Hwaet!

A Year of Living Bloglessly

2012-02-07T11:49:00.003+11:00

Hello?...

Hello?...

Is anyone still here?

(taps microphone)

Yes, well, in spite of our best intentions, things do not always go as we plan. I had fully intended to continue blogging about the endlessly fascinating time I've been having living in China the past year. However, it turns out that, of the various websites that the Chinese government blocks, Blogger is one of them.

For much of the year, I took this as a divine hint. A providential nudge. Loose lips sink ships, after all, and a fortiori careers. I can endure living bloglessly for a year, I thought. But two things have now happened. My contract at the university where I've been teaching the past year has been renewed for another 12 months, with additional renewals after that a viable possibility (moreover, the current state of the industry in Sydney doesn't give much incentive for coming back anytime soon). So it looks like I might be living in China for the foreseeable future. Also, now that it's the holidays and I've had a couple of weeks back home before returning to China for the new semester, a number of people have prevailed upon me to take up blogging again, at least in some capacity. Finally, the itch to write will not endure suppression for another 12 months.

.....three things. Three things have happened.

Accordingly, blogging will transpire this year. By which I mean I will blog. Not being able to access Blogger, I have set up a new blog with Wordpress (which, mysteriously, is not blocked by the Chinese government- maybe Blogger has a higher percentage of political blogs or something). The address is www.glennabolas.wordpress.com. Necessarily, the new blog will have to be rather different from this one. Obviously I can't talk quite as much about religion, or at least not as freely, and the same goes for politics (and, I suppose, history to an extent). I will try to compensate with cultural stuff and interesting expat observations. I conceive of it as also being a vehicle for those of my students who are interested to practice their English reading and for me to practice a bit of Chinese writing as well. So something for everyone.

So to all of my readers who remain (both of you), migrate along with me; the best is yet to be.

A Change of Scenery

2011-01-21T19:50:00.008+11:00

I am not in the habit of posting about personal matters, but this one is of sufficient moment to warrant a post, I think.

As readers of this blog would be aware, I have planned for a while to spend a couple of weeks in China. Some of my thinking and reading (and, consequently, blogging) has reflected this. In fact I am to leave this coming Monday. But there has been something of a change of plans.

Suffice to say, without going into unnecessary details, instead of a couple of weeks it now looks like I am going to be in China for a year, and possibly longer. Due to various market forces and governmental immigration policies, my present job's days have become numbered. I have (albeit with some reluctance) therefore decided to abandon ship and leap across to a more seaworthy vessel. From February 21, then, I shall be an employee of the Hubei University of Chinese Medicine (湖北中医药大学) in Wuhan. There I shall teach English, as I have been doing hitherto, but in a decidedly different environment.

Naturally, I will continue to blog, and there will be no end of interesting details and incidents to report. But I shall also have to be careful, especially when it comes to religious matters, and most especially Chinese religious matters. There are no spiders watching over the web here in Australia, but that is not the case yonder. So expect at least some level of self-censorship in future, at least for the time being.

I humbly petition all of you who read this blog to keep me in your prayers in the days to come.

"I Have a Work to Do in England."

2011-01-18T15:06:00.003+11:00

Much of the time, the Holy Spirit is subtle, even too subtle to notice. Occasionally, amazing and unprecedented things happen, but even when there are deafening fanfares, they tend to take place on hills for the benefit of shepherds rather than from the balconies of ivory towers or in city squares. But if one is paying attention, and happens to be in the right place at the right point in history, one can be given a glimpse of the Hand of God at work.

On that note, exciting things are afoot in England. The Ordinariate is up and running, and from this mustard seed, I hope and pray along with many others, great things will come. This Sunday just past, one of the newly ordained former Anglican bishops, Fr Andrew Burnham, presided over Mass for the first time at the Oxford Oratory. Fr Aidan Nichols preached, and his sermon expresses beautifully and profoundly the importance and significance of the Ordinariate. It may yet be that England will not ultimately be lost to the Faith. If it is not, the Ordinariate will have its part to play in that, in the revivifying of English Christianity (by which I mean both Christianity in England and a uniquely English form of Christianity) and the redemption of what is left of English culture. Big dreams, small mustard seed. But that is how God likes to work. And if He doesn't do exactly that, He will do something better.

'I have a work to do in England.' Quite so.

11/1/11

2011-01-11T14:44:00.005+11:00

Humans are strange animals who sometimes find patterns in numbers. As such, I happened to notice that today's date is 11/1/11.

Was there today any great world-shattering event to justify this strange yet undeniably significant convergence? Not that I know of.

However, it does remind me of a joke I was once told many years ago by a middle-aged chap whom I met and had dinner with at his home in the French countryside near La Rochelle: "Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé en 1111?" "L'invasion des Huns."

He that hath ears to hear (and knows French), let him hear.

Matteo Ricci - A Different Kind of Missionary

2011-01-08T08:19:00.012+11:00

I have recently finished reading "Matteo Ricci- Le Sage Venu de L'Occident" by Vincent Cronin (a title that would sound even better in English- 'Wiseman from the West'!), which is, I suppose, appropriate given that I will be visiting China a fortnight from now. Its subject is the first Western Christian missionary to China. Not quite the first Christian missionary, but he might as well have been- the Nestorians briefly set up shop there at one point but had died out centuries before.

The book has given me a lot of food for thought.

The (very nearly successful) experiment that Ricci set out upon in his missionary work was governed by this question: Can a people be Christianised without being Westernised? Can the leaven of the Gospel be planted in an alien culture and grow without bringing with it the excrescences of the culture planting it? If one thinks about it, such a thing has almost never happened in Christian history. Certainly, as time goes on, cultures and peoples that convert to Christianity take on their own particular character. But it never begins that way. English Christianity was, from the start, unquestionably Roman. The Slavs, though able to worship in their own language thanks to the work of Cyril and Methodius, took on a very recognisably Greek Christianity.

Is there another way?

Matteo Ricci and his superior Alexander Valignano thought there was. And they were given a unique opportunity. Before them they found a culture whose essence was not fundamentally opposed to anything in Christianity. Sure, there were some questionable practices around. No Christian could countenance the widespread practice of concubinage or foot-binding. But at the heart of Chinese culture were duty, filial piety and the whole magnificent ethic of Confucius. In some ways, Chinese culture presented an even greater opportunity than that facing the first Christians who evangelised and converted the Greeks for, whereas the latter had to contend with a typically pagan pantheon whose morals were repugnant and the characteristic suspicion of the body in Greek philosophy, all of these were absent in China. It was an almost unprecedented thing. A sophisticated civilisation with a high ethic. No Dark Age barbarians who would kill you as soon as look at you here. No nomadic tribes as in South America. Nor even a high civilisation built on blood, as in Mexico. No, here was an ancient and highly civilised culture with its own Plato.

The danger of course was that unscrupulous missionaries would come in and treat the Chinese and their culture like other groups they would evangelise, either as an uncivilised group that would need to receive the equal gifts of civilisation and Christianity from the hands of the missionaries, or as a pagan civilisation that must be fought and destroyed so that a Christian civilisation might take root. This, alas, is the route most missionaries eventually took, but it was not taken by Matteo Ricci nor by his immediate Jesuit successors.

Here is a pertinent excerpt, from towards the end of Ricci's life when he has to consider the future of the mission (translated from the French as best I can):

Ricci could see from his own experience eight reasons for hope. Firstly, the miraculous progress accomplished in spite of immense difficulties seemed to prove that God looked on the development of the [Chinese] mission with a favourable eye. Secondly, since the Chinese regarded reason as the highest of all things, Christianity, a religion supported by reason, would satisfy them as much intellectually as mystically. Thirdly, books, which circulated freely in China, would permit the diffusion of an important apostolic literature. Fourthly, the Chinese, an intelligent people, were prepared to admit the superiority of Westerners in metaphysics and theology, as well as in the domains of mathematics and astronomy. Fifthly, Ricci had become convinced, thanks in large part to his study of their ancient beliefs, that the Chinese, a people pious by nature, had created for themselves a philosophy which conformed in almost every point to natural law. Sixthly, the peace which reigned in this country would permit Christianity, once established, to be maintained in a more or less permanent fashion. Seventhly, by adapting themselves to the Chinese mindset and etiquette, missionaries would certainly be known as wise and holy men. Eighthly, the doctrine of Confucius would be for them a most precious ally in their struggle against idolatrous sects [i.e. Buddhism and, to a much lesser extent, Taoism].

One of the really interesting things about all of this is the quite fundamental question, which we never find it necessary to think about: What really is of the substance of Christianity, and what are its accidents? Another book I've been reading on and off for a while is "The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys" by Andrew Louth, which has brought home to me in new and surprising ways to what extent our doctrines and our whole spiritual approach, in both East and West, depend upon Plato and those who came after him (I had hitherto no idea, for example, how vital were the foundations laid in Philo's ideas about the logos to later Christology). In Confucius, Matteo Ricci had a fascinating possibility open to him. Could he do with Confucius what the early Christian theologians had done with Plato? Could Christianity be built as solidly and fruitfully on the Chinese ethical tradition as it had been on the Greek philosophical tradition?

During his lifetime, the approach that Ricci took worked, even if it had slow beginnings. By the end of his life, he had been granted permission to live permanently in Beijing and was being inundated by Confucian mandarins, the cultural elite, and other government officials impressed and intrigued by his scholarship, ideas, skills (he was an adept clockmaker and cartographer) and religion. He had published several books, including a catechism which drew heavily on Confucius to demonstrate Christian truths.

Of course, since his death things have not turned out so well. There has been a lot of water under the bridge. The Rites Controversy, when the Church foolishly and ignorantly forbade the Chinese Christians from revering Confucius or venerating their ancestors during Qingming (thankfully rescinded, though far too late, in 1939); the whole wretchedness of colonialism, the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion; the Taiping Tianguo*; and then the unmitigated disaster that was the twentieth century, whose low point was the induced national brain-death that was the Cultural Revolution, when China's leaders sought to destroy utterly the great ethical tradition that had been the foundation of the Chinese people's culture for 2500 years.

Where to from here, for Christianity in China, or indeed for China itself?

I don't know. But I recall something that Finn Torjesen (whose organisation 'Evergreen' is carrying on a work not entirely dissimilar to Ricci's) said to me when I and some other Evangelicals visited him in China in 2003; that China is heir, as the Chinese love to boast, to a 4000 year old continuous culture and, though the last hundred years have been years of terrible upheaval, that is just a blip in their history and we don't as yet know where things will eventually settle or how the pieces will fall.

I don't know to what extent the approach or ideas of Matteo Ricci are still relevant or appropriate in modern China. Maybe there is no way to recapture the opportunities he saw, now irrevocably lost. Or maybe his ideas are the key to the future of the gospel in China. In any case, I have no doubt that he has not ceased to pray for China and the Chinese, his adopted country and people, especially over the past hundred grievous years, and will continue to do so.

*Warren Carroll, my favourite historian, is very sympathetic to the Taiping Tianguo.I find that remarkable. To me, the Taiping Tianguo epitomises the wrong-headedness of a quintessentially Western and usually Protestant approach to missions that shares, I believe, a similar error with the approach to relief practiced by too many celebrity charity workers and organisations (I'm looking at you, Bono). In the same way such organisations delight in throwing money at Africa, exacerbating the problem of poverty but enjoying the catharsis philanthropy brings, there have been and are plenty of Western missionaries and missionary organisations who delight in throwing Bibles at foreign countries and those who hail from them. I remember well as a child being invited to give money or do fundraising work to help buy Bibles for China, PNG or other such places. Imagine my shock when I eventually went to China and saw that Bibles were plentiful and easy to come by. Come to that, I find the idea that you can give a book to someone who shares almost no common cultural knowledge with you and expect him to come up with full-fledged orthodox Western Nicene Augustinian Protestant Evangelical Christianity on his own simply by reading it a laughably absurd notion. But the Taiping Tianguo shows a darker side to this approach. You may endanger someone's soul by a) not bothering to explain anything about Christianity to him first, b) not bothering to explain or try to approach agreement on the basic philosophical premises necessary to accept Christianity eg. the law of non-contradiction (not accepted by Buddhism), c) not bothering to find out even the first thing about his culture and beliefs. Endangering someone's soul in this way is bad enough. Or it could, on the other hand, lead to the deaths of millions of people (most sources say about 20 million) as when Hong Xiuquan was given a Bible out of the blue, read it and went on to carry out the biggest and bloodiest civil war of the nineteenth century. There are better ways to bear witness to the gospel than this.

Two Thousand and Eleven?

2010-12-31T17:34:00.007+11:00

Tonight, lots of people will make resolutions for the New Year, look back on the old with regret, satisfaction or a combination of the two and look towards the seemingly boundless possibilities of twelve brand spanking new months to live through.

For my part, I have only one hope. It is something that I looked forward to this time last year, but which did not then materialise. It is not particularly earth-shattering, but it does make me nervous about going outside or turning on the TV tomorrow.

It has now been ten years since the turn of the millennium. Prior to that, we had been accustomed to describe our years as two sets of double digits (nineteen eighty-nine, eighteen fifteen, etc.), but the moment the millenium hit, it seemed most sensible to describe the year as a single number; to wit, the Year Two Thousand and so on. Last year, I looked forward with some excitement to the end of this pattern. It would again become fashionable to have double digit years. Twenty-ten was about to arrive.

Alas, it didn't happen. Throughout the past year, invariably and with very few exceptions, everybody has gone on saying 'two thousand and ten' despite the superfluous two syllables this added to the obvious alternative.

But this year- this year I'm certain will be the year for this important cultural language shift. People would have to be mad to say 'two thousand and eleven' rather than the much shorter 'twenty-eleven', wouldn't they?

Wouldn't they?!

St Thomas Becket

2010-12-29T08:40:00.003+11:00

An excerpt from the Christmas sermon given by Thomas Becket in T.S. Eliot's play 'Murder in the Cathedral'.

Reflect now, how Our Lord Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His disciples 'My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.' Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of England at peace with its neighbours, the barons at peace with the King, the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the children? Those men His disciples knew no such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom. What then did He mean? If you ask that, remember then that He said also, 'Not as the world gives, give I unto you.' So then, He gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.

Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our Lord's Birth and His Death: but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and in the Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.

Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world's is. A Christian martyrdom is no accident. Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man's will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.

I have spoken to you today, dear children of God, of the martyrs of the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of Canterbury, the blessed Archbishop Elphege; because it is fitting, on Christ's birth day, to remember what is that Peace which He brought; and because, dear children, I do not think I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say, and think of them at another time. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Nativity

2010-12-25T11:48:00.006+11:00

A relative, reading my last post, challenged me to stop whinging and do something positive to re-emphasise the mystery of the Incarnation. So I wrote this piece- about a week ago, but it seems most appropriate to post it today. I had intended it to have a kind of zooming/panning effect- from outside in the town to inside the creche to the Child in the manger and then to Him in His Mother's arms, but I fear some of the metaphors may have inhibited the effect. On their own, I think the stanzas work, but I'm not sure if the thing works as a whole also. Anyway, feedback is welcome. Merry Christmas to all!

A west wind blows, bleak chill forlorn,
Like icy oceans' rising tides,
And past is the time for wheat and corn
But the House of Bread abides;
And in its midst, amid the rush
Of census-driv'n humanity,
Unseen, unnoticed, is a hush
In the place of God's humility.

All men may seek the comfortable
And shy away from any pain;
The mighty and the miserable
Alike reach for perceivèd gain,
But inches above a dirty floor
Where few but animals have trod,
The thin and prickly ends of straw
Scratch the new-born skin of God.

Strong wine is drunk in palaces.
Though bureaucrats prefer it thin,
Kings laugh and talk, as callous as
A killer on the cusp of sin.
But Jews enjoy their Sabbath rest,
Recalling their commandments ten,
And at a Jewish woman's breast
Tonight God drinks the milk of men.

Most mothers, having given birth,
Have idolised their newborn child
And, overcome with joy and mirth,
To former pain were reconciled;
But She whose pain is yet to be
Is silent, and with feet unshod
Contemplates this mystery:
The human face of God.

Burying the Lead

2010-12-12T09:41:00.006+11:00

Why do we Christians shy away from the big selling points of our religion?

Last night I was helping out at the Combined Churches' 'Carols in the Park' at Warragamba, in which my parents' church is heavily involved (my minimal contribution was to assist, in an ecumenical gesture, some of the young people from my brother's Anglican church down the road, who had set up a balloon animal stall for the children). Now one would think, given that it is Advent and Christmas is on the horizon, that this would be the logical time to talk about the Incarnation.

But no.

In between carols and musical items, there was a very well done puppet show put on by a Christian group, very professional and amusing and the children lapped it up, but the puppet talked about Jesus as King, and urged the kids to 'make Him your king'. All well and good, you might say, and fair enough. Then there was a short speech/sermon by the local Anglican minister, and he consistently spoke of Jesus as 'Son of God', but never as 'God'. Nothing truly objectionable there, either, you might say, and I can't really argue with that. No one expects you to use all of Jesus' titles in a short presentation.

But the fact is there was nothing said during the whole night that couldn't have been very easily accepted by an Arian. And this bothers me.

I mean, why would we shy away from the Incarnation? Surely this is Christianity's biggest selling point? What other religion is based on the idea that God (not 'a god' from a pantheon but 'the God') became human? Nobody else has anything like that! This is a word worth preaching. So why are we reluctant to talk explicitly about it?

On the face of it, you would imagine that the more gung-ho and evangelistic of Christians would see the attractive potential of this doctrine and make it the centre-piece of their evangelistic pitch. But it almost never happens. And then we're shocked and annoyed when, at Easter, some fired-up atheist on the radio deplores Christianity's belief in 'divine child abuse'. It never occurs to us that we've left ourselves wide open to the charge by talking about Jesus the way we do.

Nor is the Incarnation the only central doctrine we tend to sideline in public. I've recently been reading this book, which restates the classic Christian ideas about eschatology and shows how far we've drifted from them in the way we tend to talk about the afterlife and the end times. Too many Christians have believed for too long in a kind of Platonic afterlife with some Christian features, and the authentically Christian endgame (the General Resurrection) has all but fallen off the map. Last night provided another example of this when our Lord's resurrection was briefly mentioned thus : "Then on Easter Sunday, Jesus came back from the dead. So, if you believe in Him, when you die, you can go to be with Him forever." I cringed at that, and imagined N. T. Wright appearing and turning over tables and chairs a la Our Lord in the Temple.

Why don't we make more of these doctrines? They are, after all, utterly unique in terms of world religions and distinctively Christian. They are also unusual in their own right and attention-grabbing. And they have some shock value, particularly in a secular Western culture that still thinks it knows all it needs to about Christianity even though it has forgotten most of what it used to know. Idiots that we are, we've put the letters page (or maybe the cartoons?) on the front page and left the lead story for page six.

"Fighting!"

2010-12-03T14:49:00.009+11:00

Loan words are curious animals. Most of them are harmless enough. Kimono means more or less the same in English as it does in Japanese. But now and again, you come across an unusual specimen that has come to mean something quite different in its new environment from what it meant in its original tongue.

I recall, for instance, the surprise on both sides when, living in France a number of years ago, I happened to remark upon an instance of déjàvu. I naturally assumed that, since the word was French (literally meaning 'already seen'), I could simply lift it back across the linguistic divide with no harmful side effects. To my surprise, my French interlocutors had no idea what I was talking about. Was it my accent? I tried a few more times in as un-English a way as I could. Incomprehension persisted. Eventually, I had to explain the concept to them, which they immediately understood. It turned out the French don't describe déjàvu as déjàvu; only English-speakers do that.

I have recently come across another linguistic borrowing in the same vein, but exported from English rather than imported this time . I speak of the use speakers of Asian languages make of the word "fighting". It tends to be used alone as a kind of exclamation and its meaning seems to be located, as far as I can gather, somewhere between, "Chin up!", "Go for it!" and "Hang in there!". I first met it in a Korean TV show called Full House (unrelated to the 80s American sitcom) in which the heroine would say it frequently when facing a difficult situation or trying to encourage someone. I have since heard it on the lips of a number of my students when facing exams or when their course workload is weighing heavily on them.

What interests and amuses me not a little about all this is that they expect me to understand what they mean because, of course, it's an English word. Which I do, but only because I have some acquaintance with Asian people and Asian culture. It doesn't occur to them that an Australian wouldn't pat his mate on the back if he'd had a bad day or was facing some difficulty and say in a bracing tone, "Fighting! Fighting!" just as it never occurred to me that the French wouldn't describe déjàvu as déjàvu.

As Advent Begins

2010-12-02T15:03:00.006+11:00

There is something wonderfully accessible about Advent.

Perhaps part of it is the long lack of focus that tends to obtain during Ordinary Time. That is certainly true for me, wherefore I have been looking forward to the season for quite some time. But I think that mostly Advent is accessible for much the same reason that Dante's Purgatorio is the most accessible part of the Divine Comedy- it's where we are.

Who is not acquainted with longing? Who does not know the desire for something just out of reach? Who has not felt the thrill and sweet pain of awaiting something promised but not yet received? The spring in the step as one embarks upon a long journey, the accelerated heartbeat as the plane takes off on its way to a foreign country, the joy of anticipated reunion- sehnsucht is part of the universal human experience. "How long, O Lord?", we ask in eager anticipation.

Or it can have its darker side. Orwell speaks in 1984 of the way in which pain drives out principles until all one desires is simply for it to stop. Many of us, young, affluent and comfortable, are insulated from such an experience, but myriad others are not. Persecutions and injustices and bloodshed go on, and those in the middle of them cry out, "How long, O Lord?" in agony and desperation.

Advent is where all of us are. If we allow ourselves to be free of our distractions long enough (or even, sometimes, if we don't) we are aware that all is not right in the cosmos. There is a lack. There are problems. There are atrocities and petty selfishnesses and parasitic wasps. We know within ourselves that the world is not the way it is supposed to be. Much closer to home, we know that we are not as we are supposed to be. At a most basic human level, we sense our alienation and dislocation.

Some of us know that that for which we long, that for which we hope, is Christ. He Who will put all to rights, the universe's rightful sovereign, is coming. We try to strengthen in ourselves the desire for Him. He, cure of our miseries, better than our hopes, will not delay.

He came once before, and we know His face. We had the opportunity to get to know Him. And He has left behind Him, for our sake, the Church which bears witness to Him, and the Spirit through Whom it speaks and which sanctifies its members.

But He has not come back yet.

And so we Christians wait, knowing Him for Whom we wait. Knowing Him, Who brings into focus our hopes, desires and longings, our distresses, difficulties and failures, knowing that He will fulfill them all and bring them to their predestined end.

The Kingdom of Heaven is Like...

2010-11-22T19:58:00.005+11:00

Spooky supernatural stories will have to wait. I have another poetic offering in the offing. Not my greatest work, I'll admit, but some of the lines are fair to decent. Feedback is most welcome.

While others might have found their place

By giving in and saving face,

And many are the kind that chose

To swim the way the current flows,

I far prefer to such a set

The ones not loath to make a bet

On odds unfair and prospects bleak

And risk the loss of what they seek,

Who disregard the passing fad

And do not miss the things they had

When sold was all their earthly wealth

In hopes of winning joy by stealth.

No sure thing is the hidden yield

Beneath some undistinguished field

Which randomly is bought and sold

Because it may hide buried gold.

And what of him whose only gain

Consists in fruit of oyster's pain

For which he'd give up all to take?

It may well be a clever fake!

Such ventures will not ever earn

The smile of an insurance firm,

Nor would economists approve

As valid a financial move

Which had such low chance of success,

Whose sure end would be sore distress

For anyone who chanced to take

Such low odds for so high a stake.

But sense and safety won't suffice

For dungeon-dwellers, 'mid their lice,

Who won't accept their grim surrounds

But second-guess the dubious grounds

On which their fellows built a case

For keeping to one's proper place.

A prison schedule keeps the mind

Alert and fit, but disinclined

To look beyond it's narrow walls.

But somewhere out there, something calls...

An unobtrusive, subtle sound,

A snatch of music echoing round,

A half-remembered melody

Like waked love or old company;

A siren song scores have declined

That grabs the heart and wakes the mind.

Though many happy minds remain

Encelled, with means to entertain

Themselves for endless hours on end,

A few, a very few, contend

That only by their breaking free

Will they save their humanity,

And maybe even come upon

A greater one than Solomon.

So contrary to all advice,

A small band reckons small the price

And, staking all on what they'll find,

They smile and, trembling, leave behind

The multitudes who found their place

By giving in and saving face.

I Write Like...

2010-11-21T20:27:00.005+11:00

I discovered (courtesy of Fr Ray Blake) this site, which purports to analyse your writing style and tell you to which famous writer your writing is most similar. Curious, I gave it a shot, and apparently...

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

I had put in the text from a lecture I gave a while ago on Galatians. 'Peculiar,' I thought, 'I wonder how reliable it is.' So I pasted in an old blog post. Same result. So there you go. Maybe I should leave off the poetry and try my hand at a spooky supernatural story sometime.

Strains of Beowulf

2010-11-20T09:18:00.004+11:00

Given the title of this blog, it would be bizarre and perverse to refrain from providing a link to this very nice reading and step-by-step explanation of the opening lines of Beowulf (found in, of all places, the Telegraph!). So I won't.

The reader's pronunciation is slightly different from the way I was taught, but not by much. A delight to hear the ancient words articulated once more.

The Diverse Significances of the Humble Poppy

2010-11-15T12:04:00.007+11:00

A clash of cultural symbols, by turns amusing and interesting, took place last week the day before Remembrance Day. The symbol was the poppy. For English speakers (and the French as well, I imagine), the poppy conjures up images of Flanders, the Somme and crosses row on row. For the Chinese, on the other hand, it conjures up the collective memory of the two Opium Wars and humiliation at the hands of foreign powers. Read about the aforementioned clash here.

In fact, I had a much smaller-scale version of the same clash the following day. A number of my students (the overwhelming majority of whom are Chinese) inquired after the flower I was wearing (I had been to a service earlier in the day). I explained to them its significance and, having done that, told them the name of it. Immediately, electronic dictionaries appeared and a flurry of typing ensued, whereupon a collective, almost simultaneous, gasp went round the classroom. Shock registered on a number of faces, followed by questions and remarks such as, "But...but...isn't it illegal?" "You must not have this flower. It is bad" and the like.

That such things can have such divergent associations in different cultures fascinates me, diplomatic incident or no. What intrigues me particularly in this case is the fact that, contrary to his advisers, David Cameron still wore the thing. Of course, cultural associations don't de facto trump each other, but it has become an almost reflexive habit of us Westerners over the past forty-or-so years to give automatic deference to other cultures before our own. Cameron's breaking of the mould is slightly refreshing and I can't help wondering if it's a precedent for something.

Implications of Language Reform

2010-10-31T20:52:00.008+11:00

In the New Year, I will be visiting China, so in recent days I have been brushing up on my Chinese, which had been lying in a lumber room growing mouldy. I tell you this by way of lead-in to the following anecdote. The other day, I was chatting with one of my students during the break between periods. This particular student hails from Taiwan and I had some particular questions about some items of Chinese vocabulary, which I proceeded to write/draw for him (the distinction between writing and drawing fades somewhat in a pictographic language like Chinese). It was at this point that the conversation took a turn for the interesting. My student didn't understand what I had written. And, surprisingly enough, not because of my dodgy handwriting.

In the 1950s, ostensibly to encourage greater literacy and increase efficiency, the Chinese communists reformed the language by introducing simplified Chinese characters to replace many of the traditional ones and introducing the pinyin system for foreign learners of Chinese. Warren Carroll, one of my favourite historians, despises the pinyin system and refuses to use it in his works, opting instead for the older Wade-Giles system, but I've never felt any particular animosity towards pinyin. The romanised spelling of Chinese words which is used in that system is rather counter-intuitive, but once you get the hang of it it's more or less phonetic, and unlike the Wade-Giles system it is capable of depicting the all-important Chinese tones. Unlike Carroll, I don't see anything particularly Marxist in pinyin.

Simplified characters, on the other hand, are a different matter. I had been technically aware of the distinction between simplified and traditional characters before, but wasn't aware of any practical implications (apart from making them easier to remember and therefore read) before speaking to my Taiwanese student, whose name is Mars.

A spelling reform in a European language is a purely practical matter of standardising writing so everybody is spelling things the same way. It may accrue political overtones depending on who supports or opposes it, but it is not by nature a political thing. This is because European languages use an alphabet. The letters of the alphabet denote, more or less approximately, the pronunciation. They do not denote meaning. Spelling reform, therefore, can only ever be an attempt to conform writing with current pronunciation or new conventions regarding depicting particular sounds. Chinese, on the other hand, does not use an alphabet. The various components of characters may contain a hint of how to pronounce the word but mostly they denote meaning. Which means that when you change characters, you change meaning. As Mars explained to me with a few examples, by simplifying characters the nuances of meaning that words formerly had are lost. This naturally has repercussions on how people think.

Does this sound familiar? It should.

Interestingly, I discover that there was a second attempt at further simplification in the 1970s which did not go down well and was rescinded.

Quant a moi, I fully intend to continue brushing up on the simplified characters if for no other reason than that they are easier to learn and read. But, following this conversation, I can sympathise with Chinese outside the People's Republic who see them as a form of cultural rape. Yet another thing the Communists have to answer for.

For John Milton, Concerning the Barbarous Nature of Rhyme. A Retort.

