In the Making

By Richard Wu

[wesleyhill]

Good Catholic storytelling has always been corporal: messy, strange, steeped in the sins of real people. I’m not talking about church thrift-store fare, devotional tales with covers of sunrises over mountains. Consider the profane piety of the whiskey priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. The lust of Obadiah Elihue Parker in Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back.” The scarred and scorned bodies searching for grace in the novels of Toni Morrison. Catholics go for crucifixes over crosses. They want their Mass wine in a chalice, not Solo cups. The Eucharist is not a symbol; it is substance.

Nick Ripatrazone, “Mariette in Ecstasy” | The Paris Review (via wesleyhill)

[canonizedandotherwise]

Coptic Martys of Sirtre, Libya

[garbandier]

The current habit of desecrating beauty suggests that people are as aware as they ever were of the presence of sacred things. Desecration is a kind of defense against the sacred, an attempt to destroy its claims. In the presence of sacred things, our lives are judged, and to escape that judgment, we destroy the thing that seems to accuse us.

Roger Scruton, “Beauty and Desecration” (via garbandier)

[richwu]

Wodwo Vergil: Eclogue 4

This thing of ours. You ever look at the world, like, really look at it? It’s a great dome, some real supernatural architecture, roof so smooth and high you can’t even touch it in a jet, not even those invisible ones the Air Force fly made of black ceramic or some shit like that, going faster than music faster than light can catch up with not even then. And the air is thin up there, so, and, that’s why I keep coughing, capisce? Cold like frost lining the inside of the lungs. And from so high, looking down the sea is texture like an untuned TV channel bright and gray and white and impossibly far deep. This bambino, though: he’ll step over this whole vault, like stepping over the corpse of a rival, bleeding on the sidewalk, and you got somewhere you need to be. This whole dome and everything inside it will kiss his ass and sing his fucken praises. Believe me.

–

Behold, Adam Roberts (via Alan Jacobs). Mind. Blown. 

[wesleyhill]

Let’s start with one particular thing that Catholics can offer the public discussion right now, which Protestants cannot. And that’s this new Pope of yours. I’d urge Catholics to use Francis’ popularity specifically among American leftists as an occasion to point those leftists to the link between his so-called “leftist” concerns and the pro-life witness he continues (if sometimes too quietly) to bear. On what basis are modern leftists concerned for the well-being of the weak, of the powerless? What is the source of their moral intuition? How did that get written on their hearts, for one thing, and how did it get inscribed in the Western conscience, for another? And given this essential decency for which the left has been such a powerful voice, how precisely are we meant to draw a line saying that this particular group of the powerless—this weakest group of humans—is outside of our concern? These are the questions that, under Francis’ papacy, Catholics are now in the best possible position to ask—and answer.

Susannah Black, “What I Want from Catholics: Occupy the Public Space”

[wesleyhill]

We are all easily lured into what might be called “package deal” ethics: if you are committed to one cause you will probably be committed to a particular set of causes, even if there is no clear logical connection. The danger then is of reducing ethics to style, to a set of superficially matching accessories. It is an important jolt for us to have to come to terms with those who look for a deeper kind of consistency – whether they are radical libertarians uniting a pro-choice position with a deeply individualist social morality, or Catholics uniting an orthodox sexual ethic with root-and-branch hostility to market economics or nuclear arms. It was one of the choice ironies of the era of the Second Vatican Council that the stoutest defender of the inherited position on birth control – Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani – was also one of the fiercest advocates of nuclear disarmament. Having to think through the connections between our moral perspectives so that we can have intelligent arguments about them is a rather urgent need in the current climate, where policy and principle are so often created reactively and opportunistically. (Do I have any political party especially in mind? Perish the thought.)

Rowan Williams, in a review of two biographies of Pope Francis.

