The first sequence of feasts in Leviticus 23 — Passover/Unleavened Bread (vv. 4–8), Firstfruits Offering (vv. 9–14), and Weeks (vv. 15–21) — maps to the sequence of Christological events from Passion through Resurrection to Pentecost. The Gospels, and St. Paul (1 Cor. 5), of course spell out the Passover/Passion connection. But what I hadn’t noticed before is the Firstfruits Offering. This offering, less familiar perhaps than Passover and Unleavened Bread, is a wave offering of a single sheaf of the firstfruits (probably of the barley harvest) “that you may be accepted” (v. 11), and accompanied by an ascension offering of a male lamb a year old with (unleavened, of course) bread and wine (vv. 12–13). No bread may be consumed before this offering is brought (v. 14). And this offering takes place on “the day after the Sabbath” (v. 11) during Unleavened Bread: that is, on the first day of the week. On Resurrection Day — well, Christ rises as the firstfruits of those that had fallen asleep. Meanwhile, Weeks marks the ingathering of the firstfruits of the (probably wheat) harvest, seven weeks later; at Pentecost, the Spirit descends to gather in the firstfruits of the Church, harvested from all nations.
Is St. John the Evangelist subtly hinting that he was present at the very beginning of Christ’s ministry in John 1? John the Baptizer is “standing with two of his disciples” (v. 35) when the Lamb of God walks by, and the two follow Jesus. One is Andrew, the brother of Peter (v. 40), but the other goes unnamed. Is this the Evangelist? If so, it helps make sense of some of the curious features of John 1. The dramatic action of the gospel begins with the Baptizer’s confrontation with the Pharisees' emissaries, which one of his disciples would have been well-positioned to observe. But perhaps more significantly, the Prologue — otherwise a carefully crafted poem about the Logos who was in the beginning with God, who was and is Light and Life, who came into the world and became flesh to dwell among us — contains two prima facie odd interjections about John the Baptizer: that he was sent from God as a witness about the light, but was not the Light himself (vv. 6–8), and a part of that testimony about the Light’s preeminence (v. 15). If the Evangelist initially had a life-altering encounter with the Baptizer such that he became one of his disciples, then subsequently encountered Jesus of Nazareth and was sent to follow him at the Baptizer’s behest — this all makes sense of why, in his old age, as he was giving final shape to his own testimony that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, he and his followers still could not do without the Baptizer’s testimony. (There is also a point about the historical particularity of the Word becoming flesh: remove the specifics of John the Baptizer that intrude upon the Prologue, and it could resemble a passage of Platonic speculative theology.)
The question is still haunting me: Why is there no New Covenantal analogue to the Feast of Booths? Is it because the temporary dwellings and tabernacles and temples of the Old Covenant, made by human hands, have received their fulfillment in the Word who became flesh and tabernacled among us, the new Temple not made by human hands?
[Discovering] things is much more gratifying if there has been some difficulty in the search for them. Those, after all, who never discover what they are looking for suffer from starvation, while those who do not have to look, because everything is ready to hand, often start wilting out of sheer boredom; in either case, a malady to be avoided.
— St. Augustine (tr. Edmund Hill, O.P.), Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana) 2.8. He is speaking about the interpretation of Scripture, and particularly of the “innumerable obscurities and ambiguities” (2.6.7); but there are many applications of this word.
A great little aside in St. Basil’s On the Holy Spirit (15.35, p. 68 in PP42):
The Lord, therefore, in restoring us to the resurrected life, sets forth the Gospel’s whole way of life, by establishing as laws of conduct freedom from anger, the suffering of evil, freedom from the filth of loving pleasure, freedom from the love of money. In this way, we are set right and by design partake of those things which the age to come naturally possesses. Now, if someone would say as a matter of definition that the Gospel is a prefiguring of the resurrected life, he would not, it seems to me, go astray of what is proper.
St. Basil names three of the four as “freedom(s) from,” and I think they may all be so understood (and so coordinated with passages from the Sermon on the Mount):
from anger that prevents reconciliation (Mt. 5:21–26);
from the cycle of retaliatory violence = “suffering evil” (Mt. 5:38–42);
from lust that destroys our self-control (Mt. 5:27–32);
from the grasping power of Mammon (Mt. 6:1–4, 19–24).
The positive virtues (if that is the right word) that characterize the resurrected life, then: reconciliation, non-retaliation, self-control, and generosity.
Justin Smith-Ruiu: “[My] concern is not that we’re overestimating what machines might soon be able to do … but that we are systematically underselling the common understanding of what it is that human beings in fact do. We are now raising a generation of human beings who have come to believe of themselves that machines can do, or will soon be able to do, everything they as humans do, as well or better than themselves. This proves that they have accepted the model of themselves as essentially information systems. They don’t know, or can’t make any sense of the fact, that they are boiling over with affect, let alone that this is the dimension of them that they would do well to focus on if they wish to get some kind of handle on the human essence.”
[N]arrative-critical insights are achieved precisely by setting aside the conventional diachronic questions which bind textual meaning to origination, focusing instead on synchronic questions about relationships immanent within the text itself. It is arguable, and indeed plausible, that the narrative-critical perspective represents a long overdue liberation of the gospels from captivity to source-critical hypotheses. [But t]he limitation of the synchronic, narrative-critical perspective is that the Jesus of whom it speaks is no more than the protagonist in a narrative. Were someone to succeed in showing that no “historical Jesus” ever existed, narrative criticism could continue regardless. Nothing would have to be changed. The presumed flesh-and-blood individual known as “Jesus of Nazareth” might prove to be a figment of the early Christian imagination, but he would remain the protagonist of the gospel narrative. This reduction of Jesus to a figure immanent within the text is integral to narrative-critical method, and it helps to establish the point that the “real,” historically- and theologically-significant Jesus cannot be detached from the process of reception that reaches its telos in the canonical gospel narratives. By restoring the integrity of these narratives, a narrative-critical perspective helps to make that point. But it cannot make that point on its own, insofar as it is confined within a synchronic frame of reference. The process of event and reception is inescapably diachronic. For that reason, a diachronic account of the reception process (so far as this is accessible to us) may serve to clarify the relationship between the flesh-and-blood Jesus of Nazareth and the figure embodied in the texts, providing a way out of the conventional and fatal dichotomy between a “Jesus of history” and a “Christ of faith.” Reception occurs in large part through the active shaping of what is received in the work of interpretation.