2010-10-22T14:08:00.008+11:00

A shadow passed across the world, as those who saw can tell,
The day that, with a deaf'ning crash, Rome faltered once and fell;
And Cicero turned in his tomb, but no verse from him came;
Catullus' lyrics, like his corpse, grew cold; he said the same.
And eastwards, where an emperor yet sat upon a throne,
Men chose words for precision, and left their art alone.
Thus Homer's six dactylic feet, whose sound would bless the ear,
Were saved and savoured, handed on, but no one wrote their peer;
The Versifiers left their pens and gave up prosody,
But Providence was moving, moving imperceptibly;
Soon from the mist-filled valleys of the Frankish realm there came
A rumour of a righteous king, one worthy of the name;
From out his mouth came eloquence in Frank and Roman words,
More earthy than the badger's lair yet lofty as the birds;
And many men then came to him to see if it were so
An emperor was in their midst like those of long ago.
He called to him the artisans, the skilled of mind and hand
And then like falcons sent them forth, that all throughout the land
His tribe might feel transcendent warmth, with vision magnified
By craftsmanship's forgotten fruits, exceeding ancient pride.
Then men recalled magnificence, exulting to regain
A past surpassed by things within the mind of Charlemagne;
And in the days to come, though some achievements came to naught,
The sparks remained, and others fanned to flame what he had wrought-
In later years, when tongues were changed and others were no more,
In newbuilt towns were heard the sounds of those called troubadour.
A troop of trav'lling wordsmiths were these Carolingian sons,
Each man a gold-tongu'd Orpheus who captivates then runs,
And each one left behind him sheer enchantment when he'd gone,
A ling'ring vision built of lyric verse of Occitan:
Of ladies unattainable the lowly fain would woo,
Of cunning foxes, Roland's horn, of tales told anew
Of Arthur and his knights- these were the subjects of their song.
It broke upon the people like the sounding of a gong.
And ere long this unprecedented, mesmerising style
Had found a place among the race of England's scepter'd isle;
In noble rhyme did pilgrims wend their way to Canterbury,
In self-same form was one knight sworn to uphold cortaysie
While seeking for a man of green that he had seemed to slay
Whom he must journey far to find, and find ere Christmas Day;
The lilting sound of English words, their rhythm and their shape,
Made drunk the cream of England like the crushing of the grape;
Their interlocking sounds, like jigsaw pieces, like a jar
And lid did show our tongue's true worth thence in perpetua;
The very ideal Form of verse was this, its hard-won peak! -
Thus English made its own that which was sought in vain by Greek.
And all the poets gathered round and marvelled at the sight,
That such a humble language should ascend to such a height.
As for a hoard of scattered jewels, they grabbed and grasped around
That each might show his peers his own rendition of the sound;
The Muses smiled as they surveyed this thing they had achieved
And blessed the poets, who in turn revered what they'd received
And handled with grave reverence this sacred gift of rhyme,
As circumspect as priests, or actors in a pantomime,
Yet joyful with an almost Dionysian delight-
They came before an altar every time they sat to write.
So Spenser wrote in wonder of his virgin fairy queen,
The Bard improved on Petrarch in ways hitherto unseen,
And Robert Southwell's verses, which he offered with his blood,
Were kept by grateful hands the day his gore was mixed with mud;
Then Donne, late as a cleric or as first in passion's heats,
Did sigh to write of fleas and maps and various conceits,
And Pope and Dryden tried their hand at epic; with respect
Translating from the masters who were mouldy with neglect,
But reasoning such brilliant verse could yet more brightly shine,
To set it off, they placed it in a rhyming dual line.
Then lest the rhyme grow hoary with convention as with age,
Will Wordsworth and Sam Coleridge began another stage-
For rhyme can work as epic but is not thereby confined-
It can appeal to both the learned and the simple mind.
Achilles is no more fit subject than a man and son
Discussing which place they prefer- this or a different one.
But while these poets wrote their works and all the Muses smiled,
A figure in a darkened spot was sulking like a child,
A man apart whose hardened heart did curse them as uncouth
For writing rhyme, which he believed the realm of wayward youth
And Philistines- he far surpassed such unsophisticates:
"Blank verse," he said, "is better for our tongue's inherent traits."
And so he cursed the verse that rhymed, his face towards the wall;
Its very sound was bitter to his ear, like bilious gall.
The poets disregarded him and kept on just the same.
"He is," they said, "a harmless man- John Milton is his name."

Glimpses of the Age of the Soapbox

2010-10-01T12:15:00.012+10:00

"The past is a foreign country," said L.P. Hartley, "they do things differently there."

In recent weeks I have had the at times frustrating but also rewarding privilege of proof-reading and editing my grandfather's memoirs. The experience has been enlightening, to say the least. In it, my grandfather details his childhood growing up during the war (at 13 he was overseeing a factory because there were no experienced men left to fill the job), his years as an itinerant preacher in Queensland and his subsequent years as pastor of various Baptist churches.

What has struck me most (and there have been several things that have struck me) is the difference between the culture of the 50s, when my grandfather was an itinerant driving from town to town in a "gospel wagon", and the culture now. Simply put, there is no way the kind of evangelism my grandfather practiced would work now. Not just the content of the message but the methodology.

A slight tangent. There is a fellow whom I regularly see who preaches from a soapbox (actually a small platform) outside the Queen Victoria Building opposite Sydney Town Hall a few evenings a week. He is, I think, Baptist, or certainly from that tradition of preaching, and almost never does anybody stop to listen to him. Mostly, people are embarrassed that he is there. Some, no doubt, are offended by things he says (he invariably sets up shop during the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and preaches hellfire in shrill tones to the passersby), others are simply put off by the fact that he is there at all, waxing eloquent to bustling crowds of the indifferent. I admit I usually have the latter reaction, even when I happen to agree with what he's preaching about, and I feel like taking him aside and telling him, "Mate, you're not helping the cause here. You're just making people more alienated from Jesus than they were before."

Yet, returning to my grandfather's memoir, in the 50's my grandfather was doing a very similar thing. He would park his wagon in the main street of a country town or a Brisbane suburb, stand up in the back and begin preaching. And a crowd would gather. People would come and listen. Some would heckle, of course, but others wouldn't. Occasionally, there might even be converts. He tells of one time when he was assisting a Baptist church in Park Ridge, south of Brisbane, over the course of a few months. As part of the work, they initiated a Sunday school and would drive through the town to pick up children and take them to the church. As the weeks went on, the number of children who wanted to come rose steadily until they had to sell their vehicle for a larger one to accommodate them. This would not happen now, I think.

I don't think these reminiscences are symptoms of a rose-coloured view of the past or, indeed, are isolated examples. For example, I think of what Frank Sheed used to do, first in Sydney and later in London- very much the same style of thing.

What does this mean? Were people more spiritual in the 1950's? Are they less spiritual now? Or is there some other reason? One could, I suppose, argue that people who had lived through the war would naturally be more open to God and anyone claiming to speak for Him. On the other hand, can anyone deny that today's generation is more hungry for meaning than any within living memory? Alternatively, it could be merely evidence of different things appealing to different generational cultures. Perhaps both theories are true to one degree or another.

There are of course practical considerations to take from that observation. If soapbox preaching was accessible to one generation but not to another, there surely must be some mode of evangelism which would appeal to the latter as soapbox preaching did to the former.

In any case, it is enlightening to get a glimpse of this foreign land where getting up on your soapbox did not automatically make you a pariah and an oddity.

St Augustine on Hillsong

2010-09-18T08:38:00.002+10:00

When St Augustine visited Hillsong last week, many interested parties plied him for comment on Australia's biggest and most influential mega-church. At the time, he was strangely silent; however, through conniving and skullduggery, I have managed to obtain portions of the manuscript for his Sunday morning sermon tomorrow. Though he doesn't mention Hillsong by name, I think readers will agree that his visit has clearly made an impression, and that he has some important things to say about it to his own congregation:

What kind of men are they who, fearing to hurt those they speak to, not only do not prepare them for imminent temptations, but even promise the happiness of this world, which God did not promise to the world itself? He foretells toil upon toil, that will come upon the world right to the end; and do you wish the Christian to be exempt from these labours? Because he is a Christian, he is likely to suffer more rather than less in this world.

For the Apostle says, 'All who wish to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution.' Now if you will, you shepherd seeking your own advantage not that of Jesus Christ, let Paul say, 'All who wish to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution,' and do you say, 'If you have lived piously in Christ, all good things will be yours in abundance. And if you have not children, you will take up and nurture all men, and not one will die on your account'? Is this your way of building? Notice what you are doing, where you are placing a man. He is on sand, this man you are setting up. The rain will fall, the floods will come, the wind will blow; they will beat upon that house of yours and it will fall, and great will be the fall thereof.

Raise him up from the sand, set him upon a rock; let him whom you wish to be a Christian live in Christ. Let him note the indignities and sufferings of Christ; let him observe the sinless Christ paying for what He had not stolen; let him attend to the words of Scripture, telling him, 'The Lord chastises every son whom He accepts.' Let him prepare himself for chastisement, or else not seek to be accepted.

Great-Grandson of Discovering the Classics

2010-09-11T09:39:00.006+10:00

This week, I finally finished Milton's Paradise Lost.

I confess I have mixed feelings about it. I should emphasise, though, that that is a personal reaction. It would be futile to deny that this is one of the great works of English literature. Certainly I have no intention of denying it. Let me therefore unpack some of my impressions, for what they are worth.

The Poetry

Milton really knows his way around iambic pentameter. And he knows how to sustain it for the long haul. That's no mean feat. Shakespeare could take advantage of the nature of dialogue to allow him some variety in his use of that metre, but Milton, though he has several series of long monologues (I'm not sure if its legitimate to call them dialogues when its mostly long speeches replying to each other or whole books of recounted narrative in direct speech), also has masses of poetic description sustained for pages. To maintain that in iambic pentameter is impressive.

And some absolutely delicious lines result. Who could deny the delectability of a line like 'So glozed the tempter and his proem tuned'? How I would love to use that in a conversation one day! Or this description of ante-deluvian women: 'Bred only and completed to the taste/ Of lustful appetance, to sing, to dance,/ To dress, to troll the tongue and roll the eye.' Or the description of Noah as 'the only son of light in a dark age'. Wonderful.

I was a bit put off by Milton's aversion to rhyme (this would have been alleviated if he had accorded any affection to alliteration, but nothing was apparent). He has strong views on the matter- he speaks of rhyme as 'the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre' and those who will regard its absence as a defect are, to him, 'vulgar readers'. But he refuses to be constrained by 'the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming', whatever anyone else may think. To which, my hackles being raised, I was of a good mind to retort, "Hey!" in a wounded and indignant tone. But that is a rather inarticulate way to reply to a great English poet, so this vulgar reader has a good mind at some point in the future to craft a poetic protest defending rhyme in heroic couplets (and yes, they will be in iambic pentameter). Watch this space.

The Story and Theology

There's no way of treating the narrative and its theological ideas and implications separately, so I won't.

There's no denying that Milton writes a cracking tale, rousing and suspenseful. It does go on a bit in parts, and the modern reader is likely to get bogged down in a few bits (so, perhaps, even some older readers- Samuel Johnson declared of the poem, 'None ever wished it longer than it was.'), but the narrative as a narrative is very well-crafted. Particularly notable bits, and certainly the most memorable ones, are the opening in Hell, the account of the war in Heaven (very anthropomorphically told, but Milton sidesteps this by Raphael's explaining to Adam that he has had to translate what happened into terms Adam can understand) and most especially the temptation itself.

This latter is a particularly brilliant piece of work. Milton extrapolates from details of the Fall narative in Genesis and ties these together to make a temptation scene that is dramatically complex but utterly plausible. The reader, even with the benefit of retrospective knowledge, cannot help but be tempted, if only vicariously. Milton does this by drawing attention to things which the reader of Genesis too easily passes over. Eve meets a talking snake. Naturally, she does what we all would do- wonders how a snake could talk. The snake, who has been possessed by Satan, informs her that he ate of a particular fruit which, somehow, endowed him with the ability to reason and understand and this has made him capable of speech. Where is this remarkable fruit, wonders Eve. The snake leads her to the forbidden tree. She knows what it is, but begins to wonder. If an animal can gain abilities and faculties proper to creatures higher than it in the hierarchy of being (in this case, human faculties) by eating its fruit, what would happen if she ate it? What would she then be capable of? She begins to wonder about the prohibition as well. Surely the prohibition was a test. But what kind of test? Did God, through the mediation of the angels, tell them not to eat the fruit of this tree because He didn't want them to eat it? Or did He tell them not to eat it to see if they would? Was it a test of their ability to reason independently, rather than just follow arbitrary orders? Did He actually secretly want them to eat of it the whole time? All the while, Satan remains completely in character as the snake, not telling Eve to do anything, but all the while suggesting and encouraging her in these trains of thought, until at last she eats. It is a masterfully conceived scene.

Of course, right at the outset, Milton declares the purpose of the poem to be to 'justify the ways of God to men' and much ink has been spilled on whether or not he succeeds. A lot of this ink I haven't seen, but I have read the poem myself and that, I believe, entitles me to an opinion. There are two extremes on the matter, and those at least I have read. On the one hand, there is Blake's assertion that Milton could make Satan an interesting character but not God and the angels (the angels in particular strike one as cardboard cutouts, in stark contrast to the demons in the first couple of books who are remarkably distinct) because Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it.' On the other hand, there is C.S. Lewis' assertion that those who are offended by Milton's God feel thus not because He is somehow different from the Christian God but because He is the same. "Many of those who say they dislike Milton's God," he says, "only mean they dislike God." Interestingly, the edition of Paradise Lost that I have puts an interesting spin on Lewis' assertion. It is edited with an Introduction by Phillip Pullman, the well-known atheist and author of the His Dark Materials trilogy (which some have described as a kind of Chronicles of anti-Narnia). Pullman finds God offensive and repulsive, tyrannical, manipulative and cruel, the very opposite of loving or benevolent, and this picture he finds abundantly confirmed by Milton.

Contrary to Lewis, I too found such characteristics clearly portrayed in the character of God in the poem, and I do not believe any of them are characteristic of God as He is. It is worth asking, then, why God is depicted in this way.

Reading Pullman's introduction initially, I wondered if this portrayal of God might not be a consequence of Calvinist ideas. Milton was, after all, a Puritan (sort of), and I am not alone in finding the implications of TULIP to result in a God Who, though undeniably sovereign, is also morally repugnant. However, in reading the poem, I found this was not the case. Calvinism is nowhere particularly explicit and the more discomfiting aspects of Milton's God do not appear to be consequent upon Calvinist ideas. That appears to come from a quite different quarter, because it turns out that Milton was also an Arian.

One of the chief theological problems with Arianism is it naturally leads to a theology of 'divine child abuse'. Many modern atheists have accused Christians of subscribing to such an idea (admittedly, the tendency of some Christians to reduce the whole doctrine of Redemption to exclude everything except penal substitution doesn't help matters) but this is only because they don't get the concept of the Trinity. God is on the Cross as much as He is up in heaven. For Arians, however, the accusation is legitimate- they really do advocate a theology of 'divine child abuse'. So, in Paradise Lost, though it is never really made explicit (though a couple of passages come close), the distinction drawn between the Father and the Son so that they are two clearly separate characters means that the reader doesn't really see the Son as God to the same extent and in the same way as the Father, if at all. Thus, the Father's waiting three days while watching His angels battle and fall against Satan and his minions, then sending the Son out to win the day in one foul swoop, seems callous and cold-hearted. One is more likely to ascribe that characteristic to God than the Son's heroism in routing the foe. Likewise, the Father's acceptance of the Son's offer to sacrifice himself to redeem man introduces all kinds of problems on a character level. Whereas Milton could (albeit with difficulty) have demonstrated God's love for mankind by implying that the Son's gracious offer to be incarnated, suffer and die was something proper to God and consistent with His character, the reader is more likely to see the Father's pragmatic acceptance of this offer as God's proper act in that scene. Pullman admits that the Son is the more sympathetic character, but is also perfectly aware that Milton did not believe the Son was God, even if other Christians do, and thus it is the Father Who is the depiction of what Milton understood God to be like.

In addition to his Arianism, I could not shake the impression that a large part of the problem with Milton's depiction of God is the fact that he decided to make Him a character among other characters at all. There is some beautiful poetry associated with God throughout the poem, but little sense of transcendence or the numinous when God is treated of directly. God has speeches just like everyone else in the poem has speeches. There is little sense when the Father speaks that He is qualitatively different from the other characters around Him. More powerful, perhaps, but not fundamentally different. Of course, if one wants to treat of the transcendent or mysterious in a story, the easiest way is to never let the reader see it, like the way Tolkien never depicts or deals with Sauron directly in The Lord of the Rings. Moreover, though it is awfully difficult to write about the numinous in a narrative, it is not impossible. Kenneth Grahame achieved it with Pan in The Wind in the Willows in a scene that has never ceased to resonate with me since childhood (Pan? The goat-footed minor Greek deity, Pan? Yes, Pan- if you haven't read it, do so and tell me if you don't get goosebumps). Lewis, likewise, to a greater or lesser extent with Aslan and, above all, with 'the god of the mountain' (actually Cupid) in Till We Have Faces. Likewise H.P. Lovecraft in The Call of Cthulhu. Milton was a greater master of English than any of these; surely he could have pulled off a God who would inspire awe in his readers if he had wanted to. So, I don't know if I would go as far as Blake, but (much as I regret to say it) I believe Lewis far off the mark on this one. Milton's theodicy is, for me, a failure.

So, mixed feelings about Paradise Lost. I think it is inadequate in what it sets out to do (i.e. in how it works as a theodicy); on the other hand, if only all inadequate theodicies could be as spectacular and brilliantly written as this one.

Four Types

2010-09-05T09:44:00.003+10:00

An interesting thought from Chesterton.

As long as you have a creed, which everyone in a certain group believes or is supposed to believe, then that group will consist of the old recurring figures of religious history, who can be appealed to by the creed and judged by it; the saint, the hypocrite, the brawler, the weak brother. These people do each other good; or they all join together to do the hypocrite good, with heavy and repeated blows. But once break the bond of doctrine which alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his own kind outside the group. The hypocrites will all get together and call each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call themselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker in a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off looking for somebody else with whom to brawl.

Prophetic Rumours

2010-09-02T12:16:00.005+10:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again: sestinas are the dickens to write!

This one took me three days. The most difficult part is ideally you should write the final stanza first. Maybe some people write like that, but I just find it impossible. Anyway, I'm not too unhappy with the result, and it is even possible some of you may share that sentiment. So, by all means, feed me back.

The day the universe gave birth to man,
A stranger creature it had never seen,
And Nature then did tremble at the sight;
The earth lay still to kiss his fleshy feet
And heaven'ly hosts arranged in bright array
Did hover humbly just above his head.

The day, the grievous day, man bowed his head
In shame, and found himself less than a man,
Lost, lost from sight then was the former ray
Of glory by which all that could be seen
His spirit did transfigure. T'wards his feet
Was now where was directed all his sight.

Half-blind, self-blinded, salvaged dusk-dim sight
Did see but not perceive, for in his head
Stood now a marred mind, and cold defeat
Th'habitual taste now in the mouth of man.
A taint appeared to tarnish all he'd seen,
His thoughts now in perpetual disarray.

But misplaced blame the eye that's lost its ray
Does place on what it sees when its own sight
Is faulty. No fault lies in what is seen
But in what sees. And foolish is the head
That blames the agonising pain of a man
On hardened earth who walks on broken feet.

Long ages and vast distances the feet
Of man have walked beneath the solar ray,
And weary, weary is the soul of man
And seeking, always seeking is his sight
A half-forgotten image in his head,
The mem'ry of a thing he's never seen.

And shall he e'er behold the thing unseen
Or grasp the thing he seeks? Alas, that feat
Remains beyond the best that's in his head
Or heart, despite the brilliance of their ray,
And all attempts to render to his sight
The object of his longing kill the man.

But He Who made his head shall unforeseen
Soon come to man and wash his weary feet,
The cosmic array all trembling at the sight.

Election Night

2010-08-21T19:15:00.004+10:00

While we watch with trepidation and eagerness while the votes continue being counted, here's the buzz from a slightly different election. I leave it up to the reader to decide if there is any correspondence at all between these political parties and the ones presently courting power in Australia.

Midday Meal Postponed

2010-08-19T14:51:00.003+10:00

I cobbled this together during a quiet moment in class (my students were doing a writing activity) in solidarity with those colleagues of mine who are presently snowed under with marking (as indeed I will probably be before a fortnight has elapsed). Reading over it again, I can hear definite echoes of Chesterton's Ballade of the Suicide in the refrain, but I think this ballade has its own thematic and poetic integrity as well. Feedback is welcome. Copyright is mine.

I still have not yet had my lunch today
And now the clock is ticking towards three,
Yet still here at my desk I have to stay,
Marking endless mediocrity;
These students who assume stupidity
In teachers, with low marks I will repay.
You say I seem a tad deprecatory?
It's just I've not yet had my lunch today.

While colleagues come and go, as is their way,
Arousing in me endless jealousy,
Flitting like the restless popinjay
Which sounds its cheerful chirp from tree to tree,
From page to page to page relentlessly
My pen swoops down on ungrammatic prey;
An end to shed red ink I fain would see
Since I have not yet had my lunch today.

Oh, what I wouldn't give for one big tray
Of meat and rice- and cheese!- perhaps some Brie
Accompanied by a cup of karkaday,
But I can't even spare time to make tea.
I hear my stomach protest noisily;
Does my complexion seem a little grey?
Another essay. Health is secondary,
Although I've not yet had my lunch today.

Envoi
O Prince, why send your progeny to me
To educate them? I know what you pay.
But I would gladly teach them, and for free,
If only I might have my lunch today.

St Augustine on the Transfiguration

2010-08-06T15:09:00.003+10:00

The Lord Jesus Himself shone bright as the sun; His garment became white as the snow; and Moses and Elijah talked with Him. Jesus Himself indeed shone as the sun, signifying that He is “the true light that enlightens every man come into the world.” What the sun is to the eyes of the flesh, so He is to the eyes of the heart; and what that is to the flesh of men, that He is to their hearts…

Peter sees this, and as a man savoring the things of men says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” He had been wearied with the multitude. He had now found the mountain’s solitude; there he had Christ the Bread of the soul. What — should he depart once again to labor and suffering now that he had a holy love for God and a holy way of life? He wished well for himself; and so he added, “If you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” To this the Lord made no answer; nevertheless, Peter received an answer. “He was still speaking, when lo, a bright cloud overshadowed them.” He wanted three tabernacles; the heavenly answer showed him that we have One, which human judgment desired to divide. Christ, the Word of God, the Word of God in the Law, the Word in the Prophets. Why, Peter, do you seek to divide them? Is it not more fitting for you to join them. You seek three; understand that they are but One.

As the cloud overshadowed them, and in a way made one tabernacle for them, “a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son.’” Moses was there; Elijah was there; yet it was not said, “These are My beloved sons.” For the Only Son is one thing; adopted sons another. He was singled out in whom the Law and the prophets glorified. “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear Him!” Because you have heard Him in the Prophets, and you have heard Him in the Law. And where have you not heard Him? “When they heard this, they fell” to the earth. See then in the Church is exhibited to us the Kingdom of God. Here is the Lord, here the Law and the Prophets; but the Lord as the Lord. The Law in Moses, Prophecy in Elias — but they are servants and ministers. They are vessels: He is the fountain. Moses and the Prophets spoke and wrote; but when they poured out, they were filled from Him....

And in this glory is fulfilled what He has promised to those who love Him: “he who loves me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him.” … Great gift! great promise! God holds for you nothing less than Himself. O you covetous one; why isn’t Christ’s promise enough for you? You seem to yourself to be rich; yet if you do not have God, what do you have? Another person is poor, yet if he has God, what does he lack?

Come down, Peter! You wanted to rest on the mount. Come down and “preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” Persevere, work hard, bear your measure of torture — so that you might possess what is meant by the white garment of the Lord, through the brightness and the beauty of an upright labor in charity …Hear and listen, O covetous one: the Apostle explains clearly to you in another place: “Let no man seek his own, but another’s.” He says of himself, “Not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.” This Peter did not yet understand when he desired to live on the mount with Christ. He was reserving this for you, Peter, after death. But for now He says, “Come down, to labor on the earth; on the earth to serve, to be despised, and crucified on the earth. The Life came down, that He might be slain; the Bread came down, that He might hunger; the Way came down, that life might be wearied in the way; the Fountain came down, that He might thirst; and yet you refuse to work? Seek not your own. Have charity, preach the truth; so shall you come to eternity, where you shall find security.

The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism- Part 2

2010-08-05T12:32:00.021+10:00

The Negative Principles of Protestantism

Bouyer states that Protestantism "seemed to bring in an incalculable wealth of constructive power, even to consitute a rediscovery of what was capital and permanent in Christianity." The principles noted already are regarded by Protestants as alone "necessary and sufficient" for the Reformation. But, as we have seen, there was nothing in these principles, understood positively, that was essentially at odds with the Catholic Church. The question then arises, "How did a movement that seemed and still seems to bear within itself the power to rejuvenate and restore traditional Christianity, the Church of all time, come in fact to set up a Christianity disrupted from tradition and to injure and attack of set purpose the Church it had wished to renew?" Protestants, of course, would turn the question around and ask why the Church rejected Protestantism. But, as has been shown, to the extent that Protestantism upheld and strove for sola gratia, sola fide, sola Scriptura and soli Deo gloria, understood positively, the Church did not reject them but upheld these principles also. Thus there must be other principles which explain why what should have been a reformation became a revolt. Bouyer sets out to demonstrate two things in treating of these negative principles: 1) that they do not follow necessarily from the positive principles already mentioned, but are arbitrary to them; 2) that they have in fact undermined and stifled the practical application of the positive principles in the history and practice of Protestantism.

1) Sola Gratia -> Extrinsic Justification

In Luther's writings, two ideas ultimately become inseparable: i) grace alone saves us; ii) it changes nothing in us by doing so. Bouyer points out that the connection is not at all prominent in Luther's pastoral works, when he is teaching the Faith per se or speaking out of his own experience, but is front and centre in his polemics. Thus the notion that to expect or require change in a person is to deny the sufficiency of grace subsequently becomes a key Protestant idea. This is the source of a great deal of the faith vs. works polemic which is perennially popular from Protestant pulpits, in which the possibility of grace-sustained works tends to be elided over.

The New Testament, on the other hand, affirms at once the impossibility of any positive contribution of man to his salvation and at the same time the necessary fruitfulness of grace acting within man for his salvation. The tension may be seen in Romans 7 and 8, and most particularly in Phillipians 2:12-13, which may rightly be regarded as the key to an orthodox soteriology on this point. Luther, of course, hated James for not upholding extrinsic justification, but, in fact, Paul is not much better, consistently speaking of the new man and the old, the spirit and the flesh, a new creation and so on. The idea of a justification whose effects are invisible is foreign to Scripture. Indeed, Calvin saw the problem and advanced the distinction between justification and sanctification that remains standard for many Protestants. However, though this solves the problem, it is also a distinction unknown to Scripture.

Sola fide comes in at this point as well since, understood within the terms of extrinsic justification, faith becomes opposed to works rather than their complement and prerequisite. The Church was perfectly happy to deny the value of Jewish works of the Law, or works done prior to faith or without faith, but the Reformers went further, denying value even to works done by grace. Luther ultimately attacked the formula of fide caritate formata (faith formed by love, c.f. Galatians 5:6), regarding it as the ruin of all he set out to preach.

Bouyer cites the modern Lutheran author Anders Nygren, who agrees with Luther on this point, regarding his rejection of fide caritate formata as the highest point of Lutheran theology and subsequently writing a book ("Eros et Agape") in which an opposition between faith and love is made the hallmark of the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. To do this, much of the Gospel of John and the two great commandments in the Synoptics are sidelined, and Bouyer regards this as a demonstration that Protestantism, by its adherence to extrinsic justification, has created within itself a crisis it cannot resolve.

How does extrinsic justification relate to or derive from medieval nominalism? Because nominalism denies the reality of substance or essence and reduces abstract universals to concrete particulars, it creates problems with the idea of change within and relations between beings. If a change takes place within me, so as not to multiply entities unnecessarily, the change must be regarded as having its source in me. Thus, to preserve God as the source of grace, grace can only work externally. Anything active that comes from within me must derive from me. Bouyer states, "If being is reduced to action, and action to what takes place in us, our experience is closed to anything transcendent, or else, on the assumption that the transcendent could intervene, it could only do so by reducing itself to becoming part of ourselves." Thus, on this view, extrinsic justification becomes necessary in order to safeguard the integrity of sola gratia.

2. Soli Deo gloria -> T-LIP & God Beyond Good and Evil

This is not unrelated to the last point. Within Protestantism, God's sovereignty almost immediately becomes bound up with the idea of the impossibility and rejection of any human activity, grace-informed or otherwise, with any religious value or 'merit'. Essentially, Protestantism came to accept that "it is impossible to affirm and uphold the sovereignty of God without a corresponding annihilation of the creature." Bouyer goes on:

[In Protestantism,] to suppose that man, as the result of God's grace, has the power to do acts good in themselves, even granted his total dependence on God, would be to destroy the gratuitousness of grace and so to deny the sovereign freedom of God's action...to say that man, as the recipient of saving grace, could be himself pleasing to God is to be guilty of blasphemy.

Such ideas are clear in Luther, clearer in Calvin and pivotal in Barth. Indeed, Barth regards saints in the Church as being, rather than a testament to God's grace and holiness, an affront to them. Conceiving God's sovereignty as inversely proportional to any freedom or value, whether inherent or received, in His creatures derives, like extrinsic justification, from the reluctance of nominalism to multiply entities or to allow that substances/essences can be equal possessors of a particular universal, since nominalist philosophy does not accept either the existence of substance/essence or of universals.

