecies in Isaiah that we heard in today’s first lesson, and also in the word’s of today’s Psalm: the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see. There’s something about the way in which Jesus answers the question that is important. Note his language: the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see. He is not emphasizing his own role in these miracles. Instead, Jesus emphasizes what has been done. It is as if he points away from himself, toward God, toward God’s powerful presence in the world through him. By acknowledging that the lame walk, the blind receive their sight, and deaf hear, we, and John, recognize the presence of God in our midst.

But it’s not enough. It’s not enough for John, and it’s not enough for us. There’s another image in today’s readings that I find of great help. In today’s epistle reading, we are reminded to be patient, to wait the coming of the Lord. As a farmer or gardener must wait for the crops they planted to bear fruit, so too are we told to be patient.

Of course patience is a hard thing to come by at any time of the year, but it may be most difficult in the season of Advent. We all know how eager children are for Christmas. We adults may be equally eager, if only to get it all over with. But there is more to it. In the midst of the hectic pace of Christmas, the shopping, the parties, the planning, we come to church and hear the simple words of the letter of James: “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

It’s a message that is important to hear, and not only during Advent. To wait for God is a very difficult thing to do. It means to allow God to act in the way, and when God wants to act, to allow God to answer our questions, to answer our prayers, in the fashion and at the pace that is God’s time, not ours. The letter of James was written at a time when early Christians were asking the question why the Second Coming hadn’t taken place; that delay was enough to challenge the faith of many. We see John the Baptizer in something of the same position in today’s gospel. For some reason, Jesus’ actions, his ministry did not quite fit the expectations John had of it. So he began to wonder, is Jesus really the Messiah, or should we wait for another?

To wait for God means also to open oneself up to the presence of God. God is here, in the world, God is present in our lives, yet too often we fail to see God’s presence, we fail to sense it. We don’t take the time we need, we don’t take the time that God needs to make that presence real.

But it’s also easy to mistake the presence of God for something else. John had a set of expectations about what the Messiah would be and do. And apparently, those expectations were not met by Jesus’ actions or teachings. The disconnect between the two led to his uncertainty. The same is true for us. There is a cacophony of voices around us in the world, laying claim to being the authentic voice of Christianity and of Christmas. There are shouts that Christians are persecuted in contemporary secular culture, that we have abandoned the truth of the faith in favor of being politically correct.

As Advent moves toward Christmas, as the pace of holiday activity increases, I pray that all of us find time in our daily lives to wait for God, to listen for God’s presence, to look for the signs of God’s coming in our midst. But most importantly, let us allow God to come to us in the fashion and manner, and at the speed, God chooses.

 

Karl Barth, December 10

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I was surprised by the appearance in Holy Women, Holy Men of a commemoration of Karl Barth. Not that he isn’t important, mind you. No, what took me aback was his presence in a volume produced by politically-correct Episcopalians in the twenty-first century. I would be curious to know about his presence in the syllabi of theology courses offered at Episcopal seminaries.

Barth was an important stage on my own theological journey. I read the Commentary on Romans as an undergraduate, then worked through the German original of the second edition. His insistence on the utter transcendence of God and the centrality of Christ were revelations to me and helped me move away from the theology of my upbringing. His resolute opposition to Hitler and his sharp criticism of his teachers and 19th century liberal theology were helpful as well.

Thinking about Barth today reminded me of how far I have come theologically in the last thirty years. I don’t know that I’ve read anything of his since the very early 80s. Certainly at Harvard in that era Barth was mostly a foil for critique, almost a straw man. We were certain we had moved beyond him.

The write-up on Barth for Holy Women, Holy Men provides a standard biography and some sense of Barth’s place in twentieth-century theology. It makes no mention of his impact on Anglican theology and I suspect for most Anglicans with advanced training, their indebtedness to Barth is relatively slight. He was a Calvinist after all, and although he had a deep Incarnational theology, he was also convinced that there was a chasm between God and God’s creation. This meant that he was suspicious of reason. To put it in more positive terms; for Barth, the Word of God was the only certain knowledge.

 

 

Why I love the Daily Office: Psalm 39 edition

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How often have I read or recited Psalm 39 over the years? For some reason this evening, while saying Evening Prayer, the words of Psalm 39 jumped out at me:

1 I said, “I will keep watch upon my ways, *
so that I do not offend with my tongue.

The opening verses are striking in tone, but it was the last verses that really threw me:

13 Hear my prayer, O LORD,
and give ear to my cry; *
hold not your peace at my tears.
14 For I am but a sojourner with you, *
a wayfarer, as all my forebears were.
15 Turn your gaze from me, that I may be glad again, *
before I go my way and am no more.

Verse 13 is clearly a plea to God to attend to the Psalmist’s cries, but what’s going on with verses 14 and 15? On the surface, v. 14 seems to be self-deprecating, but v. 15 is a plea for God to ignore the Psalmist–apparently God’s gaze is oppressive–until the Psalmist’s death.

What profound and unsettling notions of God and human being are packed into those two verses!