— Francis Watson, Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective, 157
[The] aim of that divine power, which bestowed upon us the sacred Scriptures, is that we should not accept what is presented by the letter alone — such things sometimes being not true with regard to the letter but actually irrational and impossible — and that certain things are interwoven with the narratives of things that happened and with the legislation that is useful according to the letter. But, that no one may suppose that we assert that, with respect to it all, none of the narratives actually happened, because a certain part did not; [or] that none of the legislation is to be observed according to the letter, because a certain part is irrational or impossible according to the letter; or that what is written about the Savior is not true on the perceptible level, or that no legislation of this or commandment is to be kept: it must be said that regarding certain things it is perfectly clear that the detail of the narrative is true… [and] the passages that are true on the level of the narrative are much more numerous than those which are woven with a purely spiritual meaning. (4.3.4)
Nevertheless, the precise reader will be torn regarding certain points, being unable to show without lengthy investigation whether the supposed narrative happened according to the letter or not, and whether the letter of the legislation is to be observed or not. Therefore one who reads in an exact manner must, observing the Savior’s injunction which says “Search the Scriptures,” carefully ascertain where the meaning according to the letter is true and where it is impossible, and as far as possible trace out, by means of similar expressions, the sense, scattered throughout Scripture, of that which is impossible according to the letter. When, then, as will be clear to those who read, the connection taken according to the letter is impossible, yet the principal is not impossible but even true, one must endeavor to grasp the whole sense, which spiritually connects the account of things impossible according to the letter to things not only not impossible but even true according to the narrative, with as many things as did not happen according to the letter being taken allegorically. For our position is that with respect to the whole of the divine Scripture all of it has a spiritual meaning, but not all of it has a bodily meaning, for there are many places where the bodily is proved to be impossible. And therefore great attention must be given by the careful reader to the divine books, as being divine writings… (4.3.5)
For “the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid, and then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field”. Let us consider whether the apparent and superficial and surface aspect of Scripture is not the field as a whole, full of all kinds of plants, while the things lying in it and not seen by all, but as if buried under the visible plants, are “the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge” — which the Spirit through Isaiah calls “dark and invisible and hidden” — needing, for them to be found, God, who alone is able “to break in pieces the doors of bronze” that hide them and “to break the iron bars” that are upon the gates… (4.3.11)
But let it be sufficient for us in all these matters to conform our mind to the rule of piety and to think of the words of the Holy Spirit in this way: that the text shines, not because composed according to the eloquence of human fragility, but because, as it is written, “all the glory of the King is within,” and the treasure of divine meanings is contained enclosed within the frail vessel of the common letter. … (4.3.14)
Let everyone, then, who cares for truth be little concerned about names and words, since in every nation different usages of words prevail; but let him attend, rather, to that which is signified rather than the nature of the words by which it is signified, especially in matters of such importance and dignity… [for] there are certain things the significance of which cannot be adequately explained at all by any words of human language, but which are made clear more through simple apprehension than by any properties of words. Under this rule must be brought also the understanding of the divine writings, so that what is said may not be assessed by the lowliness of the language, but by the divinity of the Holy Spirit, who inspired them to be written. (4.3.15)
— Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles, tr. John Behr (Oxford University Press, 2019). I have introduced minor repunctuation in certain places for clarity.
The Gospel always says: Yes, then No, and then Yes again — and Amen.
Yes. Christ wants you: you, exactly as you are, as who and what you are. What Christ wants is no less than everything you are and have. He wants the whole of you because He loves you: He loves you because He made you, and He made you because He loves you. There is nothing in you that prevents you from coming to Him. There is no better or worse time, no more or less fitting state. Whenever it is called “Today,” if you hear His voice, the command is the same: “Follow Me.”
No. What this means is that when you come, you cannot offer anything more than the whole of yourself, in simple, complete, and undivided submission. You contribute nothing yourself, for what do you have that you did not receive? No part of what you now are is worthy as it is. Nothing can remain unchanged about your life or within your being. There is no power within you, no performance you could deliver, no height of virtue you could reach, which could make up the difference between what you are and what you would need to be: it is not a finite quantitative lack, but an infinite qualitative difference.
Yes — and Amen. When you offer nothing less and more than the whole of yourself, Christ Himself will make you what you ought to be. He takes your sin and gives you his righteousness; he takes your heart of stone and gives in its place a heart of flesh. He removes the veil from your sight and teaches you the true spiritual law. He will instruct you in the way you should go, shine His lamp upon your path, and give strength to your weary feet. He will at first perfect your feeble efforts at obedience and in time give you full power to do His will. Only then you will know what it is to say, with the Apostle, “Indeed, I worked harder than anyone: yet not I, but the grace of God working within me.”
“The graven images of their gods shall you burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourself, lest you be snared by it, for it is an abomination to YHWH your God. And you shall not bring an abomination into your house and become a devoted thing like it. You shall utterly detest it and you shall utterly abhor it, for it is a devoted thing.” (Deut. 7:25–26)
That is the translation of these verses in the “American Literary Version” (the bespoke revision of the ASV produced for Bibliotheca). The underlying term is kherem, which usually denotes “under the ban,” i.e., absolutely incompatible with the sole worship of God and therefore to be destroyed.* Accordingly, the ESV and other contemporary translations here (and elsewhere) renders it more expansively as “devoted to destruction,” for quite understandable contextual reasons: “You shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction like it…”
Now, kherem and its derivatives can also carry a more general meaning, which the ALV’s “devoted thing” evokes: roughly speaking, something committed exclusively to sacred use, wholly dedicated to g/God, such that if it is misused the wrath of God falls on the one who misuses it. These meanings are of course compatible: a thing “under the ban” must not be stolen for personal gain (cf. Achan) or used according to one’s own inclinations (cf. Saul), but in many cases must be completely destroyed — as with the idols in view here, and as is threatened to the Israelite who brings such an idol into his home.
But the ALV’s rendering here suggests a multi-layered meaning, and an insight into the nature of idolatry. An idol is “under the ban” because it is “a devoted thing” — devoted, that is, to another god: a false god, whose claim to godhood violates the true God’s preeminence, and whose worship by the children of Israel breaches the exclusivity of their covenant with the true God. It cannot be “rescued” for the worship of the true God — unlike, say, the Egyptian gold and silver which is used to beautify the Tabernacle. It is permanently corrupted and corrupting. Once a thing has been consecrated to one god, for good or for ill, it cannot be re-consecrated to another. The golden calf, though made from that same Egyptian gold, cannot be melted down or repurposed once the people repent; its elements must be completely, permanently destroyed.
Thus one who brings a “devoted thing” into his house, rather than “utterly abhorring and detesting it” — viz. smashing it to pieces — has already in a way given himself over to the god to whom the idol is dedicated, via the power of covetousness by which the false god rules (and is not covetousness always the way?). The idol reshapes his devotion. He himself also becomes a “devoted thing.”
This is is precisely what the psalmist says about idols: “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.” (Ps. 115:8)
*Note: the name of the Nigerian Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram uses the Arabic cognate of this term; while Western media usually translates this name as “Western education is forbidden,” the group has claimed that it actually should be rendered “Western civilization is sacrilege.” Loath as I am to take exegetical advice from self-proclaimed jihadists, the latter rendering is a far more plausible explication of their motives, and one which resonates more strongly with the biblical use of kherem.