What does Scripture say on the matter? On the one hand, as noted earlier, it disqualifies any attempt by man to ascribe to himself what belongs to the Creator. In Isaiah, the Almighty states "I will give My glory to no other," (Isaiah 42:8) and Isaiah says elsewhere, "All our justifications are like a soiled garment" (Isaiah 64:6). Job declares, "He finds fault even among the angels," (Job 33:23) and Our Lord Himself admonishes the rich young ruler, "No one is good but God" (Mark 10:18). But elsewhere Our Lord also commands His listeners, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5:48). St Paul writes, "His grace in me has not been void," (1 Cor 15:10) and St John encourages the recipients of his first letter, "We are called sons of God and that is what we are" (1 John 3:1). There is a tension here and any adequate theology must account for it. Bouyer summarises:

The Bible sets God's holiness...in 'inaccessible light'...not...to deny Him the act of creating or recreating anything of value outside Himself...[but] to emphasise how much the first creation, still more the second, attest by their intrinsic reality and goodness the incomparable reality and goodness of Him Whom they manifest...The God of Calvinism and Barthism...keeps all His greatness only if His creatures return to nothingness. The God of the Bible...shows His greatness in snatching them from nothingness.

Nominalism creates even more problems for God's sovereignty, however. The sovereignty of God, as a concept, requires that God be absolutely free, that none of His actions be constrained. To be understood in nominalist terms, however, this creates a gulf between the Creator and creature that goes beyond Christian orthodoxy. Given nominalism's rejection of transcendence as such and it's need to understand all things as singular, concrete and particular rather than as exemplars of abstract categories, in order for God to be God, He must be beyond all possible limitations, all possible particulars, incapable of being comprehended or understood by finite beings. This is somewhat similar to Eastern ideas of apophaticism or hesychasm, but taken to even greater extremes, because on this understanding God is, among other things, beyond good and evil, beyond true and false (Occam proposes this as the only acceptable definition of omnipotence or potentia absoluta). Thus the favourite Calvinist text of Romans 9:20-22 ("But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?") becomes not a rebuttal to those who would limit God's covenant but a rebuttal to anyone who would believe that God must be true to His own nature as He has revealed it, i.e. merciful, faithful and just. The infinite in nominalism must also be the indefinite. To refuse the possibility that God can leave men as sinners while regarding them otherwise or create some to salvation and others to damnation would be to limit His sovereignty. Conversely, a God Who makes us act and be freely is a God Who lessens and diminshes Himself precisely to that extent.

To demonstrate the deleterious effects of this philosophy on Christian theology, Bouyer takes the example of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth on the 'analogy of being', and it is an interesting enough example to warrant a short digression.

2.1 Barthism vs. Thomism on Revelation

Thomas in his understanding of God's revelation of Himself to mankind puts forward the idea of the 'analogy of being'. This idea is designed to see off two possible errors:

1) that the Word of God is of like nature with human words and is thus reducible to them (this is essentially the present liberal position), thus the Word of God can be understood and manipulated by me in the same way my own thoughts and words can be.
2) that the Word of God has no relation to human words whatsoever; thus the Word of God must remain "an unresolved enigma, a symbol impossible to decipher".

Thomas skirts between these two errors, proposing a third alternative. Since God made all things, says Thomas, and thus all things are a reflection of God's mind (the mind of man included), it is possible for man to open his mind, illumined by faith, to the mysteries of God's Word, not limiting them within his own ideas but transposing and enlarging these to reflect God's Word truly, if imperfectly. Thomas calls this the analogy of being (a good historical exemplar of the analogy of being at work is the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance in the concept of the Son being eternally begotten; here we see precisely this stretching and enlarging of human ideas, words and concepts to express infinite realities).

Karl Barth, however, regards the analogy of being as an aberration and tantamount to idolatry; in fact, he believes it indistinguishable from Error 1 above. He has precedent in this, because nominalist theologians of the late Middle Ages thought the same, though approvingly, because they believed Error 1 was correct. This was far from Thomas' understanding, however. Bouyer bemoans the fact: "Catholic writers are certainly to be blamed for [this misconception] but only through their subservience to fallacies that Protestants did not dream of criticisng, Barth least of all."

3. Personal Religion -> Individualistic Religion

Despite Luther's conservatism vis-a-vis liturgy and the sacraments (he was the only Reformer to uphold the Real Presence as an objective reality against Zwingli's symbolic and Calvin's subjective approach), there exists in him and in Protestantism from its inception the tendency to downplay the value of the sacraments and/or make their worth purely subjective. Thus personal religion, in practice, has no object outside itself. Several natural consequences flow from this tendency.

The sacraments, the Church (and even, potentially, doctrine c.f. modern liberal Christians) become only aids to individual faith or psychological stimulants. By implication, then, a person of strong faith doesn't need them and, since the person with least faith naturally thinks himself the person of strongest faith, we have, in the case of churchgoing, the classic line, "I don't need to go to church. I can pray to God at home." The standard Protestant response of quoting Heb 10:25 and saying, 'You need to meet with those of like mind; you need the support of your Christian brothers and sisters," misses the point. Thus faith becomes less and less a faith in salvation in a universal covenantal sense or faith in Him Who saves and more and more faith in my own individual salvation.

4. Supreme Authority of Scripture -> No Authority But Scripture

The supremacy of Scripture was very quickly married to absolute denial of any authority in the Church, present or past, either in its interpretations of Scripture (patristics), doctrinal decisions of Councils or the right of bishops or Popes to recommend or condemn ideas, or discipline in any way the Christians in their spiritual care (in other words, fulfill any of their pastoral responsibilities). Sola Scriptura, then, came to mean, not only 'Scripture is the supreme authority' but 'Scripture is the only authority'. Scripture did not merely trump other authorities (an idea the Church had always accepted), it replaced them. There were to be no other authorities, even ones subservient to Scripture.

Once again, this new idea derives from nominalism. The necessity of an external Word in nominalism precludes any immanence of it in tradition, external interpretation (eg. by any church) or in mystical experience. It cannot come through the agency of man in any form, lest it cease thereby to be of God. Thus the perennial Protestant temptation is to regard it as delivered direct from God, dictated to its human authors. Though many Protestants hold that Scripture had active human authors and as such is at once the words of men and the Word of God, the extent to which that idea affects how Scripture is read and understood can be shaky at times, and the temptation to deny it altogether often exhibits itself (eg. in John Owen, among others).

Positive and Negative Principles Confounded

The great tragedy of the Reformation, according to Bouyer, is that, since nominalist concepts and categories were largely taken for granted by all, almost no one, either Catholic or Protestant, thought to distinguish between the positive principles at the heart of Protestantism and the negative principles that were arbitrarily but intimately joined to them. So mostly each side fell to condemning the whole package wholesale or defending it wholesale. I would argue, contra Bouyer, that the Council of Trent did go some way towards separating the two and condemning only the latter (though far too late for it to do very much practical good; the lines were by then too clearly drawn and each side too deeply entrenched) but certainly on a non-magisterial level, that contention holds true more often than not. Three examples:

Exhibit A: Luther and Erasmus on the Will

The titles of their respective treatises (De Servo Arbitrio & De Libero Arbitrio- "The Enslaved Will" & "The Free Will', respectively) demonstrate the problem. Essentially, Erasmus tried to salvage free will independently of grace, while Luther tried to defend grace by denying free will. It occurred to neither of them to say that prevenient grace frees our will to respond to saving grace, or that grace, instead of declaring us free while we remain slaves, makes us free indeed. For both Luther and Erasmus, the idea that God and man act together in justification is a zero-sum game, like two men hauling something. The more one man does, the less the other has to (or can) do. For the corrective to both, see St Bernard of Clairvaux's De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio ("Of Grace and Free Will"- again, the title sets the tone, this time in the right direction). For St Bernard, God does all and man does all and there is no contradiction between the two. St Bernard maintains the paradoxical balance of Phillipians 2:12-13 whereas both Luther and Erasmus betray it in different ways.

Exhibit B: Personalism vs. Authoritarianism

As one reads the writings of the Counter-Reformation, it quickly becomes apparent that the extreme subjectivism and individualism of the Reformers was countered, not by an effective personalist alternative, but by rigid authoritarianism. Catholic writers of the period have a tendency to exalt external authority and make blind submission a virtue. This was effective to at least some degree in keeping Catholics in the fold, but it also persuaded lots of Protestants and reform-minded individuals that their conviction of the importance of engaged, personal religion could only be preserved by rejecting any external authority, legitimate or not, and replacing it with free-thinking.

Exhibit C: Predestination

If infinite equals indeterminate, God is either not the cause of our salvation or He is the equal cause of salvation and damnation since good and evil are in the Deity not intrinsic but arbitrary (as chez the Muslims). Calvin, of course, took the latter option. The Catholic response? Almost across the board it was urged "Just don't think about it." For example, see the admonition in St Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, "We should not make predestination an habitual subject of conversation." It is not surprising, then, that many people, to retain the traditional Christian doctrine of predestination in some form, jumped on board with Calvinism.

Both reactions flow from nominalist assumptions. Because nominalism is a purely empirical system, excluding anything not within our experience, thereby disallowing transcendence, it must conceive the kingship (sovereignty) of God in human terms, i.e. the more power the people have, the less the king has, and vice versa. An absolute authority that, by its very absolutism, enables (rather than destroys) the freedom of its subjects is thus literally inconceivable. Therefore, in the very effort of trying to maintain God as Wholly Other, Calvinism reduces Him to human categories and engages in a bit of ugly but covert anthropomorphism. Meanwhile, the Counter-Reformation sees the problem but sees no way out of it since, without noticing, it has become guilty of the same anthropomorphism, and thus covers its ears and sings, "Lalala!"

Decay of the Protestant Principles

According to Bouyer, the retention by Protestantism of nominalist categories and the ideas flowing from them led not only to "the neglect of the complementary aspects of Christian truth" but also inhibited and undermined the positive principles on which Protestantism is built. A few examples will suffice to make the point.

From Sola Gratia Back to Pelagianism

Extrinsic justification, designed to safeguard sola gratia, ultimately prohibits grace from having any visible effect. Thus mysticism becomes suspect, since God is not allowed to show Himself in the interior life, only externally (Bouyer mentions the violent reactions in Lutheranism against the Lutheran Collegia pietatis of Arndt and Spener). In addition, the secular and sacred realms become domains which do not affect or touch each other. Both of these tendencies were ultimately reacted against and the pendulum swung back the other way, to a religion of moralism and of sentimental experience (the latter especially prominent in a lot of modern Evangelicalism, to the chagrin of some- Bouyer regards it as an inevitable development since grace had been understood as meaning man had nothing to do). Likewise, Puritanism soon turned Pelagian by trying to establish 'the heavenly Jerusalem' on earth, first in England under Cromwell, then in America. Since grace did not enable them to do this (it being a simple declaration of righteousness), they had to do it on their own, in their own power. Also Arminianism, reacting against Calvin's double predestination and the repugnance of TULIP, makes the will that accepts grace autonomous. Pure Pelagianism.

To speak of broader currents in Protestant culture. If for God to be sovereign man must be nothing, and since experience demonstrates that man is not nothing ("made in the image of God", as the Scriptures attest), to regard man as he is requires diminishing God. This naturally leads to things like the old Protestant maxim, "The Lord helps those who help themselves", a sentiment that would have horrified both Luther and Calvin. Likewise, one not infrequently finds in modern Protestantism a tendency to treat God as an equal (the "Jesus is my boyfriend" kind of spirituality present in many modern Praise and Worship songs exemplifies this) or as a commodity (for example, as a means to make your life better, Prayer of Jabez-style). All of these things run entirely counter to those genuinely Christian principles at Protestantism's heart.

From Personal Religion and the Sovereignty of God to Authoritarianism and Human Tyranny

By making a genuine valuing of personal religion, over against arbitrary regimentation, legalism and authoritarianism, into a force overly individualistic and subjective, Protestantism inadvertently raises up an even more authoritarian edifice than before. Moreover, it is an edifice that rests not on the sovereign and almighty will of God but on the arbitrary will of men.

Given the break with the Catholic Church, three options were open to Protestantism:

1) reject all spiritual authority save the individual (Anabaptists, Quakers, etc.)
2) give spiritual authority to the civil authorities (Lutheranism)
3)create a new church artificially through the contrivance of an individual genius (Calvinism)

All three options subject Christians to arbitrary and undeniably human authority. This is so in large part because of the relegation of concrete authority from God to an inaccessible heaven (or, arguably, the inaccessible past). Thus Luther, following a medieval tendency (which Henry VIII also ultimately followed) created a national church, subservient to the State. How this undermines effective living of the Christian life and, most particularly, effective corporate witness of Christ to non-Christians may be adequately seen in the current upheavals in the Anglican Communion. Calvin tried to avoid this implicit denial of divine sovereignty by creating a church from a Scriptural blueprint. But the Body of Christ cannot be remade by men- it must be created directly by God. Thus the Calvinist churches became, rather than divine institutions, human institutions established according to a divine plan.

The existence of these different approaches naturally gave rise to the concept of denominations (we too easily forget how novel the very idea of denominations is, and how foreign to the minds of most Christians throughout history). Subjectivism rules out an objective norm for faith, but when someone with such ideas founds a church, it is founded on his own subjectivism and thus is narrower and more oppressive to others. Such foundations, as they multiply, tend to become ever narrower and, in an attempt to halt the process, become ever more pedantic about rules of faith and doctrinal requirements, making matters of speculation into makers or breakers of fellowship (for example, the original Fundamentalists, who made fundamentals of some things which had never been so regarded by Christianity in the past and did not feature in any of the historic Creeds; moreover I know of and have been a member of churches that have split or have lost members over issues such as gifts of the Spirit, various eschatological scenarios, creationism, when the age of reason commences in children and inerrancy- issues on which Catholics, perhaps surprisingly, are perfectly free to hold a variety of opinions). Bouyer says:

Whenever [Protestant churches] refuse to dissolve themselves in practice into simple associations for worship, without any doctrinal, moral orliturgical law other than the whim of each, they tend immediately to become rigid frameworks in which a particular type of religious mentality or feeling unconsciously results in the opression of others. Moreover, in practice, even where the ministers do not wish or claim to be other than delegates of their own communities, churches of this type always end by delivering over their members to the subjective views of each minister.

The principle is seen a fortiori in worship. At the centre is the sermon, which the minister has written and delivers according to the message he wants to give his congregation. He chooses the readings based on what he wants to preach on, the hymns to fit the same topic (though, with the advent and increasing use of 'worship leaders' and 'worship bands' this is less the case than when I was growing up) and the prayers he usually makes up as he goes. The whole liturgy is moulded by the minister's personal devotion. "One cannot imagine," says Bouyer, "any system more completely effective in replacing the authority of God by that of the individual minister."

In addition, the Protestant use of sacraments, according to Bouyer, undermines sola gratia. In the sacraments, on the Protestant understanding, is found not what faith finds there but what it puts there. My baptism is merely an outward showing of an inner reality. The Lord's Supper is simply a memory aid. Thus both become not unlike the Jewish Law, merely exterior acts, bringing nothing that is not in the believer, becoming less necessary the more spiritually mature you are. "What, in fact," asks Bouyer, "is more contrary to the principle of a religion in which the gift of God is all than the reality of a religion in which there is nothing beyond what is brought by the personal devotion of each?"

Moreover, far from returning to the simpler worship of the early Christians, Protestants have inadvertently exacerbated late medieval worship tendencies and corruptions. For example, in the late medieval period in the West, the focus of Eucharistic worship had come to be predominantly on the words of institution. The older focus, however (still strongly maintained in Eastern Orthodoxy), was on the whole epiclesis, which ultimately derived from Judaism. The Reformers (most especially the Zwinglians) tended to drop the epiclesis entirely and regard as valid any Eucharist at which the words of institution were uttered, and this is still generally true of Protestants today. In doing this, rather than harking back to the apostolic practice of the Lord's Supper freed from medieval accretions, Protestants have taken a dodgy medieval idea and run with it, sacrificing essential and apostolic elements of Christian worship.

From Sola Scriptura to the Jesus Seminar

Protestantism, in making itself a Religion of the Book, opened itself to two contradictory tendencies. The first is to virtually divinise the Bible (certainly that's what it looks like to more than one Catholic to whom I have spoken), to eliminate as much as possible the human elements in it by, for example, postulating the inspiration of the vowel signs in the Masoretic text or remaining stubbornly committed to the exact scientific accuracy of Genesis 1 or the census numbers in Numbers. The Bible must be seen, says Bouyer, "as a spiritual meteor discharged suddenly onto our planet...innocent of any geological traces." In modern times, we have such things as the KJV-only crowd or the idea I once read (I forget where, unfortunately) that God providentially caused the original autographs to be lost lest people misguidedly worship them (a notion which, to a Catholic, confirms all his mistaken supicions about Protestant bibliolatry and, in any case, seems patently ridiculous since there are plenty of more immediate relics of Christ and the Apostles out there and nobody worships those).

In the nineteenth century, textual criticism made the human element undeniable and so this extreme view was reacted against and the human element elevated above or even to the exclusion of the divine element. Not being comfortable with a Word both fully divine and fully human, due to nominalist modes of thinking, the reactionaries relegated it firmly to the latter category; unable to see anything in Scripture that was not human, it became merely human literature, at best evidence of the 'religious genius' of the Hebrews.

Protestant Revivals

Bouyer sees, in addition to these examples of the negative principles undermining the positive, other examples of Protestants instinctively taking hold of the positive principles and fighting back against the negations that cancel them out. He describes at some length how he sees in such a category men like the Lutheran Pietists, Count von Zinzendorf and the Moravians and, most interestingly (to me, anyway), John Wesley and the Methodist movement. I won't describe at length these examples (this post is getting far too long- I had forgotten how extensive my notes were) but Bouyer sums them up in this way.

[Protestants such as these] remain faithful to the religion of the sola gratia, but do not consider themselves bound irrevocably to extrinsic justification. They do not cease to uphold the ideal of soli Deo gloria, but they have discovered anew the meaning of the words of St Ireneaus, 'Gloria Dei, vivens homo.' More than anyone they desire personal religion, but they escape the chimera of a person built on autonomy and subjectivism. More ardently than all the rest they believe in the Bible, in the Word of God in the Bible, as the source of light and life; but the very truth of their practical obedience to the divine Word is what preserves them from bolstering it up with philosophical assumptions that would prevent its being heard whenever it said anything different from what the system warranted.

In short, Bouyer urges Protestants to carefully examine and seek to understand the significance of these revival movements for Protestantism and the ideas it is founded on.

And what of the Catholic Church? Bouyer's final chapter is titled "The Catholic Church Necessary for Full Flowering of the Principles of the Reformation". Protestantism, he believes, will only be fully faithful to the principles on which it is founded in union with the Catholic Church. Separate, it will continue to undermine its own principles by the negations already mentioned. Likewise, Catholicism needs the living expression of that Christian core at Protestantism's heart. Protestantism should have reformed the Church and it still can, but it can only do so from within the Church; separated, it will continue to sabotage itself to a greater or lesser extent. "Catholicism," concludes Bouyer, "insofar as it is opposed to the principles of Protestantism, opposes only a systematisation of them that rests on fallacies and leads to their destruction. In reality, the real tenets of Catholicism, if seen as they are and not through a distorting lens, bring the Reformation principles the support refused to them by the structure actually made for them." Ultimately, rapprochement and reunion between the Protestant movement and the Catholic Church would bring about "the full splendour [of] the Reformation"- it would be "a Reformation at last achieved".

The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism- Part 1

2010-07-28T10:41:00.023+10:00

I recently finished going back through Louis Bouyer's "The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism", this time taking down some notes, and thought I would put some of what came out of that exercise here.

"The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism" is one of those fascinating books that comes at a subject one knows well but with insights and angles one had not considered. It is, moreover, a book with something to offend everybody. Bouyer's basic thesis is this: Protestantism was a movement of reform and renewal in the sixteenth century that recovered, emphasised and embodied several authentic and positive principles inherent in Christianity which had been in recent centuries marginalised or neglected. At the same time, it connected and confounded these positive principles with certain negative principles deriving from the nominalist philosophy of the late Middle Ages. These negative principles undermine, both theologically and historically, the full flowering of the positive principles; however the continued affirmation and embodiment of the positive principles within the movement means that there is a permanent and vital Christian core to the movement whose presence is not as pronounced in other Christian traditions. Bouyer states:

The main error of Protestantism lies in this; that it has come to associate inseparably, but quite artificially, the positive statements of the Reformation with certain negations, so that these have come to seem equally characteristic of its nature.

The negative, 'heretical' aspect of the Reformation neither follows from its positive principles nor is a necessary consequence of their development or vindication but appears simply as a survival, within Protestantism, of what was most defective and corrupt in Catholic thought at the close of the Middle Ages.

The first part of that thesis is likely to offend a large number of Catholics who regard the Reformation as an unmitigated disaster, think things would have been better if it had never happened, and look warily at anybody who would suggest that Protestantism might not be all bad or that Catholicism as it is lived and practiced in their particular neck of the historical and cultural woods is in any way deficient (they ought to know better but, for good or ill, most Catholics are human).

The second part is likely to offend almost all Protestants, who regard the Reformation as an unmitigated triumph, literally cannot imagine Christianity without it, and who regard warily anyone who would suggest that Catholicism might not be all bad or that Protestantism (or my brand of it, anyway) is in any way deficient (I guess most Protestants are also human).

Bouyer doesn't exactly say "A plague on both your houses!" but he does open up the possibility of a more honest mutual critique and assessment.

What I'm going to offer here is a kind of precis of my notes from the book (hopefully more readable than my actual notes), with some of my own ideas springboarding off these here and there. For my part, I am fascinated by some of the ideas here (though I don't necessarily agree with everything wholesale). Indeed, much of this is, for me, news rather than simply information; i.e. something told to you that demands a response. The responsibility of having lived in both camps and thus having the opportunity and duty of bringing in those elements of authentic Christianity from Protestantism which are inherent but less prominent in Catholicism is one that I continue to think about and, by God's grace, try to fulfill.

Positive Principles of Protestantism

1. Sola gratia

'Grace alone' is THE fundamental principle at the heart of Protestantism. The Reformers believed that, and Bouyer agrees with them. It is also the source of, and is intimately related to, sola fide, which is why in almost every case when you hear an apologetic defending sola fide, it actually ends up defending sola gratia. I'll come to sola fide later though.

Sola gratia undermines any attempt by man to contribute to his own salvation. It rejects any possibility of pulling oneself up by one's moral bootstraps, in the popular phrase, or any salvific action independent of God. In this sense, it rejects synergism, understood as God and man contributing parts to salvation independently. It lies at the core of Protestant conviction and is the beating heart of authentic Protestant spirituality. Bouyer quotes at some length both from the Reformers, from modern Lutheran theologians and from Protestant hymns to demonstrate its centrality, both for Protestant theology and at the popular level in worship.

Is sola gratia really an authentically Christian principle, and where did it find itself in Luther's day? The answer to the first question is clearly yes. It rings throughout the pages of the New Testament. Nor, come to that, is it particularly absent from the Old Testament. It had been affirmed and described clearly and at length by St Augustine, great foe of Pelagius and touchstone of Western theology (not to mention founder of the Order to which Luther belonged), in the fifth century. It had been upheld at the Council of Orange and would later be upheld without reservation at the Council of Trent. It had, however, as sometimes happens (even in Protestantism) fallen by the wayside in the actual practice of the Faith and in popular piety. In this sense, Luther's recapturing of it was a genuine recovery.

Bouyer sees two possible problems deriving from the centrality of sola gratia in the Protestant movement, which he deals with in turn. The first is the thorny problem of grace and free will. How can God "create in [us] to will and to acomplish" without absolving us from "working out [our] salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12-13)? In fact, Bouyer demonstrates, the problem is not as thorny as one thinks, as long as one is not a priori committed to a philosophy that sees the two as necessarily mutually exclusive. Garrigou-Lagrange writes, "In the work of salvation, all is from God, including our own co-operation, in the sense that we cannot distinguish a part as exclusively ours that does not come from the author of all good." God, in other words, as Lord and Creator of all, is also Lord and Creator of our freedom. How then do we explain sin and evil? Well, if we understand sin as something positive, an actual thing that we now have as fallen human beings, then this is indeed a problem. However, if we understand it as a lack, a privation, a negation, as Thomas Aquinas did, the problem ceases to exist. As Augustine points out, "Free will is a sufficient cause for evil, but for good it can do nothing unless aided by the Almighty Good."

The second potential problem Bouyer addresses is the possibility that, since Protestantism focusses so centrally on sola gratia (in contrast to Christianity up to that point where the Trinity or Christology had been central), this will warp the rest of its theology in the same way putting a bicycle wheel hub immediately next to the tyre, with some spokes shorter and some longer, will undermine its nature as a wheel and probably make it impossible to run. There have been even Protestant theologians who have proposed this as a real possibility- Schweitzer, for example, with his emphasis on union with Christ in conscious opposition to Luther's emphasis on justification by grace through faith. But in fact, Bouyer demonstrates that this problem is also ephemeral, quoting at length from Luther's commentary on Galatians where Luther uses sola gratia as a safeguard ensuring the integrity of his Christology (in this case the doctrine of Christ's full divinity). Thus, the centrality of sola gratia in the Reformers and in the Protestant movement, though unprecedented in Christian theology up to that point, is in fact an authentically Christian development.

2. Soli Deo Gloria

Luther had made God the sole cause of all, and man's salvation the principal effect. But the peril of sola fide (which is really just the human side of sola gratia) is the possibility of leaving out faith's Object- "justification by faith, independently of beliefs" in Eugene Menegoz's phrase, as exemplified in twentieth century liberal Protestantism. With soli Deo gloria or, put differently, the doctrine of the full sovereignty of God, Calvin sought, among other things, to head off that pass.

At the heart of Calvinism is a high idea of God, and the Calvinist will not settle for less. Everything redounds to God's glory. And God can in no way depend on a creature; He is by His nature totally sufficient in Himself. Calvin, in fact, is a man drunk on God, a quality that shines through in the greatest parts of his writing and is reflected in the most faithful of his successors. Well do I remember the way my conception of God was challenged and enlargened the first time I read A.W. Tozer's "The Knowledge of the Holy". One even finds strong echoes of this aspect of Calvin in a populist like Louie Giglio.

Bouyer puts forward the idea that Calvin's was a fundamentally mystical insight, one that he later attempted to systematise. A surprising assertion, but one that makes more sense the more one thinks about it. Why is it so shocking? Principally, says Bouyer, because most Protestants are "incredibly ill-informed about Catholic mysticism while Catholics know only the externals of Calvinism." To demonstrate his point, he examines some of these externals.

Calvinist churches are blank. This is striking and, often, offensive to Christians from more liturgical and sacramental traditions. They seem barren and empty and, thus, unworthy of God. There is nothing to lift the mind or heart to contemplate the Almighty and His works. But what is the significance of this barrenness? In fact, it has clear counterparts within earlier Christian history. The austerity of Calvinist churches derives from the same impulse that sent the first monks out into the desert- the desire to cut away all intermediaries and aids so that, in barrenness and silence, the soul might encounter God Himself.

In the void and in nakedness, if the soul does not reach out to God, it runs no risk of illusion and deception. It will not think that it advances or has found Him when it is only amusing itself, merely losing itself among trifles that have nothing in common with Him. Conversely, for the soul that truly seeks Him, at however great a distance, this virile austerity may have the most invigorating effect.

This is largely why Calvin's chief objection to Catholicism, likewise inherited by his successors (quite clearly in Tozer, Karl Barth and, a bit closer to home, in Ray Galea), is that of idolatry, of putting the creature in the place of the Creator and of arrogating to it that which belongs to the Creator alone. The impulse described above may be seen as, in part, a reaction to the decadence of the Renaissance Church, in the same way the early hermits and monks were reacting to the diluting of Christian devotion and practice after the legalisation of Christianity under the Roman emperors or, to take another example, the way the early Franciscans were reacting to the worldly thirteenth century Church. It is, however, a quintessentially Christian reaction, as evidenced by its consistent expression throughout Christian history. Nor, Bouyer points out, was it confined to Calvin. It is no coincidence that St John of the Cross, pre-eminent mystical theologian, arose and wrote at the same time as Calvin. Both men had the same preoccupation with God's transcendence, both saw idolatry as the chief evil to be guarded against (especially in its most religious forms) and both even use many of the same Scriptural texts to support their ideas.

Calvin also, by the by, was first to propose the concept of separation of Church and State. This seems ironic given what Geneva was like in practice, but Calvin understood that, if the soli Deo gloria is taken seriously, civil society must also acknowledge God, even if it is separated from the Church as an institution. All things ought to further the sanctification of justified men so that "in all things God may be glorified." Bouyer, interestingly, compares this aspect of Calvin's thought with St Ignatius of Loyola who was also very concerned for God's glory (ad majorem Dei gloriam) and used authoritarian means which flowed from that conviction. The Puritan state of New England and the Jesuit state of Paraguay were not so dissimilar.

3. Personal Religion

One principle that Bouyer elucidates that does not fit neatly into the solas (unless one places it under sola fide, which is not an exact fit but may well do) is the concept and practice of personal religion. This is the idea that, as Dean Inge says, "One cannot be religious by proxy." Faith, to be real, must involve the active participation, the conscious engagement, of him who holds it. Nominalism, in the sense of people who are religious through habit and nothing else, is anathema to Protestantism. Faith stimulates and engages the individual personality; if it does not, it is not faith.

