catholicism 101 -- part 15

Catholicism 101

(The outline of this
series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)

Church of the Holy
Cross

June 8, 2008

Part 15

Christian Duty:  Christian Belief: The Three Great
Creeds: Concerning God:  The
Creator of Heaven and Earth:  The
Creation of Man

=---      We have discussed the hierarchy of the creation narrative before:  how the narrative moves upward along the chain of being:

o   “The hierarchy of creatures is expressed by the order of ‘six days,’ from the less perfect to the more perfect.  God loves all his creatures and takes  care of each one, even the sparrow.  Nevertheless, Jesus said:  ‘You are of more value than many sparrows,’ or again:  ‘Of how much more value is a man than a sheep!’” 
(CCC 342)

o   The crown jewel of the creation, on the sixth day, the very last thing God creates
is man:

§  “Man is the summit of the Creator’s work, as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other
creatures.”  (CCC 343)

§ Genesis 1.26f:

·      Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

§  Man (male and female) is made in the image and likeness of God:

·     “Of all the visible creatures only man is ‘able to know and love his creator.’  He is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,’ and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life.  It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity:” (CCC 356)

o   ‘What made you establish man in so great a dignity?  Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself!  You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good’ (St. Catherine of Siena – 14^th century –  Dialogue 4, 13).

·      The image of God can be (and is) marred by sin, but it can never be fully effaced.

·      Being in the image of God means that the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, “who is not just something, but someone.  He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons.” 
(CCC 357)

o   Man is free, and he is free to love.  When we freely love, we actualize the image of God in which we are made, we inhabit it.  We are living in accord with our telos, with what we were made to be.

§  When we do this, when we love and serve God, when we willingly say “yes” to God, we are in a “state of grace” – there is a kind of harmonious and free interpenetration, or mutual giving, of God and man.

o   The Fall

§  At the very outset, mankind blew it.  He listened to that “seductive voice” (cf. last time), which out of envy and malice, deceived mankind.

·      This is the voice of “the serpent” or “the dragon” in Genesis, which says:

·      “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

·      The great irony is that we were “like God” from the beginning, because God made us that way.  When we try to go off and self-actualize apart from God, we get into trouble.  Because there’s no self to actualize apart from God.  He made us from nothing, and he made us to be in a free communion of love, a “state of grace”.

§  But the fall is the occasion for redemption.  Redemption, and not just redemption in the abstract, but a personal redeemer, is promised immediately, because God’s love for us is sovereign:

·     God makes a promise for the future, another woman, and another man, who will undo what was done in the fall, when the serpents head will be crushed definitively:

o   (The curse of the Serpent:) “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head…” (Gen. 3.15).

o   This is on the surface what is called a scriptural “etiology” – i.e. an explanation of where the scariness and venomness of serpents comes from, and why it is that people (and particularly women) are afraid of them.

o   The deeper reading of this text, though, is a prophecy of the redemption.  There will be a woman in the future at enmity with the ancient serpent, who will undo what Eve did; and there will be a man who will crush the head of the ancient serpent forever.

o   That woman will be Mary, who will willingly say “yes” to God, and who will therefore be called “full of grace” (and whom Jesus otherwise puzzlingly calls “woman” [or “Eve” in Hebrew] – cf. Jn. 2.4, and Jn. 19.26), and from her womb will come the Deliverer, who will “bruise the head” of the serpent, and restore the communion of God and man.  Thus we will see later that creation is not really completed until Jesus, the theanthropos, the God-man, who is raised from the dead and glorified on the eighth day, as a sign of the completion of God’s creative work in him.

catholicism 101 -- part 14

Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
Church of the Holy Cross
June 1, 2008

Part 14

Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God: God the Creator: “things… unseen.”

- The Creation of the Angels

• In the hierarchy of creation, the angels are at the top.
• Their existence, though often ignored these days, is clearly and repeatedly attested by Scripture and by sacred Tradition (i.e. the dogmatic teaching of the Church).
• The word “angel” (In Greek: ανγελοσ ) means “messenger”. But this is not their oldest name, as there were none (so far as we know) originally to whom the angels could be messengers. “Angel” is their office, not their nature. Their nature is Spirit. They are personal. They are immortal.
• In the book of Job, these beings are called “the sons of God”, and we get a little glimpse into their most ancient activity:
• “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements -- surely you know! / Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38.4-7).
• Matthew 25.31 the Lord says “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him…” Thus Christ is the center of the angelic world. The angelic beings were created by him and for him. “They belong to him still more because he has made them messengers of his saving plan” (CCC 331):
• And the book of Hebrews calls them “ministering spirits” (“λειτουργικα πνευματα” = “liturgical spirits” or “spirits of worship”):
• “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation?” (Heb. 1.14).
• From this passage we can see that the angelic activity is both Godward and manward oriented. I.e. they are beings whose activity involves the service and worship of God, and they act on behalf of humans, “those are to obtain salvation”.
• Angels are there at every stage of the way in the narrative of salvation. Scripture describes them at the creation of the world (Cf. Job, above), “announcing…salvation from afar or near and serving the accomplishment of the divine plan: they closed the earthly paradise; protected Lot; saved Hagar and her child; stayed Abraham’s hand; communicated the law by their ministry; led the People of God; announced births and callings; and assisted the prophets… Finally, the angel Gabriel announced the birth of the Precursor [J-Bap] and that of Jesus himself” (CCC 332).
• Likewise they are with Jesus at every stage of his earthly life, from our Lady’s conception, to the Lord’s ascension: “Their song of praise at the birth of Christ has not ceased resounding in the Church’s praise: ‘Glory to God in the highest!’ They protect Jesus in his infancy, serve him in the desert, strengthen him in his agony in the garden, when he could have been saved by them form the hands of his enemies as Israel had been. Again, it is the angels who ‘evangelize’ by proclaiming the Good News of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection [cf. Lk. 2.8-14, Mk. 16.5-7]. They will be present at Christ’s return, which they will announce, to serve at his judgment [cf. Acts 1.10-11; Mt. 13.41, 24.31; Lk. 12.8-9]” (CCC 333).
• The lives of humans intersect with those of angelic beings:
• The “Guardian Angels” – Jesus said: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18.10).
• St. Basil the Great (lived in the 300’s): “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life” (Adv. Eunomium III).
• Most of all, believers and angels stand together in their shared work of worship:
• In the Church’s liturgy we sing with the Angels the “thrice-holy hymn” (the Sanctus: Isaiah 6.3, Revelation 4.8), and the Gloria in excelsis (Luke 2.14), and so join them spiritually, cooperating with their doxological work.
• Angels are moral beings. That is to say, they are not robots, but they have free-will. They may choose to do good or to do evil. In this respect, they are like humans; they are “moral agents”.
• Scripture hints at their being ranks of angels, an angelic hierarchy. Tradition speaks of nine “choirs” of angelic beings, in descending order of greatness:
• Seraphim – Isaiah 6. 2, 6; Cherubim – Gen. 3.24, Psalm 18.10; Thrones – Colossians 1.16; Dominions – Colossians 1.16; Principalities – Colossians 1.16; Powers – Colossians 1.16; Virtues – Ephesians 1.21; Archangels – 1 Thessalonians 4.16, Jude 9; Angels – Hebrews 1.13, 1 Peter 3.22
  

