The Problem of Christian Soteriology-Part 2

Robert - Blogging is such an ephemeral medium: if a thread is overtaken by more recent postings, any subject, no matter how engaging, tends to drop off into the aether, never to be seen, or commented upon, again.

I hope you'll be able to post your thoughts on Romans soon - Being of the old school, I've just spent the day reading and thinking about Fitzmeyer's critique of Paul's theology in the NJBC as well as an hitherto overlooked, 40+ year old paper by Krister Stendahl (included in Wayne Meek's The Writings of St. Paul, the "Norton Critical Edition") entitled "Paul and the Conscience of the West." Both seem critical to advancing this discussion.

Please resurrect this subject sometime soon?
Boreas

The pivotal essay in modern Pauline studies is Krister Stendahl's "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West." I've discussed this before (which simply means I'm probably going in circles), but Boreas' request prompted me to go back and re-read the essay last night. Sadly, the essay is not available on-line, and while that first link is to an essay analyzing Stendahl's analysis, it's as close as I can come to something resembling Stendahl's argument on the Web.

Which is still not "close enough." This is not a case where horseshoes or hand grenades will do, because Stendahl's argument is a subtle one, and worthy of careful consideration. I'll see what I can do to summarize it, without additional commentary, and then we can carry on the conversation on soteriology:

Stendahl opens noting that "In the history of Western Christianity--and hence, to a large exten, in the history of Western culture--the Apostle Paul has been hailed as a hero of the introspective conscience." He makes his first critical point by questioning "the often tacit assumption that man remains basically the same through the ages." "[B]oth the historian," Stendahl notes, "and the theologian, both the psychologist and the average reader of the Bible, are well advised to assess how this hypothesis of contemporaneity affects their thinking, and their interpretation of ancient writings."

This is, of course, now the basis of all New Testament scholarship (and even of Anne Rice's complaint about that scholarship).

Here is the key introductory paragraph, in part (I told you the whole essay was important!):

...it is exactly at this point that Western interpreters have found the common denominator between Paul and the experience of man, since Paul's statements about 'justification by faith' have been hailed as the answer to the problem which faces the ruthlessly honest man ini his practice of introspection. Especially in Protestant Christianity--which, however, at this point has its roots in Augustine and in the piety of the Middle Ages--the Pauline awareness of sin has been interpeted in the light of Luther's struggle with his conscience. But it is exactly at that point that we can discern the most dramatic difference between Luther and Paul, between the 16th and the 1st century....

Let me try to bring this down to the issue of soteriology. Kaufmann plainly sides with those "interpreters [who] accuse Paul of misunderstanding or deliberately distorting the Jewish view of Law and Salvation." As Stendahl presents that interpretation:

It is pointed out that for the Jew the Law did not require a static or pedantic perfectionism but supposed a covenant relationship in which there was room for forgiveness and repentance and where God applied the Measure of Grace. Hence Paul would have been wrong in ruling out the Law on the basis that Israel could not achieve the perfect obedience which the Law required.

Stendahl's interpetation of Paul turns on Phil. 3:6: "I was blameless as to righteousness-of the Law, that is," and he points out that Romans 2-3 "deals with something very different."

The actual transgressions in Israel--as a people, not in each and every individual--show that the Jews are not better than the Gentiles, in spite of circumcision and the proud possession of the Law. The "advantage" of the Jesus is that they have been entrusted with the Words of God and this advantage cannot be revoked by their disobedience (Rom. 3:1ff.), but for the rest they have no edge on salvation. The Law has not helped. They stand before God as guilty as the Gentiles, and even more so (2:9). All this is said in the light of the new avenue of salvation, which has been opened in Christ, an avenue which is equally open to Jews and Gentiles, since it is not based on the Law, in which every distinction between the two rests....The only metanoia (repentance/conversion) and the only grace which counts is the one now available in Messiah Jesus. Once this has been seen, it appears that Paul's references to the impossibility of fulfilling the Law is part of a theological and theoretical scriptural argument about the relation between Jews and Gentiles.

Stendahl makes one last critical point for our purposes. First, he points out that, until Augustine, Paul was relatively unimportant to the thinking of the church (he also draws a line from the Saint to Luther, a clear line since Luther was an Augustinian monk; I would extend the line, today, through Kierkegaard, the Lutheran pastor, and into modern theology through the melancholy Dane; but that's another story) . Paul was interpreted as grappling with the question of the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. But, after the 1st century, that was no longer a "live issue," and so Paul's importance receded. Until, that is, Augustine took up Paul. Augustine "universalized" the issues Paul wrote about (and this tendency flowered in the allegory and metaphor of medieval Europe) by universalizing his feelings (and not incidentally creating the "interior conscience" that has been the hallmark of Western civilization since; especially following the powerful impact of Wordsworth and Goethe). As Stendahl says, relating this (again) to soteriology:

The problem we are trying to isolate could be expressed in hermeneutical terms somewhat like this: The Reformers' intepretation of Paul rests on an analogism where Pauline statements about Faith and Works, Law and Gospel, Jews and Gentiles are read in the framework of late medieval piety....Where Paul was concerned about the possibility for Gentiles to be included in the messianic ommunity, his statements are now read as answers to the quest for assurance about man's salvation out of a common human predicament.

And here we touch on the critical point: what is the nature of Christian salvation?

All quotes from: Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1976).

"I started a joke/which started the whole world crying...."

Somehow, over at Eschaton, comments about Dr. Howard Dean turned into a brief discussion of Augustine of Hippo (one never know, do one?). And this got mentioned:

Is this the Augustine who went on to become St. Augustine? Interesting that he had a libertine youth before his sudden repentance, especially on the subject of sex. Reminds me of dubya's sudden "born again" moment. - int argc, Smiling Conqueror

Which led me to respond with this:

Where the whole concept of such a 'conversion' began. It later became a staple of frontier American Christianity largely because Luther was an Augustinian monk. Indeed, Krister Stendahl (a Lutheran pastor and scriptural scholar) argues convincingly that Augustine's Confessions is the beginning of the interiorization of self-consciousness in Western thought, which reach its fullest flower in European Romanticism.

Which was, not coincidentally, the age of Soren Kierkegaard, one of the forerunners of Existentialism. Augustine and Romanticism both greatly effected Rousseau, who in turn had a profound influence on German and French Existentialism, and on modern phenomenology.

There is an 'eternal golden braid' that reaches from Paul through Augustine to modern philosophy. (Did I mention the connection to Paul? No? Drat!)