The first expressions of this conviction may be seen in Luther's De libertate Christiana and De captivitate Babylonica. The former seeks to free the Christian from a legalistic/ ascetical system which he believes has become "a hindrance rather than a support" for the spiritual life. In the latter, Luther seeks to separate the soul from " the complexities of an ecclesiastical organ that would stifle it, once the means of grace were either misdirected or made ends in themselves." Luther wants to recall the Christian to a radical and direct dependence on Christ. It may be argued that in fact Luther sets the Christian up as a king in a desert, deprived of the supports necessary for living the Christian life, but this is not his main aim or desire.

The Protestant conviction that faith must be active and engaged explains the natural Protestant ambivalence towards any number of Christian practices that might appear to violate it, such as infant baptism, confession and set prayers, among others. It also explains the Protestant love of conversion stories and the penchant (taken to new heights in revivalist movements like Methodism) for proposing these as a standard for all Christians.

Some have argued that this element in Protestantism is at heart the religious aspect of sixteenth century humanism: the turn towards the individual, which has caused much harm in the centuries since and continues to do so in our own time. But is this in fact the case? Bouyer argues that it is not; that this aspect of Protestantism is the true heir of a thread woven throughout the Old Testament, coming to fruition in the New. Particularly in the prophets, God condemns the desire of the individual to hide behind the group, to cover his infidelity to the essence of the covenant with pedantically followed rituals (rituals given by God- a fact that, if anything, makes the trespass worse). That message rings throughout all the prophetic writings and reaches its apogee in Christ ("Say not, "We have Abraham for our father" for I tell you God can make sons for Abraham from these very stones.") Here, therefore, Protestantism has recovered an authentic Gospel principle.

And here again, curiously enough, concord may be found between unexpected bedfellows. The distrust of outward show that does not reflect inner spiritual reality is characteristic, more than in any other Christian group, of the Desert Fathers, whose realism and honesty in such matters can border on the discomfiting. For example, in one account, Abba Makarios refuses money from a visitor. "Why should I accept your money," he says, "I have everything I need." "In that case," says his visitor, "give it to the poor." "Absolutely not," says the Abba, "for if I did that, I should be proud for having done a good deed and my soul would be in a worse state than if I accepted the money for myself."

Likewise, it is notable that St Ignatius of Loyola wrote his Spiritual Exercises with the express purpose of "rous[ing] the individual to the most personal 'realisation' of his beliefs as a Christian." Again we find curious points of convergence between Protestants and their nemeses the Jesuits.

4. Sola Scriptura

Two great dangers within Protestantism throughout its history have been the opposite errors of illuminism and fundamentalism. The first of these does not accept any objective criterion of revelation and so can and does admit individual inspiration that is inherently unverifiable (this was true of the early Anabaptists and is presently true of some Pentecostals). The second restricts all communication between God and man to the Bible, thus making Christianity into a Religion of the Book (thus, in practice, not unlike Islam). Neither of these extremes, however, derive from Luther (indeed, fundamentalism of this sort was largely unknown in Christianity before the nineteenth century).

Authentic Protestantism, argues Bouyer, is found in Calvin's idea of the interior witness of the Holy Spirit in the believer agreeing with the Spirit-inspired words of Scripture; in the twentieth century sola Scriptura, in its positive sense, has found its fullest expression in the rich theology of the Word of God by Karl Barth. For the Reformers, Christianity was a religion of the Word, not a religion of the Book exclusively. Luther writes in De Concilio et Ecclesiae, "The Word of God cannot exist apart from the people of God. Who would preach it or hear it, if not the people of God? And how would the people of God arrive at faith, if the Word of God were not preached to them?" Here, God's Word and His Covenant People exist in a relationship of mutual, though unequal, dependence, underscored by God's grace mediated by the Holy Spirit who, in a sense, dwells in and supports both. The best of Protestantism derives from this positive view of Scripture in the life of the Christian people. Bouyer writes:

In spite of all its possible defects, Protestantism has lived by, and handed down, an authentic life, constantly renewed, precisely in the degree in which it has handed down the Bible and, with this, a living practice of recourse to it, of drawing nourishment from it as from a source of life, of finding in it personal contact with Christ, while interior experience is constantly referred to it as to the highest ideal. [Protestantism is a] collective...life discovered and maintained by familiarity with the Bible."

The extent to which Protestant life and practice draws on and is immersed in Scripture is, adds Bouyer, almost impossible for Catholics (or any other outsider) to appreciate. This does not help mutual understanding when it comes to apologetics and polemics.

Is such a high view of Scripture inherently foreign to Catholic faith, however, or is this an accident of history? Bouyer argues for the latter position. If one reads the Fathers, after all, their books and sermons are immersed in Scripture, and it is clear that they assume a substantial knowledge of Scripture from their congregations. Nor did this decline as much as might be thought during the Middle Ages- the sermons of St Bernard of Clairvaux (and, to a lesser degree, Aelfric) are very much along the same lines. St Augustine wrote, "To those books of Scripture alone now known as canonical I have learned to pay the honour and respect of believing firmly that none of their authors made any mistake in what they wrote."- a view that sounds surprisingly close to inerrancy (though the way Augustine approached the interpretation of Scripture was not inerrantist in the modern sense). Likewise, Thomas Aquinas wrote that the Scriptural books alone, in and by themselves, enjoy absolute authority, and that "sacred doctrine makes use of [other] authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable. For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books."

Is such a view still current in the Catholic Church? Well, yes, at an official level. One need only read Dei Verbum from Vatican II or read Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth to see that this is so. Certainly no Catholic theologian would raise any doctrinal authority to a level equal with Scripture. But nor can it be denied that, at a popular level, Biblical literacy and piety certainly do not obtain in modern Catholicism anywhere near the extent that they do within Protestantism. Though many Bibles were printed before the Reformation, both in Latin and the various vernacular languages of Europe, it was Protestant Bibles (in Germany and England) that became shapers of culture and language. And though the liturgy has always been and continues to be drenched in Scripture, more than one person to whom I have spoken who has left the Church has deplored the paucity of aids available to help the average Joe in the pew contextualise and internalise what he hears each Sunday.

This, as may be seen, is an anomaly in Christian history and it is, perhaps, part of the tragedy of the Reformation that the movement that could have renewed Biblical piety in the Church should have gone its own way for other reasons. The present state of affairs in Catholicism may then plausibly be blamed on ongoing suspicion by association, in the same way Catholics were ambivalent towards itinerant preaching during the late twelfth/early thirteenth centuries because of its association with the Cathars (until, of course, St Dominic came along and demonstrated that there was no reason orthodox Christians couldn't also preach as itinerants). This has decreased in the last century or so, but there is still a substantial gap to be closed.

Still, as before, it is curious to note where the closest convergence between Protestantism and its older Christian counterparts comes; for sola Scriptura, in practice and in spirit, has most in common with the monastic ideal, especially with lectio divina. Indeed, many Protestants already practice a form of lectio divina without knowing it. Moreover, having spent time in a monastery less than a week ago myself, I can testify that the constant presence of Scripture throughout the monastic day (be it in the continual chanting of Psalms or in private Bible reading) echoes and appeals to something deep in the Protestant psyche. Both monks and Protestants find in Scripture the principal support for their relationship with God.

Given the historical regard for and reverence towards Scripture in the Church, and the culture of Biblical piety so characteristic of Protestantism since its beginning, Bouyer concludes, "The supreme authority of Scripture, taken in its positive sense, as gradually drawn out and systematised by Protestants themselves, far from setting the Church and Protestantism in opposition, should be the best possible warrant for their return to understanding and unity." I agree, and I'm not the only one.

These are the four positive principles Bouyer puts forward as the essential core of Protestantism as a movement, principles undeniably Christian with deep roots in gospel soil, shared (at least in principle) with all Christians of all centuries but clearly in the sixteenth century in need of new emphasis and application. In my next post, I will continue my precis of Bouyer's book with my own reflections here and there, this time regarding the negative elements that Protestantism inherited from medieval nominalism.

The End of the World As We Know It

2010-07-27T15:23:00.006+10:00

Today could well be the day that global industry sees the first link in a chain reaction that brings to its knees the modern global economy that we've come to know and love (or atleast I have).

You think I'm kidding? That such predictions are ephemeral prophet-of-doomery? Then you have underestimated the sway that the computer game company Blizzard holds over the population of South Korea.

It's a masterly plan for world domination, really. And it involves only 3 steps.

(1) Create a computer game that gradually becomes so addictive to a certain nation's people that it becomes an inextricable part of that nation's popular culture, to the extent that vast swathes of the population (of all ages) spend most of their free time playing it or watching professional players play it on television.

(2) Make sure that this nation is also a lynchpin in the global economy, being the home of substantial industry and major multinational companies.

(3) Release a sequel.

Indeed, the plan is so masterly and so foolproof, it is perfectly possible that it has been masterminded by this individual:

As this day dawns in South Korea, masses will haste to game retailers to obtain their long-awaited copy of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, in numbers that would shame the most carefully planned and co-ordinated Zerg rush. And then they will race home to install it and begin playing. Job absenteeism will skyrocket. The practice affectionately referred to as the "sickie" in Australia (but hitherto little known in Korea) will become the rule rather than the exception as the week progresses. Many companies will be oblivious as their CEOs will be themselves helplessly tied to their computer screens attempting to stem the relentless tide of Zerg.

Naturally, the snowball will begin in the automotive industry. The combined factories of Daewoo, Renault Samsung, Kia and Hyundai will fall silent. The output of high-tech gadgets, mobile phones, heavy industry, construction materials and training, not to mention insurance, by Samsung Group will rapidly grind to a halt. Does anyone honestly think this will not have any effect on the global economy? Samsung Electronics is, after all, the world's largest electronic company. Samsung Group as a whole has a GDP larger than some countries. In fact, the company itself is rated 35th largest economy in the world, larger than the entire economy of Argentina.

It may be argued that, being a multinational, it has many outposts in countries other than South Korea. This may be true, but all of these are directed by its headquarters in Seoul. And how can a body survive without a head?

Within a few months, this Starcraft-induced inactivity will start to have genuinely serious economic repercussions. Will the UN see the threat and bring its members' military might to bear against this invasion of Korea by a seductive foe, as it did once before? Or will the developed economies of the world look on in helplessness as their best-laid plans are undermined by a single computer game?

As I watch and wait with a certain morbid fascination for the coming economic collapse, I can only marvel at the genius and ingenuity that saw the potential for global domination in such an inoccuous package as this:

Tarrawarra Abbey (or The Benefits of Monkery)

2010-07-26T15:48:00.008+10:00

There has been something of a paucity of blogging in recent days, as no doubt some of you, my avid readers, have noticed. I will try to remedy this in the days to come.

This past week, however, I have had an EXCUSE. Yesterday, I arrived back in Sydney having recently enjoyed the hospitality of the Cistercians of Tarrawarra Abbey of Victoria (they live somewhere outside of Melbourne, in a place apparently home to a number of vineyards which I think begins with Y- as a Sydneyite I am a bit fuzzy on Victorian geography). It was my first time in a proper cloistered monastery, participating in the monkish lifestyle at least to a limited extent.

A truly wonderful place. I have returned with much food for thought. Which I thought I might share, as it's a sorry man who eats alone. Especially from a banquet table.

Two things, in fact, struck me more than anything else while I was there. Firstly, the Office.

I love the Office! More than I did before! On it goes, seven times a day, until the Psalms become a blessed blur, sanctifying every part of the day and making God present in it. All things are done within sight of God, in the continuous consciousness of His presence. He is nowhere absent. My whole day each day was sustained and nourished by His Word. The passing of each day - time itself! - becomes an act of swimming through Scripture, immersing oneself in it, letting the Word and the God Who inspired it into every nook and cranny of one's day and activities. My regular Bible reading is to that lifestyle like the difference between drinking eight glasses of water a day (the recommended dietary intake) and learning to breathe underwater.

Sleep regulation was a bit tricky (I missed Terce last Wednesday because I went to sleep while reading and was only awoken by the bell, after which it was too late) but I got better at it as time went on. I think getting up at 3:30am (or 3:45 si on peut faire vite sa toilette) and going to bed at 8:30pm would become relatively easy and routine before long. One merely needs to shift one's normal sleeping pattern a couple of hours earlier.

The other thing that struck me forcefully is the import and psychological (and spiritual) implications of the vow of stability. I'm a big fan of travelling and I love seeing new places, especially ones of historical or cultural interest. But I must admit, staying a week at Tarrawarra Abbey, praying with the monks, doing my own (albeit quite leisurely) form of work - reading, studying, writing - and having the verdant pastures and rolling hills of the Yarra Valley all about (refreshingly free of eucalypts and gloriously green), the vow of stability took on unprecedented appeal. Being in that place, the sense of time, the permanence of the monastic lifestyle, the transitoriness of the individuals who follow it strike one's soul with surprising force. The isolation of the place and the freedom from distractions, be they media, newspapers or a bustling metropolis surrounding one, induces in one a consciousness of the transitoriness of life - of one's own life especially.

On Thursday I walked down to the small cemetery they have there (after 50 years, there are fourteen monks dead) and then walked back up the path for Sext, there to pray with the living monks. The juxtaposition impressed upon me that each of those living monks has vowed to spend all his days in that place and ultimately to die there. The landscape around that they saw when they first arrived as novices is the landscape each man will see on the day he breathes his last. The very act of living there is a memento mori. And the fact that, for every monk, each day from today until his last day on earth will be spent doing essentially the same things puts the whole of life in perspective.

In the world, one tends to imagine an endless torrent of new experiences coming at one like a wet flannel, with no end in sight. There'll always be more time. The pursuit of the novel foresees no end. Until there is no more time. And sometimes even then, people grab the bull by the tail and start writing Bucket Lists. We are even prone to live like this as Christians.

The monk, on the other hand, has a different vocation from most of us. He is, in a sense, the only man who sees clearly, who looks squarely at life in its contingent nature without turning away or blinking. Since every day is basically the same, the monk can accept peacefully that every day could be his last. Maybe today he will die. Maybe he won't. Whenever his last day comes, he will spend it doing basically what he did today. The same work, the same prayers in the same place. A life lived in the sight of God.

Such lives, if they are lived thus, stand as silent witnesses to the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and to the emptiness and futility of everything else.

St Thomas

2010-07-03T09:15:00.009+10:00

Today is the feast of St Thomas. And therefore presumably the traditional anniversary of his martyrdom by the Brahmins in Mylapore (as depicted above).

It is worthwhile to note the nature of the two greatest missionaries of the apostolic generation. On the one hand is St Paul, who travelled farthest West- to Spain. And all the places in between. On the other is St Thomas, who went farthest East- to India.

Yet who were these men? Not the greatest in the Apostolic College by any means. Thomas took more convincing about the Resurrection than any of the other Apostles. And Paul had persecuted the Christians and overseen the first Christian martyrdom.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the LORD."

God's methodology is at once bracing and humbling. You are never so insignificant that He might not have greatness planned for you, and never so great that He might not humiliate you or pass you over and choose instead someone far less deserving.

Zizioulas' Eastern Critique of the West

2010-06-12T08:05:00.010+10:00

I've been reading a good deal of Zizioulas of late (you may recall I've posted about him before). I'm particularly interested in his ideas about ecclesiology and how he regards the way we think and do things in the West. Quite enlightening.

For instance, he sees not just Protestants but the whole Western Church preoccupied with mission, so that mission governs everything about the Church and our Christian lives, including (detrimentally) our worship. For the Orthodox, it seems worship does not include preaching or proclamation of the Word. The liturgy, of course, is drenched in the Word, but Zizioulas bemoans the fact that some priests are beginning to read it rather than chant it in the liturgy. He sees this as changing the orientation of the Church.

As a Westerner, and a fortiori as an Evangelical, I value very highly preaching and proclamation of the Word and would be greatly bothered if it were banished from the liturgy. And I find the difference between chanting and speaking in the liturgy to be purely aesthetic rather than imbued with any particular theological significance. Having said that, though, I can grasp at least to some extent where Zizioulas is coming from here. The Church is constituted by what it offers, not the fact that it offers, and the act of offering is necessarily incidental to the nature of the thing being offered. That thing is Christ's eternal once-and-for-all sacrifice of Himself, to which and to Whom we are joined as His Body, and His Resurrection by which the world is redeemed. There must be a place in the life of the Church which is totally characterised by this core. We Christians are in trouble if everything we do is simply geared towards evangelism, either evangelising or preparing and training to evangelise. If we limit ourselves to that, it will necessarily cause us to lose sight of Christ Himself. We will begin to see Christ as a means, rather than as the end to which we are heading, and the desire for Whom it is our duty to cultivate in ourselves. After all, there will be no evangelism in heaven, after the resurrection. The liturgy is a foretaste of when God will be all in all, that place where eternity touches time and we worship in union with the angels and all the heavenly hosts.

What intrigues and surprises me is that Zizioulas sees this as a potential (if not actual) problem for all Western Christians, both Catholics and Protestants. If I wanted to be simplistic, I might accuse the East of the opposite error- of neglecting mission and evangelism. One could argue it historically if one wanted to- after all, after the Great Schism almost no great missionary efforts came out of the East and virtually every people group which has converted to Christianity during the second millenium was evangelised by Catholic missionaries or (after the seventeenth century) by Protestant missionaries. But then that critique is too easy. You see, I've met Copts. And I have at least a dozen tracts and booklets on my shelf which they've given me. One could travel very far before one met a more evangelical people. Moreover, I hear the Russians are going from strength to strength (and after last century, they've got their work cut out for them!). I suppose Zizioulas would probably say about these folks that they differ from the West not so much in their zeal to win souls as in the fact that they keep that to its proper sphere and reserve the liturgy for worship of God and that alone.

Another thing is that Zizioulas believes the West emphasises the cross, sin, evil and suffering too much, to the detriment of the resurrection and eschatology. This I concur with to this extent: that I don't believe we overemphasise the cross but I do think we underemphasise the resurrection. In fact, maybe it's an inherent part of the Western Christian soul. Personally, I know that Lent and the Triduum are more consonant with my spirit. I understand them even if they're not easy to live. Mind you, I do love the Easter Vigil (I think it would be fair to say that it is the highlight of my year, not just liturgically but generally) but the Easter Octave is always difficult for me. It demands much more faith.

It has been well said by someone that Original Sin is the only empirically verifiable Christian doctrine (this is perhaps slightly inaccurate- the idea that sin is inherited is not immediately apparent but certainly universal human sinfulness is). Lent and Good Friday don't really require any faith at all- just clear eyes. Easter, on the other hand, cannot be lived without faith. To look forward to the day when all will be put to rights, and to believe that in Christ that process has begun and that God will surely bring it to fulfillment- and to be joyful and delighted at the prospect for at least eight days- this is no mean feat. Feasting is sometimes more difficult than fasting. Certainly it takes more energy, both emotional and spiritual. But this is not as it should be. I'll let Zizioulas speak for himself:

[In the West,] the sacraments and in particular the Eucharist are seen as the perpetual presence of Christ's death...[However,] the truth of the Eucharist is that it does not take us to Calvary in order to leave us there, but brings us through it and beyond into the communion of saints and the glory of God.

The Church is constituted by the resurrection and so has travelled past the cross and broken through into that new creation which is filled with the uncreated light of God.

The Church that focuses on history and on Calvary will come to a halt before it reaches the end of that path. The overcoming of evil and the defeat of the devil is not our final destination. A healthy ecclesiology will lead us on beyond the struggle with evil and into the light, to gain in the divine Eucharist our first experience of the kingdom of God.

Parts of me want to counter that with Luther's theology of the cross (and the suspicion that Zizioulas is presenting a kind of theology of glory), but Zizioulas is not presenting a glory that comes without the cross but one that comes because of it. Without the resurrection, the cross is a defeat. The Church is characterised not by defeat but by victory.

All of this reminds me of John Paul II's phrase that the Church needs to learn again to breathe with both lungs. The East needs the West's emphasis on the cross. We in the West need the East's emphasis on the resurrection and Christ's ultimate victory in the new heavens and new earth. And the world needs our united lived witness to both.

The Existence of Hell as a Sign of God's Mercy

2010-06-12T07:37:00.003+10:00

Hell is a strange kind of mercy. Metaphysically, the turn to self, the choice to seek the wherewithal to sustain life within the self (which we call sin) rather than from the One Who in fact sustains our existence, ought naturally to lead to the dissolution of existence because it is impossible for that which is contingent to support its own existence. Hence sin and death are naturally linked.

By rights, therefore, the human race should have ceased to exist in the very moment of the Fall. But God in His mercy links the dissolution to time. So, whereas the turn to self ought to have caused us to instantly cease to exist, God has ordained that it should take time, leading from the corruption of the soul and body to their increased conflict and finally their separation in death.

But God never lets the process reach its natural conclusion- the end of existence. He allows the turn to self to extend itself so far, respecting our freedom thus far and no farther, never allowing its ultimate consequence.

This leads to a further question. What is achieved by the resurrection of the damned as well as the saved at the General Resurrection?

Jumping Castle War Memorial and the Inherent Significance of Bodily Acts

2010-06-08T15:00:00.006+10:00

Yesterday, I took my students on an excursion to Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. A former prison and shipyard, the island is at present one of several sites hosting the Sydney Biennale, a festival of contemporary art.

Most of my students were underwhelmed ("It was....strange," said one, with a thoughtful expression on her face after I asked what she had thought of it) but I, by contrast, enjoyed the outing immensely. The slipperiness of meaning and interpretation in post-modern stuff is rubbish as a philosophy but terrific fun as a parlour game, if one approaches it as one. Which I did ("It represents the human condition." is a great conversation-starter in these places, and possibly an effective way to pick up one of the art-loving ladies, though I wouldn't know anything about that).

One of the more interesting pieces, which I think is significant, not least for the implications of its set-up, was Jumping Castle War Memorial (pictured above). It was set up on a large green next to the old Turbine Hall and initially a number of my students wondered aloud what it was. I explained the concept of a jumping castle (it seems such things are unknown throughout much of Asia) and they inquired whether they could jump on it. It being art, I said I wasn't sure but probably not. During much of the excursion, the jumping castle was somewhere in the background, always on the green as we went from building to building.

During lunch, I broke out the guidebook for the exhibition and discovered a bit more about this castle. It is an artwork by Brook Andrew, an Aboriginal artist from Melbourne. One can, it turned out, jump on the castle but only if one is over 16. There is a further catch. The guidebook informs us that "[o]n closer examination, we see that its plastic-enclosed turrets contain skulls that represent those often forgotten peoples who were the victims of genocide worldwide."

Vast swathes of modern culture tell us that what we do with our bodies is meaningless. Whether it be the trivialisation of sex and spread of promiscuity or, within Christian circles, the tendency to casualise (if that's a word) worship by, for example, substituting different kinds of music or different ritual actions, the temptation is great to look only at the heart (yes, the Samuel reference is deliberate- some truths need to be balanced by equal and complementary truths). But during the whole time we were at Cockatoo Island, I never once saw a single person jump on that castle.

Why not? The reasons nobody jumped on it may well have been diverse and certainly there is more than one possible reason. I told my students they had to be over 16 to jump on it (without initially mentioning the other elements to the artwork) and every one of them balked. For adults to jump on it would have seemed to them undignified. No doubt many Australian adults might feel the same. Alternatively, it might be that, given the significance (and title) of the work-a memorial- it would have seemed irreverent for a person to jump on it. By doing so, one would have been disrespecting the victims the work commemorated. On yet another hand, some may have sensed (what indeed my initial reaction was) that to jump on the castle would have been to symbolically identify with the perpetrators of those crimes. Perhaps people felt a combination of these considerations.

It should be noticed that each of these reasons is subjective, but more than subjective. No doubt none of the people who might under different circumstances have enjoyed jumping on a jumping castle felt any sympathy for people who have committed (or sought to commit) genocide. None of them would have anything but sympathy for the victims. Why did none jump, then? Clearly, the action, in this context, held significance quite apart from the person's subjective feelings. The action itself conveyed some kind of meaning (though precisely what that meaning would be is debatable). If we extrapolate this to other bodily actions or take it as representative of the nature of bodily actions in general, this is a fact that has huge implications for both morality and worship (in both cases studied by people far more intelligent than I, eg. Mary Douglas). Fascinating to find it demonstrated at a contemporary art exhibition.

Bride of Discovering the Classics

2010-05-29T10:17:00.014+10:00

Well, I've finished the Odyssey. What a ride!

I must say I enjoyed this work immensely, in contrast to my experience of the Iliad. Curiously enough, however, I found the Odyssey worked retroactively and actually made me enjoy the Iliad rather more in retrospect (if that is possible).

Let me try to unpack that a bit. Firstly, the Odyssey contextualises the Iliad. It does this both by letting us see what was going on before, during and after the Trojan war in other parts of Greece. For me, I also found it gave me more of a taste for Greek poetry (in terms of content at least- alas! my Greek is confined to occasional New Testament word studies in sermons over the years), so that I saw that Homer and the Greeks in general were not just interested in interminable action sequences and that these were particular to the Iliad rather than to Greek poetry in general. If anything, that made the particularity of the Iliad sharper. With that wider context, it becomes clearer that that poem is nothing more nor less than a war poem and that, if anything, the dullness and chaos and many of the features I found it difficult to come at as I read it actually express that reality. I had a notion of this immediately after finishing it, but reading the Odyssey made the contrast clearer and helped me to appreciate the Iliad a bit more for what it is.

If the Iliad is a war poem, the Odyssey is perhaps a kind of post-traumatic stress poem. It is a poem of recovery, both in the psychological sense and in the sense of finding and taking possession of things which one had lost.

In coming to it, I shared what I suppose is the popular image of the Odyssey as being essentially a travel-log. Parts of it are that, but it is much richer and deeper than that, and even the travel-log elements are told in a perhaps unexpected and (I felt) almost cinematic way, with flashbacks and cuts between different characters' narratives. Homer has here the delightful directorial sense of when to cut to a different scene, when to jump forward or flashback or pause the action, as it were, to create tension. In the early chapters, for example, one doesn't know anything about Odysseus, where he is or what he is doing. All one hears is hearsay and rumour, and one finds oneself in the same position as Telemakhos, who operates as the audience's surrogate. Odysseus himself doesn't appear until the middle of Book 5. By that point, we only too eager to hear what has been the cause of Odysseus' decade-long delay. Another masterly example comes in Book 11 when Odysseus, who has been narrating his travels in flashback to the Phaiakaians, pauses in his relating of his conversations with the dead just as this was getting interesting, leaving the audience on the edge of their seats as to what will happen next.

More thoughts and impressions, in no particular order.

1. Nothing in the poem makes one realise how far one is from paganism and to what extent the Christian ethos has permeated Western culture than sexual morality. This on several fronts. Most obviously, narrative-wise, the fact that, technically, Odysseus has had two affairs on his travels, both of which lasted for substantial amounts of time (one year and seven years, respectively). This, for some reason, does not make Odysseus' character less sympathetic, and no cloud hovers over his and Penelope's reunion on account of it. Of course, it is obvious to anybody that in our present culture Christian sexual morality does not maintain the dominance that perhaps it once did; yet even now, one could not make a film or write a novel in which the male protagonist was unfaithful to his wife and this had no effect on his story-arc or on their relationship. In the Odyssey, however, the focus is not so much on Odysseus' extra-marital relations but on the fact that these have delayed him from continuing his journey. Once he sets off again, nothing further comes of them, and everyone's conscience is clear. The modern reader (whether Christian, feminist or anything else) is likely to think Odysseus a cad for behaving like this and Penelope a fool for not reproaching him with it, or at least showing some indignation given that she managed to remain totally chaste the whole time he was away. Yet such reactions aren't even on the radar for Homer. Christian ethics, I guess, infects us more deeply than we realise.

On the other hand, other forms of morality do affect things where we would not expect them to. I was bewildered by the episode with Kirke, for example. In Book 10, Odysseus and his companions come upon an island and a number of them travel inland where they find a hut and hear singing. It is the hut of the witch-goddess Kirke, however, and she turns them into animals- all but one, Eurylokhos, who comes running back to tell Odysseus. Odysseus sets off to see what's what and, on the way, is met by Hermes who gives him a plant to ward off the witch's magic. Odysseus enters Kirke's hut but she is surprised when he does not succumb. So far so good. Typical fairy-tale fare. But then it gets weird. Kirke tries to seduce Odysseus. He refuses, understandably enough. But then he decides that he will sleep with her after all, as long as she promises not to harm him (the text seems to suggest that he's worried she might castrate him in his sleep). She promises, and off to bed they go. At this point, I experienced a whiskey tango foxtrot moment. Kirke is, after all, a witch. Odysseus' men have been transformed into pigs. Why should he trust a promise from her? Does it not occur to him that she isn't the sort who keeps promises (as I imagine most people who slip drugs, magic or otherwise, into their guests' drinks are not)? Clearly this doesn't enter Odysseus' thought-process; ironic given that Odysseus is himself the master of deception. I was prepared at this point to see Odysseus's error of judgement here serve him up a mountain of woe (Eurylokhos echoed my feelings by being understandably apprehensive about accompanying Odysseus back to Kirke's hut when he goes to fetch his other companions to come and meet her). But nothing comes of it and Eurylokhos' apprehensions ultimately appear unfounded. Bizarrely, Kirke keeps her promise, lifts her spell from Odysseus' companions and then - weirder and weirder- they all spend a year living with her, feasting and having a gay old time. Kirke turns, for no reason that seemed plausible to me, from a sinister witch, no less terrifying than the Cyclops, to a winning hostess. I finished Book 10, bewildered at a world in which husbands' promises of fidelity to their wives are of no consequence at all, but in which it is literally unthinkable for anybody to break any other kind of promise.