- The Fallen Angels

• Like everything made by God, the Angelic beings were created good. But because they are also free beings, they had the ability to choose to turn away from God, to disobey.
• Some of them did choose to turn away from God. The Church has usually held that the sin of the angelic beings (that is, the ones who did in fact sin), was that they turned to pride: the angels who did so became what we call devils (from Greek “διαβαλλειν” which means “accuser” or “slanderer”) or demons (from Greek “δαεμονιον” which meant a spirit or lesser deity, though not necessarily a malevolent one).
• “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing” (Fourth Lateran Council, 1215 AD).
• The “fall” of the evil angels consisted in their free choosing to radically and irrevocably reject God and his reign (CCC 392).
• The devil “has sinned from the beginning” and the Lord says: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8.44).
• When “the Seventy” return to Jesus rejoicing that “even the demons are subject to us in your name!” The Lord says “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10.18).
• St. John of Damascus says about the irrevocability of the rebellion of the evil angels: “There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death.”
• Scripture speaks of a chief of the fallen angels: Satan (a Hebrew word meaning “adversary” or “accuser”).
• Matthew 25.41: “…the devil and his angels….”
• Revelation 12.7: “…the dragon and his angels…”
• Luke 11.15: “…the prince of demons…”
• Evil angels likewise have a power of influence over the physical world and a power to lure humans away from God.
• “Behind the disobedience choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel,” namely Satan. (CCC 391.)
• “Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls ‘a murderer from the beginning’… ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.’ [1 John 3.8] In its consequences the gravest of these works was the mendacious seduction that led man to disobey God.” (CCC 394) Jesus came to give life, and therefore to destroy the work of him who was “a murderer from the beginning”.
• It is important to remember though that Satan is not the opposite of God. He is a creature made by God, who rebelled against God, whose end, we know, is destruction and defeat. If Satan has a counterpart among good beings, it would probably be St. Michael the Archangel. But even St. Michael is more powerful than Satan, because the visionary of the Apocalypse shows Michael warring against Satan and winning:
• “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world -- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Revelation 12.7-9).
• “The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God’s reign” though he “may cause grave injuries – of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature – to each man and to society” (CCC 395). Yet the love of God is absolutely sovereign, and we know the end of the story.
  

catholicism 101 -- part 13

Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
Church of the Holy Cross
May 25, 2008
Part 13
Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God

• “…maker of heaven and earth.”

• If we go back in time, to the beginning: “In the beginning God…”

• God is first. He precedes all.

• From all eternity, unto endless ages of ages, God is there.

• Remember, though, that the eternity of God means preeminently that he exists outside of time – not that he exists forever “in both directions” (though it means that too).

• Last time we talked a little bit about God as eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so it is.

• God cannot be eternally Father without eternally being Father of the Son. Likewise the Son cannot be eternally Son without being eternally Son of the Father. And the Holy Spirit is their mutual delight, their mutual love.

• This is the inner life of God – the “divine economy” – what we may licitly say about what God is like “inside”.

• The aseity of God means that he alone is self-sufficient, self-sourced.

• He is that greater than which nothing can be conceived.

• He is perfectly perfect (so to speak). He needs nothing to increase his perfection. He lacks nothing.

• Creation is therefore a mystery. It has baffled philosophers since the beginning of philosophy: why is there something rather than nothing?

• Our appeal to God’s eternity (i.e. his timelessness) take the contradiction out of the doctrine of creation, but not the mystery.

• There was never a time at which the created order was not. But “prior” to the beginning there was God alone.

• Why did God create? That’s the mystery.

• It seems we may say that God created, mysteriously, out of love – that before we existed, God loved us.

• It seems also that, because God is eternal, his act of creation is an eternal (timeless) act. There was never a time at which God did not create.

• It seems to be a part of his nature to create.

• So we might say he “owes it to himself” to create – i.e. in order to be who he is.

• In any event: God does create. And he creates “ex nihilo” – out of nothing.

• There was not some block of raw material from which God constructed the universe. There was nothing. And out of nothing God called something into being, by his word.

• “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.” (Heb. 11.3)

• Cf. Genesis 1: “And God said… and it was so.”

• Cf. Psalm 33.8-9: “Let all the earth fear the Lord; * let all who dwell in the world stand in awe of him. / For he spoke, and it came to pass; * he commanded and it stood fast.”

• This is why God as Creator is differentiated from all finite acts of creation. When we create something, we create it out of something. When God creates, he creates out of nothing.

• God creates as Trinity:

• Genesis 1.1-2 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

• John 1.1ff: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”

• Psalm 33.6: “By the word of the Lord [the Son] were the heavens made, * by the breath of his mouth [the Spirit] all the heavenly hosts.”

• The six days of creation need not be understood as six twenty-four hour periods (how could the day be measured before there was day and night?). Genesis is depicting the hierarchy of creation. Each stage of creation is succeeded by more perfect elements, until we reach the creation of men and women, the apex and pinnacle of God’s created work: finally, moral / spiritual creatures made in the image and likeness of God.

• You can believe in the Biblical account of creation and believe in Evolution.

• The Bible is not a science text. As a datum of communication, it has a different purpose: to disclose God. As such, Genesis is the story of God’s creation, of man’s relationship with God, and of the poisoning of that relationship by sin, and the beginning of God’s plan of redemption. It was not written by modern people obsessed with empiricism and scientific method and whatnot. It is as much (or more) poetry than history in the modern sense of that term.

• In creation we see God’s first language. God reveals himself in his act of creation, and in what he has created. The “analogiam creationis” – or the “analogiam entis”.

catholicism 101 -- part 12

Catholicism 101

(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)

Church of the Holy Cross

May 18, 2008

Part 12

Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God: The Mystery of the Holy Trinity

- We believe in one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

• The Church’s teaching about the Holy Trinity is summarized in the words of the Athanasian Creed: “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three gods, but one God.”

• Our teaching about the Holy Trinity is revealed in Scripture, and has been taught by the Christian Church, and believed by Christians, from the first.

• It is a mystery which transcends human reason, but is not contrary to human reason.

• For example: it is reasonable to assume that human religion should contain mysteries. And it is most reasonable to assume that if there is a God, that his being should be mysterious (and more than that: a mystery).

• Imagine sitting in a chair with a dog staring at you. The dog might understand certain things about you (that you are friendly towards him, that you are the source of his food and comfort, etc.). But the dog would certainly not understand human nature fully.