This morning in our Daily Office readings my wife and I reached Luke 8, which contains St. Luke’s account of the Parable of the Sower (parallels in Mt. 13 & Mk. 4):
(1) Soon afterward [Jesus] went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, (2) and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, (3) and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means. (4) And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, (5) “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. (6) And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. (7) And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. (8) And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold.” As he said these things, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
(9) And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, (10) he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’ (11) Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. (12) The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. (13) And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. (14) And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. (15) As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.
(16) “No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. (17) For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. (18) Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.” (19) Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. (20) And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” (21) But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
St. Luke’s telling differs in various minor ways from St. Matthew’s or St. Mark’s, most notably the immediate context for the parable: he introduces it with the Lord “on the road,” as it were (Mt. and Mk. set it explicitly beside the lake), with his followers and supporters around him, and concludes it with the episode about the Lord’s “mother and brothers” (which in Mt. and Mk. immediately precedes the parable). This mild defamiliarization highlighted some non-obvious features of the parable, which in turn led me to what I think is a slightly unconventional interpretation. Essentially: this parable is not intended first to explain the individual’s response, but to illumine the community and context in which the individual responds.
Let me explain. The sower who sows the seed — which “is the word of God” (v. 11) — is, of course, Christ, who is going out “through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God” (v. 1). As he does so, Christ finds himself surrounded by “a great crowd” coming “from town after town” (v. 4). The parable is, then, a commentary on his (literarily) present actions. He is sowing the Word as he goes, in many different places, on many different soils. Now: the sown Word grows up into a plant (or, as in the first case, does not), which puts down roots in the soil — and the depth of the soil, and the other plants growing in that soil, determines whether the plants wither in the heat, fail to bear fruit, or grow healthfully and fruitfully. When Christ explains the parable, to what do the “plants” — the growths of the seed — correspond? They correspond to the persons who hear the Word. The most explicit indications of this are Christ’s references to their “roots” (v. 13) and “fruits” (vv. 14, 15). The plants are, as it were, “new growth” of the Word: new embodiments of the Word, which should themselves in the proper harvest time bear the seed of the Word, ready to be scattered anew by the sower. The growing Word-plant is a new life where previously there was none, a new-created person, which is to say a new kind of person. (Echoes of the psalm: “Blessed is the man… whose delight is in the Law of the Lord, and on His Word he meditates day and night; that man is like a tree, planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.") What, then, are the “soils”?
My suggestion is that the “soils” are not, primarily, different “types” of individual persons' hearts and souls with their individual responses to the Word; rather, they are different sorts of communities with different kinds of environment for the Word-plantings. Think first about the nature of soil. Soil is not crude, inert matter on which a seed acts to extract water and nutrients. Soil is rather a rich micro-ecosystem, full of other living creatures, with hyper-locally varying tendencies and capacities and deficiencies, itself best understood as a kind of quasi-living substance. There is a dynamic relation — better, an indescribably complex array of dynamic relations — between the seed that is planted and the soil in which it is planted, even as they remain distinct from one another. So it is with the one who comes to believe the Word and the context in which he or she comes to believe it. Some “soils” offer only broad hostility, in which case the seed will struggle or fail to grow at all (“the devil comes and takes away the word,” v. 12). Other soils do not welcome a deep commitment, enforcing only shallow ones (“they receive it with joy… [but] in time of testing fall away,” v. 13). Many soils are full of entanglements and diversions for even a personally-committed believer (“they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature,” v. 14). But some soil is good, not only permitting but encouraging deep, fruitful commitment (“they… hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience,” v. 15). In a rich, nourishing community, the new believer may put down deep roots and bear fruit a hundredfold.
Once we recognize that the primary correspondence is not between soil and believer, but soil and believer’s proximate environment, how much more, and broader, sense does this parable make of the life of faith! It was in a different context that St. Paul quoted the poet Menander to the effect that “Bad company corrupts good morals” (though it is a remarkable not-quite-coincidence that immediately after that quotation he discusses the nature of the resurrection body by analogy to seeds and plants; there are no coincidences in Holy Scripture!). But who has not seen a friend or acquaintance, ostensibly growing in faith, begin to wither when his closest friends begin expressing their disapproval of some teaching inherent to the faith? Or, even more commonly and tragically, whose faith has been slowly choked out when (say) she takes a high-paying job that relocates her away from her community, or when he begins dating someone who is attractive but has little interest in or commitment to faith? Which interpretation of the parable is more realistic (not to say compassionate): to say, “well, this just goes to show they were never good soil to begin with, you see”, or “alas that they were uprooted from good soil and planted elsewhere!” How psychologically realistic — brutally so — is this view of persons' relation to their communities! Look at the findings of interpersonal neurobiology: I really am something like the weighted average of the five people with whom I spend most of my time. Who they are, and what sort of relation they have to the Sower, is naturally of critical importance for who I am. And in subtler but no less significant ways I am influenced by what a previous generation called my “station” in life, i.e., the cultural expectations endemic to my socio-economic layer: the sorts of media that People Like Me consume (and indeed the posture of “consumption”), the kinds of jobs we take, the places it is acceptable for us to live, the churches it is respectable for us to attend. This is the soil in which I live, and in which I am trying to grow. Of course it would affect how deep are my roots and how fulsome my fruits.
Note also that on this interpretation, the growth of the Word-seeds into living Word-plants at all is not only less a deterministic what-kind-of-soil-are-you? matter, but also more evidently due to the inscrutable, uncontrollable power of grace. Anyone who has sown seeds of any sort knows that, even in essentially the same soil, some of the seeds will grow well and others will not (indeed, probably only wealthy modern Westerners, in our highly sterilized environments and de-agriculturalized culture, can imagine crop growth to be basically a matter of controllable inputs and predictable outputs). Yes, there is a dynamic relation between the soil which permits and the seed which sprouts, but the priority is with the sowing of the seed and the actuality of the growth. So it is with the Word of God: whether an individual Word-seed, all else being equal, will indeed begin to grow into a Word-plant is decidedly inscrutable — at least to human understanding; I do not say inscrutable to God, for only God knows why a given human heart does or does not receive the Word in the first place. But — and this is the crucial point — in the process of discipleship, after the Word has been received, after the plant has begun to grow, there really are predictable and repeatable patterns of growth or failure to grow, which one can understand quite readily based on the characteristics of the soil/community in which it is planted. Nitrogen deficiency may not prevent a plant from growing at all, but it will fail to thrive and may not bear its fruit. And, of course, in some communities and contexts the devil seems practically always on the prowl to take away the planted word before it can grow. Certain plants won’t grow at all in acidic soils; “how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God!”