2. Book 11 was fascinating for its insight into how the Greeks imagined the afterlife. Clearly this was where Dante derived some of his inspiration (Odysseus, like Dante, is eager to learn what he can by conversing with the spirits). I was particularly intrigued by the points where Homer diverged from anything I read in Dante. For example, these spirits are not exactly incorporeal. In the Divine Comedy, there are a couple of poignant moments when Dante tries to embrace somebody he knew, but it doesn't work because the person has no physical substance. In Homer, however, Odysseus is capable of warding off the spirits with his sword. In fact, the spirits here remind the modern reader of nothing so much as zombies. Not only are they corporeal in some sense, but they have an insatiable and instinctive thirst for blood, towards which they wander mindlessly. Only upon tasting the blood do they recover their personality whereupon they are able to talk with Odysseus. One of Odysseus' fears seems to be that they might all taste the blood at once, though it is not clear what will happen if they do. Presumably they wouldn't injure him in any way? Is he afraid they will all talk over each other and he won't be able to hear what any one spirit is saying to him?

3. One of the things I was not expecting was how little of the poem would be taken up with Odysseus' journeys. A large chunk of it takes place back on Ithaca when he arrives there and sets about putting his kingdom back in order. One of the most interesting aspects of this part of the narrative was Odysseus' measured reluctance to reveal his identity. The results of this reluctance, and the revelations that came when he finally did reveal himself, were by turns moving and hilarious. The most notable example of the latter is when Odysseus is met by Athena almost as soon as he wakes up back on Ithaca, having been borne there by the Phaiakaians. Not realising who she is, and not wanting to draw attention to his homecoming just yet, he spins her a story about how he is a sailor from Crete who has journeyed far and finally washed up on- what is this island again? Athena lets him tell his fanciful and off-the-cuff tale, whose details become ever more involving and extraordinary, and one can imagine her chuckling quietly to herself at Odysseus' elaborate attempt at deception, as a parent might at a child who, fingers covered in chocolate, relates in great detail and with numerous rhetorical flourishes and carefully judged facial expressions how it was the dog that ate the recently-baked chocolate cake.

On the moving end of the spectrum is Odysseus' reunion with Penelope. This comes even after Odyseeus has killed the suitors and has revealed himself to every other Ithacan character the audience has met so far. But Penelope requires special treatment. She has waited too long and is balanced on a knife-edge of hope, unwilling to give in to despair or remarry and shut the door entirely on the possibility of her husband's return, yet realistic enough to know that he is almost certainly dead and that she would be foolish to harbour expectations that will never be fulfilled. She maintains this taut balance, keeping the suitors in suspense at every turn but likewise refusing to hope even when multiple individuals tell her that her husband is indeed coming back and could arrive at any time. After the suitors are killed and her maid announces that Odysseus has indeed returned, she is the very epitome of caution. But her emotional reactions are painted very subtly, and it is at this point that the poem reaches a peak of character-driven drama. Initially, she thinks her maid has gone mad, but when the maid reproaches her and reminds her of her bona fides, there is a moment of pure joy. Penelope begins to weep. Can it be true? But no, its not possible. She recovers herself. You must be wrong, nurse; no one could kill all the suitors. Well, the maid retorts, I don't know how he did it, but they're dead. Fair enough, thinks Penelope, but maybe there is another explanation. Perhaps it is a god disguised as her husband, she says. They do that, you know (and by this point we certainly do!). She decides to go down and see for herself. Across from Odysseus, on the other side of the room, she takes her seat and studies him. Telemakhos is amazed and offended by his mother's reticence, but Odysseus, here being the very model of a good husband (for a change), is patient and goes about organising the clean-up of the slaughter, allowing her to make her own mind up. Finally, she engages in a bit of Odyssean cunning of her own, telling the servants to set up this man in Odysseus' own bed, but to put the bed outside her chamber. Odysseus is astonished that anybody would be able to move the bed given that he carved it from a great tree-stump embedded in the ground, around which he built their bed chamber. But only Odysseus could know that. At this, Penelope realises that this indeed is her long-lost husband and a touching scene of reconciliation, of joy and tears, ensues.

All these concealments, the hints, the deceptions and the eventual revelations made me think, curiously enough, of the Incarnation. By concealing his identity, he preserves the freedom of the inhabitants of Ithaca, is able to see their true loyalties, and also prepares them to receive him. Is the swineherd longing for his master's return? Yes, he is. Would the suitors give way to the master of the island if he came back and stop chasing his wife? No, they would not. Thus, long before the slaying begins or their visitor reveals himself, judgement is passed on this generation. John Zizioulas, in Lectures on Christian Dogmatics, sees as one of the important aspects of the doctrine of the Incarnation the fact that it preserves human freedom. True relationship, true communion between persons, is only possible when both parties are free. By becoming man, God refuses to impose Himself on mankind but leaves people free to respond to Him, or not. Thus, the possibility of a genuine relationship with God is established. In the first century, and later in His Body, both in the Eucharist and in the Church, His presence did and does not overwhelm but was and is, in a way, hidden. Thus rejection is possible, but so is free acknowledgement. And, like in Homer, judgement is passed, in a sense, by the people on themselves; either condemnation or vindication.

Likewise, Penelope's realisation made me think of the Resurrection appearances- something one dared not hope for, something that doesn't even seem possible, has taken place. Can it be true? The slow dawning of hope and eucatastrophic joy, the characteristic air of Easter, is present here. In fact, Penelope rather reminds me of Thomas, casting around for any more plausible explanation, requiring evidence, wanting to believe but unable to do so until all other possibilities have been exhausted; then finally accepting, believing last of all but with joy more profound than all.

4. One thing I found a bit difficult to come at was the exultation over the killing of the suitors. The exultatory climax of Books 22 and 23 includes, quite unself-consciously, delight at the suitors' deaths, not as a regrettable but necessary prerequisite of Odysseus' reclaiming what is his but as an actual element of the celebration. One feels the poem urging one to be, not satisfied or relieved, but happy and even overjoyed that the suitors met such bloody ends. For example, the maid, when she comes to tell Penelope of what has happened, exclaims, (in Fitzgerald's translation)

"So I went out and found Odysseus/erect, with dead men littering the floor/this way and that. If you had only seen him!/It would have made your heart glow hot! - a lion/splashed with mire and blood."

Pope has a turn of phrase here at once masterly chosen yet horrifying- 'glorious in gore". Such sentiments turned my mind to passages in the Old Testament - the terrible end to Psalm 137 with its blessing of those who would dash out the brains of Babylonian infants, the zeal with which the Israelite army slaughtered entire populations during the conquest of Caanan, and that at God's command (perhaps the most difficult-to-answer apologetical problem for the modern Christian). We moderns do not feel comfortable glorying in violence to this extent. Sure, we watch very violent films and play very violent computer games (well, some of us do) but in order to do so, we usually need to dehumanise the victims of the violence. It's fun to shoot at Nazis, but only while they're in uniform. It's fun to watch the foyer scene in the Matrix, not so much because lots of people die but because it's well-executed and stylish. But these characters have been painted carefully. They have distinct personalities. We've heard speeches from them. Even their final moments are depicted humanly (when the first man falls, the others initially cry foul, thinking Odysseus missed his target and accidentally shot one of them; only subsequently does the realisation dawn that he means to kill them all). We too have our revenge fantasies (c.f. almost any Tarantino film) which, like the Odyssey, play on our sense of justice. But we also have a sense of the dark side of- even justified- violence that is absent here. The heroes of modern cinema walk away from explosions with a look of combined determination and world-weariness- they don't look back and hoot with glee.

Why is this? Has something in our culture made us more empathetic, so that we cannot inflict voluntary harm on a person and enjoy it unless we convince ourselves subconsciously that they are not a person? Has the echo of the Great War not yet faded from the collective subconscious, a war which more than any war since combined zeal to fight and horror at the consequences of that zeal? It's an interesting question, and one which brings to mind a line from Chesterton's "Song of the Strange Ascetic":

If I had been a Heathen,

I'd have sent my armies forth,

And dragged behind my chariots

The Chieftains of the North.

But Higgins is a Heathen,

And he drives the dreary quill,

To lend the poor that funny cash

That makes them poorer still...

Now who that runs can read it,

The riddle that I write,

Of why this poor old sinner,

Should sin without delight-

But I, I cannot read it

(Although I run and run),

Of them that do not have the faith,

And will not have the fun.

Well, there are some thoughts anyway. Now I'm moving forward a few centuries to Milton. A bit ambivalent about that, actually (what kind of man makes the Devil his protagonist?) but we'll see. The poetic odyssey (in a more popular sense) continues.

Why Nirvana and Heaven Are Not the Same Thing

2010-05-28T12:54:00.005+10:00

This morning, the Office of Readings (Matins) had this passage from Augustine's commentary on 1 John.

We have been promised that we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. By these words, the tongue has done its best; now we must apply the meditation of the heart. Although they are the words of Saint John, what are they in comparison with the divine reality? And how can we, so greatly inferior to John in merit, add anything of our own? Yet we have received, as John has told us, an anointing by the Holy One which teaches us inwardly more than our tongue can speak. Let us turn to this source of knowledge, and because at present you cannot see, make it your business to desire the divine vision.

The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.

Suppose you are going to fill some holder or container, and you know you will be given a large amount. Then you set about stretching your sack or wineskin or whatever it is. Why? Because you know the quantity you will have to put in it and your eyes tell you there is not enough room. By stretching it, therefore, you increase the capacity of the sack, and this is how God deals with us. Simply by making us wait he increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.

So, my brethren, let us continue to desire, for we shall be filled. Take note of Saint Paul stretching as it were his ability to receive what is to come: Not that I have already obtained this, he said, or am made perfect. Brethren, I do not consider that I have already obtained it. We might ask him, “If you have not yet obtained it, what are you doing in this life?” This one thing I do, answers Paul, forgetting what lies behind, and stretching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the prize to which I am called in the life above. Not only did Paul say he stretched forward, but he also declared that he pressed on toward a chosen goal. He realised in fact that he was still short of receiving what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived.

Such is our Christian life. By desiring heaven we exercise the powers of our soul. Now this exercise will be effective only to the extent that we free ourselves from desires leading to infatuation with this world. Let me return to the example I have already used, of filling an empty container. God means to fill each of you with what is good; so cast out what is bad! If he wishes to fill you with honey and you are full of sour wine, where is the honey to go? The vessel must be emptied of its contents and then be cleansed. Yes, it must be cleansed even if you have to work hard and scour it. It must be made fit for the new thing, whatever it may be.

We may go on speaking figuratively of honey, gold or wine – but whatever we say we cannot express the reality we are to receive. The name of that reality is God. But who will claim that in that one syllable we utter the full expanse of our heart’s desire? Therefore, whatever we say is necessarily less than the full truth. We must extend ourselves toward the measure of Christ so that when he comes he may fill us with his presence. Then we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Here is the very essence of the difference between Buddhism and Christianity.

Pentecost

2010-05-23T09:18:00.008+10:00

An interesting thought from "an unknown African writer from the sixth century" yesterday. Why is the gift of tongues not common among Christians as it was in the early days of the Church? Or, put another way, why do Pentecostals spout gibberish rather than becoming missionaries and speaking spontaneous Swahili?

The answer of this writer is that tongues is not just a private prayer language, much less a cool party trick, but a sign of the Church's catholicity. At the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Church was catholic and spoke all the languages of the nations. But at that point its membership was quite small, entirely Jewish and all native to Palestine. Yet that group, even given their particularity, was catholic and, through the Holy Spirit, not bound by that particularity. On Pentecost morning, a small group of Palestinian Jews encompassed the nations. In an instant, they were made participants in the divine nature, the love and life of very God roared into them and the new human race, whose head is Christ, was confected and begun. And that race is much bigger than Palestine or the Jewish people or any language and culture. It includes and enfolds them all and may be expressed equally in any.

Here is why the other instance of the gift of tongues in the Acts comes precisely at that moment when the full extent of the Church is made clear, and Gentiles are welcomed into the kingdom. Once again, tongues serves as a sign of the Church's catholicity, vindicating the faith of Cornelius and demonstrating to Peter how truly universal the Lord intends His Church to be, beyond anything that Peter himself had expected.

So why does no one speak in tongues now? This unknown African tells us. "While a single man [then], if he received the Holy Spirit, could speak in every tongue, now the one Church in its unity, which is established by the Holy Spirit, speaks in every tongue. So if anyone says to one of us, 'You have received the Holy Spirit; why do you not speak in tongues?', he should reply, 'I do speak in every tongue. For I am in the Body of Christ, the Church, which speaks in every tongue. For what did God signify by the presence of the Holy Spirit if it was not that His Church would speak in every tongue?'"

Ballad of St George- an excerpt

2010-05-15T10:28:00.005+10:00

It has been a while (a couple of years, in fact!) since I posted anything from my slowly growing work 'The Ballad of St George' so I thought I might do so today. One of these days I'll actually finish this but mostly I work on it intermittently and just add a stanza or two every week or so when I get a moment. This is a moderately (but not completely) polished Chapter VII (or Canto VII or Book VII, or even possibly Part II Chapter I, depending on how I eventually decide to organise the poem). Feedback and criticism is very welcome, particularly regarding scansion. Copyright, needless to say, is mine.

A weary world lies round the sea
At the centre of the earth,
And in those parts, the people laughed
And joked with joyless mirth.

High in the air the eagle fixed
It'seye on all the land;
It's outstretched wing
O'er everything
Had left no thing unplanned.

Th'imperial bird looked down on all
And loved the things it saw,
Bestowing in it's matchless grace
On every soul from Gaul to Thrace
The peace that comes with war.

It's shadow reached across the world
O'er lands and folk far-flung,
From where the druid chanting sounds
To Pharaoh's pyramidal mounds
To where Hellenic bards are found
And Homer's songs are sung.

But in the Senate cracks were seen
'Neath politician's feet;
Grim-toga'd men pursued their way
Till empire lay in disarray;
Men's vision faded into grey
Till all they saw looked bleak.

And men distrusted politics
And grisly governance;
Distraught at the debauchery
Of emp'rors and their progeny,
Men lost hope in nobility
Nor gave it any chance.

But men there were who once knew fame
In centuries now gone,
And such were found now ranged around
The ruins of Ctesiphon.

These relics of republic past,
Of Cincinnatus' day,
Remained the good and simple men
That once their fathers had been when
Great Carthage passed away.

While all the eagle-shadow'd world
Lay weary, ill-at-ease,
One of these declared, "Enough!",
Took an assassin by the scruff-
His name was Diocles.

With spirited beneficence
And boundless charity,
This man who fought the savage Goth
WIth stern and calculated wrath
Took up the purple flowing cloth
And made a Tetrarchy.

A scion of a noble stock,
A soldier of the land,
He did not flinch now from his cause
For, though he'd fought in many wars,
No guilt had stained his hand.

And power was a means to him
And no desired end;
There was no madness in his mind,
No motive ill of any kind;
He sought the help of gods enshrined
To put Rome to the mend.

For "Rome's remembered unity
Must once again obtain.
And all the ills of civil wars
(Where mockery is made of laws
And all Rome's grave, deep-seated flaws
Are made so very plain)
Must be forever at an end.
An end to war and vice!
And natur'lly this will sometimes
Require sacrifice.

"No building that is made of brick
Can have a base of clay,
And every weakness in the walls,
Each crack and chink, all faults and flaws-
These must be smoothed away.

"Just so, an empire on the earth
Whose fate is on the scale,
Must find her former acumen
And purge herself of trait'rous men
If hoping to prevail.

"The ancient ways must be restored
And each must do his part.
Corruption must now see a halt,
The gods enjoy again their cult,
And those who balk must know their fault
Against Rome's noble heart."

And so in Diocletian's days,
Quite unexpectedly,
The firstfruit of th'unwholesome branch,
The stone that starts an avalanche
Fell on the milit'ry.

In eastern parts where folk speak Greek,
In Nicomedia,
Upon the barracks wall was placed
The edict whose effects disgraced
That lordly emperor-

An edict posted for all men
And placed where all might see,
So that no single man might claim
He had not seen the emp'ror's name
Clear on that decree.

It's message: "All the gods of Rome
Stand angry and displeased,
For though the heirs of Troy we be,
We've entertained catastrophe
And left them unappeased.

"Your contribution to our peace
Comes at a minor price-
A pinch of incense is enough
For each man's sacrifice."

A day or two had passed perhaps
Since that grim bull was placed
When, not long after day had gone,
A figure passed the megaron,
Moving with great haste.

A figure clad in soldier's garb
Of lorica and greaves,
Disturbing the still, moonlit air
Where muteness passed for peace and where
Sad sycamores did throng the square,
Caressing mudbrick eaves.

He strode across the dusty street
Until he came, ere long,
To where the wall was no more bare
For someone had placed something there
Upon which he began to stare
And stared for very long.

Then in one motion smooth and swift
As dry air turns to rain,
He wrenched the paper from the wall
And tore the thing in twain.

Ascension

2010-05-13T12:40:00.003+10:00

You have ascended on high. You have led captivity captive. You have bestowed gifts on men.

Possibly Counter-intuitive Eastern-Western Comparison

2010-05-08T22:43:00.005+10:00

I mentioned earlier that a lot of my reading of late has been Greek or Greek-related. While I'm presently chugging my way through the Odyssey, I just finished this book and have jotted down some notes and thought trains which I thought I might share.

Andrew Louth (a Russian Orthodox priest who, interestingly enough, works at Durham University, Durham being the city where N.T. Wright is bishop) attempts in "Greek East and Latin West" to treat of Eastern and Western Christendom for the period in tandem. As he does so, he draws out some interesting and occasionally (at least to a Western Christian)counter-intuitive contrasts between the two. For example, looking at the monastic reforms of the eighth and early ninth centuries in both East and West, he points out that the reforms of Theodore of Stoudios were quite independent of imperial authority and, in a society and church wracked by iconoclasm, his reforms and his stubborn and principled refusal to toe the imperial line on doctrinal and ethical matters (while Constantine VI did his best to ape Henry VIII) set a precedent that allowed Eastern monasticism to attain a place in the society independent of emperor and political expediency, enabling it to counter-balance the primacy of those elements and fulfill a kind of prophetic office in the Byzantine Church, like Samuel to Saul or John the Baptist to Herod.

In the West, on the other hand, monastic reform was largely instigated and overseen by the emperor (in this case Charlemagne and then Louis the Pious) and the imperial court. It was a largely top-down affair, among other things standardising the Rule of St Benedict.

The interpretation Andrew Louth puts on this is very interesting. He says that the nature of reform in the West set later precedents for centralised reform of monasticism by bishops and/or the Pope- that, in effect, monasticism was to be ordered and controlled and always fall under some sort of central authority, to be (I think the East would see it thus) less pneumatic (in the Greek sense of the word). In the East, on the other hand, it was and is more chaotic, as we in the West might say or, as they might say, more Spirit-led and free.

What I find interesting is how contrary to the typical stereotype both pictures are. Contrary to the charge of caesaropapism often levelled at the East (which, I think it would be fair to say, has often been true generally of the episcopal hierarchy), the monks and monasteries could (and sometimes did) stand against the emperor, giving a substantial section of the Eastern Church independence from political vagaries and therefore the ability to comment on and apply the Church's teaching to the issues of the day. On the other hand, as far as the West is concerned, it is arguable that, even given the later battles to secure the Church's independence from the state, the habit of centralisation, at least as far as religious and ascetic life goes, was simply transferred from the imperial court to the Pope. It is interesting to see this tendency even now at work, with the recent papal-sponsored tour of inspection of monasteries in the U.S. (a very much needed and, indeed, long overdue initiative). The habit has become, for good or ill, ingrained.

At the same time, looking at the period in question, it is undeniable that, given the choice, one would much rather have been a Christian (and, for that matter, a Christian monk) in the West than in the East. The Eastern emperors were, at this point, hostile to orthodoxy and, largely, a liability for the Church. In the West, Charlemagne and his immediate successors were faithful, devout and orthodox Christians who were genuinely trying to foster the Church and the life of faith in their domain.

Of course, times change and what was once necessary and laudable under certain circumstances becomes unhelpful and detrimental under other circumstances. That is, I suppose, true of the approach to monasticism of both East and West. The approaches seem to have remained the same ever since, but the political and social situations which form their context are constantly changing, and either model suits certain contexts better than the other. Which, I wonder, is the better approach in our present situation?

Mariaphobia

2010-05-08T11:50:00.011+10:00

The other day, in a conversation about other things, I was met with this: "Yesterday I was driving past a Catholic church and on the roof there was a big cross but in front of it was a statue of Mary....I don't want to argue about it, but it frustrated me and I just needed to get it off my chest." Whereupon the conversation moved on.

I have often wondered where the Evangelical fear of Mary originally came from. It's an interesting historical question. You won't find it anywhere in the Reformers (the feast of Mary's Assumption was preached on by Luther after his break from Rome and continued to be practiced even in Zwingli's Zurich). Nor is it anywhere in evidence in the Anglican divines (John Pearson, who wrote polemical works about the early history of the papacy and engaged in a high profile debate against two Catholics in 1658, wrote "If Elizabeth cried out with so loud a voice, 'Blessed art thou among women' when Christ was but newly conceived in her womb, what expressions of honour and admiration can we think sufficient now that Christ is in heaven, and that mother with Him?"). Perhaps a Puritan influence? But then Pearson (unlike, say, Donne or Lancelot Andrewes) was ministering after the Restoration.

The question is of more than academic interest. Even after 6 years as a Catholic, I still find myself occasionally reacting aversely or regarding with suspicion some of the more florid Marian prayers or Marian-flavoured practices (though, interestingly, my love of the Rosary has never stopped increasing; indeed it grows the more often I pray it). I wonder sometimes if it's not some kind of neurosis; not least because this kind of Mariaphobia has surprisingly little to do with the few doctrines Catholics accept about her but Protestants reject. I know this because those doctrines made sense to me quite soon after I first applied myself to examining their merits, yet the phobic response remained and remains. Similarly for other Evangelicals I've spoken to. One can quite easily accept the Virgin Birth, the Theotokos, the Immaculate Conception, the perpetual virginity and the Assumption but still have the vague and irrational sense that God and Mary is a zero-sum game (the closer to Mary, the further from God; the closer to God, the further from Mary). The difficulty in reversing this kind of mental reflex reminds me of many atheists and agnostics I know for whom God is necessarily a tyrant intent on inhibiting people's freedom. No matter how one tries to demonstrate that such an idea of God is inaccurate (be it by rational argument, personal anecdote or any other method), the conception won't budge, until at last all one can say is, "But I know Him. He's not like that at all." Sometimes I feel like saying that about Mary, not just to others but even sometimes to myself: "I know her. She's not like that at all."

What's curious is that the suspicion attaches to Mary alone* (and is unique to modern Protestants, being unknown to any other sort of Christian, past or present). I know of a low-church Anglican parish that did a Bible study that centred, not on the Bible, but on a book by John Piper (it had a study guide and everything!). This was not seen as odd or worrying. It occurred to no one that they were focussing too much on John Piper and not enough on Jesus Christ. God and John Piper was not a zero-sum game.

Of course, it's common-sense that in order to foster one's relationship with Jesus Christ, a good thing to do is to spend time with someone who enjoys an even closer relationship with Christ than you do. But for some reason, while it makes sense to Evangelicals to treat John Piper or John Stott or Calvin or St Paul in this way, Mary doesn't make the cut. While Paul will draw you to Christ, Mary will draw you away from Him. Why? Where did this double standard come from, and why has it become so ingrained in us? It's no necessary part of Protestantism, much less Evangelicalism, and seems a peculiarly modern phenomenon. So what is its origin? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?....

I did think about the comment with which I began this post for a while after that conversation ended, not least because my initial emotional reaction was not so different from my interlocutor's. And then it occurred to me that, in fact, Mary was in front of the cross. The actual one. On Calvary. Why? Not to block other people from Christ but rather to be as close to Him as she possibly could.

Devotion to the crucified Lord and a desire for proximity to (and some form of participation in) His suffering and death ought to be something I strive after too. Most of the time it is not. A person for whom it is and was is a person with whom I could profitably associate more. The image of Mary before the Cross, then, is a challenge to me in my spiritual complacency. By drawing near to her, I draw nearer to Him. I guess I can think of worse scenes one could put on a church roof.

* Some might venture that Evangelicals feel the same about all saints, but I'm sceptical- Protestant Evangelicals do honour Christians of ages past, it's just icons and the canonisation process that make them uncomfortable- I suppose because of the papal element in the latter and the inherited vestiges of iconoclasm with the former.

St George's Day

2010-04-24T08:19:00.003+10:00

Holy Martyr George, who endured torment for the Name of Christ and yet remained steadfast, pray for England, bowed down and buffeted by the breath of that ancient serpent the devil, that the light of Christ may once more blaze throughout this verdant land and that her people might remember and turn to the Lord for whom and in whom you died. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Discovering the Classics

2010-04-23T15:13:00.009+10:00

I generally have a couple of books going at any one time and, as per the advice of C.S. Lewis, I try to ensure that at least one of them is something old. Recently, by some strange coincidence, I seem to have been delving into a lot of Greek stuff (both pagan and Christian; not an intentional choice- it's just turned out that way) and as it happens I just finished The Iliad (yes, I had not read it before) and thought I might share some thoughts and impressions.

One of the things that interests me particularly about such works as this, and I felt much the same wandering about the various temples and sites in Egypt last year as well, is the opportunity to try to get inside the mind of paganism. It would not be too inaccurate to say that the advent of Christianity spelled the end for paganism historically. Whereas throughout the entire history of human society before Christ, virtually every society had had some pantheon of gods, some practice of sacrifice, etc., after Christianity this has become less and less the norm. This is of course a very broad statement with exceptions (yes, Zoroastrianism never really fit into the category of paganism; yes, pagan religions and peoples were still here and there long after Christianity, and later Islam, started spreading) but there is a broad truth here as well. 2000 years ago the majority of societies were pagan. Now, the only major pagan religion left is Hinduism, and those few foolish and ignorant who want to resurrect paganism in some form instead create something entirely new that the ancients simply wouldn't recognise.

This last indicates something significant. Real paganism is a thing utterly foreign to the modern mind and thus, in a sense, irrevocably lost. Even neo-pagans and Wiccans can't escape their underlying Judaeo-Christian mindset. So to walk around the temples of Egypt, or to read Homer, is to step into a foreign and fascinating land. How did these people think? What were these rituals they practiced and how did they understand their significance? What and who did they really think the gods were?

In this connection, two things surprised me in reading the Iliad. One was just how involved the gods are in the poem. One imagines in a work like this that the gods will be distant entities, sitting atop Olympus looking down, occasionally invoked by the people. Not so. They get their hands dirty. They're constantly trying to influence battles and kill or save individuals (Aphrodite even gets physically injured by Diomedes when she rescues Aeneas from him). They also like disguising themselves as random minor characters whereby they seek to influence the minds of major characters.

In addition to their constant presence, though, is their pettiness. Virtually all of the gods have taken a side in the war and are keen to not only root for their side but actively sabotage the other side. To this end, for example, Hera seduces Zeus, knowing this will send him off to sleep (I found that pretty funny actually) so he won't notice her fellow gods turning the tide of battle behind his back. This trait sits alongside a certain arbitrariness, which comes across as cruel and heartless. Zeus has a masterplan for the whole thing. He has every intention of letting the Greeks win the war eventually. But he intends that Hector should die at the hands of Achilles. To do that, Achilles has to get over his disagreement with Agamemnon. For that to happen, Patroclus has to die. For Patroclus to die, he has to decide to go into battle. For Patroclus to go into battle, the Greeks have to believe that he is the only one who can save them from utter defeat. For them to believe that, the Trojans have to have pushed the Greeks back to the beaches and have fired at least one of their ships. For that to happen, all the Greek champions have to have been injured and incapacitated for the rest of the battle. So Zeus has it all worked out, and to hell with all those dying on both sides in the meantime. When Poseidon starts feeling sorry for the Greeks in their increasingly desperate situation and decides to go into battle himself disguised as one of them, Zeus is none too happy. "That wasn't part of the plan!"

As Christians we often take the steadfast love of God for granted. We're used to His benevolence. We accept that God is love, as St John says, and that mercy and goodwill is simply of His nature. The Greeks clearly didn't have that luxury. Their gods had their own agenda, and bad luck if your death or suffering was an essential ingredient in their grand scheme. We, for our part, know that if we suffer, God means it for our good, even if we cannot see it. For the Greek gods, the good of the individual did not exist. Men, even the greatest of men like Hector or Patroclus or Achilles, are simply pawns in a game which is not ultimately about them. Given the contrast, I find myself less surprised that the Greeks as a people converted and have never really looked back.

On the human side, one of the other things that intrigued me was, on the one hand, how graphically violent the whole poem is and, on the other, how personalised it is. The norm for much of the poem is something like this: "So Hector threw his spear at Arnokos, and it hit him on the left side and pierced him just below the shoulder-blade, emerging near the centre of his back slightly to the left of his spine and blood spurted out and stained his bronze armour which he had taken from his father at his home in the hill-country of Mt Ida, though his father had warned him repeatedly that no good would come of his going to war and had expressly forbidden him from seeking the field of Troy; but Arnokos had stolen away in the middle of the night, taking with him his father's spear and bronze shield and bronze greaves and gold-hilted sword and plumed helm, yearning for the god-bestowed glory and honour that comes in the heat and din of battle. Thus his father's warnings were proved and Arnokos saw his end by the thrusting spear of Hector." So one gets a full back-story, along with graphic details of the death, of a character who has never been mentioned in the narrative before that point and is never mentioned again. It's weird and takes getting used to. In some ways, I kind of liked it, because it married the excitement of your typical modern Hollywood battle scenes with their nameless hordes rushing forward en masse to be slain by our heroes in a grisly and gory manner with a more personal touch that recalled to my mind Victor Hugo's penchant for writing characters for their own sake even if they have no bearing on the plot whatsoever. On the other hand, after several chapters of almost nothing but this kind of thing, it got terribly, terribly boring.