• Human persons are higher than dogs in the order of creation. But humans at least share with dogs their situatedness WITHIN the order of creation. Whereas humans are much “higher” than dogs, God is INFINITELY “higher” than humans. At least humans and dogs share the status of creature. God is literally off the charts. He is not even in the scale of comparison, because he is the creator. If you made a list of everything in the universe, God would not be on it .

• In the last session we discussed the suitability of Christianity’s lofty teachings, as words must necessarily cease with respect to God: they all fall short, and thus may serve to lead us to silent adoration. So it is with the Holy Trinity. At a certain point, explanation must come to an end, and one must proceed toward God in silence and in faith.

• Father Staley says: “Though a philosopher cannot explain the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, a child can believe it.”

• Note what the Athanasian Creed says: “And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.” Note it says that the catholic faith is WORSHIP – not necessarily understanding.

- “We believe in one God, the Father the Almighty…”

• God is the eternal Father.

• He is eternal Father because he eternally begets his only Son.

• In the Nicene Creed we say “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ; the only Son of God; ETERNALLY BEGOTTEN of the Father…”

• The Rite I language is more helpful here: “…And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds…” This is in a sense a better rendition of the Latin original: “Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei Unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula…” And of the Greek: “Καὶ εἰς ἕνα Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ, τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων”. In both cases: “…begotten from the Father before all ages…”

• In other words, before creation, when all there was was God, “then” the Son was begotten – i.e. “eternally”, beyond the domain of the temporal.

• So God has always been, and is eternally Father and Son. There was never a time when he was not Father of the eternal and only Son.

• Annoying but important answer to feminist critique: God reveals himself as Father (and reveals himself as ETERNALLY Father). So it is not the case that God is in the same way Mother. He does describe himself with feminine metaphors in Scripture.

• In Matthew 23.37, Jesus quotes 2 Esdras when he says: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

• 4 Ezra 1.28-30: “Thus says the Lord Almighty: Have I not entreated you as a father entreats his sons or a mother her daughters or a nurse her children, that you should be my people and I should be your God, and that you should be my sons and I should be your father? I gathered you as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”

• Both of these passages describe God’s activity as being like that of a mother, or a hen. This is different from God’s self revelation AS Father.

• It is also true that, as we have said, all language ultimately fails when faced with the reality of God, and so therefore the language of fatherhood likewise proves equivocal. However:

• 1) certain language concerning God is revealed by God himself (as for example the whole of Scripture), and is thus in a sense sanctioned and hallowed by being “the Word of the Lord” and not merely “the words of various loquacious people ABOUT the Lord”.

• 2) The analogy runs in the opposite direction from that we would naturally be predisposed to think. With respect to this discussion, it is not merely the case that the Christian conception of God (and hence Christian language about God) is the product of patriarchal society(s), and thus that the Christian God is a social construction in the image and likeness of human patriarchs. The opposite is in fact the case: human fatherhood is the shadow, constructed by God as a properly inadequate mystical cognate of God’s paternity.

• This is what St. Paul is driving at in Ephesians 3.14-15: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” The Greek word here translated “family” is “patria” = “fatherhood” – which in Greek had the connotation “kindred” or “family”. But the broader, more literal point germane to our discussion is that human fatherhood is derivative (and fallen and defective), not the other way around. This is the teaching of Scripture and of the Church.

• I don’t want to belabor this point, but it is an important one in our contemporary cultural milieu, and we will see much later that it has theological ramifications (with respect to the “analogiam creationis” – or the sacramental iconography of creation).

• God is the Father of the eternal Son. He is also in a sense the Father of ALL, because he has made all. And as human beings are the apex of his creative work, he is the Father of all humanity.

• Yet he is the Father of Christians in a more excellent way, because through faith and baptism, we have now have Jesus Christ, the only and eternal Son, as our BROTHER. Thus we gain God as our Father in a new and important way. This is deeper significance behind the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father…” and it is why “we are BOLD to say” it. Because as prodigal sons and daughters, we were “no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15.21). Yet God wills that despite our unworthiness, he grants us kinship with himself – a new and more excellent sonship, because it comes from the only and eternal Son.

• Galatians 4.4ff: “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.”

• Father Staley: “The Son of God was made Son of Man, in order that the sons of men may become sons of God. In Holy Baptism we are made members of Christ, and the children of God – children of God, because members of Christ the only-begotten Son of God.”

catholicism 101 -- part 11

Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
Church of the Holy Cross
May 11, 2008
Part 11
Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God

- Last time we considered the existence of God. Today:
- The Nature of God. Remember the definition given by St. Anselm (in the “ontological proof” for the existence of God): God is that “that than which greater cannot be thought” – i.e. he is the greatest thing conceivable. This implies:

• God is Spirit (John 4.24).

• As Spirit, God is “incorporeal” – i.e. he is not composed of matter as we are. He is without spatial dimensions, and he transcends time (he is “eternal” – more on this later).

• He cannot be seen with the eyes of the body.

• “No one has ever seen God” (John 1.18, and 1 John 4.12).

• He cannot be touched with the hands.

• He cannot be heard with the ears.

• Scripture speaks of the “face of God” (e.g. Genesis 33.10), and of his hands (e.g. Deut 4.34), and of “the eyes of the Lord” (e.g. 1 Peter 3.12) etc. But these phrases are analogical. Because there is no way to speak of the actions of an incorporeal being, a Spirit, without recourse to corporeal concepts and words.

• God is self-existent.

• Exodus 3.14: when Moses asks God his name, he says “YHWH” – “I AM WHO I AM.”

• God is the creator of all that “is”. As such he transcends “is-ness” – he transcends the being which we know by “being” among those things that “are” – those things which he has made (namely everything).

• God is eternal.

• He has no beginning and no end.

• Just as he has no spatial location or extension, so he has no temporal location or extension. He is timeless – he abides outside the framework of time. This is expressed in Scripture: God is he “who was, and is, and is to come” (Revelation 4.8). But even this is analogical. We find ourselves trying to describe with temporal words a being who transcends temporality

• With God all is as though an eternal present: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or the land and the earth were born, * from age to age you are God” (Psalm 90.2) (yet these words, too, fail).

• So far it doesn’t look very likely that we will be able to say much accurate about God. He is chiefly identified in his being DIFFERENT from everything, and since our words and our thoughts arise within the ambit of “everything” (within the sphere of creation), its not likely that they will prove adequate to circumscribe a being who is characterized chiefly by being “different from everything”.

• Saint John of Damascus (“Doctor of the Church”, 600’s-700’s AD) wrote in his book “An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith” – God “does not belong to the class of existing things: not that He has no existence , but that He is above all existing things, nay even above existence itself. For if all forms of knowledge have to do with what exists, assuredly that which is above knowledge must certainly be also above essence : and, conversely, that which is above essence will also be above knowledge.”