Now, someone will say, “But the analogy of the lamp suggests a more individualistic reading. Christ speaks of ‘the one who has or has not’ in v. 18.” So he does. “Take care then how you hear,” of course. A greater emphasis on the community context in which an individual grows in faith by no means abrogates the individual’s responsibility for that faith; I am tempted to suggest, in an admittedly circular move, that the Holy Spirit sets these words after the parable of the sower in order to guard against a kind of community-is-destiny fatalism. (In this connection it is striking to recall that the post-apostolic Christian generations seem to have essentially invented the concept of free will to explain how Christians could so thoroughly defy, among other things, the temptations of lust endemic to Greco-Roman society.) But I see no reason that these words do not admit two levels of interpretation: one individual, the other communal. The community that receives true faith hospitably — that is good soil — to it will more be given, viz., richer soil and more believers; the community that has not — is a thicket or rock or path — even what it has (as in erosion!) will be taken away. Remember also that St. Matthew uses the same analogy of the lamp to speak of the whole community of disciples (“You [pl] are the light of the world,” Mt. 5:14ff). The apparent interlude about the Lord’s “mother and brothers” in vv. 19–20 also strengthens the community-focused reading. What community could be more naturally proximate (even more naturally in first-century Galilee than in twenty-first-century suburbia) than one’s family? Yet Christ says, in effect, “Those who hear and do the word are my true family; better to surround myself with them than my literal family — unless they hear and do the word also.” The centrality of biological family is fundamentally relativized by the new creation of the Word.
This brings me to the other key objection to my interpretation, which is how to make sense of those whose new-planted faith actually flourishes in hostile contexts — I think naturally of the little apostolic communities scattered around the Mediterranean over the course of the Acts of the Apostles; or, in the present day, of Muslim-background believers who encounter Christ in a dream and are led to one another by the voice of the Spirit. I might reasonably respond that again, Christ’s parable is a commentary on his present actions, and therefore situational; it is not, and does not need to be, in principle infinitely applicable to absolutely any situation. (Scripture in its totality is profitable for all situations, not simply any individually extracted passage, and most of the profitability comes in learning — from Scripture itself — the quotidian wisdom to discern which passage is most fit to which situation.) But the ultimate response, I think, is again to emphasize the inescapably communal aspect of faith. As often in Christ’s parables, there is an instructive asymmetry between the good examples and the bad examples; in Christ’s four paradigms — the path, the rock, the thicket, and the “good soil” — this last is the only one that is not a specific sort of place. Soil is hyperlocal; a patch of “good soil” may be found, or formed, anywhere in the field. (Legume plants, for instance, famously improve the soil quality for other plants by “fixing” nitrogen so that it is usable.) Every such example of faith flourishing in a hostile context which comes to my mind presupposes that at least “two or three are gathered,” such that the soil quality is enriched so as to nourish new plantings. St. Paul never traveled alone in his apostolic work, and never left a solitary believer as a “congregation of one,” but baptized whole households. Christ sent the seventy-two out in pairs. The Desert Fathers, who might similarly be considered a counterexample, in fact are constantly warning novices in the faith about the spiritual dangers inherent to the desert, and how unwise it is to charge, solo, into battle with the devil before you are ready.
The lesson of the parable of the sower, then, might not in fact be “test yourself to see whether you are good soil or not”; it might instead be “get yourself to the good soil, and put down roots.”
Reflections on Plato’s dialogues — or, if I break it out as a separate post, links to reflections — to follow below. The order is that of the Ukemi Audiobooks series The Socratic Dialogues, which dramatizes Benjamin Jowett’s translation with a full cast of great British actors (headlined by David Rintoul as Socrates). Jowett’s translation may be “out of date” from a scholarly perspective (which I am unqualified to judge) but in Rintoul’s hands (vocal chords?) is enduringly lucid. Ukemi also organizes the dialogues loosely according to a traditional early-middle-late periodization, which I gather is a contested approach, but it doesn’t seem to harm the understanding for a first pass. (I’m already suspecting that the “dramatic ordering,” following the chronology of Socrates' life as best that may be reconstructed, might be more fruitful… but that’s for a second round, and I’m just beginning the first!)
Early Period
Apology. A barnstormer to start in medias res — better, near the end of things. We meet Socrates for the first time as he defends himself, before the assembly, against the charges laid at his door: of being an evildoer and “making the better appear the worse,” of being an atheist and introducing new deities, and of corrupting the youth. He does not succeed, though he is condemned by only a small margin. Socrates here introduces a number of key motives in the corpus: his claim to “know nothing at all” and thus to only be the “wisest” by exposing everyone else’s ignorance (which makes him quite unpopular); the deceptiveness of rhetoricians, who know how to speak elegantly and persuasively, but know really nothing of the Good and therefore of how to make men better; his own role as a sort of “gadfly,” provoking the polis into active self-reflection which it might otherwise neglect, and seeking thus to improve it; the absolute priority of caring for the soul over against all other cares (of property, wealth, body, etc.), and the absolute refusal to employ any tactics unworthy of the soul; the “daemon” or voice of God — or Conscience — speaking to him and infallibly guiding him toward the right course of action, though all public opinion be against him; his real indifference — perhaps, even here, optimism! — in the face of death, but absolute service to the truth. We also get a taste of the dialectic style as he cross-examines his accuser Meletus. It is an extraordinary bit of writing by Plato, moving and sweeping and incisive. Apology thus introduces and crystallizes the brilliant literary paradox of the Socratic corpus: Socrates disclaims all “rhetoric” and “elaborate defence,” portraying himself as a humble and artless seeker of wisdom — using brilliant rhetoric and elaborate defensive strategies to demolish his opponents' arguments. I loved Apology, and expect to revisit it with great enjoyment, but there is undoubtedly something inhuman and irritating (gadfly-like!) about Socrates. One understands instantly why Socrates had so many admirers in his own day (including Plato), and why Plato’s Socrates has been such a titanic figure in the history of thought and culture; and, equally, just why Socrates made so many enemies. Most of all I chafe at his claim that “the life which is unexamined is not worth living.” Is it not the other way round: no life which is lived is worth leaving unexamined?
Crito. A simple but moving dialogue, set in prison on the night before Socrates' execution, on the question: “Is it right to disobey an unjust law?” Socrates' answer in this case, of course, is No. The titular Crito (also mentioned in Apology) comes to him in prison and makes one last effort to persuade Socrates to escape his condemnation. But — despite his complaint in Apology that his trial was not conducted with full propriety — Socrates is determined to accept the death penalty meted out by the state. The most curious, and seemingly central, feature of the dialogue is the lengthy portion spoken by Socrates in the voice of the personified Laws of Athens. How, the Laws ask Socrates (and thus Socrates asks Crito), can one who is so personally committed to justice defy the demands and decisions of justice?
Charmides. Now we flash back several decades, and get going with our first, though assuredly not last, “What is X?” The X in question is the virtue of temperance.