So, the Iliad's done. I had vaguely intended to read it in Fitzgerald's translation and then read Pope's version, but I'm not really motivated as much now. The Iliad is, to be honest, not the most riveting thing I've ever read. Still, I'm pretty chuffed to have finished it, and eager to dive into the sequel.

Easter Musings

2010-04-12T15:30:00.004+10:00

One of the terrific things about Eastertide is a reminder of the inherent transitoriness of evil and ill and entropy in all their forms. As we focus on the Resurrection, fixing our eyes on the Firstborn from the Dead, all ills around us are put into perspective.

A death, an acquaintance's terminal illness or the growing awareness that certain people in one's life, even if in good health now, are of such an age as to have before them only a couple more years at most; the knowledge that man is mortal and that decay is inherent in our present nature..... but for more than 24 hours Christ was a corpse, and now He is still alive 2000 years later. The tomb is still there and still empty.

Likewise, I find myself still plagued by vices and faults. Occasionally, I might manage the superhuman feat of not resenting a person for bruising my ego by implying I'm not perfect. Or, conversely, I might plunge myself into resignation and self-loathing when my weaknesses become undeniable, declaring to God that He ought to just give up because, clearly, the whole sanctification thing still isn't working..... but Christ, having borne up under the sins of the world, submitting to the greatest crime humanity ever perpetrated - deicide - did not end as victim but as victor. The crime did not go on to breed vengeance, retribution, further injustice as we are used to crimes doing. It was swallowed up by love and instead brought forth life. God has caused the greatest evil to become the wellspring for the malicious and wretched human creatures of the very life of God. If He can do that, do I really think Him impotent before my own petty sins?

Infectious goodness is available. God is strong enough to cast the darkness from within me, strong enough to render the human race hale and whole once more, to put joy in place of despair and love in place of ego, strong enough to heal the whole universe of its slide into chaos and entropy. He has conquered in His own person wrong and imperfection, death and decay. There is a new kind of man in the universe. The human condition that presses itself upon my experience is not necessary or inevitable. It is transient. It is provisional. Glory and beauty and goodness and life and love are inevitable. The rest are on their way out. Ineluctably, though perhaps for the moment imperceptibly, they have begun to fade.

Sin and death are mysteries. They don't fit the universe and, throughout history, we have never had anything with which to fight them. So we resigned ourselves to them and told ourselves they were normal by saying things like, "Well, I'm only human," or "Death is just a part of life." But look now upon the Risen Christ. Here is the true 'only human', really human and no imperfection, character flaw, fault or vice has any part in Him. Here is true life, the truly Living and death has no more power over Him. Now we know that sin and death have an end. They are foreign to the universe and will be expelled. For the moment, I may fall under the burden of my weaknesses and vices. One day I will cease to breathe and become lifeless. But none of these things defines me. It is the Risen Christ Who defines me. The day is coming when what is true of Him will be true of all things, for all things await the blessed subjugation that He brings, a subjugation that is in fact a liberation from every imperfection, even those we despair of being freed from, even those we've persuaded ourselves are natural, even those we've persuaded ourselves are desirable.

Christos anesti! Alithos anesti! Alleluia. Come, Lord Jesus.

RIP Internet Monk

2010-04-06T15:28:00.002+10:00

Earlier today, it would appear from his website, the Internet Monk, Michael Spencer, died. He will be sorely missed.

Requiem aeternam dona eum, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eum.

A Musing on the Nature of Vocation

2010-04-05T15:52:00.003+10:00

Perhaps it is true for many of us (might one even turn it into a general principle?) that very often we begin by desiring our vocation- it turns out that God has placed a desire for what He wills for us in our hearts from the very beginning- but that in the beginning we grasp after it for ourselves, try to take it in to our own hands, control it, make it ours. God must take it from us and make us give up all hope of ever attaining it before He can give it back to us as a true vocation, as something to which He calls us and for which He enables us, rather than something we do simply because we want to and in our own strength.

Thus Moses wants to aid his people and free them from Egyptian oppression. But "Who made you judge and prince over us?" ask the Hebrews he is trying to help. The answer, at the time the question is put, is himself. His vocation is indeed to be prince and judge over them, but it is God Who will call him to it. And when that call does come, Moses has given up any hope or expectation of doing what once he attempted when he saw one Hebrew in trouble. But there was no wrong in his desire, only in the way he sought it. He will indeed be prince and judge, and he will free his people, but not by laying hands on Egyptians. Instead he will become the very mouthpiece of God.

Likewise, in a way, with Peter. At the Supper, he enthusiastically proclaims, "I would lay down my life for You." So he shall, but not like this, for he is speaking from his own strength, and he is not nearly so strong as he thinks. It is only after his great fall, at the very time when faithfulness was most crucial, that he is humbled (indeed, humiliated) enough for Christ to give him his vocation again- in a sense, for the first time (Christ's words to him in Matthew 16 are all in the future tense)- and foretell to him his martyrdom. For martyrdom , like vocation, is a gift which one must receive rather than take. Peter will undergo it, exactly as he said he would at the Supper, but he will do so in union with Chist and not otherwise.

Christos anesti!

2010-04-05T06:43:00.002+10:00

H/T to Lolsaints.

A Word for Good Friday

2010-04-03T09:47:00.005+11:00

What depth of shame is here! I cannot plumb
The ocean of this love; too dark and cold
For me it is, and though so often bold
My words, in face of this I must be dumb.

The Ground of Being strung above the earth-
The words, they can describe but not express;
The facts I comprehend not but confess
And, trembling, seek that fearful divine dearth.

O speak the news I've heard and yet not heard!
These words still seek but cannot fill that pit
That swallows up all things that come to it,
Swall'wing even the eternal Word.

There disappears He in the grave, and grim
Oblivion it seems will be His fate,
But, 'midst despair, despair not; hope and wait,
This Word will swallow that which swallowed Him.

Ash Wednesday

2010-02-17T15:34:00.001+11:00

A Lenten poem.

God is gone into the desert
'Mid the jagged rocks and the sand
Where the lizard lies under the rock
And the heat haze hangs over the land;
He furrows His brow 'gainst the sun
And wanders with purposeful plod.
Begins now in dry desolation
The long Lenten fast of God.

God is gone into the desert;
Alone He sits for love.
The Bread of Life will not cause
Any manna to fall from above.
No water will burst from the rock,
But He treads where His people once trod,
Redeeming the steps of His fathers
In the wilderness wand'ring of God.

God is gone into the desert,
And those who would follow Him, are.
They go armed with self-denial,
Led on by a new Shekinah;
'Neath cross-emblazoned brows,
Ten thousand faces nod,
Winding their way through the wasteland
In imitation of God.

A Warning to the Nameless Businessman Whom I Saw Buying a Cream Bun at the Local Chinese Bakery

2010-02-11T13:25:00.004+11:00

Another bit of random doggerel.

The difficulty of the cream bun lies
In how one may ingest this gustat'ry
Delight while under harsh and public eyes
Maintaining still some air of dignity.
Among the civilised, hygiene demands
Are never waived (and seldom ever moot);
You'll get the cream and sugar on your hands-
For heaven's sake, don't eat it in a suit!-
And on your face, on lips and cheeks and chin,
Your visage painted white, flecks on your clothes;
In modern life, there is no greater sin
Than meeting clients with cream on your nose.
From what sadistic, nameless bakery
Did this concoction first emerge? Each fool
Who eats will suffer such indignity....
And yet the thing's so irresistible.
Sir, mark my words, this bun you'll come to rue-
I think that maybe I might buy one too.

Ascetics Ancient and Modern

2010-02-10T21:04:00.011+11:00

I recently found this article on Roger Ebert's blog (you know, that film critic fellow), and was fascinated by it. My fascination exists on several levels, and I thought I might try to articulate exactly what it is that fascinates me about the event the article describes.

Chris Burden, of course, is not the only man who does these kinds of bizarre things. There's also David Blaine, whom the article mentions in passing; probably the more famous for such stunts. What motivates these men to do such things? Arguably, in Blaine's case, there is a large element of vanity and desire for fame. Although, come to think of it, there must surely be easier ways to achieve fame; I can't imagine the anticipation of rousing applause and a welcoming crowd would be enough to sustain one through a 44-day long fast. Or perhaps I have underestimated the lengths some individuals will go to become famous.

With Burden, though, there is clearly something else at work. Something far more interesting. And it reminds me of nothing so much as some of the more extreme of the early monks. Not so much the Egyptian fathers, who were for the most part rigorously commonsensical and seem to have generally eschewed the more showy forms of asceticism (though they were plenty ascetical in their own way). But some of the Syrian monks, for example, did crazy things. Fasting for dangerous periods, standing for days on end, etc. The most memorable of these, of course, is St Simon Stylites, who sat up on a pillar for 39 years. To what end did these men inflict such things upon themselves? The easiest thing to do with them is dismiss them as wackos, extremists, individuals who are so far from the mainstream of their religion that it is better to ignore them and act as if they hadn't existed. But they are not so easily dismissed. People clearly looked up to them at the time. In addition to the legends of the miraculous that surround them (which the modern is also inclined to dismiss or downplay), people came from great distances to seek spiritual advice from them and they were even consulted on occasion with respect to doctrinal controversies. By all accounts, both their spiritual and doctrinal advice was impeccable- when reading about St Simon Stylites, he seems decidedly sane and, indeed, wise- except of course for the whole living-on-top-of-a-pillar thing. Likewise with Chris Burden, there's something fascinating and yet tantalisingly indefinable about him and what he does that draws people. Like with the monks, it goes beyond the mere morbid curiosity that inspired nineteenth century circus and freak shows. There is mystery in his actions. What do they mean? Because, as Ebert says, they must mean something.

As regards the monks, Simon Tugwell, the Oxford Dominican, has an intriguing answer. In writing of the monks in his book Ways of Imperfection, he suggests that they took seriously the idea that with Christ all things were made new. By taking on human nature, Christ had opened up innumerable possibilities for the human person. The severe asceticism of some of these monks, Tugwell suggests, was an almost scientific desire to see where, in this age of grace, the limits of the human person now lay.

"What [the monks] all had in common was a quest for a definition of human life independent of any definitions contained in the ordinary structures of life....The coming of Christ had reopened the fundamental question, what it means for us to be human beings. It is no longer sufficient to accept from our social milieu the values, aspirations and so on which structure our concept of ourselves; the question has to be pushed to a much further limit: 'What is a human being as such, as envisaged by the Creator?'

"It is difficult to avoid the feeling that at least some of the curious practices adopted by some ascetics were intended to be a kind of experiment, designed to extract further evidence of just what it is to be human. It is almost as if they were saying, 'Let us fast for a week and see what happens,' or 'Let us fasten ourselves to rocks and see what happens.' It is by pushing human nature to the limits of its endurance that you discover what human nature really is."

So what is Chris Burden up to? Is he tapping into something similar? Perhaps; though I suspect that he would be able to articulate what he's trying to demonstrate less well than the monks could. Of course, the theological rationale that the monks had (assuming Fr Tugwell is correct) is absent from what Burden is up to, but, given that at least in his case there appears to be no particular vanity or desire for fame in what he does, it seems reasonable to suppose that his various conceptual-art pieces are driving at similar questions. And, in this age of self-indulgence, any act of asceticism, whatever it's goal or purpose, is countercultural and, thus, impressive in a way.

Korean Game Culture

2010-02-09T19:04:00.001+11:00

In a similar vein to the previous post. Weird, yet strangely compelling.

Religion in PC Games

2010-02-09T17:28:00.004+11:00

Being a frequent connnoisseur of games (Hi, my name is Glenn and it has been three months since I last played World of Warcraft), I found this article marginally interesting, if a bit shallower than I would have liked. There is, I suspect, a great potential for treating of religious subject matter in games, but it seems that most of that potential, maybe from the nature of the medium, has been and will continue to be channeled more in the direction of what one would in another context call moral theology. For the rest, the majority of religious subject matter in games would fall naturally into the category of Crystal Dragon Jesus. Which is not particularly interesting on the face of it.

There are, of course, other more minor religious avenues in gaming. In particular, I have in mind historical games. Some of these have a better track record than others. The Civilization games, for example, encapsulate in their basic game mechanic a quintessentially nineteenth century concept of Progress, where theocracy and monarchy belong to the ancient/medieval periods and secularism and democracy belong to the modern period and one is inherently superior to the other, so one graduates from one to the other as the appropriate technologies/philosophical advances are discovered. I recall also how Age of Empires II had a terribly PC slant to it, where you had to play as peaceful Saladin against the evil crusaders, as misunderstood Frederick Barbarossa (strangely, you never got to play as him on the Crusade after his change of heart later in life), then as the peaceful Aztecs against the evil conquistadors in the expansion. On the other hand, the Total War games tend to be a bit less ideological and a bit more matter-of-fact about religions. And are more enjoyable for that (it does, for example, give you a buzz if one of your cardinals whom you have trained up and been using to evangelise in your country or abroad suddenly gets elected to the papacy).

To what I mean about moral theology in games, it is an element that is growing more commonplace and is becoming ever more interesting as games become more sophisticated. More and more games, particularly (but not exclusively) RPGs, have been incorporating some form of good/evil metre over the past few years and offering players several different ways of solving problems, some more morally acceptable, some less (and, naturally, a genuine moral dilemma from time to time to keep things interesting). There is an intriguing potential here- an avenue to explore the ethics of situations in a context without real-world consequences but which nonetheless, if one has become invested in the characters and the world they inhabit, can have an impact on the conscience.

An example: I have recently been playing the game Dragon Age: Origins. At a certain point, it is revealed that, by virtue of various details of the narrative, to slay the dragon in the battle, it is inevitable that one member of the Order to which the player belongs will have to sacrifice his own life. Naturally, the player expects that the person to make that sacrifice will be him. But then, soon after this revelation is made, another character offers a way out. Maybe no one will have to die. Another course is available. But, if you take it, there may be other much more far-reaching consequences, and those are ambiguous at best. I sat in front of my screen for fully five minutes trying to decide which course to take. Why? Because in that moment, with the richness of the story, characters and environment (as detailed as a good novel), the decision had all the weight of a genuine moral choice. Does one choose to embrace death for the greater good, or to live, with the knowledge of one's cowardice and the possibility of one's deeds coming back to haunt one at some indeterminate point in the future?

This is one example. Like a good book, the game player lives the adventures, deeds and dilemmas of the protagonist vicariously, but with this one vital difference- the player can alter the course of the adventure, make choices and thereby change the moral tenor of the character, for the better or for the worse. There is some fascinating potential in that mechanic, much of which remains untapped.

First Edition?!

2010-02-01T20:34:00.004+11:00

At some point in the long-forgotten mists of time, I must have accidentally selected 'Yes' to a question while purchasing something from Amazon.com when in fact I should have selected 'No', for now I find myself the occasional recipient of random email recommendations for books on the site. Ordinarily, I simply delete these with nary a second thought, but the one I received today made me do a double take.

It purported to be for a first edition of Homer's Odyssey.

Yes, you read that right. Someone is trying to sell a nice leatherbound copy of an originally orally-transmitted poem that was first written down over 2500 years ago as a first edition. In translation, no less. It's even got "First Edition" in big gold letters on the front cover.

As it turns out, it's actually Pope's translation, but Pope's name is nowhere on the cover (or indeed inside, so far as I could tell from the glimpses Amazon permits to potential buyers, or, for that matter, in the product description on the site). Any poor pleb with no background in Western literature would naturally assume that this was an historic keepsake being sold for an unmissable low price.

Definitely one for the 'Strangely Interesting' box.

Evangelical Catholic Manifesto

2010-01-25T18:19:00.003+11:00

Regarding myself, as I do, as a Catholic Evangelical (as opposed to a Protestant Evangelical), I found the manifesto here refreshing, rousing and, overall, excellent. And so I share it, repent of the ever-present temptation and inclination to simply coast along in my faith life and resolve to live up to such expressions of active fidelity to Christ more fully.

The Principles of Evangelical Catholicism

1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the crucified and risen Savior of all mankind, and no human person can fully understand his life or find his dignity and destiny apart from a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. It is not enough to know who Jesus is; we must know Jesus.

2. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is divine revelation, not human wisdom, and the Gospel is given to us in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition which together constitute a single divine deposit of faith transmitted authentically and authoritatively by the Bishops in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. We must surrender our private judgments in all matters of faith and morals to the sacred teaching authority of the Church’s Magisterium if we are to receive the whole Gospel.

3. The seven Sacraments of the New Covenant are divinely instituted instruments of grace given to the Church as the ordinary means of sanctification for believers. Receiving the Sacraments regularly and worthily is essential to the life of grace, and for this reason, faithful attendance at Sunday Mass every week (serious illness and necessary work aside) and regular Confession of sins are absolutely required for a life of authentic discipleship.

4. Through Word and Sacrament we are drawn by grace into a transforming union with the Lord Jesus, and having been justified by faith we are called to sanctification and equipped by the Holy Spirit for the good works of the new creation. We must, therefore, learn to live as faithful disciples and to reject whatever is contrary to the Gospel, which is the Good News of the Father’s mercy and love revealed in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

5. The sacred liturgy, through which the seven Sacraments are celebrated and the Hours of praise are prayed, makes present to us the saving mysteries of the Lord Jesus. The liturgy must therefore be celebrated in such a way that the truth of the Gospel, the beauty of sacred music, the dignity of ritual form, the solemnity of divine worship, and the fellowship of the baptized assembled to pray are kept together in organic unity.

6. Receiving the Sacraments without receiving the Gospel leads to superstition rather than living faith, and the Church must therefore take great care to ensure that those who receive the Sacraments also receive the Gospel in its integrity and entirety. Consequently, before Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, and Marriage are administered, there must be in those who request these Sacraments clear evidence of knowledge of the Gospel and a serious intention to live the Christian life.

7. Being a follower of Christ requires moving from being a Church member by convention to a Christian disciple by conviction. This transformation demands that we consciously accept the Gospel as the measure of our entire lives, rather than attempting to measure the Gospel by our experience. Personal knowledge of and devotion to Sacred Scripture is necessary for this transformation to occur through the obedience of faith, and there is no substitute for personal knowledge of the Bible. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

8. All the baptized are sent in the Great Commission to be witnesses of Christ to others and must be equipped by the Church to teach the Gospel in word and deed. An essential dimension of true discipleship is the willingness to invite others to follow the Lord Jesus and the readiness to explain His Gospel.

Decidedly Dodgy Syllabic Verse

2010-01-25T17:56:00.005+11:00

Here is me trying my hand at syllabic verse. Not very good, I fear. The first is alternating seven- and five-syllable lines. The second appears chaotic but is actually chiasmic.

Rain

I love the smell of the earth
Before the rain. It's
Invigorating, vivid,
Tells you you're alive;
The whole world seems emboldened,
Technicolour-draped,
Like Dorothy, the first time
She stepped into Oz.

Hygiene

When I take
A show'r, it's a surreal
Strange
Experience;
Naked with hot water falling-
It will take time
To
Adjust to the real world
After that.

Hmmm....perhaps I should stick with accentual verse.

Aggressive Inarticulate-ness

2010-01-24T09:19:00.003+11:00

This is well done. Some elements are perhaps less applicable to Australians than others- the 'ya know's and 'like's are more characteristic of American speech (Australians prefer using other words as filler- 'actually' is a favourite) but the rising tone at the end of sentences which are not questions is very Australian (in fact I think that quirk began here). I recently read an article in a British newspaper bemoaning the fact that it was catching on among British youth, thanks in no small part to the popularity of Australian television shows in Britain.

On an entirely separate note, I've since had a look at some of this fellow's other material (turns out he's a professional poet!- I had thought that animal long extinct) and his manner and delivery remind me strangely of Mark Driscoll.

H/T to Hermeneutic of Continuity via Creative Minority Report vi Fr Z (it's been doing the rounds).

Wicked- A Comparative Analysis

2010-01-23T09:45:00.014+11:00

Last night I went to see Wicked at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney and, having read the book by Gregory Macguire on which it is based a couple of years ago, and this being the second time I have seen the musical, and having the whole thing fresh in my mind, I thought I might share some thoughts.

Wicked is a post-modern riff on characters and themes from the Wizard of Oz. Its major conceit is reversal- The Wicked Witch of the West is put forward as the hero, whereas the heroes of the original are portrayed as petty, duplicitous, compromised or of small import. Unlike some, I have no particular beef with post-modernism per se, (though I do with some of its fruits) and am perfectly happy to take such conceits at face value and see what is done with them. Indeed, this technique of reversal is suprisingly easy to do- a friend of mine a while ago thought of taking a similar tack with The Lion King and turning Scar into the hero (which could work- the outcast uncle, next in line to the throne, with plenty of ability and political experience for the position and a grand dream of uniting in a kingdom of mutual toleration and peace the two races of lions and hyenas who have been separated for generations by unfounded mutual prejudice, is pushed aside in a coup by the late king's long-lost son who has no political experience whatsoever, is as full of hate for the hapless and marginalised hyenas as anyone else and has come back from years of sowing wild oats in a far-off country to claim the throne for his own self-interested purposes).

Though having this same conceit of reversal, the book and the musical are quite different, so I shall treat of each in turn. The musical first. Underneath the Broadway glam, it is more than anything a meditation on the nature of public perception, both in present political life and in the view of the past by the present, i.e. history. Indeed, the Wizard sings an entire song on this latter theme. "Is one a crusader or ruthless invader? It's all in which label is able to persist," he declares. This theme is embodied in the reversal that is the core of the story. The Wicked Witch, Elphaba, is portrayed as a noble figure who, as the story progresses, goes on to conduct a crusade for the rights of talking animals, who the Wizard's government is trying to suppress. Consequently, the Wizard launches a smear campaign against her, levelling at her every weapon of propaganda and using all possible means to destroy her credibility and, ultimately, dispose of her. Dorothy, portrayed largely off-stage, is only the final and (so it at first appears) most successful of these means.

Contrary to John C. Wright, I do not see the story as an attack upon innocence. I too have fond memories of watching the Wizard of Oz as a child (as my family has for three generations- my grandfather skipped school to see it back in 1939!) and was, like most children, terrified by the flying monkeys and exultant when the Witch met her doom. I don't think retellings like Wicked necessarily mar or undermine that experience. In any case, Wicked is not a simple case of calling good evil and evil good. Elphaba in the musical never really embraces evil at all. The closest she comes is near the end of the Second Act when, in a bout of disillusionment and frustration at how inneffective her efforts have been and how all her deeds have failed to produce the good she had intended, she sings "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" and declares, "No good deed will I attempt to do again." But even after this, none of her actions are particularly evil. She turns her love interest Fiyero into the Scarecrow so that attempts to torture or kill him will prove futile, briefly imprisons Dorothy in an effort to reclaim her sister's shoes (to which, she indignantly claims, Dorothy has no right) and then stages her own death amd goes into self-imposed exile. In the middle of all this, she and Glinda share a reconciliation. Not much evil here at all. If one wants to look for a glamourising of evil, one would be better served by seeing films like Seven Pounds or Jumper.

I think, if Wicked is an attack on anything, it is not innocence but the media that it sets its sights on. It would also be fair to say that it strongly encourages revisionist history. This may or may not be a bad thing. While the mention of revisionist history probably makes most people think of Holocaust denial (which, by rights, is not worthy of any description that includes the word 'history'), it is worth remembering that it can also encompass such things as Eamon Duffy's paradigm-shifting study on the English Reformation, 'The Stripping of the Altars'. For that matter, the Church is no stranger to media hype, as we would call it now, which is why there is a Devil's Advocate in every investigation of the causes of saints. So the encouragement of revisionist history inherent in the musical is, I would say, a strictly neutral thing.

On the other hand, it might be argued that Wicked encourages moral relativism. Dorothy does what is right in her eyes in The Wizard of Oz, but here we see that even the Wicked Witch was only motivated by good intentions. So goodness just depends on your perspective. This may or may not be the view of Stephen Schwartz (or Gregory Maguire for that matter), but if so, they write better than they think. Elphaba's inherent nobility is not relativised at any point. She is painted as a true victim, contra mundum, who, in an almost Shakespearean touch, seeks to do what is right but finds everything she does goes awry.

One point where the charge of moral relativism might achieve some traction is in the character of Glinda. Glinda is depicted as the popular girl at school, and never outgrows her deep hunger for popularity. This leads her to side with the Wizard's regime, in spite of her (on-again, off-again) friendship with Elphaba and the fact that she secretly sympathises with her. But her ambition and love of fame always win out over her better nature. In spite of this, she is a largely sympathetic character to the audience, never really being depicted as a villain, though she is more often than not in their company and is actually capable of great nastiness. This is a servicable argument. But it falls short, in spite of the fact that the musical is arguably the story of the relationship of these two women primarily, because Glinda is always seen as having taken an inferior path to that of Elphaba. Where Elphaba (somewhat ironically) has a clear moral compass and is willing to sacrifice her ambition on the altar of her principles, Glinda compromises and gets caught up in the moral ambiguities of the political process and of public perception. Where Elphaba, like the good man in Plato's Republic, is largely content to be good but be thought wicked, Glinda is determined to be thought good though she compromise her own goodness in the process. And the audience is clearly meant to regard the former position as morally superior to the latter.

_ _ _ _ _

To the book, then. Gregory Maguire's book is a very different animal to the musical. Much more complex. Much more mature. Indeed, in many ways, I enjoyed the book more. The conceit of reversal is still the same, but different things are done with it, and the plots are very dissimilar. Whereas the Elphaba of the musical remains in many ways adolescent- moved by romantic interest, motivated to a very large extent by the political idealism and activism so characteristic of youth- the Elphaba of the book, though passing through those stages, is a more mature and adult character. By the end of it, she is 38, and certain of her later actions and thoughts would not seem out of place in someone undergoing a mid-life crisis. As in the musical, Elphaba at first opposes the governmental policies of the Wizard and fights against them, taking up the cause of the talking animals and becoming an agent in some kind of anti-Wizard organisation. She also finds love with the character of Fiyero (a very different person in the book from the same character in the musical), though in this case Fiyero has had an arranged marriage and so their affair is in fact adulterous. But the plot takes a turn the musical doesn't when Fiyero follows Elphaba on one of her political missions, unbeknownst to her, and gets himself captured and killed in the process. Transfixed by grief, Elphaba leaves her life of political activism and takes refuge in what is, to all intents and purposes, a monastery. There, she stays for a few years, giving birth in the process to a son. Eventually, with a quintessentially post-modern sense of displacement, alienation and longing for she-knows-not-what, Elphaba sets out with her son to find Fiyero's wife and seek her forgiveness. She takes up with a travelling band who are headed in that direction and, while with them, begins to take on the classical characteristics of a witch, i.e. the persona of a solitary and aloof woman who doesn't much like company but can commune with beasts. When she finally reaches her destination, Fiyero's wife, Sarima, takes her and her son in, but refuses to discuss Fiyero at all, thus witholding the forgiveness Elphaba seeks and preventing her from obtaining any kind of closure on her past misdeeds. In spite of this, Elphaba continues to live with Sarima and her children and they become a kind of quasi-family unit, with Elphaba being a sort of eccentric and reclusive aunt-figure. Later, Elphaba goes to visit her sister and father in Munchkinland and, upon her return, finds that Sarima and the family have been taken prisoner by the Wizard's army in her absence. Desiring to get them back but unsure how to do so, she takes up residence in the family castle on her own. Shortly after, word reaches her of her sister's death and she goes back East for the funeral, where she meets the Wizard for the second time. Back in Fiyero's castle, Dorothy turns up, but she and her companions misinterpret Elphaba's welcome and slay the animals she sends to bring them to the castle (first dogs, then crows, then bees- here following Baum's novel and not the 1939 movie). When the flying monkeys succeed in escorting them, Elphaba, wracked with grief at the pointless deaths of her familiars at the hands of this girl, and having been informed that Dorothy has arrived to kill her on the Wizard's orders, is not sure how to approach her. She knows there is something other-worldy about the girl; indeed, Dororthy seems almost like an angel of death, bringing destruction in her wake, but Dorothy tells her that, though the Wizard told her to kill her, she herself had other ideas and wants to ask forgiveness for killing her sister. To Elphaba, this seems like the cruellest stroke of all; for she wanted the same thing from Sarima, who took her in and showed her every kindness, refusing her nothing save forgiveness, and how can she give to Dorothy the forgiveness she never received from Sarima? In her dismay, she accidentally lights herself on fire, and Dorothy, crying "I will save you!" tosses water on her and thus inadvertently kills her.

Inherent in the book are some of the same themes of public perception that characterise the musical, but there is more than that, and the themes are more complex. The book is far more concerned with the nature of evil, as opposed to the perception of evil. Elphaba slides closer to evil here also, though again, by the end, she is still a far cry from the unremitting villainy of Baum's Wicked Witch. Late in the book, in a scene that rather evokes Charlotte Corday, Elphaba seeks out Madame Morrible, her old headmistress who she knows to be responsible for the murder of an Animal professor and who, Elphaba suspects, has been manipulating events behind the scenes far more than anybody realises. She intends to kill her, regarding it as a quasi-act of tyrranicide. Her leaving behind of the moral high ground is symbolised and highlighted by the fact that, on gaining admittance to see Madame Morrible, she lies for the first time in her life. But when she finds Madame Morrible, she discovers, to her great frustration and ire, that the woman died of natural causes not five minutes before she arrived. Seeing this, Elphaba bashes in her skull with a trophy and then, determined to gain the credit for the 'murder', repairs to the house of the local Margreave (whom she knew at school) to confess the deed. Thereupon, the Margreave invites her to supper and, in a surreal scene, Elphaba and the guests argue about the nature of evil while the Margreave's wife deplores the fact that they are treating so abstractly the murder of an old woman in her bed, and becomes progressively more upset. Amidst lots of metaphysical talk, Elphaba gets in the last word:

"The real thing about evil,' said the Witch at the doorway, 'isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it- the human side, say- and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well, no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.'"