• So the transcendence of God, his ineffability (our inability to speak accurately of him) and his transcendence of knowledge are at the center of the teaching of orthodox Christianity.

• God is holy.

• Not only is he transcendent, above and beyond all things, but as such he is also the supreme good.

• The angelic hymn sung in his presence is “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Isaiah 6.3).

• Revelation 4.6 & 8: “…round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind…. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty.”

• We join in this hymn at every mass.

• God’s perfection, his goodness, his holiness, his transcendence are such that by comparison: “…the heavens are not clean in his sight…” (Job 15.15).

• God is almighty (omnipotent).

• His will is supreme, governing the highest order of magnitude and the lowest.

• “In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, * and the heavens are the work of your hands; / They shall perish, but you will endure, they all shall wear out like a garment; * as clothing you will change them, and they shall be changed; / But you are always the same, * and your years will never end” (Psalm 102.25f).

• “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will” (Matthew 10.29).

• Though creation rebelled against God, yet at the end of time, all things will be subjected to him, “that God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor. 15.28).

• God’s omnipotence means that he can do anything (“with God, all things are possible” Matt. 19.26). But this does not mean he can do absurd things. He can’t sin, because that would be a violation of his own nature (it would be a logical contradiction). Similarly, he can’t cause a triangle to have four sides. He can’t make a rock so big that he can’t pick it up. God can do anything. These are non-things.

• God is everywhere (omnipresent).

• This means that in virtue of his transcendence and perfection, he is mysteriously present to all things. Or rather, perhaps it is better to say that all things are eternally and immediately present to him.

• “…before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4.13).

• “God is LOVE” (1 John 4.8).

• God is now what he has always been. He has always been love. This is a part of his perfection (in a sense, the WHOLE of his perfection – because he IS love).

• The love of God necessarily has an object. If it didn’t, his love would be unrequited, and his desired unfulfilled; and he would thus not be “that than which greater cannot be thought” – because a being whose love has an object, and who is himself beloved is greater than a being with unfulfilled and unrequited love.

• The beloved of God is the Son of God, and this love is substantive, fructive, generative – God BEGETS the Son in love eternally.

• The perfect, eternal, and mutual love of the Father and the Son is itself the Holy Spirit, consubstantial with the Father and the Son. That is, this love of Father and Son is itself God with the same “Godness” (the same divinity, the same “essence”, the same “substance”) of the Father and the Son. So God is love.

• So the realization that “God is love” prepares the mind for God’s disclosure of himself, of his identity in the teaching of the Church – that he is “Three persons; one God”.

catholicism 101 -- part 10

CATHOLICISM 101

(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)

Church of the Holy Cross
April 27, 2008

Part 10
Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds

- “I believe in God, the Father Almighty…”

• The Bible doesn’t demonstrate the existence of God, it assumes the existence of God.

• That God is, is thought by the authors of Scripture to be a universal instinct of the human heart.

• Part of the problem with contemporary people is that their hearts have very often been removed, or turned to stone (as CS Lewis warned in The Abolition of Man.

• Thus the Lord, foreseeing this problem, says through the prophet Ezekiel: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36.26).

• “For man believes with his heart and so is justified…” (Rom. 10.10).

• Yet there is compelling evidence, accessible to the mind and appealing to the intellect.

• There are philosophical demonstrations, like the “Ontological Proof” of St. Anselm – which philosophers have been contemplating for over a thousand years.

• There is, more recently, the “Argument from Fine Tuning” – much discussed in the media lately: the idea that the conditions that would allow life (or even matter) to emerge in the universe can only possibly occur within a very tight range of values for the universe’s physical constants, that if any of these constants were just slightly different than it is, then life would never have been able to evolve in the universe.

• As Gerard Manley Hopkins put it:

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

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

• What we are after is FAITH in God, not merely a bland acknowledgement that he is. St. James says: you believe that god exists? Congratulations. “Even the demons believe… and shudder” (James 2.19).

• But faith is not just a servile acquiescence to an assertion, uninformed by the mind.

• Faith in God rather implies a relationship, a giving of oneself in trust.

• St. Augustine chronicles his discovery of faith in his Confessions. The famous passage from the beginning says “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” And about the quest for God, St. Augustine says “Whither might I withdraw beyond heaven and earth that from thence my God might come into me, when my God has said ‘I fill heaven and earth’?” Augustine finds God by searching his own heart.

• So you have to have a heart. From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers: Abba Pambo said “If you have a heart, you can be saved.”

• Creation speaks of God.

• Indeed creation is God’s first language, his first disclosure of himself, the analogiam creationis (which is why catholic Christians put such an emphasis on materiality – bread wine, male, female, etc. – it speaks of God, or rather God speaks of himself through his making it what it is). Gen. 1.1.

• Psalm 102.25: “In the beginning, O LORD, you laid the foundations of the earth, * and the heavens are the work of your hands…”

• As Hopkins said, the world is CHARGED with the grandeur of God.

• Romans 1.20: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.”

• Part of the danger we face is allowing our culture to take away our hearts of flesh and give us hearts of stone, at which point God becomes invisible to us. Our challenge is to see him everywhere, but we have to have FAITH to do that, and to have faith, we have to have a heart.

• St. Augustine, again in the Confessions: “I questioned the earth, and it said, ‘I am not He;’ and all that is in it confessed the same. I questioned the sea and the depths, and the creeping things which have life, and they replied, ‘We are not your God, seek above us.’ I questioned the blowing winds, and the whole air with its inhabitants replied ‘I am not God.’ I questioned the heavens, the sun, moon, stars; ‘Neither are we God whom you seek’ they said. And I said to all those things which stand about the doors of my flesh, ‘You have told me of my God, that you are not He; tell me now something of him.’ And they cried out with a loud voice, ‘He made us.’”

• Belief in God is nearly universal in humanity – it is built into our souls. God is at the bottom of the endless inquisitiveness of young children first being awed by the world: “Why…? Why…? Why…?” He lies just beyond the reach of the instruments of the astronomers and physicists – he is the object of their search, the cause of causes.

• And if he is there, then it stands to reason that he would reveal himself to his creatures. And so he has: through creation itself, in the heart of man, in Scripture, and finally and definitively in his Son.

catholicism 101 -- part 9

CATHOLICISM 101

(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)

Church of the Holy Cross
April 20, 2008

Part 9
Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds

- The Apostles’ Creed

• An ancient creed, dating back to the earliest days of the Church (no one knows when it was first formulated).

• Called “Apostles’” Creed because it is a distillation of the teaching of the Apostles, containing the central truths which they passed on to the world, which they had learned from Jesus himself.

• Phrases and quotations from the Apostles’ Creed are found in very early writers, but a complete version of it is not found in writing until the late second century (late 100’s a.d.)

• The Apostles’ Creed as we know it is first found in writing in Rufinus, writing in the fourth century (300’s a.d.).