Laches.
Lysis.
Euthyphro.
Menexenus.
Ion.
Gorgias. Is it okay to really rather dislike this dialogue? The subject matter is of great importance, of course: moving from the more specific question “what, if anything, does a teacher of rhetoric need to know about goodness?” to the general question “what is the best way of life?”. In these early dialogues Plato does not often set up Socrates' interlocutors as particularly compelling or thoughtful — see Euthyphro or Ion and their namesakes — but in Gorgias he seems to regard, and Socrates seems to treat, all three of Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles with barely-disguised contempt. And they are, in differing ways, worthy of contempt (less so, perhaps, Gorgias).
Protagoras.
Meno.
Euthydemus.
Lesser Hippias.
Greater Hippias.
Middle Period
Symposium.
Theætetus. Fantastic. Far and away the most enjoyable, dare I say riveting, of the dialogues so far. “What is knowledge?”
Phædo.
Phædrus.
Cratylus. Some people, apparently, say this dialogue is “tedious.” I had the exact opposite reaction! (Perhaps I am a tedious person…)
With the beginning of this year, I have determined to patch some of the (very large) holes in my reading of the classics. I have never read Plato or Aristotle in any sort of panoptic way, let alone later major philosophers of antiquity such as Seneca or Plotinus; my reading of the Church Fathers has been almost entirely occasional and extremely selective; it has been years since I have read either the Iliad or the Odyssey (and I have in fact never read the Aeneid). My major reading for roughly the last two years has instead focused on the characteristic novelties and problems of modernity, as articulated by modern writers: George Steiner’s Real Presences, James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State, Lorraine Daston’s Rules, Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge, Jason Josephson-Storm’s The Myth of Disenchantment, Erazim Kohák’s The Embers and the Stars, and Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry; in a more explicitly scriptural/theological key, my teacher Jeremy Begbie’s Abundantly More, my teacher Kavin Rowe’s essays on New Testament hermeneutics, Brevard Childs' Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Ephraim Radner’s Time and the Word, and Andrew Louth’s Discerning the Mystery; and, of course, the granddaddy of them all (by at least volume if not temporality), Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things.
If your guiding intellectual question is “how shall we live with integrity as Christians in modernity?”, as I am beginning to suspect mine is, this body of literature possesses obvious importance. I am nowhere close to having plumbed the full depths of this tradition (or complex of traditions), and do not intend to stop reading in this area. My reading project on the nature of tradition will bring me back up to the present age with (at least) Gadamer, Lindbeck, and more MacIntyre, and I have several more major works of twentieth and twenty-first-century philosophy and theology already waiting for me on my shelves (Heidegger, Cassirer, Adorno & Horkheimer, Bultmann, Frei, Jenson, Rosa, and so forth). And I’m currently reading through David H. Kelsey’s Eccentric Existence, which (whatever else, good or ill, I might say about it) represents a one-man (two-volume) masterclass in theological engagement with modernity. So in no way am I withdrawing my attention from modernity. Rather, two things have crystallized my sense that it is time to turn (at least more of) my attention to the Old Things.
The first is that I have found myself increasingly overpowered by what I call in shorthand the “I do not understand Hegel” problem. The great theologians and philosophers of the not-too-distant past — and, still, the greatest in the present — were staggeringly, now almost incomprehensibly, literate and erudite figures. Before publishing his great work on hermeneutics, Gadamer was a noted expert on the pre-Socratics. Karl Barth is sometimes accused of not having read the tradition fairly, but he has never been accused of not having read it thoroughly. Brevard Childs seems to have truly read every book ever written. Part of what makes Hegel singularly difficult is, of course, his ruthlessly abstract and intensely tedious style; but no doubt another part is that very few people today are educated the way that he and his peers were. Take a slightly more recent example: what man of letters teaching at the University of Michigan today would dare assign his undergraduate students a reading list like W. H. Auden’s? If philosophy and theology are the Great Conversation, one must learn to discern and hear the enduring presence of the older voices who have left the room before one can truly contribute or at least understand.
The second is that, despite the immensity of my to-read list and the paucity of my already-read list, I do feel that I reached an inflection point with the turning of the year. That was when I finished reading Karl Barth’s Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century — the bulk of which is actually about eighteenth-century philosophy and theology as the “background” to nineteenth-century theology; and it must be said that Barth appears to enjoy writing about Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and so forth a great deal more than the nineteenth-century theologians who are the book’s ostensible subject — and an unofficial trilogy by Lesslie Newbigin: Proper Confidence, Foolishness to the Greeks, and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. These, somehow, coordinate in my mind: Barth and Newbigin (who was, not coincidentally, heavily influenced by Barth) together outline the negative space for and sketch the positive content of the properly Christian post-liberal synthesis which we desperately need — or which, at any rate, I need in order to feel intellectually satisfied. In the coming months, as the intellectual dust from my aforementioned reading settles, I may take a few stabs at describing what seem the chief features of that synthesis. But I also sense, if dimly, that in order to know what I really mean by those features, I will need some more pre-modern context and contrast. I can thus leave Barth and Newbigin for a little while, confident that I will return to them better able to understand what is fruitful in what they offer.
It is high time, then, that I actually read Plato and Aristotle (not to mention Seneca and Plotinus); that I (begin to) read through the Church Fathers; that I revisit Homer (and meet Vergil anew). I am doing so as follows. For Plato, I have launched into the Ukemi Audio series dramatizing the Socratic dialogues (in Benjamin Jowett’s translation), with the astounding David Rintoul as an unforgettable Socrates — and intend to write here, for my own benefit, at least a short reflection on each dialogue. For the Fathers, the obvious place to start is Volume I of the old Schaff set, with Sts. Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and their comrades. With the Iliad, which I have at least read before (perhaps more than a decade ago), I have cracked open Emily Wilson’s recent translation. In none of these cases is the point a deep, doctoral-seminar level understanding. Rather, the point is familiarity, breadth, and fresh inspiration: to drink deep from the old and honored wells.
If [you have quoted this passage] because you imagined that you could throw doubt on the [preceding] passage, in order that I might say the Scriptures contradicted each other, you have erred. But I shall not venture to suppose or to say such a thing; and if a Scripture which appears to be of such a kind be brought forward, and if there be a pretext that it is contrary, since I am entirely convinced that no Scripture contradicts another, I shall admit rather that I do not understand what is recorded, and shall strive to persuade those who imagine that the Scriptures are contradictory, to be rather of the same opinion as myself.
— St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 65 (in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1).