The remark stands in marked contrast to her exaggerated efforts to have a crime she wanted to commit but didn't pinned on her. The secret is precisely that she did not perpetrate the evil that she wanted to, and that she is trying to attach to herself an evil which she didn't do. In this episode, Elphaba is not depicted nearly so nobly as in the musical, but there is ambiguity, even in her own self-understanding. Similarly to Charlotte Corday, she believes that the death of Madame Morrible will remove a great evil from the world and is remorseless about the deed itself, but her great desire to be known as a murderer after the fact even though she isn't is bizarre and seems to be fed on the one hand by guilt over her sister's death and her own largely ineffectual life and on the other by a feeling that might be expressed as, "If everybody thinks I'm wicked, it may as well be for something I've actually done (or at least intended to do)". When there is nothing in the paper about the 'murder' the next day, she is disappointed. The whole incident is more psychologically complex than it is morally complex. And, in spite of my suspicion upon reading that this would be the watershed moment when Elphaba turned to the dark side, she doesn't follow it up with any other misdeeds (although she does get somewhat narky with Dorothy later on, this is largely from fear and confusion, and she never actually raises her hand against her).

Wicked the novel oozes the standard modern preoccupations. Alienation and guilt figure prominently; a sense of aimlessness and loss, of desperation to know the meaning of one's life (a very different thing from the meaning of life in a general sense) are all clearly present and wrestled with in various ways throughout. In this, Elphaba is a typically modern literary heroine, buffeted by the vagaries, mysteries and misfortunes of life, trying to make sense of it all. Many things are left unexplained and none of the themes are given a solid answer. The novel ends with two cases of redemption denied, that of Sarima towards Elphaba and that of Elphaba towards Dorothy. It is not implied that either case was impossible, but both were left undone until it was too late; the former being rendered impossible by Sarima's capture and the latter by Elphaba's death. An enjoyable novel, not because there is any joy in it, but because in many ways it captures the modern malaise, the melancholia of existence, the weariness of life after the fires of adolescent enthusiasm have died and one finds oneself saddled with a particular past, particular regrets and a host of unanswered questions, some personal and some metaphysical.

Cleverly Done Halloween Theme

2010-01-20T20:43:00.003+11:00

This is very clever, and appeals strongly to my poetic instincts.

Serious Answers to Serious Questions About Christian Unity

2010-01-20T18:01:00.008+11:00

Here is a fascinating interview with Ioannis Zizioulas, the Bishop of Pergamum (a church to whose angel, it may be recalled, one of the letters in Revelation was addressed) on the possibilities and difficulties on the ground regarding reunion between the Western and Eastern churches. In particular, he talks about papal primacy.

There is some pretty heady theology here, but it has very practical implications. I particularly like this:

Primacy is not a legalistic notion implying the investment of a certain individual with power, but a form of diakonia. It implies also that this ministry reaches the entire community through the communion of the local Churches manifested through the bishops that constitute the council or synod. It is for this reason that the primate himself should be the head of a local Church, that is, a bishop. As head of a local Church and not as an individual, this will serve the unity of the Church as a koinonia of full Churches and not as a “collage” of incomplete parts of a universal Church. Primacy in this way will not undermine the integrity of any local Church.

If only all Popes had approached the exercise of their office with that in mind.

I'm not entirely convinced that biblical exegesis is such a dead-end as the Metropolitan claims (although presumably he knows the ecclesiastical terrain better). It was, after all, on such grounds that Pope Damasus defended, not simply the primacy of Rome (which actually wasn't under discussion at the time- Constantinople wanted to be counted as second most primal patriarchate) but the position of Alexandria and Antioch as holding second and third place after Rome respectively, based on Scripture and the biblical primacy of Peter, and on the subsequent association of those two cities' bishoprics with Peter (Antioch having been Peter's initial see before he moved to Rome, and because Alexandria's first patriarch was Mark, Peter's disciple). Thus Damasus answered precisely the argument of the first group of Orthodox theologians the Metropolitan mentions - that the primacy is a result of ecclesiastical politics and not of the essence of the Church as Christ instituted it. And that was in the fourth century. Surely the same argument could be offered now?

Anyway, there is great food for thought here, and reason for hope. The Metropolitan even speaks of putting off reunion for another thousand years as though it were something at once unthinkable and unlikely. What with this and the overtures the Pope has made to the Anglicans, the next couple of centuries could be very interesting indeed (a pity I won't be around to see the whole show)! May we continue to pray that our divisions may be healed and the vision of John 17 become a reality.

St Antony in His Cave, or The Puzzle of Monasticism

2010-01-17T10:46:00.017+11:00

Today, being Jan. 17, would ordinarily be the feast of St Antony. But this year today is Sunday, so it isn't. Still, why should that stop me venerating him and meditating on his life? Accordingly, I offer two related excerpts from the account I sent several family and friends of my own visit to St Antony's cave last October.

"Confronted by the life of Antony, my Protestant hackles go up. What kind of a response to Christ is it to flee into the desert and keep oneself away from all human contact? How does that fulfill the Great Commission? Expressions and images leap to mind- visions of fat friars, "so heavenly minded he's no earthly good" and such sayings. This instinct is strong, and has something in it. There are legitimate fears at work here- the fear that one will, through asceticism, believe one can work one's way to heaven; the fear that the obligation of evangelism will be neglected. Stereotypes of monastic and eremitical hypocrisy inevitably crowd in also.

To this there are two responses, which naturally overlap and interweave with each other.

The first is a story, one of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. There are many such stories and sayings, collected by monks in the very early days of monasticism here in Egypt, and I have made the collection of them my spiritual reading this trip, dipping into them and meditating upon them whenever I have a moment. One such story tells of three brothers, who all decided to dedicate their lives totally to Christ. The first brother decided to be a peacemaker, following Our Lord's words in Matthew 5:9 and also in mind of James 3:18. The second chose to minister to those who were ill. The third decided to go into the desert and live in quiet and solitude. After some time had passed, the first brother became frustrated, because he could not settle everyone's disputes. He went to find the second brother to see how he had fared, and discovered he was similarly frustrated, drained and emotionally exhausted from his ministering. So they both went out into the desert to find the third brother. Upon finding him, the two poured out their hearts to him with all their difficulties and asked him how he had fared. The third brother was silent for a while, and then poured some water in a bowl. "Look at the water," he said, and they did, but they couldn't see anything in it. He waited a couple of minutes and then said, "Look at the water now". They did, and could see their faces reflected in it because the water had settled and become still. The third brother said to them, "This is why you are failing in spirit. You are working in a crowd and because of the turbulence, you cannot see your own sins and faults. But if you are still, you will see your sins." Only if we see our sins, what keeps us from God, can we allow grace to work on us in those areas. As long as we cannot see those things, they will not be healed and they will sabotage whatever kind of good work we endeavour to do.

How many evangelists, taking seriously the command to preach to all men, preach to others but neglect to preach to themselves? "All men" must include myself. Far better to preach to oneself alone than to preach to others and have one's unconscious sins and faults undermine the message. Only by preaching first to myself will I prevent myself from preventing God saving those I meet.

But, it will be protested, such a way of life, if undertaken seriously and rigorously, would prevent any real evangelism from taking place. If the serious Christians go out into the desert or off into the woods alone to live by working and praying in solitude and quiet, what will happen to those who have never heard the Gospel? Where will the missionaries come from?

That brings us to the second response to such questions. It is a simple recognition of an undeniable historical fact, and it is this. Almost all the peoples of Western Europe (and many in the East as well) were converted by monks.

This is simply a fact. The conversion of the Franks was set on foot when St Remigius preached to and baptised King Clovis. He was a Benedictine monk. St Augustine of Canterbury (not to be confused with St Augustine of Hippo) began and made great progress towards the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons in England. His entire missionary team was composed of monks. St Boniface preached in the north of Germany and his mission had great success. He was also a Benedictine monk, hailing from a monastery near Winchester. In the East, Sts Cyril and Methodius began the conversion of the Slavic people, and Cyril's name is still attached to the alphabet he created to translate the Scripture into the Slavic language- it is called Cyrillic, and those are the letters you see on all those Russian signs. They were also monks. Nor should it be forgotten that it was principally because of the efforts of Benedictine monks, such as Dunstan, Aethelwold, and my good friend Aelfric, that the Faith was renewed in England after the wars with the Danes.

How is this to be explained? How does one reconcile the nature of the monastic lifestyle with such successful missionary efforts? How can something that begins with a man following Christ by running out into the desert to live away from people end with masses of people accepting Christ and whole cultures being drenched in the Gospel (in most of these countries, the people and the culture are only now, more than a millenium later, beginning to lose their faith- I'd call that some successful evangelism!)?

I don't have any easy answers to those questions. Indeed, it is something I am still digesting and mulling over. Part of the answer lies, I think, with the story above. So eager to get out there and win the world for Christ, we have not taken the time to let grace get its claws into us. Thus we sabotage ourselves. There is another story about a man who declared that he was completely sanctified and, taking Matthew 5:48 as his text, said that in Christ he had been made perfect. One of the monks went to visit him and asked him if he had really said this. He replied that he had. So the monk asked him, "Suppose you came in here and found a woman on your mat. Could you speak to her as though she was not a woman?" The man said, "No, but I would resist any temptation and refrain from touching her." The monk said, "Then you are not perfect. You have imprisoned lust but it is still in you. But suppose you were walking along and saw some stones on one side of the road and a jar of gold on the other. Could you think they were the same value?" The man said, "No, but I would resist any temptation and leave the gold where it was." The monk said, "Then you are not perfect. You have imprisoned greed but it is still in you. But suppose one man loved you and spoke well of you and another man hated you and slandered you, and suppose they both came to visit you one day, would they both be equally welcome to you?" The man replied, "No, but I would force myself to treat them the same." The monk said, "Then you are not perfect. You have imprisoned vanity, but it still lives in you. Your passions have been conquered but they have not been redeemed."

Another part of the answer, illustrated to some extent by the above story, lies in this. One of the things that strikes one about the monks is their total realism. Not for them lofty and abstract theological concepts. Grace, redemption and the work of Christ are found in the nitty-gritty. Sin is not a concept, an idea. It is a lived reality to be recognised and fought against intelligently, and sometimes one wins and sometimes one loses. Solitude and quiet are the prerequisites of self-knowledge, so you can know how sin gets at you specifically, and thus where grace is needed. The monastic lifestyle forces one to be honest. And only when we are honest about ourselves can we stand before God and let Him have His way with us. As long as we hide from ourselves, even subconsciously, we will also, like Adam, hide from God.

Another story tells of how a man tried to make a donation to a hermit. The hermit refused, saying, "I have enough for my needs from the work that I do." The man insisted, saying, "Then you could give the money to the poor," but the hermit refused even more vehemently, saying, "Then I should sin doubly. I would have accepted what I do not need, and then be vain from doing a good deed." That kind of moral realism, sprung from self-knowledge, is highly to be prized. To recognise that externals are ephemeral, and that whatever leads my soul to God, no matter what it is, should be sought, and whatever leads my soul away from God, no matter what it is, should be shunned.

I do not think these are the whole answer to this paradox, but they are clues.

What then, in a related set of questions, are we to make of Protestantism's traditional ambivalence towards monasticism? Of course, part of that no doubt owes something to Martin Luther's own experience of it as a bed of legalism and a hindrance to his relationship with Christ. That experience, being part of the foundational narrative of Protestantism, has, I suspect, been formative. There is also the general stereotype of monks (particularly during the Reformation period) being hypocrites, engaging in sinful and lewd lifestyles while putting forth a veneer of piety and devotion, entering the monastery because they were lazy and didn't want to work (the Desert Fathers would, one imagines, have stern words for such men), etc. It is undoubtable that these stereotypes, though open to the charge that many exceptions existed, had some foundation in reality during that period. One has only to read a little of the troubles Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross had in reforming the Carmelites in the same period to realise that monasticism was not in particularly good shape in the sixteenth century. And again, as that era was Protestantism's formative period, its birth and childhood, the contours of the culture of the time have characterised it to some extent ever since.

But I suspect it goes deeper even than that. The sixteenth century has been and gone. From an historical perspective it ought to be clear, especially in Evangelicalism whose origins are later than Protestantism more broadly defined, that monasticism as a way of life has a particular dynamic to it and that the abuses and dodginess widespread in the sixteenth century and afterwards are not of its essence. So why, apart from a few Anglican efforts which are clearly lifted pretty directly from Catholicism (the Anglican Franciscans leap to mind), has Protestantism not given rise to any monastic movements of its own? Is there a particular reason why it should, alone of all forms of Christianity, excise from itself a lifestyle that has proved vigorous, dynamic and gospel-centred in every other branch of Christians?

This is something I have wondered about for some time, primarily as simply an historical curiosity. I don't think I have a definite answer but I have some suspicions which may be more or less on the mark. I submit them for what they are worth.

It seems to me that Protestantism, particularly Evangelicalism, has a very specific understanding and practice of prayer. Prayer is there to get things done. All forms of prayer are subordinate to, and converge towards, petitionary prayer. One can see this in the kind of language used. The standard kind of opening, "Lord, we just want to praise You and thank You..." or "Lord, we are so blessed to be able to come into Your presence..." naturally leads to sentences beginning with verbs like 'help', 'use', 'allow', etc. All very active. Lord, do stuff! I should add, in case there is any doubt, that this is a perfectly legitimate kind of prayer and I am not criticising it, much less condemning it. But what I find interesting is that for Protestantism generally, and Evangelicalism in particular, this is the whole of prayer. And this naturally leads to an inherent suspicion of all kinds of prayer that do not have as their stated objective the intention of getting something done.

I think this idea of prayer is the basis for much that is good in Protestant culture. The gung-ho, pro-active "Let's win some souls for Christ!", "Let's church the unchurched!", "Let's reach out to the lost!", "Let's let our good works shine before men so that they praise our Father in heaven!", "Let's make Sydney 10% Christian by 2015!" attitude is laudable and challenging to those of other Christian cultures who are unused to such in-your-face Christianity.

But for those raised in such an atmosphere, monasticism constitutes a blindspot. "You can't cut yourself off from everybody. That's not biblical." "Following Christ means bearing witness to the good news in your home, in your workplace, not leaving everything behind and doing nothing on your own." For all of these objections, my suspicion is that the fundamental problem is that monasticism doesn't seem active enough. I recall a seminar offered once in the Sydney Uni Evangelical Union. The advertisement ran thus: "GET THEE TO A NUNNERY! Or, for a serious discussion of Christian femininity, come to the Women's Forum on Thursday at 1pm." The implication was that doing manual work, praying, and singing Psalms every day in an enclosed community was no way to be a Christian woman.Why not? At the risk of completely misreading the intentions of whoever came up with the advertisement, I would hazard a guess that it was because such a lifestyle appeared ineffective. It didn't affect anything. With no evangelistic or other outlet for outreach of some sort, the nunnery looks rather like hiding your light under a bushel. The scandal of that approach is that, with the Great Commission firmly embedded in her mind and heart, a person who takes up such a lifestyle seems to be opting out. Shirking her God-given responsibilities as a Christian.

There may, of course, be more to it than I have suggested, but I think that this dedication to what is outwardly and explicitly active and effective, this results-driven spirituality, is at least a large part of Protestantism's historic distrust of the monastic way of life. There may be more to it than that, and I may not be completely on the mark with that hypothesis. But its something to think about anyway.

To ingrained objections like these, the only thing to say is what I pointed out before- those two responses from earlier. Firstly, grace cannot work on sins of which we are unconscious and, unless we have the experience of being quiet and alone, engaging in contemplative as well as active prayer (i.e. prayer that does not seek to get things done but simply to know God), we will not see our sins nor will they be cured and they will sabotage all our efforts. Secondly, the counter-intuitive but undeniable fact that monks have been more successful and more effective missionaries and evangelists than anyone else to date."

- - - - - - -

"To our right, leading up and behind one of the large formations of rock that characterised the mountain, we saw a set of steps. This, we assumed, must be the way to Antony's cave. So we left Ahmet with the car and began to climb. Having reached the top of these steps, we realised that an error of judgement had been made. We had assumed that the cave must be just beyond this rise. Having reached the top of it, however, and therefore being able to see farther than before, we perceived that in fact the steps led halfway up the great massif, and that we had a long way to go. Moreover, we had not brought any water with us.

With an ever-so-slight devil-may-care attitude, Tanta Suzie, Jeanne and I decided to continue up anyway. We wanted to see Antony's cave. Well, we would see Antony's cave! So the climb began.

There were actually huge numbers of people going up and down the mountain. Interestingly, every one of them was Egyptian and almost all of them were young. Coptic Christianity is clearly doing pretty well these days. To either side of the steps as we climbed were little plaques stuck into the ground, each featuring a verse of Scripture or one of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers in Arabic. Tanta Suzie was kind enough to translate a couple of these for Jeanne and myself. The climb was maybe half the distance that the Steps of Repentance had been on Sinai (I found out later it was 1200 steps) and not as gruelling as the climb up Sinai had been. But it was still fairly gruelling, especially given that we had not brought water...

Eventually, after a good 45 minutes, we reached the small area where Antony's cave was. There was a precipice at its edge, and a tall fence had been built to prevent any accidents. The rockface stretched up from where we were more or less vertically, though in one small crevice one could see a Coptic cross placed, and in another one could see pigeons nesting (the first animals we had seen in the area- it is after all in the middle of the desert). Around the cave were quite a number of people, mostly young. One group of young men from a church in Cairo were eager to get a group photo with the curiously-dressed Westerner, and, slightly reluctantly, I obliged them. It was, at any rate, a good opportunity to practice my Arabic, much to their delight and occasional amusement.

The cave itself was tiny. A small gap in the rockface, nothing more. In gaps and small crevices in the rock around the entrance, pieces of paper had been placed with prayers inscribed, as at the Burning Bush at St Catherine's. And around the entrance on the ground were shoes and sandals belonging to those who had entered. The concept of going barefoot in holy places a la Moses is still very much alive among the Copts.

Jeanne and I went in, but Tanta Suzie, who was not feeling the best after the climb, decided to wait outside. It was, as I said, nothing but a crack in the rockface. I mean that literally. There was no floor as such and not enough space to stand, just two walls of rock that curved narrowly on either side, meeting in a sharp point below one's feet (or foot, as it was often too narrow to put both feet down at once) and the same again a short space above one's head. One was forced to half-crawl, half-skip, half-walk (yes, I know that makes three halves but one-third sounds odd) in order to progress, and this became even more interesting as the daylight faded behind and one became enveloped in darkness as the cave bent away and into the mountain. Someway in, it opened out to a space that was a little larger and where there were candles to give some light. There were a couple of steps down and there an altar, with one of those Bedouin mats laid out in front of it. Above the altar was an icon of St Antony and above that a larger icon of Our Lord. I thought that was as it should be. There was a man who came in with us and stood at the top of the steps where the cave opened out a bit. He spoke to us and gave us some background on the place, but, being in Arabic, I was only able to grasp a small part of what he was saying.

I knelt there for a while, praying, asking for Antony's prayers, and meditating on the significance of the place. Looking around and up at the cave walls, with the candle-light flickering and casting shadows among the formations in the cave ceiling, it was extraordinary to think that Antony had lived here for years, on his own in the dark. Getting to know himself truly. Getting to know God truly. Letting grace chip away at him bit by bit. How familiar these rock walls must have become to him. And yet how lonely. How far away from everything. This niche in a cliff-face was miles out into the desert, far from anything. Dangerous to live here. So little to sustain even basic necessities. What kind of happiness or fulfillment could a man find here? No one to talk to. Surely a person would go mad, like those people one hears about isolated on islands for years. Yet Antony did not go mad. In fact, the opposite. He became sane, saner than most anybody else around, so that people would travel out into the desert to get spiritual counsel and advice from him. Holiness and sanity are related, as Frank Sheed reminds us, because they both involve living in accordance with reality, a reality that ultimately derives from and consists in God. Far from going mad, Antony's relationship with the Lord made him into the kind of man that could ease the sufferings of the whole Christian population under Diocletian, and build up and encourage the orthodox in their struggle with the Arians.

It was not right to flee the world and isolate himself in the desert, cry the critics. It was not right to flee the world and isolate himself in the desert, cry my own spiritual instincts. What good did it do? demand both.

Ask that of the Alexandrian Christians under Diocletian. Ask that of Athanasius and the orthodox during the Arian crisis. Ask that of the Anglo-Saxons, of the Franks, of the tribes of northern Germany, of the Slavs. Ask that of the Coptic young people who climbed the mountain yesterday and placed their prayers in the rocks. Ask that of the Patriarch of Alexandria at prayer in his chapel. "Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor and come, follow Me."

I also thought of something else, which I had been thinking about since Sinai. It had always seemed to me that Moses got a rather raw deal. All those years of working, all those years of wandering. But no pay-off. The Israelites get their reward, their homecoming. They finally enter the Promised Land. But Moses, after everything, doesn't get a thing. It seems so unfair. Where is his happy ending? Shouldn't God reward him after all his faithfulness, his tireless work, his sacrifices? But then I realised. What am I expecting or wanting for Moses? I'm wanting something for him that God will give him. A crown, a sense of fulfillment, some kind of closure, something. But Moses has learnt the most important lesson, and I'm one step behind even grasping what that is- Moses has learnt to desire God Himself, in preference to any of His gifts. God Himself is Moses' reward at the end of his life. That is his only closure. That is all the closure he needs. All Moses' experiences have led up to that and it is that that is the essence of the Torah - "Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength." - and it is that that Moses finally learns to desire on the mountain when he says "Show me Your glory." The Israelites have received their home, their land, a place for themselves. But they have not learned to desire God simply in Himself, and thus they will continue to fall from Him for centuries to come. Moses has learnt this. He has come to desire God simply for Himself. So, for him, the Promised Land is superfluous. In the desert, Antony learned to desire the same thing."

Top Evangelical Theological Events in 2009

2009-12-30T19:04:00.003+11:00

Collin Hansen at Christianity Today has compiled a very interesting list of the Top Ten Theological Stories for the past year. It is an interesting selection and worth a read.

The standouts for me are the unexpected news of the phasing out of the NIV (a translation for which I have an intense dislike, frankly- how such an inaccurate translation managed to become the translation of choice for a very substantial majority of Evangelicals, a group that prides itself on its reverence for Scripture, has got to be one of the great mysteries of the universe) and the unexpected hostility towards the Manhatten Declaration (check out the comments on the article that Hansen links to and you may begin to realise just how far from Church unity we are in the West).

The Internet Monk, Michael Spencer, also gets a mention, as well he should. He has cancer at the moment, as a matter of fact, and needs prayers. His blog is well worth a visit, for those who don't know him. One of the canniest Evangelicals about these days. And one of the most Christian.

Swansong of the Sewing Machine

2009-12-30T18:54:00.003+11:00

And so it was decided that the sewing machine would be taken for one last drive, and as its shifting parts moved against each other, first slowly and then faster and faster, and the familiar whirring sound was heard for the last time, a certain melancholy pervaded the air and a certain reluctance was felt in the old pedal.

But then, within an hour, a new model was on its way, smooth and silent, bearing its owner home. And so the ageless cycle began anew.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Augmented Means to Diminished Ends

2009-12-22T23:05:00.006+11:00

This evening, I saw the film Avatar, and the above basically sums up my reaction.

Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it. The spectacle is amazing. I saw it in 3D, and it was well worth the extra money. The alien creatures (the animals, I mean) are well-conceived. The final battle is exciting. There is no doubt that James Cameron knows how to make a crowd-pleasing movie.

The problem was, it was basically a B-movie. There was very little of original sci-fi in it. What was there was hardly touched upon. For example, the Avatar concept could have led to some really interesting implications. How can you grow a (to all intents and purposes cloned) body without some kind of consciousness already in it? This is a living organism waiting for someone else's consciousness to be implanted. How does that work? What are the implications for the mind-body problem? The film touched on none of this.

What it did have was a weird quasi-biological version of Star War's Force. And the Na'vi were basically cyphers for American Indians. That annoyed me. They couldn't have thought up an alien alien? With the budget they had? Come on!

Likewise, the script was merely decent -by no means extraordinary, but certainly not as horrid as Star Wars dialogue. Mind you, there were some corkers. At one point, for example, the obligatory hyper-gung-ho military baddie declares to his men, "We will fight terror with terror!" Someone should tell the scriptwriter that being gratuitously topical is not always a good thing, and that if one does choose to do it, it should at very least make sense within the film. In this case, there had been no Na'vi suicide bombers whatsoever- indeed nobody had been killed yet at all- and so the statement made absolutely no sense.

And the plot I have seen in at least half-a-dozen other movies. It was done better and more plausibly (though that conclusion may say more about me than the film- my Japanese history is by no means thorough) in The Last Samurai.

I suppose economically it makes sense to throw a mind-blowing budget and test out unprecedented effects on a film whose story is tried and tested. But just once I would really like to see the Cultural Mafiosos take a risk. Pitch Black was far better as sci-fi than this. And when is someone going to make a movie out of The Mote in God's Eye? Now there's an alien culture I would pay to see on-screen!

Delightful Turns of Phrase

2009-12-18T23:04:00.006+11:00

One of the perks of my line of work is the fact that new speakers of English (especially of university age) have well-thought-out intellectual positions and critical thinking faculties (well, some of them do) and a whole bunch of relatively new words to put such thoughts into, but little experience with doing so or with the turns of phrase and conventions of expression that obtain among native speakers of English. This leads to some curious ways of putting things, which can sometimes be by turns striking and endearing.

An example from today's class. One of my students gave a seminar on "Family Decision-making During Adolescence", looking at the ways parents and teenagers relate to each other and make decisions during the teenage years. The student in question was from Vietnam (those folk have a thoroughly charming if at times incomprehensible accent- they seem to be allergic to final consonants). Some delightful turns of phrase ensued. The family, we were informed, is "society's cell", and good family relationships are necessary to "make us full-fledged". Teenagers tend to be of the opinion that "parents get nothing in the modern life", but in fact they are disadvantaged because "teenagers only think near future; they don't think far away far away future".

Sure, some of you may not fully appreciate the simple delights of such unorthodox English usages. It may also be that you have never gotten an euphoric rush from finding a new word by chance then using it in a sentence (such as, say, prolix- a word I learned for the first time earlier this week). In that case, you have my sympathy, and I can only describe the glee with which I attended (and marked) this Vietnamess's seminar this afternoon by comparing it to the unexpected joy of putting honey and peanut butter together on a sandwich and finding they not only go quite well together but in fact enhance each other. What sweetness to hear the thoughts of academia translated into language being stretched and tested like a new limb. Like a blind man looking out with newly-healed eyes and seeing men walking about like trees.

I love my job!

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

2009-12-12T08:15:00.005+11:00

I must confess substantial ignorance when it comes to the majority of science subjects (they're interesting- I just can't handle all the maths!), so will say up-front that honesty demands I refrain from having an opinion on the veracity of the scientific studies and whatnot behind the climate change movement. However, I must admit, this

does remind me of this

I'm also intrigued by what Mr Pachauri says about the Saudis. I take the point that they have an economic interest in denying the global warming narrative in order to preserve the status quo of the oil industry. That is obvious. I have to wonder though, if, given that the climate change movement has taken on all the aspects of a religion in its own right (the collective fast of Earth Hour, the alienation and dismissal of heretics and the establishing of an orthodoxy which is beyond question, evangelists in people like Al Gore, the threat of imminent apocalypse if we do not repent of our sins and change our ways, and now what amounts to an Ecumenical Council in Copenhagen), if at least one factor in the Saudis' scepticism might not be that they already have a quite robust religion of their own and don't particularly feel the need to subscribe to another, thankyou very much. Are other Muslim countries similarly sceptical? Well, not necessarily. Still, I can't help wondering if the economics is really all there is to it.

Online Trilinear Bible

2009-12-09T21:14:00.003+11:00

Fr. Tim Finigan at The Hermeneutic of Continuity has drawn my attention to a very handy new venture at New Advent (whose Patristics section is to die for, by the way). Specifically, their Scripture section has gone trilinear, with Greek on one side of the English text (the original for the NT, Septuagint for the OT) and Latin (Vulgate- not sure which edition) on the other. Looks like my Greek NT will be seeing a little less wear and tear from now on!

On the Wind, Ecumenical Whispers

2009-12-09T20:38:00.004+11:00

This is interesting. A book of Pope Benedict's speeches about the future of Europe, entitled "Europe, Spiritual Homeland", has been published, not by a secular publisher but by the Patriarch of Moscow. Not a big ecumenical step; not even a step really, but a hint, a rumour, a whisper on the wind that the era of mutual suspicion is drawing to a close. Let us continue to pray for the day when we may once more be united in one fold.

UPDATE: Here is some more detailed information about the matter. Hopeful indeed. Historically, the schism happened after centuries of drifting apart. Perhaps this is the beginning of a trend in the other direction. And this Archbishop Hilarion seems like one to keep an eye on.

Advential Randomness

2009-12-06T20:57:00.002+11:00

This song (though not the dialogue before it) nicely expresses the spirit of this season.

Adventine Thoughts

2009-12-06T20:09:00.008+11:00

I love Advent!

It's moments like these I wish I had prepared better for the season beforehand. To be honest, I didn't prepare myself particularly well at all this year, and so here it is the second week and I'm only just beginning to get in an appropriate frame of mind. It makes me wish Advent was longer (even most Lents I don't start really seeing any spiritual benefits in my life until the last week or two - the old ανθρωπος is stubborn).