• Staley writes: “The late appearance of the Creed in writing is accounted for by the fact that it was regarded as a precious secret, and committed to memory, being taught to persons just before baptism.

• In the early Church, baptism occurred only twice a year, at Easter and on Whitsun (Pentecost – the Latin name for Pentecost was “Dominica in Albis” – the “Sunday in white” – taking its name probably from the white baptismal garments of the newly baptized – “Albs” or “white garments”).

• On the eve of Baptism, candidates would be taught the Apostles’ Creed, which they were expected to memorize. This ritual was called the “traditio symboli” – the “handing over of the password [i.e. creed]”.

• At their baptism, candidates were asked to recite the Creed to the Bishop. This was called the “reditio symbolum” – the “returning of the password”.

• After their recitation of the Creed, their taking it onto their own lips and making it their own profession, the candidates were baptized. It was as if there was thence a mutual recognition between the candidate and the community of faith, the body of Christ, the “assembly” [ekklesia] of God’s people, the Church. “You and we believe the same thing. As we are one in faith, so now we will be sacramentally one.”

• The Apostles’ Creed is simple and direct as compared with the two other great creeds. It is a straightforward, affirmative distillation of the fundamental truths of Christianity. When these things could be affirmed, in conscience, by a person, the Church considered that person fit to be incorporated into the life of the Body, to be baptized.

• This Creed is given great prominence in Anglicanism. It appears many times throughout the Book of Common Prayer (seven times in the BCP of 1662 – the “mother” of all Anglican Prayer Books).

• It is recited in the official, public prayer of the Church twice daily – at Morning Prayer and at Evening Prayer, which clerics are obliged to recite daily. Thus it is commended to Anglicans as very important by our tradition, and this commendation is manifested liturgically, in the Church’s official prayer.

• Bishop Forbes says “From the days of St. Paul to this, these articles [of the Apostles’ Creed] have been the sum and substance of Christianity. Nothing less than this is sufficient. Nothing more than this is of absolute necessity to salvation. When a child is baptized, the Church demands no more of him, or of his sponsors, than an assent to the Apostles’ Creed.

- The Nicene Creed

• Whereas the Apostles’ Creed is a Latin creed (having its origin in the Western Church), the Nicene Creed is an Eastern Creed, having its origin in the East, originally written in Greek.

• It was deliberately drawn up by the fathers of the first Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in the year 325, and ratified and elaborated, attaining the form in which we find it in our Prayer Book, at the Ecumenical Council held at Constantinople in the year 381. Thus it is sometimes called the “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed”.

• The Council of Nicaea was convened to decide Christological questions having to do with the teachings of the heretic Arius.

• Arius taught that the Lord was in fact a creature, that he was made by God; that Jesus was not perfect God.

• So the Nicene Creed forcefully affirms the full divinity of Jesus, and thus clarified and circumscribes the interpretation of the teaching of Jesus about himself, as found in the Gospels.

• The end of the creed affirms the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. This part was added at Constantinople, in response to questions surrounding the teachings of the heretic Macedomius (who taught that the Holy Spirit was, in fact, not God).

• The Nicene Creed thus has the weight of very great authority behind it. It is hard for the Church to teach anything more forcefully or authoritatively or definitively. It was decreed by two Ecumenical Councils (which teach infallible – from the Latin “infallibilis”, from “in” = “not” and “fallere” = “deceive” – thus “infallibility” is an epistemic gift of God to his Church for our sake, so that we may not be led astray – and claims to infallibility should be considered within the framework of the Lord’s sayings, e.g. that “I will build my Church” etc.).

• Liturgically, the Nicene Creed is again commended very forcefully, in the summit and source of Christian worship, the mass, the holy Eucharist, where it is recited every Sunday, and on all major feasts.

- The Athanasian Creed

• St. Athanasius of Alexandria was one of the most forceful and stalwart defender of the apostolic teachings about Jesus against Arius. Indeed when much of the Church had succumbed to Arianism, Athanasius endured exile, deposition, and threats of violence, for the sake of the truth. The phrase “Athanasius contra mundum” is a legacy of his fidelity.

• St. Athanasius was one of the main speakers at the Council of Nicaea, and the leader of the orthodox party, and at the time, those who held to the orthodox position were popularly known as “Athanasians” – just as the heretical party were called “Arians”.

• After the death of St. Athanasius (in 373 a.d.), the Athanasian Creed was put forward as a summary of his teaching, and thus of the orthodox teaching about the Trinity and Jesus.

• Where the Apsotles’ Creed puts the faith simply and affirmatively, and where the Nicene Creed rules out false teaching, the Athanasian Creed condemns heretics.

• These condemnations should be read of those who knowingly, willfully, stubbornly reject the teaching of the Church on these issues. The condemnation is not to be read as directed against the ignorant. Cf. Romans 3.19: “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

• The great doctor of the Anglo-Catholic revival in the 19th century, John Keble, wrote of the Athanasian Creed: “Creed of the Saints, and Anthem of the Blest, / And calm-breathed warning of the kindliest love. / Who knows but myriads owe their endless rest / to they recalling, tempted else to rove?”

• Historically, the liturgical place for the Athanasian Creed in Anglicanism was at Morning Prayer on great feasts (Easter, Pentecost, etc.).

catholicism 101 -- part 7/8

CATHOLICISM 101

(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)

Church of the Holy Cross
March 9, 2008

Part 7
Christian Duty – Initiation into the Life of Grace / The (beginning of the) Sacramental Life

- We have seen what the Church is – that it is the sphere within which God is active, the sphere of grace; that it is the home of the Truth. But what about individuals? How do we stand in relation to the Church?

• We are concerned with those who are within the Church (this is, after all, a discussion within a church).

• ALL PEOPLE (including those who are not members of the Church), from our point of view, should maintain an open and suppliant heart. They should constantly seek the truth for its own sake, honestly search for God, and do good.

• But we are after SALVATION, union with God, eternal fulfillment, deliverance from death. What then must we do?

• “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. HE WHO BELIEVES AND IS BAPTIZED WILL BE SAVED; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover" (Mark 16.15ff).

• But we all see in this baptism that its impossible just to believe in the sense of passive acknowledgement.

• “But some one will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe -- and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren?” (James 2.18ff).

• Its not enough just to “believe” in the sense of believing something to be the case. That’s not the what the Scriptures mean. They mean FAITH – which is ACTIVE.

• “Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (1 Timothy 6.12).

• The life of faith is a FIGHT. Its something we DO. It’s a “taking hold” of eternal life. It doesn’t stop with “making a good confession”.

• There are two stages of faith:

• “the good confession” – cf. the man born blind from John 9: “Lord I believe!” AND HE WORSHIPPED HIM (John 9.38); or the father of the epileptic / mute child from Mark 9: “Lord I believe! Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9.24); or Mary and Martha and Lazarus from John 11: “if you would believe you would see the glory of God” (John 11.40).