My reading project on the concept of tradition commences in earnest with Origen’s De Principiis (I use John Behr’s translation, with minor punctuation and formatting alterations):
All who believe and are assured that “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” and who know Christ to be the truth, according to his saying, “I am the truth,” derive the knowledge which leads human beings to live a good and blessed life from no other source than from the very words and teaching of Christ. And by “the words of Christ” we mean not only those which he spoke when he became human and dwelt in the flesh; for even before this, Christ, the Word of God, was in Moses and the prophets… And that he also spoke, after his ascension into heaven, in his apostles, is shown by Paul in this way, “Or do you seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me?” [Pr.1.]
Since, however, many of those who profess to believe in Christ differ not only in small and trivial matters, but even on great and important matters — such as concerning God or the Lord Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit, and not only regarding these but also regarding matters concerning created beings, that is, the dominions and the holy powers — it seems necessary first of all to lay down a definite line and clear rule [Gk Vorlage: kanon?] regarding each one of these matters, and then thereafter to investigate other matters. … [Although] there are many who think that they know what are the teachings of Christ, and not a few of them think differently from those before them, one must guard the ecclesiastical preaching, handed down from the apostles through the order of succession and remaining in the churches to the present: that alone is to be believed to be the truth which differs in no way from the ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition. [Pr.2.]
[The] holy apostles, in preaching the faith of Christ, delivered with utmost clarity to all believers, even to those who seemed somewhat dull in the investigation of divine knowledge, certain points that they believed to be necessary, leaving, however, the grounds of their statements to be inquired into by those who should merit the excellent gifts of the Spirit and especially by those who should receive from the Holy Spirit himself the grace of language, wisdom, and knowledge; while on other points they stated that things were so, keeping silence about how or whence they are, certainly so that the more diligent of their successors, being lovers of wisdom… might have an exercise on which they might display the fruit of their ability. [Pr.3.]
A rich, and pointed, passage by Sertillanges on the intellectual’s need to be solitary but not isolated:
[Do] not forget that in association with others, even in ordinary everyday meetings, there is something to be gleaned. Too much solitude would impoverish you. … [You] must feel that you cannot shut yourself up entirely. Monks themselves do not do it. You must keep, in view of your work, the sense of the common soul, of life, and how could you have it if, cutting yourself off from human beings, you had in mind but a dream-humanity? The man who is too isolated grows timid, abstracted, a little odd: he stumbles along amid realities like a sailor who has just come off his ship; he has lost the sense of the human lot; he seems to look upon you as if you were a “proposition” to be inserted in a syllogism, or an example to be put down in a notebook. In the inexhaustible wealth of the real, too, we can find much to learn; we must move in it in a spirit of contemplation, not keep away from it.
— A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Condtitions, Methods, 59. “The inexhaustible wealth of the real”: what a marvelous phrase.
Subject for further reflection: Christ’s encounter with His two disciples on the road to Emmaus gives the paradigm for our worship. First, as they walk, Christ expounds Moses and the Prophets, “opening their minds” to understand how the Scriptures show it necessary “that the Christ should first suffer and then enter into glory.” Then, as they sit down to supper (“Stay with us!"), the Lord “opens their eyes” in blessing and breaking the bread, and they learn Who it was that unfolded the Scriptures to them: “Did not our hearts burn within us…?” The order is always thus: Hearing ushers us on to seeing; the Word guides us to the Table; the Scripture prepares us for Eucharist.
A ChatGPT query requires roughly 5x the electricity of a normal Google search — that is, a Google search from the days before Google’s “AI Overview” itself 5xed the energy use of every single Google search you perform. If this is the case for a purely text-based response, I don’t even want to know how much energy an image or video generator like DALL-E — or a “music” generator like Sora — requires per query.
Furthermore, LLM chatbots — due to both their design and their inefficiency in completing the tasks for which they are designed — invite far more queries per day than your typical search engine. The teenagers who spend hours a day chatting with their LLM “therapists” or “AI girlfriends” may be the high tail of the bell curve, but there is no doubt that they are living right into the technology’s basic affordance. I challenge anyone to find a large number of people who literally spend all day Googling things (well, okay, actually, I do know at least one person like this). OpenAI wants everyone to use GPT-4o for everything, 24/7.
To keep up with this insane and constantly-escalating scale of usage (think also of how every shopping website is suddenly integrating an AI-powered helper chatbot!), new data centers are being constructed every single day. Worldwide data center energy use probably doubled between 2022 and 2023, probably due in substantial part to the impact of rolling out generative AI tools, and seems on pace to keep doubling annually (in a sickening update to Moore’s Law).
Note also that server farms and data centers are frequently built in regions like the American West which have plenty of available land but scarce water resources. In energy economics, there is a well-known tradeoff known as the “water-energy nexus:” the more water you are able to use (mostly for cooling), the less energy you have to use, and vice versa. In other words, there is ecologically no such thing as a free lunch: degrade your local ecosystem through water use, or pump carbon dioxide and other more noxious pollutants into the air somewhere else. Furthermore, by all accounts data centers significantly degrade quality of life and health outcomes (through, fascinatingly, steady noise pollution in both audible and inaudible frequency bands) for the people who are misfortunate enough to live near them.
The easiest technologies to eliminate from the economy are, by definition, the ones which have not been integrated into the economy yet. Unlike the automobile, industrial agriculture, air travel, and the other technological revolutions to which we are constantly hearing “AI” compared, the “AI revolution” has not happened yet. It is incredibly unpopular — the American public views “AI” with something like 70% unfavorability the last time I looked into it, which is more unpopular than Donald Trump was at any point during his first term in office — and consistently becomes more unpopular as people learn more about it and have more experience with it. So why not simply say, with Bartleby the Scrivener, “I would prefer not to”? If you want to be serious about climate change, ban AI.
This, of course, will not actually happen. For one thing, it might not be legal (and certainly would not be legally practical) for, say, the US government to ban generative “AI” development. For another, all the incentive structures are aligned against it. To simply “not develop AI” is, clearly, a step that no currently existing tech company (and many not-yet-existing tech companies as well) is willing to countenance, for fear that they will be left behind by their AI-developing competitors — a classic race-to-the-bottom collective action problem. The incoming administration is filled with unapologetic cryptocurrency boosters (another infamously environmentally degradatory technology). And I should pause to say that I don’t quite wish to launch a Butlerian Jihad against all “AI” tools — I am very optimistic, for instance, about the improvements to weather forecasting which the new AI-based models seem to provide when used in conjunction with traditional computational physics-based models, and if AI tools can effectively replace human content moderators to keep porn off social media, all the better.