Which led to the good Prior to respond with this:

Augustine's conversion would have been the first

If not for St. Paul...
Prior Aelred

and then this:

I find one of the fascinating things in the West is that Augustine's invention of the individual goes underground until the 12th Century Renaissance (Bernard of Clairvaux, Aelred of Rievaulx) -- Augustine was influential in between, but not the Confessions -- rather his Commentaries, esp on John & the Psalms

Whence self consciousness, does it wax & wane with community centeredness? Does it relate somehow to introversion & extroversion (do extroverts have souls? ) -- the Enneagram?
Prior Aelred

And since the topic was so intrinsically fascinating, and I didn't want the light of it to go out, I brought it over here (besides, these are my public notebooks. I'm laying out a variety of ideas, trying to see which ones I can develop into something fruitful, or at least worth the attention).

But already I realize how long this is going to go. So I'll try to make essential connections first, then connect the dots a bit later.

First, the self-consciousness we are all so sure is a part of human nature, is actually just a social construct. It's a way of viewing the world we are taught, as part of our human identity. (The whole concept of identity is a fascinating one. We are all appalled at the thought of men like Socrates engaging in sexual activities with young men or even young boys. While Paul condemned the practice, the Hellenistic Greeks apparently considered it perfectly civilized behavior. Partly because we now identify ourselves as sexual beings, we condemn the alleged actions of Michael Jackson. Sexual scars, we understand, do lasting damage. But is that because of human biology, something immutable? Or because of human society? Is our identity, in other words, a social construct? Or a biological necessity?)

So, per Krister Stendahl, the interiorization of self-consciousness in Western culture begins with Augustine, who taught us to read Paul as the originator of Christian self-consciousness. "Wrteched creature that I am, who is there to rescue me from this state of death?" (Romans 7:24, REB). In Stendhal's reading, that famous statement does not say what we've all been taught it says. That's one point to return to.

Another is the idea of individuality. Prior Aelred is right (as usual) that it does not follow a clear line from Augustine to the present. In many ways, Augustine was ahead of his time. It took the Augustinian monk Martin Luther to put Augustine again at the center of Western consciousness and conscience. We can trace that line, too, with a little help from our friends. And it is no coincidence that a Lutheran seminary student, Søren Kierkegaard, reasserted the primacy of the individual in mid-19th century Denmark. Nor that he did it at the very apogee of Romanticism in Europe. And what is the connection between individualism and community? What are the boundaries there, between Same and other?

Lastly, we can even enter into the conversation about "call" v. "conversion." Stendahl argues that Paul's experience on the road to Damascus is not exactly a conversion at all, as it is not a change from one religion to another (!). And again Augustine is our model: not only was Paul "blameless before the law" as a good Pharisee (something Augustine makes abundantly clear in the Confessions that he was not; blameless, that is), but Augustine went from pagan to Christian (and finally non-Pelagian), while Paul went from Jew (or perhaps Hebrew is less anachronistic) to: the first Jew for Jesus?

We have several places to go with these issues.

Basiliea Tou Theou

The concept of pacifism in a Christian context raises the concept of "just war," an idea originated by Augustine in his apologia for Christianity, The City of God. Augustine was trying to resolve the conflict between the empire of Rome and the empire of God (the basiliea tou theou). It was that conflict, of course, that led to the crucifixion of Christ and the mocking sign: o basileus ton Ioudaion ("King of the Jews"). Augustine wanted to give Roman Christians the ability to keep one foot in each realm, an idea itself that can be criticized as distinctly un-Christian. "Just war" is part of this concept: that one can be a citizen of two realms. But, as Jesus said, you cannot serve two masters. One of them will demand your loyalty above your obligations to the other, and how then do you choose? Who gives you your life? God, or Caesar? To whom do you give it up, if demand is made?

It is the basiliea tou theou that is the stumbling block: the empire of God that is meant to be all-encompassing. Jesus, and Paul after him, proclaimed a complete alternative to the empires of this world. Israel itself found its identity in a covenant with the God of Abraham, a covenant that only belatedly turned into a kingdom, and when that kingdom was taken away from them for their injustice and greed, it was replaced with a kingdom that could never be taken away.

But one that could be abandoned. And the concept of this basiliea is just as controversial now, as it was in first century Palestine. It could be argued, in fact, that the origin of individuality, of the concept of the individual, began there.

Prior to the emergence of Romanticism, the "modern" concept of the individual was all but unknown. "That solitary individual" to whom Kierkegaard dedicates Purity of Heart is a wholly Romantic ideal, but one founded (consciously, in the case of Rouseeau; less explicitly in the case of Kierkegaard, raised in a church started by a conscience tormented former Augustinian monk) on the concept originated by Augustine, in his attempt to explain his conversion to himself, and to the collapsing Roman empire and the citizens of that empire in which he lived. Krister Stendahl has argued quite persausively that "Augustine may well have been one of the first to express the dilemma of the introspective conscience" (and noting that in this Luther was "a truly Augustinian monk"). Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia, Fortress Press 1976), p. 83. Stendahl's essay is aimed at the interpretation of Paul's letters, but the thesis he employs is applicable here: that what we generally consider human nature is not essentially the same throughout the ages. Some of what we cover with that umbrella term may be immutable, but some of what we consider immutable is certainly highly changeable, and has changed over history, and from culture to culture. The "introspective conscience" is Stendahl's aim, and he links it directly to Augustine:

For Paul had not arrived at his view of the Law [Stendahl is concerned with Romans 7:19] by testing and pondering its effect upon his conscience; it was his grappling with the question about the place of the Gentiles in the Church and in the plan of God, with the problem Jews/Gentiles or Jewish Christians/Gentile Christians, which had driven him to that interpretation of the Law which was to beome his in a unique way.....

Yet it was not until Augustine that the Pauline thought about the Law and Justification was applied in a consistent and grand style to a more general and human problem....His Confessions is the first great document in the history of the introspective conscience. The Augustinian line leads into the Middle Ages and reaches its climax in the penitential struggle of an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, and his interpretation of Paul. (Stendahl, pp. 84-85)

Recognizing this can have a very upsetting effect on one's assumptions about individual actions and the concept of corporate responsibility. Is it even possible to think of oneself as an individual, and yet not think of oneself in terms of an introspective conscience. Stendahl's thesis is that it is not only possible, but that it is precisely how Paul saw himself and the world, and so when he says "Miserable sinner that I am!," it is not a cri de couer or a mea culpa such as we, in a post-Augustinian world, imagine it. No more so than Paul would automatically interpret the act of the prostitute in Luke's anointing story as an outward display of an inward act of conscience. That kind of introspection, which we think so fundamental to "human nature," is not so fundamental at all. It is the result of human thought, of philosophy; of the efforts of a saint of the church.