[froggylaw]

Some trust in chariots and some in horses but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

Psalm 20:7 … but sometimes I feel terribly irresponsible, lazy, selfish, to simply trust in the name of the Lord when most of the world is crying for relief from war, famine, death. where is their security? who do they trust in? I bet they would love a chariot to ambush those out for their blood, and horses to carry them away to safe havens where their children might rest. I trust in the Lord because I can… Others must… and often without any proof God listens. Lord, have mercy. (By Easten Law)

[richwu]

Thank you again, Lauryn. (And you too, Nina.)

[richwu]

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is “correct” or “wise,” any more than a forest fire can be “correct” or “wise.” Wisdom isn’t the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

Ta Nehisi-Coates in “Nonviolence as Compliance”.

[unapologetic-book]

Tenebrae on Good Friday evening, as the lights go out one by one.

[ayjay-deactivated20161206]

To all of us, I believe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Roman Empire is like a mirror in which we see reflected the brutal, vulgar, powerful yet despairing image of our technological civilization, an imperium which now covers the entire globe, for all nations, capitalist, socialist, and communist, are united in their worship of mass, technique and temporal power. What fascinates and terrifies us about the Roman Empire is not that it finally went smash but that … it managed to last for four centuries without creativity, warmth or hope.

W. H. Auden, 1952 (via ayjay)

[unapologetic-book]

A final thought on the cultic. The word has a primitive feel. This is intentional. Christianity should be far better at foregrounding its exotic otherness. For it is interesting, and engaging – this business of worship. At least in theory! Why is it that religious worship seems duller than more limited cultural expressions such as art and literature? Why is that people are fascinated by dismembered aspects of religious worship – theatre, carnivals, icons, meditation, performance art – but seem to have little desire for the form that integrates these things in a supreme performance of meaning? Why have the churches not learned to be culturally exciting places? A reinvented liberal Christianity needs a new sacramentalism, which should seek the attention of the secular world. Perhaps the medieval feast of Corpus Christi should be the churches’ model: worship should spill out from churches into the streets and nurture busy amateur creativity. Why hasn’t this sort of thing happened to any large extent? There remains a strange failure to notice that religious worship is the highest possible state of cultural creativity and also, dare one say, of grown-up fun.

Theo Hobson, Reinventing Liberal Christianity (2013)

[triadic]

I’d already learned to respond to most challenges and catastrophes by saying not, “God is trying to tell me something,” like pain is a code, but, “There is a way to serve God in every situation.” Suffering can be offered up for others; it can change us, make us more humble or more loving; it’s an opportunity to trust in God; when the suffering is a result of societal crimes and “structural sin” it can be an opportunity to fight for justice. These are all ways of serving God through pain. I don’t know if it’s best to think of these acts as revealing the meaning which was always embedded by God in our suffering, or as imbuing our suffering with meaning by imbuing it with love.

Eve Tushnet, God Is Working His Purpose Out.

[ayjay-deactivated20161206]

That music you hear in the distance? It’s St Augustine, St Teresa, Teilhard de Chardin, Pascal, Kierkegaard and Simone Weil all singing together, and what they are singing is that, as Christ commanded, we are supposed to love God with our minds, as well as with our hearts and our souls and our strength. It is an illusion to think that there is any necessary conflict between a Christian commitment and free, adventurous thinking. No-one ever does their thinking on a blank sheet of paper. Every intellectual of every kind is in a conversation with some set of ideas, doctrines, ways of seeing the world, and that’s what makes their own thinking serious. The Christian conversation with Christian ideas, and with every other kind of idea, need not be defensive or imprisoning. Why is there a stereotype that says you have to choose between faith and thought?

Francis Spufford

[richwu]

A Letter to the Hong Kong Charismatic Church

Dear Hong Kong Charismatic Church,

It has been an eventful few months, has it not? There have been historic worship gatherings in Asia, exciting conferences on the power of the Spirit, and even a justice conference for those who sense that their faith must be expressed more concretely in our world. At the same time, it has been a turbulent season for our city, to say the least. We have witnessed the stabbing of the newspaper editor Kevin Lau, an official “white paper” from China reneging on the promise of universal suffrage, political referendums and demonstrations, corporate leaders “encouraging” their employees to join anti-democratic marches — and, in the midst of all this, a vibrant, resilient movement for democratic reform.1

My hunch, however, is that we are somewhat hesitant to discuss these issues within our communities, much less speak about them in public. In fact, I would not be surprised if many of us feel sheepishly under-equipped to think through them as Christians (an observation which my Facebook feed seems to confirm). How should we respond to the political unrest that has gripped our small island? Is it permissible for a Christian to join a protest, or is this “rebellious” in God’s eyes? Why, in fact, should we even care? Isn’t this all a distraction from our primary task of saving souls?