It’s also true that ending “AI” development would not come anywhere close to reversing anthropogenic climate change. Automobiles, industrial agriculture, and air travel are far larger contributors still to the problem, and there is no good replacement for fossil fuels in these domains (electric car boosters to the contrary). It is impossible to avoid the truism that if you want 18th-century emissions, you need an 18th-century lifestyle. Nobody in the 21st century is going to voluntarily revert to an 18th century lifestyle. What we need, rather, is a massive and non-fossil fuel source of energy that could not only, say, power AI, but also make planetary-scale carbon capture & storage economically viable. No solar or wind power technology is capable of providing this, for reasons of basic physics, and the ecological costs of resource extraction to make solar panels and their battery packs are so significant that it is not clear to me a solar panel will ever, environmentally speaking, “pay for itself” in emissions reductions. Hydropower sounds great if you have a massive river nearby (not the case everywhere!), but every time we check in on the maintenance requirements and ecological impacts of dams, the answer gets worse and worse. That is why I consider it enormously telling that AI developers such as Microsoft, recognizing that the new product they are shoving down all our throats requires an astounding quantity of energy which the current American grid is simply not ready to provide, are making quiet but massive investments in the future of nuclear energy.
The real proposal, then, might actually turn out to be: anthropogenic climate change, widespread generative “AI”, new nuclear energy — pick two.
Questions the “historical method” might ask about the “laws of leprosy” in Leviticus 13–14: What was this disease, actually? The same as what we know as “leprosy” today or different? Multiple diseases? Surely the same pathogen does not affect humans and garments and structures — are these different sorts of molds? What is the cultural logic of hygiene that generates these regulations?
Questions a literary-theological approach might ask: Why is the leper who is “covered head to toe” in his disease pronounced clean? Why must the unclean leper dwell outside the camp? Why are the defilements of skin, fabric, and structure all referred to as “leprosy”? Why is the cleansing of leprosy accomplished through a sin offering and a burnt offering? What exactly is being “cleansed”? Why does it require a full-body shaving? What are the analogies between humans and houses? The significance of clean garments? How can one make atonement for a house?
Imperial conquest — or “national” unification by force, which is hardly so different — requires first that the army be restructured to be highly legible and loyal to the State, rather than organized according to local customs and loyal to their own localities; then that the government of the empire (or nation) be remade in the image of the army; then, finally, that local society be remade in the image of the government.
Any institution, movement, or ideology that appeals to the priors of wealthy, successful, and powerful men and women — especially those who (or whose families) have attained wealth, success, or power via success in business — will, as a rule, be surpassingly better funded than any institution, movement, or ideology that questions, undermines, or contravenes those priors.
Success in business, while (in most cases) requiring the development of certain skills and capabilities which bear resemblance to (and may even participate in) important virtues, is not domain-transferable. It offers absolutely no credit or guarantee that the model successfully used — or the businessman or woman who achieved that success — is in any way applicable outside of business.
Indeed, success in business may indeed blind the successful to their need for the virtues which enable “success” in other fields of life, by leading them to assume that those fields of life all work on roughly the same principles as the business world. Success in business may thus, absent a deep and thorough process of virtue-formation which cannot originate from or primarily take place in the business world, produce wealthy, successful, and powerful men and women who radically lack insight into what is truth.
The support, or lack thereof, of the wealthy, successful, and power for an institution, movement, or ideology therefore has absolutely nothing to do with the truth of such an institution, movement, or ideology’s core commitments or doctrines. Not only is there definitively no causal relation; there is no necessary correlation whatsoever.
It is almost defensible, as a result, to say that if one wishes to find truth in an institution, movement, or ideology, one should begin by looking as far as possible from where the wealthy, successful, and powerful congregate — and donate.
this post brought to you partly by a reading of Plato’s Gorgias and Protagoras
Those who aim at what is beyond their powers, and thus run the risk of falling into error, who waste their real capacity in order to acquire some capacity that is illusory, are also men of curiosity in the olden sense… Do not overload the foundation, do not carry the building higher than the base permits, or build at all before the base is secure: otherwise the whole structure is likely to collapse. What are you? What point have you reached? What intellectual substructure have you to offer? These are the things that must wisely determine your undertaking. “If you want to see things grow big, plant small,” say the foresters; and that is, in other words, St. Thomas’s advice. The wise man begins at the beginning, and does not take a second step until he has made sure of the first. That is why self-taught men have so many weak points. They cannot, all by themselves, begin at the beginning.
— A. G. Sertillanges, O.P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods (tr. Mary Ryan), 27.
Goal for the next stage of my intellectual life: Answer his questions. Begin again from the beginning.
We should probably be skeptical of efforts to formulate the correct theological method in the abstract, prior to any effort to formulate and commend particular material theological proposals, as though a theological method could serve as an instructions booklet about how to assemble your very own Christian theological conceptual structure.
— David H. Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, 12
I’m sure everyone else has already noticed this, but in Exodus 29:38ff the twice-daily (morning & evening) lamb offering in the Tabernacle is offered with bread and wine:
A few stray observations, with no particular ordering:
The “bread” is composed of flour and oil. One might object that as described it is not bread yet but merely a sort of flour-oil paste. However, this is of course a burnt offering: the bread is baked, as it were, in the fire, as it is being offered.
There is, of course, no leaven in this bread. The Passover (which of course involves the sacrifice of a lamb) is followed by the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the first day of which all leaven is cleaned out of every Israelite house. There is no permanent regulation of which I am aware that prescribes leaven the rest of the year. But the collocation of lamb & unleavened bread recalls this festal season. Dare we infer: the Tabernacle exists in a sort of permanent Passover state, or is indeed a kind of permanent Passover?
The bread and wine are offered with the lamb. They are not substitutable with the lamb, but are its essential accompaniment in sacrifice.
Similarly, the description of the daily offering as a “sweet savor” comes not in reference to the lamb, but to the lamb with the bread and wine.
The covenant language of the LORD’s presence with Israel, “meeting” her and “speaking to” her, sanctifying the Tent of Meeting by His presence, dwelling among her and being their God, is not novel to this passage — but its reiteration in connection with the daily sacrifice is, shall we say, suggestive.
The “grain and wine and oil” of, say, Joel 2, are all present here: the signs, by the fruit of the earth, that the nation is blessed and enjoying abundance.
To get (potentially) fanciful: Flour symbolically combines various Scriptural images of judgment, death, and resurrection. A kernel of wheat falls to the ground and “dies” so that the plant may “bear much fruit” (John 12). The wheat must be threshed to separate the chaff (which is to be burned unto destruction) from the kernels. The kernels are then ground up to make flour; one thinks of St. Ignatius’ image of himself, preparing for martyrdom, as the “pure wheat of Christ.” Oil, then, is associated with the Spirit; while wine stands everywhere for blood and thus also for judgment.
More on leaven: In 1 Corinthians 5, when St. Paul is instructing his wayward congregation to expel the man who has his father’s wife (a kind of symbolic, if not necessarily literal, incest), he appeals by analogy to… the sequence of Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread. “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed; therefore let us celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” In expelling notorious evildoers, the churches honor the once-for-all Passover of Christ by keeping a permanent Festival of Unleavened Bread.