Which realization makes everything more interesting. So, where, then, do I find my identity? In the introspection of my conscience, my personal place before God? Or in my community, my empire, neighborhood, family, friends? No one, truly, is alone: but our ideal "individuals," be they Thoreau or Byron or Kierkegaard, are all products of Romanticism, and this is the lingering effect of Romanticism, that we still seek to praise the indivdual, be it an action adventure hero or a moral hero, above and apart from any group.

So the basiliea tou theou poses the uncomfortable question: whose side are you on? Is your identity founded in family? "I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man will find enemies under his own roof." (Matthew 10:34-6, REB). Is your identity in the ruler, the country, the empire? "Pay the emperor what belongs to the emperor, and God what belongs to God!" (Matthew 22:10, SV) [note the Greek here is "kaisar," the obvious root for the German word "Kaiser." We are too prone to think of "Caesar" as a personal name, not a title] Or are you a citizen of the basiliea tou theou?

As Arundhati Roy says: "Radical change will not be negotiated by governments." If the bailiea tou theou is not here and now, then the question has no purpose, and the need to live it, see it, even to proclaim it, is pointless. We do not prepare the way of the Lord; we do not usher in the age, we do not negotiate for its presence at some time in the future, when everyone and all governments are ready. God can truly raise children of Abraham from the stones; God doesn't need us to act. But if we are called into the basiliea, if we are at last invited to "Come, buy grain and eat; come, buy wine and milk, not for money, not for a price," surely we should make that invitation to everyone. And if we hear that invitation, how can we accept it if we do not accept the reality, here and now, of that basiliea? And if we accept the reality of that basiliea, and the invitation into that basiliea, how can we then refuse the law, the comands, of that kaisar, the emperor of this empire? Not the command to be holy, but the command to be humble, to be servants, to live as if the first are indeed last, and the last first.

Dies Irae and the Church of Meaning and Belonging

I've wanted to return to this point precisely here:

Part of the horror here, is that people have to call a stranger on an 800 number, simply to get empathy. There is an ecclesiastical problem here: where are the churches? Why aren't they helping? The short answer is: in large part, having bought lock, stock, and barrel into the "consumer culture" that has led to this situation, they can no more critique it than a fish can complain about living in water. Sometimes it seems the institutional church can't even see the problem, much less offer a solution to it.

It's an ecclesiological issue, but it rankles me more as a minister than a theologian. It rankles me precisely because we have a tendency to divide matters theological from matters practical, and to either prefer the practical over the theological, or to to abjure the concrete because it is so specific and, as my Pastoral Care professor loved to say, "messy."

This elevation of the abstract over the concrete is also a driving force of Derrida's deconstructionism, so maybe that's why I like French phenomenology so much; or perhaps its where this impetus comes from. And that's not such a chicken-or-egg question as it seems.

What I'm circling around to is this: our language prefers the abstract, which we tend to associate with the "permanent." Of course there are good philosophical and cultural reasons for us to do so, and they can be traced back to Plato and Pythagoras and such thinkers, or more broadly called "Greek" or "Hellenistic" ideas. Walter Kauffman, in his study of existentialism, Irrational Man, introduced me to the split between "Hebraism" and "Hellenism" a long time ago. This morning, reading the opening chapter of James Barr's The Semantics of Biblical Language, I was reminded of it again. But Barr makes an interesting distinction that, while I knew of it, I hadn't seen it stated quite so clearly before

These are not original with Barr; he merely restates them to move on to his point (which as to do with linquistics, so we'll leave him to it). First he notes that one of the main contrasts drawn between Greek and Hebrew thought in theological circles, is between "static" and "dynamic." As Barr puts it:

Movement could not be ultimate reality for the Greeks, to whom being must be distinguished from becoming, and the ultimate must be changeless. For the Israelites the true reality was action and movement, and the inactive and motionless was no reality at all."

With this may be associated the Greek contrast of appearance and reality. The world was full of changing phenomena, but since reality must be static the change was unreal appearance. Tot he Israelites however the appearance of a thing was the manifestation of its being or reality, and a valid and adequate manifestation at that. What did not appear in action and movement would not be real, and what did appear was not a pale or secondary shadow of this reality but the reality itself. There is therefore no contrast of appearance and reality.

This leads to two more important distinctions: one, the distinction of subject and object, which the Greeks recognize, but not the Hebrews. The other is the conception of the human: In Greek thought man is seen as a duality, with an immortal soul imprisoned or confined in a mortal body; the two are only temporarily or accidentally related. In Hebrew thought the 'soul' is the living person in his flesh; 'soul' and 'flesh' are not separable but one is the outward and visible manifestation of the other. There is no thought of the soul living apart from the body.

Let me interrupt here to mention the ruah that is breathed into the dry bone in the vision of Ezekiel, as Exhibit "A" in the examples of such thought among the Hebrews.

It is simliarly felt however that Hebrew thought saw man as a person within a totality, while Greek thought tended to see him as an individual, i.e., in essence as one separated from others, and then to form collectivities by grouping individuals together. The conflict of individual and collectivity thus arises from the Greek tradition. But Hebrew life was lived in a social totality of religion and justice.

James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, (Philadelpia: Trinity Press International 1991), pp. 10-13)

First, let us stipulate that these are generalities, and as such subject to all kinds of pointed critique. Barr acknowledges as much, and means only to describe the state of the theological discussion as of 1961, when his book was first published. Little has fundamentally changed since then. Second, I want to tie this in with something I just re-read, by Krister Stendahl. A speech he gave on Martin Luther King Day, 1972, on the topic of judgment and mercy. He has some interesting things to say, that turn this rather esoteric discussion about human nature, back to more mundane (and concrete) questions about ecclesiology (i.e., what is church for?).

Stendahl starts sounding a note that could have come from Kierkegaard:

In the Christian tradition, judgment and mercy have become engrafted into our spiritual wisdom as we have played the "soul game," transforming practically all of the immense and ferocious drama of history that we read about in the Bible into the kind of pastoral counseling and consolation in which God's mercy overcomes the fear of judgment.