Let me be upfront: I am deeply convinced that our faith requires us to be engaged with these issues, and that it offers us the theological and spiritual resources to do this well. My hope is that this letter might point us to one such resource — namely, the doctrine of Jesus’ human and divine nature — as a way to begin to think through how we might mount a coherent response. Here, then, is my argument: I believe that a proper understanding of Jesus as both fully human and fully divine compels us to care for God’s world, and to work with him to redeem it. Before we unpack this statement, however, we must first confront an ideology which lurks behind so much of our thinking.

Our Temptation: Gnosticism

As charismatics (of which I am one), one of our greatest temptations is to slide into the worldview known as gnosticism. This is an ancient belief system which was prevalent during the first few centuries of the Church’s existence. Its chief characteristic was the belief that the “spirit” and “soul” are pure, whilst matter and the material world are evil and corrupt. Human beings, it reasoned, were pure souls imprisoned in a corrupt body, and could only be saved by escaping the world and ascending to ever greater heights of spiritual knowledge (“gnostic” is the Greek word for knowledge). It is no surprise, then, that many gnostics believed that Jesus was a “pure soul” who did not possess a true, human body. Wisely, early Christian theologians rejected this worldview on the basis that God, in Genesis, declares his creation to be good.

It does not take a particularly active imagination to spot the influence of gnostic ideas within our own charismatic movement. As a community which is profoundly marked by our experiences of the Spirit, we tend to prioritize the “spiritual realm” over the “natural” one. We admire leaders who seem especially attuned to the third person of the Trinity — those who minister with a powerful anointing, or who regularly ascend to “greater levels” of prayer and mystical experience. In such a culture, it is no surprise that our earthly bodies are tacitly implicated as hindrances to spiritual progress. It is also no surprise that we tend to emphasize Jesus’ divine nature over his fleshly, human existence. Of course we acknowledge his humanity, yet it is much easier to picture him in a state of rapture than, say, hacking away at a plank of wood or stubbing his toe on a rock. It would be wise for us, then, to become reacquainted with one of the earliest and fiercest battles in church history: the battle to preserve Jesus’ humanity in doctrine and belief. Far from being a trivial exercise in theological speculation, this was, for those involved, the very key to understanding the full scope of God’s salvation.

The Humanity of Jesus: Why Does This Matter?

Let us zoom in, then, on the fourth and fifth centuries, when the church was embroiled in a heresy known as Apollinarianism.2 The bishop Apollinaris had taught that Jesus’ divine nature had “commandeered” his body, effectively rendering him less than fully human. His opponents’ response was both telling and surprising: Jesus, they insisted, had to be fully human in order to be the Saviour of the world. Indeed, when Christ took on matter, he dignified it and made it fit for redemption. “What is not assumed cannot be saved!” was their rallying cry. By that, they meant two things:

First, that Christ, by assuming a temporal form, brought our own temporal world — including time, space and history — into union with his own being. As Thomas Torrance puts it, Christ “permitt[ed] time and our historical existence to be the form of his eternal deity.”3 Incredibly, this meant that all of creation could now be redeemed by God.

Second, they meant that through this union, Christ raised the world out of its “downward drag of sin and decay” and sanctified it in anticipation of its final redemption. Thus, Christ’s incarnation means that both human beings and the material world can now exist “in the very life of God.”4

Why is this chapter of our history so important? Because it reminds us that a one-sided emphasis on Christ’s divinity leaves us with an impoverished, gnostic form of salvation, while a full-orbed understanding enables us to grasp the true scope of God’s saving plans. And those plans encompass not only our souls, but our bodies; and not only our bodies, but the world that humans construct, share and inhabit. No wonder, then, that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Three Implications

There are, to my mind, at least three implications which we can draw from this discussion:

Matter matters. Yes, all of it. God cares deeply about our soil, our society, and the structures that govern our lives, for through his incarnation they have been ennobled and brought into his very being.