• This is essentially acknowledging that Jesus is who he claims to be – the Christ, the Son of the Living God, he who is coming into the world, etc. Acknowledging his power.

• Then there is “fighting the good fight of the faith” – which follows on from the “good confession”. It is entailed by the acknoweldgement of Christ’s power over all. Because if he has power over everything, then he has power over YOU. Fighting the good fight means acquiescing to his power in YOUR life, your particular circumstances. Its not enough just to “believe” passively – “even the demons believe – and shudder.”

• So the Lord says “signs will accompany those who believe” in the more complete sense of “believing” – because the more complete sense of belief means making oneself susceptible to the power of Christ in your particular life. Therefore “you will take up serpents,” and speak in tongues and heal the sick, etc.

• This is symbolic. We should not be snake-handlers. It means that the Lord of Creation is now your Lord – through FAITH. You are no longer a slave to natural power, but to supernatural power. You are prone now to grace, you look for it, you find it in your life, you take hold of it, you make use of it to be transformed.

• This transformation is a transformation to make us able to see the power and glory of God, and to dwell in it (in HIM) forever. “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12.2).

• 1) Faith, 2) Baptism (from the Lord’s words in Mark 16, above).

• Baptism is sacramental initiation into the sphere of Grace – which is Christ himself.

• “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6.3)

• To be baptized means to be mystically incorporated into the sphere of divine power which begins the supernatural transformation of your personhood. Because baptism is baptism “INTO HIS DEATH” – that is, into the place where divine power delivers EVEN FROM DEATH – into Christ himself (because he IS the Kingdom of God – the place where God’s will is carried out, where his power is manifest): “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6.4).

• “And you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2.12).

• “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free -- and all were made to drink of one Spirit…. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12, passim).

• And “the Body” is the one (catholic) Church (cf. Colossians 1.18 & 24).

• When we are baptized, we make solemn vows (or they are made on our behalf, and we later ratify and renew them for ourselves). See Book of Common Prayer p. 302.

catholicism 101 -- part 6/8

CATHOLICISM 101

(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)

Church of the Holy Cross
February 24, 2008

Part 6
What is the Church FOR? (cont’d.)

• The Catholic Church is the HOME OF THE TRUTH.

• Recall what happened in the fall. Humans became blinded by psychological (= “soulish”) disorder. St. Paul in Romans (1.21 & 25): “for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened…. they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…”

• So humanity, almost since the very beginning, has lived in a kind of darkness and delusion.

• But Christ came to dispel that darkness, and to reveal once more the truth about God, and more than that: the Truth OF God. So Saint John says of Jesus’s birth: “The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world” (John 1.9).

• And again he writes: “Yet I am writing you a new commandment, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2.8). And John goes on to say the “new commandment” is to obey Jesus. Yet St. John also says that this is really “no new commandment, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard” (1 John 2.7).

• Jesus – all that he taught, and what’s more, his VERY PERSON – that is to say, all that he IS – is the divine Truth that was from the beginning. He is himself the Word of Truth that was in the beginning with God and that was God (cf. John 1).

• So his coming in the flesh means the advent (the arrival) of the divine Truth in its fullness, in its completeness. Jesus discloses God himself – what God has, what he wants, and who he is. There is nothing more to be disclosed of God than what is revealed in and by and through the Son.

• So St. John says that Jesus was “full of grace and Truth” (John 1.14).

• And Jesus himself says “I am the Truth” (John 14.6).

• And Jesus delivers the Truth in its fullness to the Church – because the Church is the custodian and guardian of Christ’s presence in the World. Catholics (and Orthodox), when they pass a church, will cross themselves – because Christ himself dwells within and is proclaimed within. (He is sacramentally present in the Tabernacle behind the Altar, and that Sacramental Presence is a sign the much deeper implications of his promise “I am with you always even to the end of the ages” (Matthew 28.20)).

• To the Apostles, Jesus says: “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for HE DWELLS WITH YOU, and will be IN YOU. I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you” (John 14.16ff).

• Again, Jesus says to the Apostles: “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14.26).

• And again: “When the SPIRIT OF TRUTH comes, he will guide you into ALL THE TRUTH; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16.13ff).

• So Saint Jude writes to the Church: “contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1.3).

• And Saint Paul writes to Timothy (1 Tim. 3.15) of “the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the PILLAR AND BULWARK OF THE TRUTH.”

• The Church as the home of the Truth is a consequence of Christ’s promised and abiding presence, to which the angels and God himself bear witness in the book of Revelation (Chapter 21): “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband [this is the Church: see Ephesians, below]; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, THE DWELLING OF GOD IS WITH MEN. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away." And he who sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for THESE WORDS ARE TRUSTWORTHY AND TRUE." And he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment. He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death."

• The “bride adorned for her husband” is the Church. In Ephesians 5, Paul writes: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”

• This, by the way, sets the standard for Christian husbands. What is a husband’s love according to the Word of the Lord? Giving yourself up for your wife – GIVING YOUR LIFE (dying) FOR HER. Devoting your life, your work, all that you do, to her and for her – as an icon of Christ’s love for us. That (and only that) is the marriage vocation for Christians.

• And about the “lake that burns with fire and sulfur” – that is because the God of Truth “is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12.29), and because the vindication of “him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1.23) will mean that all will be consumed by God’s fire in the end; and hence the refusal to live in the Truth means being tormented by God’s presence, rather than being purged and transformed by it. “Where can I go then from your Spirit? where can I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139.6). Hell is the PRESENCE of God (not his absence) for those who obstinately go on in darkness, who “lie and do not live according to the truth” (1 John 1.6). But “if what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father” (1 John 2.24).

• In a sense, then, the WHOLE POINT of the Church is to teach the truth. So that humanity may be delivered from the darkness that sets us stumbling and keeps us bound in falsehood and deceit and violence and death. The Church was instituted by the Lord SO THAT the dwelling of God would be with men – that his presence might be healing and merciful and salutary. That we might be consumed by the divine fire in love rather than judgment.

• A final point (John 8.31ff): “"If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." They answered him, "We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to any one. How is it that you say, `You will be made free'?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

catholicism 101 -- part 5/8

CATHOLICISM 101

(the outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion)

Church of the Holy Cross
February 17, 2008

Part 5
What is the Church FOR?

- The Church is the Sphere of Grace

• Man is created by God and endowed with reason (you can think), emotions (you can feel), and a will (you can choose).

• What happened through the fall is that these powers are corrupted.

• St. Paul writes (Romans 1.20ff): “Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they [idolaters] are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became FUTILE IN THEIR THINKING and their SENSELESS MINDS WERE DARKENED. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and SERVED THE CREATURE RATHER THAN THE CREATOR, who is blessed for ever! Amen.”

• The whole problem is that we are not now NATURALLY ordered toward God. We are NATURALLY ordered toward what he has created (“the creature”) rather than Him, the Creator – who alone is worthy of service and honor and who alone is blessed forever. And that’s why things, and especially people, are so mixed up. That’s how sin is perpetuated.