He introduces for analysis of his topic Isaiah 40:1-8, although I kept thinking the Magnificat would work as well:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
Because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid;
for behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;
Because He who is mighty has done great things for me,
and Holy is His Name;
And His mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear Him.
He has shown might with His arm,
He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and has exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has given help to Israel, His servant, mindful of His mercy
Even as He spoke to our fathers -
to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

A text clearly connected to judgment and mercy. But, as Stendahl points out, in words that I think apply to Mary's song:

The content of the message of comfort is the downfall of the "haves," the downfall of the powerful; here there is little or no comfort at all for the comfortable. Comfort consists in the announcement of revolution, of a change of crew, of a leveling process, of the fact that those who hunger and thirst for justice are finally going to be satisfied.

If there is no comfort for the comfortable, what of them? Says Stendahl:

Few are those who are willing to give, but the true believers are those who rejoice when God takes away that which they thought of as theirs, and gives to whomever he wants.

Consider what this means. Judgment and mercy are not balanced over against each other in a scheme in which a last judgment is tempered and adjusted by God's grace, or Christ, or the blood, or the cross, or the intercession of the saints. That is not the way it is. Mercy, salvation, liberation are all part of God's judgment. God's judgment brings mercy to those who need mercy. Judgment is justice for those who hunger and thirst after it, those deprived of it....It is important to revive and revitalize the biblical meaning of judgment (krisis) as that establishment of justice which by necessity means mercy for the wronged and loss for those who have too much.

If there was an "act of God" in Katrina, this was certainly it. If there was any justice in Katrina, this was certainly it. But why do I connect this with Barr?

The English language is a "docetic" language, as we learned theologians say. It has an unusual ability of dividing up words into that which is more spiritual and that which is less spiritual, so that one distinguishes between "justice" and "righteousness".... This phenomenon is worth noting. It is one of the peculiar ways in which language exerts great power over our thought habits and patterns of speech. So also with righteousness and justice: they are the one and only justitia.

Two more long quotes, and then I promise to stop.

Judgment is the day eagerly and impatiently awaited, the day of liberation in which God will finally vindicate his faithful ones and establish justice. In spite of this note, however, in the big national churches, increasingly involved with the affairs of state, and increasingly identified with the power of the establishment, it became natural to think and feel, in the style of Amos and other prophets of doom, that the Day of Judgment, the Day of the Lord, is darkness rather than light. Thus, much of Christianity has seen it necessary to seek mercy so as to balance the fear of judgement.

Stendahl also offers this interesting note on repentance, from Mark 5:23-24: "So, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. As Stendahl notes:

...it is not that you have something against your brother--the Westerner tends to read it that way. The Westerner, perhaps, does not even feel guilty before God (whome he encounters in a beautiful I-Thou relationship) if the other person has something against him. He would say: that is his business. But if he, as a product of Western culture, has negative feelings toward his brother, he will feel responsible and anxious to clean it up. Jesus has it the other way around, in good extrovert fashion: ...and (you) remember that your brother or sister has something against you. That has to be cleaned up first. Repentance means action in response to the pain of others.

Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1976), pp. 98-104)

Which leads us, finally, to the Church of Meaning and Beloning, and the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging. And the people who call Dr. Dobson's toll-free number, just seeking a little empathy. Having set the stage, we'll start the show shortly.

How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

Psalm 109:

1Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;

2For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

3They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

4For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.

5And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

6Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.

7When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

8Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

9Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

10Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

11Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

12Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

13Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

16Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

17As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.

18As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

19Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

20Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.

21But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.

22For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

23I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.

24My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.

25I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.

26Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:

27That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.

28Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.

29Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

30I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.

31For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

I would say, in the beginning, that this is a "difficult" psalm for worship, because it refers throughout to an individual. There is little room here for the collective voice, the corporate spirit of the body of believers. That's not an insurmountable obstacle, of course. Psalm 22 is in the first person, too, as is Psalm 23. And really, it isn't the personal narrative of the Psalm, it's the call for retribution; the same problem that keeps Psalm 137 from being heard regularly in worship, even though almost everyone knows the first six verses:

1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

We generally cut if off after that, and for good reason. It's not a universal psalm; it's a psalm of Exile, a lament of the homeless, but "home" here means, not a dwelling or a fixed abode, but an entire country. In that context, the desire for brutal vengeance is understandable, if still shocking. Out of that context, well....

But take Psalm 109 a few verses at a time, and notice the logic of its narrative:

1Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;

2For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

3They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

4For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.

5And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

6Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.

The wicked man has beset the psalmist, and despite showing love and good, the psalmist has been paid with evil. So what does he ask for, except that the evil man be paid in like coin? Not a remarkable sentiment, but not exactly a vengeful one, either. What the psalm asks for is justice, and while Christians understand the plea for justice to be one that falls on the just and the unjust alike, it's still not an un-Christian sentiment to turn to God and ask for it, especially in the name of the poor.

7When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

8Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

9Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

10Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

11Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

12Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

13Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Now that's pretty clearly the "difficult" part, and while C .S. Lewis and St. Augustine might prefer more metaphorical, and thus "theological," interpretations, that won't do. For one thing, I still remember the first lesson I learned in seminary, from the first day of my first class in studies of the Hebrew Scriptures. The professor, the dean of the school, announced that the scriptures we were about to study were not written as a prelude to the Christian scriptures of the "New Testament," and shouldn't be understood that way. It was an invaluable lesson, and obviously one I've never forgotten. This stands several centuries of Christian exegesis on its head, but it also undermines (and underscores) the hoary seminary joke about exegesis bringing "extra-Jesus" to the scriptures. So let's take the words of the Psalm at face value and in context, and try not to import, any more than necessary, an outside frame of reference (and certainly one as foreign as Christianity would have been to the original psalmist) into them.

What these words ask for is obliteration, the removal of the wicked from the earth. And really, who can argue with that? The argument with this call is almost entirely Christian (which does not negate it; but in fairness, this argument must be held in abeyance for a moment): such an obliteration would wipe out all, since in Christian humility all have sinned and fallen short. But that is Augustine's theology, from the 4th century. Already we are engaging anachronism to apply it retroactively to words that couldn't possibly presume Augustine's Platonic Christianity. Set aside that frame, and the words become less remarkable, or notable only for their seeming vitriol. But we already know the sin of this person who should be condemned, and the claim by the psalmist is not entirely personal (although it is the psalmist who has been beset):

6Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

17As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.