Still, the season is so rich (and so sadly neglected and often ignored). And it fits one's experience no matter what is going on in one's life.If one finds oneself in adversity, Advent lifts one's cries of desperation and pleading onto a higher plane, plugging you into the long trials of Israel, and reminding you of the fact that we still await the day when Jesus Christ shall return and at last put all to rights. The spirit of the season is perfectly encapsulated in the Kyrie eleison, the cry of the beggar, the cry of the drowning man, the cry of one in desperate straits for whom all other helps have failed. Advent promises deliverance. He will come to your aid at last; only wait and you will see.

On the other hand, if one is in a good place in one's life, if one finds oneself at the centre of God's will, and content, Advent puts before us the blessed expectation, the joy of imminent ineffable delight. The air is thick with excitement, like the days before a wedding, like waiting in line for the premiere of a film of whose story one has been a longtime fan. Joy beyond all imagining, glory and beauty yet unseen lie around the corner, with which nothing in our present experience can compare, for which nothing in our present experience can prepare us. He is coming. Or rather, He is coming back. And "the sufferings of this present time [will not be] worth comparing with the glory which shall be revealed in us." (Rom 8:18)

Tonight, the first reading (which I got to read- woot!) was from Baruch. Basically the whole of chapter 5. In the face of total disaster, the conquest, the exile, Baruch gives a prophecy of gradually increasing exultation, a crescendo of joy. All of these griefs will pale. God will bring the people back. They shall serve Him in truth. It is from the perspective of the ruined city herself, a prophecy that she should look out because all those who went out from her in disgrace shall return in glory. The expectation is palpable. "Arise, Jerusalem. Stand on high. Look to the east."

Then we have John the Baptist in the gospel. Out he comes from the desert. Back into society from his near lifelong exile from the company of men. But he has a message. And it is, in some ways, the same as Baruch's. God is coming. Get ready. You will soon see what He will do.

After the sermon, we appropriately had this hymn, which I love (in particular I like the third verse):

On Jordan's Bank the Baptist's Cry"by Charles Coffin,
1676-1749

1.
On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry
Announces that the Lord is nigh;
Come, then, and hearken, for he brings
Glad tidings from the King of kings.

2. Then cleansed by every breast from sin
Make straight the way for God within;
Prepare we in our hearts a home
Where such a mighty guest may come.

3. For You are our salvation, Lord,
Our refuge, and our great reward.
Without Your grace we waste away
Like flow'rs that wither and decay.

4. To heal the sick, stretch out Your hand
And bid the fallen sinner stand;
Shine forth, and let Your light restore
Earth's own true loveliness once more.

5. To Him Who left the throne of heav'n
To free mankind, all praise be giv'n;
Like praise be to the Father done,
And Holy Spirit, Three in One.

Fantastic stuff!

On Receiving Communion

2009-12-05T12:34:00.006+11:00

I am not a big fan of receiving the Flesh of Christ in one's hand at Communion. I make a practice of receiving Him directly into my mouth as a rule, which strikes me personally as a more fitting and respectful manner, and for me to refrain from doing so or to change my practice would be to demonstrate a diminishment of reverence on my part. This is, of course, an act of personal devotion to Jesus. It does not (or should not) cause me to judge the devotion or love for Jesus of those who do differently.

Of course, there are numbers of people who would regard the method of reception as some kind of a quasi-litmus test of devotion or, alternatively, suggest that abolishing the possibility of receiving the Lord's Flesh in one's hand at Communion would naturally increase people's reverence for Him. This is, I think, a potentially insidious temptation and an unhelpful way of thinking. Our bodies and our actions do, of course, communicate something of our attitudes. That is the element of truth in such persons' mentality. But bodies and actions are not an infallible indicator. And there is not always a causal effect from one to the other or vice versa. Acts of personal devotion are frequently precisely that- personal- and that which communicates or demonstrates something profound in the heart of one believer may leave another cold.

For those who think that somehow such things are a natural consequence (or, worse, a cause) of a general loss of a sense of awe and reverence before the Almighty over the last several decades, hear the words of St Cyril of Jerusalem, who could hardly be accused of a lack of reverence for the Holy Flesh and Blood of the Saviour:

Approaching, do not come with your palms stretched flat nor with fingers separated. But making your left hand a seat for your right, and hollowing your palm, receive the Body of Christ, responding Amen. And having with care hallowed your eyes by the touch of the Holy Body, take it, vigilant lest you drop any of it. For should you lose any of it, it is as though you were deprived of a member of your own body.

What would be to me a symptom of irreverence was to St Cyril quite the opposite. A very small minority would question the orthopraxis of a bishop who gave this advice today. But they would be wrong. It is good that the Church has instituted options for the faithful in this regard, rather than conforming us to an absolute and monolithic expression of worship. When I receive the Body of my Saviour, I may express devotion to Him in a way that seems fitting to me; someone else to whom such actions have no such significance is able to express the same devotion in a different way. It is then for me not to judge people's love and desire for God merely by whether or not they conform to how I naturally express these things. "For man looks at the outward appearance but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Sam 16:7) And it is by our hearts, mine and theirs, that we shall be judged.

Sestina

2009-12-03T23:48:00.004+11:00

I had a go at writing a sestina last week. Man, those things are the dickens to write! Pretty satisfying when it's done though (although I'm not sure if I'm likely to try another for a while). Not sure what to call it yet, but here it is, for public gustation.

In every place in which I walk about
I notice man's life isn't what it seems,
For every beast, when danger comes, will hide
Until it goes, but mankind looks for fun,
Oblivious until his doom has come;
Then, at the last, he finds there's no way out.

And in that moment every man cries out,
"Now that all's lost, what is my life about?"
At last does desperation make him come
To his senses, then - only then - it seems
Like he's awakened, lost his taste for fun
And maybe will from real things cease to hide.

For sometimes life's as tough as tanned hide
Or burns like roasted meat just taken out
Of the pan and eaten. It's no fun
To be betrayed or to have a bout
Of flu, to have life splitting at the seams,
To wait for something that will never come.

And when adversity like this should come,
Why should I be surprised that most men hide
By substituting what is with what seems,
And never daring once to venture out
To see the things that lie all round about
The bunker of illusion they call 'fun'?

Yet outside the confines of sug'ry fun
Lies something else which, if allowed to come,
Would shout the things they dare not talk about
And bring to light the good and bad they hide.
The one now peering in starts gazing out-
Yes, joy will shatter all that merely seems.

For Joy, not the emotion that just seems
To ignore the world, akin to fun,
But rather that which God, by trav'ling out
From heaven to be man, has caused to come,
Smiles quietly at grievous things that hide
In plain sight. It knows what the tale's about.

So hardships lie about, although it seems
That men can hide out in amidst their fun
Until God's joy should come and find them out.

Biggest Theological Battle

2009-12-01T23:07:00.005+11:00

David Ould drew my attention to this video of part of an interview between Mark Driscoll and R.C. Sproul. Driscoll asks what, in Sproul's opinion, the most important theological battle for pastors in the next few decades will be.

Sproul's short answer is "Christology". Which is spot-on. And would be difficult to disagree with in any case- arguably, every major controversy Christians have had has been fundamentally about Christology. Moreover, last century and since, the influence of theologians such as Barth and Balthasar has, I suspect (and hope), renewed the focus of theology and theologians on the person of Christ- more than for the couple of centuries prior, perhaps. Which is something to be thankful for.

Sproul's longer answer is quite interesting. He replies that the specific Christological battle in Evangelicalism over the next generation will be over the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. This confirms suspicions I have had for some time (or at least strengthens them with the agreement of a noted Evangelical theologian and pastor), and indeed Sproul mentions the New Perspective by name. The shadows of James Dunn and N.T. Wright loom large as ever.

Of course, I find myself to a large extent on the opposite side of that battle from R.C. Sproul. The battle is and will be about Christology, but I think orthodox Christology is at odds with the imputation of Christ's righteousness, certainly the way that doctrine has been traditionally understood by the Reformed. The doctrine of the imputation of the alien righteousness of Christ (alien being the keyword, imputation less so), in my opinion, fundamentally alienates Christians from their Saviour, placing a barrier between the two. It doesn't do justice to key biblical images such as that of Christ as the Head and the Church as His Body, or of the Vine and the Branches. I believe it also creates problems for the doctrines of sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit, separating entirely the work of the Spirit from the work of Christ, thus, I fear, in some ways undermining the nature and raison d'etre of what the Spirit does in believers.

The doctrine of the Incarnation must be and remain at the heart of the doctrine of justification. By taking flesh, Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, has hallowed humanity, become its new and proper source and definition. Humanness has been justified- made righteous- because Christ is human, has neutralised and defeated sin conclusively as a human and He, as a human, has been glorified. By becoming a member of Him, uniting myself with Him, the justified, sanctified, glorified life that is His begins to flow into, penetrate and take root in me. And thereby, I become not only a partaker of the life of the new Adam, but a partaker of divine life (2 Pet 1:4). That is indeed good news.

The Dean's Secret Diet

2009-11-20T20:20:00.004+11:00

Another random attempt at nothing particularly profound but simply flexing prosodic muscles. This is meant to be a variation on the Sapphic Ode. The final line of each stanza is a bit shorter than normal, but I've tried to use spondees where possible (though it's difficult not to slide into inadvertent trochees).

The crucial question is, I ween,
What are the methods of the dean
By which he keeps himself so lean
And so fit.

Inquiring women want to know
About his metabolic flow
And speculate in whispers low
About it.

Why is his diet so effective?
What is his secret weight corrective?
The global feminine collective
Must know!

But he will make no revelation,
Despite all this interrogation-
"My legs have been since ordination
Hollow."

With words like these he mocks the fuss,
And likewise with the curious
Among the men, he won't discuss
It ever.

Thus sought by casual and keen,
The stubborn nature of the dean
Makes its discovery no mean
Endeavour.

And so the secret all do crave
Shall go with him into his grave-
Unless the health his methods gave
Prove endless.

As Clouds Fly O'er

2009-11-20T19:29:00.003+11:00

At the constant promptings of Kiran to improve my minimal understanding of prosodic jargon, I recently purchased this book (actually, it was more of an impulse purchase, but don't tell Kiran that). Curiously, I bought it mere days before its author started making a name for himself as a leading anti-religious zealot, but that notwithstanding, the book is excellent. It includes, among many other things, chapters on all major metres in English, and quite a few minor ones, many with which I had had nothing but a passing acquaintance hitherto (often not knowing the metre's name but knowing poems that use it) and several that were utterly novel. This has inspired me to try my hand at a couple, just for fun, and for no particularly good reason I thought I might post some of these. Of course it goes without saying that the copyright (on the off-and-decidedly-unlikely-chance that I ever publish any of these) remains mine.

This one is another potshot at the rondeau form, which I'm finding kind of agreeable, actually- like a sonnet, its nice and compact:

As clouds fly o'er an azure sky
The businessmen don't lift an eye
But in their offices they lurk
And, bending over paperwork,
They disregard the sun on high.

Once long ago, in years gone by,
Each soul began to ossify;
Here see this long process's work
As clouds fly o'er.

Yet comes the day these men will try
And break the mould, revivify
Their spirits, for an instant shirk
The burdens of their office work
And lift their gaze to sun and sky
As clouds fly o'er.

Our Lost Youth

2009-11-12T20:20:00.003+11:00

On a whim, I had a go at writing a rondeau today. I don't think it's too bad for a first try. Tell me what you think. I retain copyright.

In our lost youth, we used to laugh;
We'd energy enough by half,
Our interest piqued by petty things,
And in our backyard we were kings,
A broken branch our royal staff.

Yet now, before the epitaph,
Despite the claims of some riff-raff,
I mourn not long nor feel the sting
Of our lost youth.

But why? Youth is a golden calf
Some worship, but at last like chaff
It's borne aloft on Zephyr's wings,
And pining for it only brings
Denial, pain, a bitter laugh
For our lost youth.

Carl Sagan Sings (with Stephen Hawking back-up vocals)

2009-11-08T10:46:00.003+11:00

This is cool.

Rapprochement et Eloignement

2009-11-08T10:25:00.008+11:00

This is a very interesting article.

It bears out what I have said before about the importance of the present debates on justification within Evangelicalism and the Calvinism/New Perspective divide. I also found this paragraph very interesting:

Beeson Divinity School founding dean Timothy George signed the 1994 ECT statement, which he said was a "circumscribed step forward" in Protestant-Catholic dialogue. Among ECT participants, George said, there is strong agreement with the Augustinian emphasis on the gratuity of grace, that we do not earn salvation by good works or merits. He acknowledges Protestants' and Catholics' lingering disagreement over how justification relates to sanctification and Luther's famous phrase simul iustus et peccator ("at the same time righteous and a sinner"). But he does not see justification as the focal point of Protestant-Catholic disagreement.

Yes and yes. This gentlemen has both identified the core of our disagreement on this particular issue and has also realised that this particular issue is not the core of our disagreement.

Professional Development Woes

2009-11-06T18:01:00.007+11:00

There were no classes today. Instead, we had to attend an insufferable professional development day with all the other staff. There were a couple of amusing moments but overall it was tedious and mostly unhelpful, some of it being entirely irrelevant to the profession ("Keynote speech: Customer Service Essentials"?! We're teachers; we have students, not customers!). Behold the fruit of the thinking processes of bureaucrats who haven't stepped into a classroom in years.

Still, rather than complaining (at least in a normal way), I decided during the course of one of these PD sessions to translate my frustration into verse. Below is the result.

Vicarious embarrassment is rife

As corporate drones attempt to motivate,

Instilling in us useful skills for life,

Suggesting that we all participate

With stupid cheers and endless pair-groupwork:

"We-all-learn! Now repeat it after me!"

Nervously, we wonder where this jerk

Has happened to misplace his dignity.

He seems to be (I think) professional

Yet talks to us like we are ten-year-olds:

"This OpenSourceWare's educational

System will assist your teaching goals.

Now turn and ask your partner how they feel

About these diverse possibilities."

Fast falls now from my brain all trace of zeal

In face of these weird incongruities.

Waul and His Ball

2009-10-30T08:55:00.004+11:00

So I stumbled across another amusing piece of news media and, frankly, it baffles me how they remained blind to the potential headline given the fellow's surname. But no matter. I've taken advantage of it myself.

Mr. Waul has created a giant ball of rubber bands. See below.

But the question remains, can it compare with the World's Largest Ball of Twine?

Amusing Headline

2009-10-29T17:41:00.003+11:00

Michael Flynn, science fiction writer and notable, drew my attention to this unintentionally hilarious article. The headline reads "Education Board calls for Less Cuts to Schools".

Well, you don't need me to tell you what's wrong with it, do you?

I'm on a Mission from God!

2009-10-26T11:50:00.003+11:00

We've gotta get the Churches back together!

Catholic Anglicans

2009-10-26T10:18:00.010+11:00

There are big things afoot and it would be remiss if I didn't offer at least some small comment. I and many others have been paying close attention to the talk of an Anglican personal ordinariate whereby disaffected Anglicans will be able to be reconciled with the Catholic Church while maintaining their liturgies and Anglican traditions including, importantly, married priests. This was all brought to light last week at a joint press conference attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of Westminster.

However big this turns out to be (and it may be bigger than many expect), it is a huge thing for ecumenism. Quite possibly the most significant since the Union of Brest. The head of the Traditional Anglican Communion, whose requests for reconciliation with the Church were in large part the catalyst for what is being proposed, talks about it here (and I have to say, 'divine divide diminishes' is a sweet turn of phrase). Having just gotten back from Egypt, seeing at close quarters the vibrancy of a persecuted church which has been separated from us for over 1500 years (and having also, as it happens, assisted at my first Greek Orthodox Mass- at the foot of Mt Sinai, no less), I am very interested in the implications for broader Church unity, particularly with the East. I'm not as confident that things are as far advanced as John Hepworth seems to think (the Russians still have huge reservations, their new Patriarch notwithstanding, and the Uniate situation in the Ukraine still leaves a bad taste in their mouths).

Nonetheless, this is a significant move. It opens the Western church up to the possibility of liturgical and cultural (and even to some extent disciplinary) diversity while still maintaining corporate unity. If the Anglican ordinariate is taken up and Anglican Catholic churches in English-speaking countries (not to mention Africa) become, not some odd and rare curiosity but a not entirely uncommon and culturally influential presence- something on the radar of the laity- then the identification of the Latin rite with the Catholic Church will be to some extent diminished. This is so even though, technically, the Anglican personal ordinariate will be operating as part of the Latin rite. The same is true of Summorum Pontificum. This is also in spite of the fact that there are Eastern rite Catholic churches around. Most of those don't figure much on the radar of your common Catholic, nor, I strongly suspect, on that of much of the clergy. But one effect that I hope this initiative contributes to is the changing of that.

This is how I hope and pray this plays out on a broad scale. More legitimate liturgical diversity is introduced. A certain mental break follows. The Catholic Church and a totally uniform Latin rite are not coterminous, it is realised. Cultural uniformity is not necessary for the Catholic Church to be what it is. Therefore, the way lies open for reunion of the other apostolic churches whose traditions and culture and whole theological mentality are totally different from the Western Church. Give it another 500 years and we might at last see something that we have not seen in 1500 years- the apostolic churches corporately reunited again and something that actually looks like the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Granted, a long way down the track. But that is what I'm hoping and praying for. And, unless I'm very much mistaken, that's the ball Pope Benedict has his eye on. John 17 is quite clear. Church unity is about evangelism, and ultimately effective evangelism requires one united Church. If we hope to truly bear witness to the gospel, we need to get the churches back together.

In the meantime, the Anglican personal ordinariate has other implications of lesser import but which are nonetheless significant and worthwhile. It means the glories of Cranmerian English set free from Cranmer's theological errors, and that on a wide scale (it has already been accomplished to a very small extent in the States- this promises to broaden it). It means disciplinary diversity- Western Catholics will be able to experience both celibate pastors and married pastors, and appreciate the strengths (and inevitably, the weaknesses) of each vocation. And, who knows, as the Anglican Communion disintegrates and disestablishment looms, this initiative might even do something towards saving Christianity in England and England for Christianity. And I'm all for that.

There is ambition here on the part of the Pope. The practicalities and the response begin to take shape but are not completely clear yet. So, with high hopes and hopeful prayers, we wait for the details to emerge and concrete responses to be made.

UPDATE: The talk of married clergy as a norm and widespread phenomenon within the Anglican Ordinariate seems to have been premature. According to Cardinal Levada, it looks like that at least will not change substantially, with celibacy being the norm for all clergy in the Latin rite, Anglican Catholics included, while the possibility of case-specific exceptions remains. I think it a pity, though understandable. Having two norms in the one rite could have been a nightmare. One can imagine a regular priest beginning a relationship with a woman and transferring to the Anglican Ordinariate simply so he could marry her. I can see why possibilities like that would cause headaches higher up. On the other hand, I don't doubt there are many Anglicans who would see a married clergy as part of their Anglican patrimony, a patrimony which it is the intention of the Ordinariate to preserve, and so they might feel somewhat betrayed by the clarification. Of course, there are exceptions and then there are exceptions, and it is perfectly possible that this is simply a way of avoiding the prospect of Roman clergy transferring to the Ordinariate for ulterior motives while leaving open the possibility of married clergy for those in the Ordinariate for whom this is part of their patrimony. At any rate, it will be revealing to see the wording of the Apostolic Constitution when it is finally released, and thereafter to see how its terms are implemented practically.

Alternate History - A Piece of Random Whimsy

2009-10-24T08:26:00.008+11:00

For millenia the earth has been plagued by a constant ongoing war. Since the dawn of time, two implacable enemies have fought for supremacy throughout the world. Never satisfied with anything but total victory, and never irrevocably defeated, these two foes have warred down the ages. They are cats and dogs.

The cats have long had as their headquarters the land of Egypt. Indeed, at a certain point in their history, they were the rulers of this land, claimed as divine. From Egypt, they made slow inroads into Europe, where dogs held sway.

The dogs have long held the European heartland. Though attempting to make inroads themselves into the Egyptian feline home with such creative religious syncretisms as the deity Anubis (a blatant copying of the cats' initial strategy), the canines were held in acclaim and affection under successive empires, culminating in that of the French.

It was during the peak of French civilisation that the dogs felt that at last they were ready to take on the cats in their home territory. So, styling a puppet conqueror called Napoleon, a face to unite the masses and behind which they could hide their true purpose, they launched the invasion, a gargantuan effort to bring the long war to its close and ensure total victory.

It was a brutal and vicious campaign. Truly, the dogs' ambitions were great. But in the end, their reach exceeded their grasp and they were defeated, as the cats of Egypt called in the unexpected aid of the British tabby.

A Festival of Dangerous Ideas

2009-09-17T12:35:00.006+10:00

Actually, before I forget- for anyone in Sydney during the first week of October, this looks very interesting. A potentially healthy cultural sign, I think. And not only are Christopher Hitchens and Cardinal Pell facing off against each other, but the crazy old Germ is making an appearance and speaking on what sounds like a very intriguing topic herself.

Off to Egypt

2009-09-17T11:39:00.007+10:00

These images are my attempt to resist the temptation to display the obligatory pyramid photo. Anyway, I fly out to Cairo tonight. Blogging is likely to be anywhere from sparse to non-existent for the next month, depending on a host of factors of which I am presently largely ignorant. Truth be told, its been pretty sparse lately anyway, but for the next month I will have an EXCUSE! So expect posts when you see them. Ma9 salaama, folks.

Hufu- The Pleasures of Cannibalism without the Moral Dubiousness

2009-09-13T10:08:00.006+10:00

I'm a big fan of random happenstance, and last week saw a choice example.

A colleague of mine was conferencing with her English for Academic Purposes students on essays they were preparing. One of them had volunteered to do his essay on "The Pyramid of Hufu". Coming into the staffroom during the break, she expressed loudly her perplexedness at this mysterious essay topic. I volunteered that perhaps the student had made a spelling error and had actually meant the Pyramid of Khufu (which turned out in fact to be the case and which monument, coincidentally, I shall be visiting next week) but not before my colleague had done a search for 'Hufu' on one of the computers, whereupon it was discovered that this word has a meaning of its own.

As it turns out, there is such a thing as hufu, or rather there isn't. It is, apparently, a parody version of tofu for recovering cannibals who wish to ease off their dependence on human flesh for sustenance but are not ready to take up the exclusive consumption of non-human based food products. Unfortunately (or fortunately) its website has been off the air since 2006 but one can read about it here. Moreover, the folks at Damn Interesting (a site which is well worth your time anyway) did an article on it a while back as well. Certainly, the concept of a pyramid of hufu does create a curious and rather risible image in the mind.

Mots D'Heures: Gousse Rames

2009-09-02T14:46:00.007+10:00

A colleague of mine brought in a delightful tome to work today. It purports to be some kind of collection of medieval French poems (complete with scholarly footnotes) but, if one reads it aloud, one immediately recognises that the French poems are actually English nursery rhymes cunningly disguised. Who would think up something like that (much less publish it)? Fantastic!

Below is one example (which I hope I can reproduce without breach of copyright):

Chacun Gille
Houer ne taupe de hile
Tôt-fait, j'appelle au boiteur
Chaque fêle dans un broc, est-ce crosne?
Un Gille qu'aime tant berline à fêtard.

(Luis van Rooten, Mots D'Heures: Gousses Rames, Penguin Books, 1980)

The author/editor interprets this to be a short tale about a country bumpkin (a Gille), who adores carriages and other such pleasures and who, having uncovered part of a seed while hoeing, calls to a limping man something about cracks in pitchers and Chinese cabbages (the editor conjectures there might be some moral implicit here which is lost on the modern reader). What becomes immediately apparent upon reading the thing aloud, however, is that it is actually 'Jack and Jill'!

What We Call Ourselves (and Each Other)

2009-09-01T18:36:00.003+10:00

These two posts form an interesting juxtaposition.

(I'm not, I should add, asserting that one is a reply to the other; simply that they make an interesting pair, being on a similar topic but from quite varied perspectives.)

Was Jesus Christ Divine?

2009-09-01T17:46:00.001+10:00

A short talk I gave for Lumen Verum last Friday on the divinity of Christ.

Read it here.

Hello from Earth

2009-08-29T08:46:00.009+10:00

"When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?"

This towering monument to faith would seem to suggest yes. There is more faith here than in most churches. But faith in what?

One can't help but find things like this and SETI vaguely amusing. Huge efforts and great wads of cash are expended in pursuit of something which has no basis in reality and no evidence to even suggest its existence. This latest outworking of religious zeal is particularly bizarre, and strikes me as very redolent of the Twitter generation.

But one wonders, if indeed there were intelligent life on Gliese581d, what the reaction of those aliens would be to messages like "Stage fright! What do you say in an intergalactic message? Hello? Peace? What's the weather like? Know that we're here, we're waiting. Hear from you soon. Ally". Humans from a century or two ago would have been mystified by a message like that (come to that, so probably would a modern tribesman from Papua New Guinea). What would a non-human intelligence make of it? Wondering if this, a random pick, was a poor example of the kind of messages sent, I clicked on Top Messages to find out what the best ones were. The best, apparently, was "Hello Gliese 581d inhabitant. Can you help us humans travel through space and become smart like you. Please do not eat us we are a friendly race." And the CSIRO funded this?! Hmmm.....

Since one would assume, given the style and vocabulary, that most of the messages have come from children or young adults, it seems supremely ironic that Richard Dawkins and others of the New Atheism, while decrying religious education as "child abuse", turn a blind eye to stuff like this. Does it really seem more rational to them?

UPDATE: A commenter has pointed out that not all atheists ought to be tarred with the same brush on this point, and that there are indeed some who are sceptical about the benefits of programmes like this one. Some of these can be found in this thread on the Debating Christianity and Religion Forum.

St Augustine

2009-08-29T08:31:00.005+10:00

Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance the innermost places of my being; but only because you had become my helper was I able to do so. I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the incommutable light far above my spiritual ken and transcending my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light of the same order; but greater, as though this common light were shining much more powerfully, far more brightly, and so extensively as to fill the universe. The light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly different, from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the sense that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it was exalted because this very light made me, and I was below it because by it I was made. Anyone who knows truth knows this light.

O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me”.

Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed for ever. He called out, proclaiming I am the Way and Truth and the Life, nor had I known him as the food which, though I was not yet strong enough to eat it, he had mingled with our flesh, for the Word became flesh so that your Wisdom, through whom you created all things, might become for us the milk adapted to our infancy.

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within,
but I outside, seeking there for you,
and upon the shapely things you have made
I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being,
were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Today is a hopeful day for sinners. Today we are reminded that the chief of sinners (in Bunyan's phrase) is in heaven. If God's grace can do that, there is hope for the worst of us.

Kiran has a nice reflection here.

St Monica

2009-08-27T23:45:00.003+10:00

God our Father, comforter of the sorrowful, You accepted Saint Monica's offering of tears for the conversion of her son, Augustine. Help us, by their intercession, to have true contrition for our sins so that we may receive the grace of Your forgiveness. We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

One in Christ: A Walk Through Galatians

2009-08-26T20:50:00.003+10:00

For those interested, here is the transcript (or at any rate, a link to the transcript) of the lecture I gave at Sydney University last Wednesday. With the addition- for those who were there for it- of those several paragraphs I had to skip because of time constraints and the next group wanting to get into the lecture theatre. (Note to self: do not agree to speak on an entire Pauline epistle in a single lecture again. Unless it's Philemon or Titus.)

One in Christ: A Walk Through Galatians

Israel/Palestine- Glimpses from the Ground

2009-08-18T17:54:00.005+10:00

Israel is one of those utterly insoluble human problems created by politicians with an agenda at a particular time which then creates strife and misery for generations upon generations afterward. Not unlike Northern Ireland.

On the one hand, the Jews ought to have a land of their own, after so many centuries dispersed (and still, amazingly, retaining a uniform cultural identity!) and especially after their ordeals during the first half of last century. On the other hand, the Palestinians also ought to have a land of their own, and the tragic thing is that they did up until fifty years ago. After the events of the last fifty years, and having dispensed with the anger and recriminations on both sides, the insoluble question remains, how can one recognise the rights of the one group without impinging on those of the other?

I have a former student with whom I have maintained touch for a while now (we take tea together- he practices English and I practice Arabic) for whom these are burning questions. He is from Jordan but his family originally lived in Jerusalem, and had for as far back as they could trace their family (several generations, so at least a century or more) until they were expelled after the 1967 war. Curious, I asked him once what he thought about the issue of Israel and what should be done, given his family's own experience. He thought for a moment and then told me that he can't see why they can't live together in one sovereign state with a party system, etc. although he admitted the Israelis would never go for that because, in that scenario, they wouldn't have a political majority, hence their political autonomy (the whole point of having a land of their own) would be compromised.

I become increasingly interested in these questions, and in what those touched by them think about it all, particularly since I will be spending some time in Egypt from next month, a country which has figured prominently in the whole debacle. Not so much because I have a vested interest (I have little sympathy with all those Leftist "Free Palestine" protestors, whose anti-imperial stance, I feel sure, obscures the endless ambiguities of the reality; nor, on the other hand, with those many Christians who see the state of Israel as some kind of fulfilled prophecy), but because behind the politics are human realities and human suffering on both sides, families and cultures and mutually exclusive histories and cultural narratives rudely and abruptly thrown into conflict with one another.

In that connection, while looking up some details about my upcoming trip to Egypt (specifically transport to monasteries in the Eastern Desert) I stumbled across this travel video by (apparently) an Israeli Jew posing as a British journalist. Of particular interest to me were the opinions of the man in the car at the beginning.