• And St. Paul in the passage that follows gives a whole litany of the messed-upness and disorder of nature (and human nature). (This passage has become very unpopular among Episcopalians): Romans 1.26ff – “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.”

-Catholic Christianity isn’t about singling out a group of people who are predisposed toward corruption in one of these particular avenues. The point is that we are ALL born into a situation of being corrupted in our nature. Therefore to be a human with integrity, reoriented toward God (and therefore toward life and grace and fulfillment) means to STRUGGLE. Because we are ALL found in that catalog of disorder.

• Since NATURE is corrupt and disordered, it takes something SUPERNATURAL to fix it. It takes GRACE – which is what God alone (who created Nature and who, as Nature’s creator, is ABOVE NATURE – is supernatural) has and what he gives.

• Acceptance of the gift of God’s grace lifts man out of the domain of the merely natural, and places him in the sphere of the supernatural. The Church often calls life in the sphere of the Supernatural being “in a state of grace.”

• Only in a “state of grace” can man know, love, and serve God. Because only in a state of grace do we have a kinship with God – by abiding in grace we become sons.

• St. Paul writes (Galatians 4.4ff): “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings [Greek “ousin” – things, existences] that by nature are no gods; but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits [Greek = “stoicheia” = “basic elements”, “elementary things”] whose slaves you want to be once more?”

• If we desire to be supernatural beings – humans full of grace, fit for divinity (Greek = “theosis” = “deified”), oriented toward God (and therefore oriented toward life and fulfillment), then we must go to the place where grace is, the sphere within which God gives what he has, where being supernatural (which God alone is “naturally” – that is God alone is “naturally supernatural”) is possible.

• And recall what we said last time -- St. Paul calls the clergy – i.e. ministers in succession from the Apostles – “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4.1), that Christ made the Apostles the ministers of divine grace: the Eucharist, the offering of his own body and blood; the absolvers of sin (that is those who loose members of the body from the things that bind them to the domain of the natural – and thus prevent them from becoming supernatural beings); baptizers, bestowers of the Holy Spirit, etc.

• The Church is therefore the sphere within which we have access to all these things: to the gift of God in Christ (the essence of Grace – Grace itself – because Christ was FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH (John 1)) in Baptism and Eucharist; the grace of being set free from those things that bind us to the domain of the natural – in the sacrament of reconciliation / confession; the bestowal of the Holy Spirit in confirmation, etc.

• So it becomes clear how it is that the Church is the “12 Lane Superhighway to Heaven” – it is the arena within which we have access to Grace – what God gives. He gives it within this sphere. Can he give it outside Church? Of course. John 3.8: “the wind (Greek = “penuma” = “spirit”) blows where it wants to blow, and you hear the sound of it and do not know where it came from or where it its going”. But God DOES (and does want to) give it within the Sphere of the Catholic Church. And he wants us to have recourse to it here. God MAY give grace wherever he wants – but he ASSURES us that he DOES give it within the sphere of the Catholic Church.

catholicism 101 -- part 4/8

CATHOLICISM 101

Church of the Holy Cross

February 10, 2008

Part 4

The Historic Episcopate: the Guardian of the Truth, and the Instrument and Pledge of Grace

• Some residual remarks on the Episcopate:

  • It is the Guardian of the Truth

    • The Truth, in its completeness, was given by Jesus and the Holy Spirit (by God himself) to the Apostles.

      • John 17.6, 7, 19: “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and thou gavest them to me, and they have kept thy word. Now they know that everything that thou hast given me is from thee…. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth.”

    • The Apostles handed it on to their successors.

      • 2 Timothy 1.13-14: St. Paul writes to St. Timothy: “Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus; guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.”

      • 2 Timothy 2.2: “and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

      • St. Irenaeus of Lyons (in about 175 AD) writes about St. Polycarp: “But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true.”

    • One of the primary jobs of a bishop is to teach and guard this faith which was given by Christ to the Apostles, and who promised to them that the Holy Spirit (the third person of the Godhead) would himself guard this deposit of truth.

      • Matthew 28.20: (speaking to the 12): “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teachings them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

      • John 14.16f: “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth…”

        • Note that the promise of the Holy Spirit is “forever” (Greek = “eis ton aiona” = “into the eon”). It cannot therefore be just about the 12 Apostles – who would die well before the close of the eon.

    • When false teaching rose up in the Church, it was the job of the bishops to refute it. That’s what the “ecumenical councils” were for. They were large gatherings of bishops from all over the world.

      • Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and of Chalcedon in 451 AD gave us the Nicene Creed, which we still recite today, every Sunday. It was produced by the bishops to differentiate what was the truth about Christ, which had come down from the Apostles, from some strange things about Jesus that had begun to be taught (like that he was a creature – but no, said the bishops, he was in fact “begotten, not made, of one being with the Father, and through him all things were made”). The bishops were restating what had been handed down to them by the Apostles from the beginning.

      • A few weeks ago, a very good question was asked: how do we KNOW what the true teaching is? Here is what I believe: we know because of the universal witness of bishops of the apostolic succession. This means, basically, three groups of bishops in the divided Christendom: The Roman Catholics (the largest group), the Eastern Orthodox (the next largest group), and the Anglicans (the third largest group). What these groups of bishops teach is what is safe and true. But some of them, you will note, disagree with one another. Here’s how to tell when they disagree: When Rome and the East agree about something and Anglicanism teaches something different (or is silent), Rome and the East win out. When Rome and the East disagree with one another, we are at liberty to believe different things. I am hear advocating a kind of democracy among bishops of the apostolic succession. I think this is right – though it is not “gospel”.

  • The historic Episcopate is the instrument and pledge of grace.

    • Grace is the free and unmerited favor of God, manifested in the salvation of sinners (us), and in the bestowal of blessings.

    • St. Paul calls the clergy “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4.1).

      • The “mysteries of God” are the very profound truths about God, which transcend the ability of humans to understand: like how God can be a trinity of persons and a unity of substance, or the Incarnation – how Jesus can be at once both perfect God and perfect man.

      • But “mysteries” also means “sacraments”. The normal Greek word for “sacraments” is “musterion”. We use this too in English, for example in the Postcommunion Prayer, when we thank God for “assuring us in these holy mysteries”.

    • The bishops are the guardians and dispensers of the Sacraments.

      • The sacraments can only be duly celebrated by those who have been authorized by Christ – by the Apostles and their successors.

      • Unless the sacraments are administered by someone sent by Christ to do so, there is no guarantee that they are means of grace (any crazy person can take a bowl of milk and a jar of peanut butter, and wave his arms around and say it’s a “sacrament”).