18As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

19Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

What is being asked for is the reward for evil, a reward brought on not by the curse of the psalmist, but by the actions of the condemned. And notice what this person has done; he has persecuted the poor and needy man, and "he might even slay the broken in heart." This is a man who "remembered not to show mercy." And this violation is not upon the psalmist, but against the covenant. The right understanding of these words is not that an individual seeks vengeance, but that a member of the group seeks to preserve the order of the community. As Krister Stendahl put it:

It is pointed out that for the Jew the Law did not require a static or pedantic perfectionism but supposed a covenant relationship in which there was room for forgiveness and repentance and where God applied the Measure of Grace.

That "covenant relationship" is not between me and God, but between the nation (understood as a familial or tribal relationship, not in the post-19th century geo-political sense) and God. As a member of that nation, it is the responsibility of all to uphold the covenant. Think of the inverse of Abraham's famous argument with God: if only 10 people are found to be just in Sodom and Gomorrah (where the sin was failing to show hospitality, not homosexual acts), then surely the cities should be spared. This is not, in other words, collective guilt, but a sense of collective responsibility. The evil man has defied the basic rules of the covenant. Of course he should be expunged from the community; not to keep it pure and holy, but to establish basic justice. By the same token we all want to see the criminal punished, if only to establish that crimes against society (i.e., other persons) cannot be allowed, lest all order and justice decay into chaos and anarchy.

The nature of the punishment, of course, is still the central issue. I'm not trying to re-write this Psalm, even as I try to understand it.

The Psalmist goes on to make this attack by the evil man a personal one, again. But no attack by an evil person is ever without impact on someone; all evil is ultimately personal to some victim:

20Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.

21But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.

22For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

23I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.

24My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.

25I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.

That last line is perhaps the most telling. How do you become a reproach to someone, if you are not also, in some measure, their responsibility? And how do you become their responsibility? Who, as the lawyer asked Jesus, is my neighbor? The answer under the covenant was clear. The answer given by Jesus, is equally clear, if somewhat broader; or at least less open to limitation. But here also is a person about to be obliterated, and what justice exists in that? Even Job's life was not taken from him; surely the psalmist is justified in asking that he be spared, as he is faithful, and that the wicked be removed, as that is all they deserve. And included in this prayer for vengeance, is a prayer for salvation:

26Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:

27That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.

28Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.

29Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

30I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.

31For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

A prayer not all that distant from the concluding verses of Psalm 22, a psalm which gets heard in many churches during Holy Week.

There is the issue of sin in this psalm. Our modern understanding of the term is complex (to say the least), but it is also almost entirely the product of Augustine's Confessions; which is to say it is not at all the understanding that a pre-Christian, and more particularly pre-Augustinian, psalmist would have. What Krister Stendahl wrote about interpretations of Paul equally applies here:

...it is exactly at this point that Western interpreters have found the common denominator between Paul and the experience of man, since Paul's statements about 'justification by faith' have been hailed as the answer to the problem which faces the ruthlessly honest man in his practice of introspection. Especially in Protestant Christianity--which, however, at this point has its roots in Augustine and in the piety of the Middle Ages--the Pauline awareness of sin has been interpreted in the light of Luther's struggle with his conscience. But it is exactly at that point that we can discern the most dramatic difference between Luther and Paul, between the 16th and the 1st century....

And, of course, the even more dramatic difference between Paul in the 1st century, and the Psalmist, in another country, another age, concerned with other problems than the conversion of the Gentiles.

It's the opening that intrigues me: "Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;" It seems to me a gentler form of this cry from Isaiah:

64:1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--

64:2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

64:3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.

A familiar sentiment at Advent, it turns out. It's the plea to God that is most interesting to me, because it sets this call apart from a mere cry for vengeance. This is a cry for justice from the author of justice, and yes, the person calling for it is not disinterested in the outcome, but who among us could be, and call the result, or the demand for it, justice?

So after all that wandering through the lines, where do I come down on this? I agree with Stephen Chapman of Duke University: "Imprecatory prayers were meant to remind the faithful of the covenant they held with God and the consequences that would follow if that covenant was broken." Although I have to say I made it all the way through seminary with ever learning the term "imprecatory prayers," and I don't put much stock, as a theologian, in the concept of categories of prayer. I understand it's use as a scholarly or even literary term, or a term of Biblical studies; but I don't understand the categorizing of any prayer made sincerely. Maybe it's the Pietist in me.

What of the psalm itself? What is a Christian reading of it? Well, you have to begin with the context of the prayer, which is the covenant with Israel. Misunderstand that, and you misunderstand the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures. Even the term "Old Testament" used to pay homage to that concept, if only slightingly. Put the psalm back in that context, and what do you have? A prayer for God to do justice. But Christianity reminds us that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, and any prayer for justice is a prayer against the interests of the one praying, as well as against those the "imprecation" is called down on. Ultimately this is still, in a Christian sense at least, a prayer of humility: the imprecation called for is pressed upon God. For Christians, it is a prayer offered like any prayer: in the context of "the Lord's prayer." So whenever we ask that a sinner be punished, we ask that we be punished, too. "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." You can pray this psalm as a Christian, so long as you end with those words; so long as you keep those goals in mind; so long as you remind yourself your anger can be taken to God as well as your praise, but God is not you, and you are not God. This prayer asks for justice; so does the prayer of Our Savior. This prayer asks for God to rule; so does the prayer of Our Savior. This prayer asks that the poor be saved. So does the prayer of Our Savior. And both prayers remind us: be careful what you pray for; because you might get it.

If we remember that, there is no evil in this prayer, and no room to offer it as an "imprecation" against Barack Obama, or anyone else, because we realize we do not stand outside a charmed circle, or inside one, and what we asked for is always visited upon us first. Are prayers of imprecation, then, Christian? Only if they are prayers that begin with "God have mercy on me, a sinner." Any Christian prayer that does not begin there, cannot truly be said to be a prayer.

IMHO, anyway.

There's a Biblical warrant for that humility, too; warrant that pre-dates the Gospels. Psalm 19:14:

14Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

Which is why it helps to read the whole, and not just the parts.

Amen.

Inconclusive unscientific postscript: Southern Beale (via Bouphonia) finds the source of the original "prayer", and makes the point for both of us.

IMHT(heological)O

Trump on heaven: "...if you're religious, you have, I think, a better feeling toward it. You know, you're supposed to go to heaven, ideally not hell, but you're supposed to go to heaven if you're good." pic.twitter.com/7mtIGWyt52

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) September 3, 2024

No one commenting on this is right about it.