A catena of quotations from Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century:
If we ask ourselves how it was that Schleiermacher could become so much our—and perhaps really still our—man of destiny, we are once again faced by the mystery of the great man, which possibly consists in the indissoluble unity of his timeless individual power on the one hand, and on the other of the temporal, historical conditions into which he was placed. … [It] is impossible to consider Schleiermacher thoroughly without being very strongly impressed. Indeed one is more strongly impressed every time one does consider him—by the wealth and magnitude of the tasks he set himself, by the moral and intellectual equipment with which he approached them, by the manly steadfastness with which he trod the path he had once embarked upon right to the end as he had entered upon it, unheedful of the favour or disfavour of each passing decade and by the artistry which he displayed, playfully, and endowing it by this very playfulness with the ultimate gravity of all true art—an artistry he showed in all he did, almost down to his last Sunday sermon. We have to do with a hero, the like of which is but seldom bestowed upon theology. Anyone who has never noticed anything of the splendour this figure radiated and still does—I am almost tempted to say, who has never succumbed to it—may honourably pass on to other and possibly better ways, but let him never raise so much as a finger against Schleiermacher. Anyone who has never loved here, and is not in a position to love again and again, may not hate here either. [412–13]
Anyone who seeks to negotiate between faith and a cultural awareness which at first is assumed to be unbelieving, and then bring about a lasting covenant between them must, at all events while he is doing this, take up a position which is in principle beyond that of both parties, a superior position, from which he can understand both parties and be the just advocate of both. He must, even if he himself belongs to one side, at least carry a white flag in his hand when approaching the other for a parley; be cannot at that moment be engaged as a combatant. To put it unmetaphorically: as long as he is an apologist the theologian must renounce his theological function. In so far as the apologist approaches the educated among the despisers of religion from the standpoint of theology he must not desire to speak only from faith and with only the faith of his hearers in view. He must present himself to them in a part which is provided for in their categories, which really occurs or can occur there. … This white flag, which the theologian must carry as an apologist, means of course for the theologian himself that in so far as he is an apologist he must, as Schleiermacher once more expressly states, take his point of departure (standpoint) above Christianity (in the logical sense of the word) in the general concept of the community of pious people or believers. As an apologist he is not a Christian theologian but a moral philosopher and philosopher of religion. He suspends to that extent his attitude to Christianity, and his judgment of the truth or even absoluteness of the Christian revelation. Together with the other educated people he looks upon Christianity as being on the same level as the other ‘pious communities’, as being subject to the points of view from which ‘pious communities’ are to be regarded here. He therefore regards the Christian Church too as ‘a community which arises only as a result of free human actions, and can only continue to exist by the same means’. … As an apologist he must say the other things, he must regard the Church as a pious community which has arisen and lives from human freedom, and has to demonstrate its possibility and necessity as such a community. [428–29, 30]
He is as a modern man and therefore as a thinker and therefore as a moral philosopher and therefore as a philosopher of religion and therefore as a philosophical theologian and therefore as an apologist and therefore finally as a dogmatist determined on no account to interpret Christianity in such a way that his interpreted statements can come into conflict with the methods and principles of the philosophy and the historical and scientific research of his time. [431]
If we call to mind the entire situation of theology in the modern world then we shall find it understandable that it fastened upon the point which had come to the centre of the entire thought of modern man. This point was simply man himself.
This shifting of interest did not necessarily have to mean man without God, man in his own world. It could also mean man in the presence of God, his action over against God’s action. A genuine, proper theology could be built up from such a starting-point. We may ask the question whether it was a good thing that Schleiermacher adapted himself to the trend of the time in this way and took up his position at the spot where he was invited to do so by the prevalence of the Copernican world-picture, by its execution during the Enlightenment, by Kant, by Goethe, by Romanticism, and by Hegel. There was in fact no need for the Copernican conception of the universe to acquire the significance of a command that theology should in future be anthropocentric theology.It might perhaps have been both more spirited and wiser to take up and carry through the Reformed theology of the Word more than ever at this time, in instructive opposition to the trend of the age. For indeed this Reformed theology had not been founded upon and conditioned by the Ptolemaic conception of the universe and, as a pure theology of the Word, it offered opportunity enough to do justice to the tendency of the age by an honest doctrine of the Holy Spirit and of faith. There was ambiguity in the fact that theology took the trend of the times as a command which must be followed as a matter of course, and in its inability to do justice to the tendency of the age other than by becoming anthropocentric in accordance with the changed picture of the universe. The suspicion arises whether this does not betray the fact that theology forgot its own theme over against all world-views. But this reversal of theology’s way of looking at things was not necessarily bound to mean that theology was now no longer theology, or had even become the enemy of true theology. Again, a genuine, proper theology could be built up from such a starting-point. Theology could remain true to its own theme while it went with the times and thus completed this reversal. What Schleiermacher constructed by means of his theology of awareness by planting himself in the centre which for the Reformers had been a subsidiary centre, could be the pure theology of the Holy Spirit; the teaching of man brought face to face with God by God, of man granted grace by grace. If it was this, then as a theology it was just as much justified as the theology which was orientated in the opposite direction, the theocentric, Reformed theology. The fact that Schleiermacher intended it as such (even if he did not perhaps execute it in this way) is revealed by the fact that he is very much aware of a second centre beside his original one, and seeks to grant it its full validity. [445–46]
There is no doubt that Schleiermacher sought to assert something like the absoluteness of Christianity, and continually asserted it. Strangely enough it was in the pulpit particularly that the problem again and again crossed his path: why Christ in particular? Why can we not manage without him? Why can we not manage with someone else? Perhaps with someone else who is yet to come? The answer consists in the constantly repeated protestation that everything we have of higher life we have from him. There can be no doubt about the personal sincerity of this assertion. But it is just this which is in question—whether this assertion can be considered as objectively valid, whether the strength of this assertion can be some other strength beside that of the asserting believer himself, or of the composite life of the community of the Christian Church, from out of whose heritage the preaching believer speaks. Schleiermacher does not seem to be able to say that there is an eternal significance of Christ, an absoluteness of Christianity. At the back of even his most forceful protestations, unrevoked, and irrevocable, unless he is to abandon his basic premise, there stands the fact he established in the Addresses that the basic outlook of every religion is in itself eternal, since it forms a supplementary part of the infinite whole of religion in general in which all things must be eternal. The sincerity and strength of the distinction which pious feeling is inclined and determined until futher notice to accord to Christ in relation to itself stands and falls with the sincerity and strength of pious feeling itself. The original fact of Christ and the fact of my Christianity are links in a chain, and the relationship of mutual determination which links in a chain necessarily have makes it plainly impossible to assume that the effect they have on one another cannot in principle be reversed. [456–57]
“‘Take away therefore the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has much, more shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him who does not have, even that which he has shall be taken away.’” (Mt 25)
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes it away. And every branch that bears fruit, he cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit.” (Jn 15)