      • Jesus told the Apostles to Baptize (Matthew 28.19), to Celebrate the Mass (“do this” – cf. 1 Cor. 11.25), and to absolve sins: John 20.22f: “…he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

      • To say “This is my body,” and “this is my blood”, or to say “I absolve you from all of your sins” would be extremely presumptuous for someone not authorized by God to do so.

      • Moreover, there is no guarantee that these words would mean what Christ meant by them, or that they would effect what he meant to effect when he used them, unless they are used by those whom he sent.

        • Here we can see the connection between the magisterial (= teaching) authority of the bishops as guardians and dispensers of the true faith, on the one hand, and their authority as guardians and dispensers of the sacraments. John 17.8: “I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them…”

    • Thus the historic Episcopate – bishops in succession from the Apostles themselves – is the warrant and guarantee of sacramental grace, of the “musterion theou” – the Mysteries of God.

      • And correlatively, Christian groups who have not maintained the historic Episcopate (most Protestants), have lost with it the ordinary means of grace ordained by God – namely, his sacraments. Those Christians, of course, who act in ignorance will likely be excused by God, and he may reward the faith of such Christians by granting them grace – but it is beyond the purview of his covenant. His covenant is with the Catholic Church.

catholicism 101 -- part 3/8

CATHOLICISM 101

Church of the Holy Cross

February 3, 2008

Part 3

Further Considerations on the Christian Ministry

• The Ministry of the Catholic Church is from God.

  • John 15.16: Jesus says to the Apostles: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide…”

    • The Church’s ministry is chosen and appointed by God. The hierarchy is not merely an expediency – a provisional structure deriving from men to effect the proclamation of the Gospel – rather it is given by God himself, a fundamental component of his self-disclosure and the work of redemption ongoing in the world.

    • The word “appointed” is translated in the Authorized Version (“King James” Version) “ordained” (Greek = ETHEKA – “place” “appoint” etc.).

  • As it was under the Old Covenant, is now: “I give your priesthood as a gift” (Numbers 18.7).

  • So the ministerial priesthood of the Church comes from above, not from below. While priests stand as representatives of the people before God, they are primarily sent by God as His ambassadors to the people.

    • So St. Paul, writing as an Apostle / Bishop / Priest says: “So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you ON BEHALF OF CHRIST, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5.20).

      • (In 1 Peter 5.1 St. Paul calls himself a “fellow-priest” (Greek = “sum-presbuteros”).

    • And 2 Cor. 2.10 Paul refers to forgiving sins “in the person of Christ” (Greek = “en prosopo christos”).

    • This is a critical point to emphasize, because of our cultural situation (as Americans), we are prone to allow our thinking about civil polity to color our beliefs about Christianity. So we might tend to think of the clergy merely as elected representatives of the people. And while voting and so forth is a PART of ecclesial polity, that process does not endow the ordained ministry with its most fundamental character.

    • And while we make think of this teaching as a kind of exaltation of the clergy, it is actually the opposite. The fact that the priest ministers “in the person of Christ” and with Christ’s authority and power, is a safeguard against pride. The Christian priest, as priest, loses his own identity in Christ.

    • So St. Paul says “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor. 4.7).

  • Apostles / Bishops / Priests / Deacons

    • Each of these words (in Greek of course) is used in reference to our Lord himself.

      • Hebrews 3.1: “Therefore, holy brethren, who share in a heavenly call, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.”

        • Compare John 20.21: “Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you."

      • 1 Peter 2.25: “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian [Greek = “Episkopon” = “bishop”] of your souls.”

      • Hebrews 5.6: “…as he says also in another place [about Jesus], "Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchiz'edek."”

      • Luke 22.27: “But I am among you as one who serves…” (“one who serves” = “diakonon” in Greek = “deacon”).

    • After the Resurrection of the Lord, he sent out the Apostles to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28.19). The Apostles in turn appointed “bishops / elders” (i.e. priests) and deacons (Acts 6 explains the deacons) to minister on their behalf in the places to which they were sent (cf. Philippians 1.1).

      • “And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they believed” (Acts 14.23).

    • As the Apostles began to die, they appointed men from the order of bishop-elders (episkopoi-presbyteroi) to succeed to their place of primacy in the nascent Church.

      • So, for example at Antioch, Saint Peter was the first leader of the local church, then Saint Evodius, then Saint Ignatius, and so on. We know this because writings from some of these people have come down to us.

        • We have a number of letters from Saint Ignatius, who wrote while on his way to be martyred in Rome about the year 110, to the Christians in a town called Tralle, in what is now the west coast of Turkey, saying “In like manner, let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father, and the presbyters as the sanhedrim of God, and assembly of the apostles. Apart from these, there is no Church.”

      • At Rome there were Peter and Paul, then St. Linus, St. Anacletus, St. Clement, etc. etc.

      • So Saint Irenaeus of Lyons writing about the year 180 says: “It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about” (“Adversus Haereses” Book IV chapt. 26).

      • If you’re industrious enough, you can find out the succession of Bishop Stanton, all the way back to Jesus himself. It’s a matter of public record.

    • So when the Apostles were all dead, toward the end of the 1^st century, the Bishops became the buck-stopping authorities in the Catholic Church. Under them the elders (presbyteroi) and deacons ministered – the quote from St. Ignatius of Antioch, above, is representative of this transition and time period.

    • The next stage of transition was during the course of the 3^rd – 4^th century, as Christianity grew and came to be tolerated by the secular authorities throughout the known world. It spread from the metropolitan centers where it had been planted (big cities like Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, Ephesus, Lyons, etc.) to smaller cities in the vicinities of the metropolitan centers.

    • So the bishops of the large cities (“Metropolitans”) appointed “suffragan” (assistant) bishops to minister in the outlying cities and towns. And as the faith spread further and increased yet more, and as distinct parishes (from Greek “para oikos” = subsidiary house, i.e. subsidiary to the diocese) grew up in within Episcopal sees (the place where the bishop has his chair or “sedes” in Latin), the bishops appointed men from the order of presbyters to minister, by the leave and under the authority of the bishop, within local churches. This took place generally during the 4^th and 5^th centuries. (These transitions and dates are fluid.) It hasn’t changed appreciably since.

  • We’ve seen that the bishops are the successors of the Apostles. Let’s consider four implications of this (fount of the ministry, bond of unity, guardian of the truth, instrument and pledge of grace):

    • The episcopate is the fount of the Ministry

      • All bishops are also priests and deacons.

      • All priests and deacons are made by bishops (as are bishops themselves – i.e. made by other bishops (at least three others, since very ancient times)).

    • The episcopate is the bond of unity

      • To separate oneself from communion with one’s bishop is to separate oneself from the Church of which the bishops are the rulers. It is to become a “schismatic”.

        • Moreover, as the bishops minister in the place of Jesus, to separate oneself from one’s bishop is an act of disloyalty to Jesus himself (2 Cor. 2.10 (above) and Matt. 28.18ff: “And Jesus came and said to them (the Apostles), "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age"”).