Has the man read a religious text in his life? https://t.co/qsl71xbzxo

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) September 3, 2024

Probably not, but it's doubtful any other commentetator on this point has, either.

This is basically a Catholic doctrine he is espousing but conflicts with most Protestant teachings. Of course, he doesn’t know any of it so what difference does it make. The cultists think he’s Christian and fooling them is all he cares about. https://t.co/ioJfAWpPGw

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 3, 2024

No.

It's almost as if he has zero understanding of Christianity. Who could've guessed? 🤔

— Lindsey (@oufenix) September 3, 2024

Most Christians are no better. Trust me.

If you’re good. pic.twitter.com/HK9tKQcFvz

— Heisenberg (@WWHeisenberg66) September 3, 2024

Now that's good. Not "good" in the Christian sense; but good in the "proper application of facts to the statement" sense.

And with that sentence, ladies and gentlemen, Trump just revealed to us all that he has no idea what's happening in the Bible. He has never read it. He has never even second-hand studied it, he has no idea what Jesus's role was in the story. He's so freaking embarrassing and…

— Harly the 🇪🇪 Globlin (@HarlysCorner) September 3, 2024

Yeah, sorry, neither do you. IMHTO, of course. But I'm willing to bet your understanding is informed by second-hand sources telling you what the gospels and letters of the New Testament mean.  I would refer you all, for starters, to the work of Krister Stendahl.  Yes, "second-hand source," but a damned sight better than what you're used to.  You could learn a thing or two from that man.

Trump is an idiot.  But laughing at him about this doesn't elevate you one jot.  Laughing at him about anything doesn't elevate you one jot; but sometimes it just feels good.  Just know why you're laughing, and don't assume it's because you know better than he does.  It may be you don't.

Katie Britt Twitter

ok I am officially addicted to Katie Britt Twitter

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 9, 2024

I can quit anytime I want to.

Internet is undefeated https://t.co/Q34WtK1oDN

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 8, 2024

Yes, I grew up among girls like this. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Most actors would kill for Katie Britt's range pic.twitter.com/SOX3KAZLle

— Krister Johnson (@KristerJohnson) March 8, 2024

Katie Britt: Inside the Actors Studio

(Points to @FrankConniff for the idea) pic.twitter.com/JMbOwCfNwK

— Ben Bowman (@BowmanInc) March 8, 2024

Behind the scenes with Katie Britt before her big speech last night. pic.twitter.com/8dsTMBVMjM

— Dr. Annie Andrews (@AnnieAndrewsMD) March 8, 2024

Katie Britt’s unedited Republican response. pic.twitter.com/GFO2ndpUJk

— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) March 8, 2024

every single sotu response ever pic.twitter.com/rFFAz2Kp1i

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 8, 2024

Just want to thank Katie Britt and the Republican Party for gifting us the most fun day on this website since Four Seasons Total Landscaping

— Karen Schwartz (@pithywidow) March 8, 2024

"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?"

Nobody can come to grips with the drama of history unless he recognizes that most of the evil in this world is done by people who do it for good purposes. Evil is not that popular. If one gathered together a lot of people and said, "Let us be evil together," it would not go over very well. Thanks be to God!....

Thus the question is not to balance judgment and mercy. Whenever one reads the Bible or theology, what I would call the "who-is-who" question always arises. Who speaks to whom and for whom? The mighty message of God was often heard in a wrong way because one listened in on the wrong message. There are many examples of this. Jesus did say, "Man does not live by bread alone," but he never said that to a hungry person. When he was faced with hungry persons he fed them--4000 or 5000. And he mass produced wine in Cana just to prevent the wedding feast from turning into a fiasco. It was to Satan that he said "Man does not live by bread alone," speaking for and to himself. The church, however, often quoted Jesus in the wrong direction--to the hungry, in defense of the well-fed.

Who speaks to whom? For whom is judgment mercy? That is the question, and unless one understands it, even the most glorious dialectical understanding of theology becomes not only counterproductive but evil.

Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1976), p. 105-06.

I have to say, I appreciate just how much attention has been paid in the last three debates to the problems of the poor in America.


 [That silence is being filled with the sound of crickets.]



 Of course, all that has been said so far is the travesty of how many people are on food stamps. We still can't seem to decide if that's a sign of a weak economy, or of an overly generous government which refuses to teach the hungry how to fish. So now Paul Ryan visits a soup kitchen  in the fifteen minutes he has between campaign events, an act that can most charitably be described as pointless.  And while it only merits a blog post, even that post merits the careful annotation that Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, has voted in Democratic primaries for 17 years.  As Charles Pierce points out, if you don't think that nugget of information came from the Romney campaign, you shouldn't be allowed out in public without a handler.

Ryan cleaned pots that were already cleaned and met with volunteers who stayed to talk to him.  And the point of this, besides the photo op?  Probably to be sure he stayed away from the patrons of the kitchen, as much as anything.  Mitt Romney made much of the people asking him for help in the last debate, and his answer highlighted the question Stendahl is asking above:  Who speaks to whom, and for whom?

Mitt Romney speaks to the middle class, to the people presumably not on food stamps, but afraid they soon will be.  He at least speaks as if they were different classes of people., and as if food stamps were emblematic of economic policy failure.  He's careful not to mention food stamps (which, really, no longer exist, any more than "welfare" does) as something we are paying for with money we don't have, but that's only because it may not be only "the poor" who need them right now.

Who speaks to whom, and for whom?

Barack Obama?  He was careful to conclude last night that free-market capitalism will save us all, if we're just patient enough.  But what does that say to the 5-6% who will still be unemployed in even the best of economic times?  Social mobility will save you?

No, apparently it won't.

"If I just know that you share a rare surname with someone who was wealthy in 1800, I can predict now that you're nine times more likely to attend Oxford or Cambridge. You're going to live two years longer than an average person in England. You're going to have more wealth. You're more likely to be a doctor. You're more likely to be an attorney," Clark says.

The point is underlined a bit further on in the article:

"We can't predict the individual aspects of where you'll end up, but if we want to rank you overall in society, maybe as much as 60 percent of the outcome is determined at the time of conception," Clark says.

And if Clark is right, that number is almost impervious to change. The Industrial Revolution didn't change it. Neither did the communist revolution in China, World Wars I or II, or even social policies like the GI Bill. Clark says he's still working on exactly how to interpret that information.