Christians should be engaged in God’s work of “sanctifying,” or redeeming creation. Because Christ has welcomed the life of the world into his very being, we are called to participate in its redemption by cultivating shalom in each of its various spheres. This is an essential part of our human vocation to reflect God‘s image into the world.5

We must embrace and work within our particularity.6 Just as Jesus chose to be a particular man in a particular nation at a particular time, so we must care for God’s world in specific, concrete ways that correspond to our particular historical moment. Perhaps this means teaching children faithfully in schools, or building just and creative businesses, or marching in certain demonstrations. Or perhaps it means making beautiful art, becoming a marine biologist, or raising inquisitive kids. Whatever your circumstances, one thing remains clear: our everyday, material world matters to God, and our participation in it is a good and hallowed task.

More than Mystics

In his book, In the Name of Jesus, the priest Henri Nouwen makes the remarkable claim that Christians are called to be “mystics and revolutionaries.” What a salient challenge for Hong Kong’s charismatic church! We are hemmed in by some of the darkest days that our city has ever seen: a cold, methodical dismantling of a venerable democratic tradition in our schools, press, judicial system, business sector, government, and cultural ecosystem. Let me say this as starkly as I can: if Christ is both fully human and fully divine, then Hong Kong’s plight matters — yes, even to God. And if Hong Kong matters to God, then we are called to be his agents of shalom, working for the peace, justice and welfare of our city even as we anticipate its final redemption. Perhaps, through this ordeal, the charismatic church will find her voice and discover that she is not only a mystic, but a revolutionary as well.

For an excellent primer on the history leading up to this flashpoint, see this post by the geographer Justin Tse. ↩

Much of this information comes from Beth Felker Jones’ lively and approachable book, Practicing Christian Doctrine: An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically. See esp. pages 127-128.  ↩

Thomas F. Torrance, and Robert T. Walker, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 66. Emphasis mine. ↩

Ibid., 66.  ↩

Obviously, I am indebted to the work of N.T. Wright here.  ↩

Jones, Practicing Christian Doctrine, 137.  ↩

[ayjay-deactivated20161206]

I don’t have any advice [for younger writers]. You are asking me to live in an era other than the one that formed me. But I will tell you this: An editor in New York told me the other day that, even as the reading audience for serious prose has diminished, the unsolicited manuscripts she receives are better than ever. Even while I think we are leaving the splendid Victorian age of serious popular literature—novels and poetry—we may be entering the Elizabethan Age, when few in London read, but there was an intensity of thought and beauty to the prose, and the poetry, and, of course, the plays. Religion still reveres the book—just visit a yeshiva if you want to see devotion to the weight of the holy word. But in our secular lives the digital revolution seems to have eroded the great age of the middle-class reader. And without readers what are we? Half-writers whose sentences are never completed by the stranger’s eyes. I tell young writers not to give a single sentence away. Charge for every noun! Beyond the matter of strategy, the question really is whether our society needs complicated thought or expressions of beauty that reveal themselves only slowly and with difficulty. The question is whether a civilization can forget the pleasure of difficult, beautiful writing so thoroughly as to ignore its loss.

Richard Rodriguez

[utahgrace-blog]

We have certainly no need for a pseudo-contemplative spirituality that claims to ignore the world and its problems entirely, and devotes itself supposedly to the things of God, without concern for human society. All true Christian spirituality, even that of the Christian contemplative, is and must always be deeply concerned with man, since “God became man in order that man might become God” (St. Irenaeus). The Christian spirit is one of compassion, of responsibility and of commitment. It cannot be indifferent to suffering, to injustice, error, and untruth.

Thomas Merton, Peace in the Post-Christian Era.