But it's clear he has growing doubts about whether public policy can really help people move up the social ladder.

So it may be true that, as Jesus says to Pilate in "Jesus Christ Superstar:"  "Everything is fixed, and you can't change it."  Which means that when we talk about economic inequality, we really are talking about class warfare.

This, by the way, is what is at the heart of the affirmative action case before the Supreme Court.  The issue is not race, but class.  The plaintiff's parents went to UT, but she couldn't get in.  Clearly, she thinks, she deserves better; clearly someone of a lower class took her place.  Mitt Romney said much the same thing last night when he claimed that illegal immigrants "take the place" of people waiting patiently for legal permission to enter the country.  The legal process, of course, is not held up because "illegals" are filling up the spaces alloted to legal immigrants.  The very idea is so silly it's ludicrous, yet it was passed over without even commentary this morning.

I suppose he meant the "illegal" (i.e., 'brown') immigrants are taking jobs from American (i.e., "white") citizens, but how many American citizens are flocking to Alabama to bring in the harvest?  As even John McCain pointed out 4 years ago, "You can't do it, my friend."  Especially at the wages such work pays.

But don't mention that aloud, it might scare the children. 

In America the poor are not just poor, they're subhuman; if they're visible at all.  I've asked before why no one is photographed anymore with poor people, as Bobby Kennedy was.  Paul Ryan wasn't concerned to be photographed with them.  He preferred being seen with clean pots and pans.  NPR and other news outlets have at least begun to recognize that the poor have completely disappeared from our national discourse, which is probably just as well since the subject of the poor makes the discussion coarser by the day.  Jon Stewart makes me feel better about Ryan's photo-op; but only just.  I remember that the questions asked last night were selected by Candy Crowley from questions submitted by those chosen to even ask questions.  Either nobody asked about the poor, or Ms. Crowley filtered out such questions as intemperate or irrelevant.

Who speaks to whom, and for whom?

Of sin and atonement and what we can learn from Yom Kippur

"You can't conceive, my child, nor I nor anyone,

 the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God."

--Graham Greene

I said something below about imposing religious ideas on the non-religious, and the advent of Yom Kippur is my starting point for that observation.  Talk of the Nation devoted some time to the Jewish observance and the ideas of sin and atonement; the guests were a rabbi, an imam, and a Jesuit priest, and the discussion was uniformly excellent between them.  But first I think of the "Christian" holidays of Christmas and Easter, and even of Mardi Gras, which marks the end of Epiphany and beginning of Lent.  Those are widely observed holidays, or at least very widely known, but they commonly have as little to do with Christianity as a fish has to do with a bicycle.  Yom Kippur is distinctly Jewish, and distinctly related to the concepts of sin and atonement, as well as the nature of God.  Lent is similar, but far less widely observed among Christians.  But what was interesting to me was the very idea of "sin" in the first place.

Sin is a concept passed down in America through Puritanical hands and closely associated with an "angry God," thanks to the eloquence of Jonathan Edwards.  I'm hard pressed to condemn the Puritans, in part because they are part of my religious heritage through my ordination into the United Church of Christ.  I have a direct connection to them through the Congregationalist church which is a major historical root of the UCC.  But sin is so often, among Christians and those who know the term only from Christianity, a burden, a malaise, a source of shame and despair.  It doesn't have to be, although Christians since at least Augustine have treated it so.  As Krister Stendahl points out, if sin seems deeply connected to our Western sense of self, it's because the source of our self-consciousness (literally as well as the source of our shame/self-concern) is Augustine and his confessions.  Paul, if you can strip away your anachronistic lens placed over his letters by the saint of Hippo, has a clearly "robust conscience," and defies the sense of shame and despair that haunts more pious Christians nearly 2000 years later.  So if we are going to make sin a universal condition of all humankind, we have to discuss just what we mean by the term.

It isn't that we can't make sin a universal issue; it is more how we do it that concerns me.  To hear the rabbi discuss the tradition of atonement for Yom Kippur, I heard the echoes of a covenant behind it.  If Alberich is good enough to read this, perhaps he can add more information in the comments, because my knowledge here is admittedly fragmentary, and even my memory of what the rabbi outlined is fading away.  The practice, though, involved far more than prayer and confession in corporate worship (as almost every Protestant and Catholic does in weekly worship).  It involved activity, the basic thrust of which was to seek forgiveness and make amends before turning to God to ask for absolution.  This was, basically, the Muslim practice as well, but in the rabbi's description I heard the clear substrate of a covenantal idea, of being bound by the covenant with Abraham to others (perhaps even Gentiles.  Why not?), and owing them as much duty as you owed to God.

It started me thinking that religion today is declared to be a private practice, and that is the problem with it:  we want our religion to be private and personal, when of all things it should be the must public and corporate.  Not corporate in the meaning of a fiction of law, but corporate in the sense of corporeal, of lived in the world, and incorporated into daily life.  How many Christians prefer to leave their religion at the door of the church, to pick it up again like a hymnbook or a church bulletin on Sunday morning?  There is a problem, but I still maintain a slight one, in Christians behaving like Rick Perry:

On Tuesday he spoke on a conference call with fundamentalist Christian activist and former pastor Rick Scarborough as part of Scarborough’s “40 Days to Save America” campaign to inspire and organize religious right voters. Echoing sentiments he expressed in “Fed Up” and remarks he made at the Reliant event, Perry said the separation of church and state was a myth being used to drive “people of faith from the public arena.” Perry said America is engaged in “spiritual warfare” and that Religious Right activists who “truly are Christian warriors, Christian soldiers” need to stand up to “activist courts” and “President Obama and his cronies in Washington.”

“Satan runs across the world with his doubt and with his untruths and what have you,” Perry said, “and one of the untruths out there that is driven — is that people of faith should not be involved in the public arena.”

I think his words are the sheerest nonsense, but if he wants the people in the public arena to be only people of his version of faith, my best response is to show up in the arena with my version of faith; not to set mine aside so I can be a better citizen when I reach the agora.  And if I'm going to live my faith, my confession and repentance and atonement have be something more than what I offer to and ask from God in the privacy of my thoughts or in the repetition of a printed prayer.

Does that mean I should expect this of everyone else?  No, of course not.  But it was the rabbi who spoke of giving forgiveness as well as receiving the confession of sin, and that was the linchpin of the covenant, to me.  Of course, just because it is expected doesn't mean it is given, and just because two Christians, or two atheists for that matter, try to reconcile but one won't and reconciliation takes two, doesn't mean a covenant would fix it, or a covenant is broken.

A caller to the program said that people can forgive each other and learn to get along with each other without religion; that humankind knew apologies and forgiveness were necessary long before religion came along.  I'm not so sure about his history or his anthropology, but even taking him at face value and accepting the basis of his argument, the fact remains:  how many people will do that without some sense of the metaphysical, or the transcendent, of a covenant or a binding love of God or something beyond the need of two people to cooperate, to make forgiveness finally happen?  It is like the argument that religion is not needed to build hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly and the mentally challenged, places of refuge for workers forced to work far from home.  No, it isn't needed, but the German E&R church built all those things in the 19th century for fellow immigrants from what wasn't yet then Germany, for those who were strangers from foreign countries who spoke an almost common language and little more.  How many atheists did that, without first requiring a profit motive or a favorable tax law?

I have a book by a Jesuit priest that describes sin in terms of the American frontier of the 19th century.  Sin, as I recall him putting it, is either violating one of the rules of the town (for which the sheriff will harshly punish you); or sin is being in the wagon train, and wanting to turn back.  I like that second metaphor:  it places us in a journey, among others with a similar purpose, going to a destination that, like Abram in Genesis 12, we can't quite imagine.  And sin is not a rule we break, but a lack of faith in where we are going, and who is leading us there.  In terms of the Hebrew scriptures, it was the land flowing with milk and honey, which would be theirs so long as they were faithful to God; and the Torah gave them guidance (much more than that, but again, I'm no rabbi).  In the Christian scriptures, that destination is the kingdom of God, and the journey is not to a physical locality, but out among people.  People who believe as we do, and people who do not.  According to the letters of Paul, it's the people in the former category who actually give us the most trouble about where we are going, and how to get there, and how to behave along the way.

I'll have to leave it there.  Perhaps I can return when I am more coherent, or more sure of what I want to say.  But I won't get any further just now.

More Notes On A Prospective Project

Tchaikovsky, a gay man often criticized for his art being overly European-influenced and insufficiently nationalist, was basically the same guy as Vladimir Putin, if you think about ithttps://t.co/K7VDrNPTA7

— Zack Budryk (@BudrykZack) March 9, 2022

Except for the part where one was a composer/creator of art, and the other is a brutal, clueless tyrant. Putin is closer to the same guy as Trump . They both have a talent for destruction; neither is much good at creation.

My point is not to discuss the finer points of this tweet, but to consider why some qualities are valued and analyzed, and others are dismissed out of hand.  My text, again, is The Saint & The Atheist.  I haven't really spent much time with it this week, but I did get this far:

Aquinas was fortunate in having as his teacher Albert Magnus, popularly known as Albert the Great (1193-1280).  Albert outlived Aquinas and defended his pupil's thoughts, well aware and happy that in many areas his pupil had surpassed him.  Still, it was Albert who initiated the general attempt to integrate Aristotle's view of matter into the Christian tradition.  It was not an easy task, for it was Plato's thought rather than Aristotle's that seemed tailor-made for Christianity. (Catalano, p. 7)

I really don't like mental sloppiness, and that last sentence really snags my attention more than it should.  I want to talk about Aristotle's views of matter, which is what the chapter does on to discuss; but I stumble over that "tailor-made" line.  It's rather like saying it was inevitable the "good guys" would win the war and establish a world order that already (practically within my life time, if I were only 10 years older) seems to be coming apart in Ukraine.  To people of my generation (born after the war), the outcome seems inevitable, and it takes a great act of imagination to place yourself in the days when the war might have had a very different outcome, or left a very different map of Europe.  Just so for Plato.  He was attractive to Christianity partly because of the influence of Paul, who was in some ways more Greek than Hebrew (you don't find nearly as much Greek influence in the letters not attributed to Paul; or even in Luke-Acts, for that matter.  Though there is definitely more there than in Mark, Matthew, or John.  It's almost non-existent in Mark, a little stronger in Matthew, and in some ways almost at war with "the Jews," as John's gospel calls them (in translation, anyway), by the fourth gospel.  So was Plato tailor-made for Xianity, or did Xianity pick it up along the way, the better to discuss the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth in a Greek-dominated, Gentile world?  Christianity would have been a very different matter if Paul's efforts among Gentiles had been less successful.  And, as some Biblical scholars like Krister Stendahl have argued, that Greek perspective actually misunderstood Paul (so did Augustine, who cemented Plato to Christianity; but that's another topic for another day).  Christian doctrine is very much based on Platonism (even more so on Neo-Platonism, a few centuries after Paul), but to say Platonism was tailor made for Christianity is to get the chronology precisely backwards:  it was Christianity that was tailor-made for Platonism, and indeed kept it alive long after the rest of the world had lost it.

I mention that just to give you an idea of my bias here.  I know things Catalano doesn't; or perhaps I consider things important that he doesn't.  Let's move on to the particular:

It was appropriate for thinkers of Augustine's time to write and hold discussions in monasteries, whereas in the thirteenth century there were universities with houses of study within these universities.  Aquinas thus worked in a different setting than Augustine.  On the other hand, surely Augustine had a philosophical understanding of Plato, and so what is the difference?   I think that Aquinas had to learn how to think only as far as a philosopher without the aid of faith.  This is particularly true in his commentaries on Aristotle's physics, but it also true throughout Aquinas's thinking, particularly against the Arabic and Jewish philosophers.  For example, in a short work, On the Eternity of the World, and in the Summa of Theology, Aquinas admits that God could have created the world for all eternity, still sustaining it in being so that without his presence things would fall into nothingness.  Thus, Aquinas admitted that creation in time is a matter of faith and cannot be proved by reason, "Hence that the world began to exist is an object of faith, but not of demonstration of science."  Catalano, p. 16

Little of that means what Catalano seems to think it means.  Or, I should be clear, necessarily means what he seem to think it means.

1) Until the Enlightenment, theology was still the "mother of all the sciences." I don't say that to defend theology against critique, or to offer a backhanded critique against science. I just mean to say the sharp distinction between science and theology is a recent one; and still not as clear as some want it to be.  I point to the example of Fr. LeMaitre, Jesuit priest and originator of the Big Bang theory. Or Gregor Mendel, the monk in the monastery garden with his peas.

2) So the distinction, even in the 13th century, between philosophy and theology is an utterly false one.  It's an anachronism, a retrojection into the past of modern sensibilities, which serves only to distort what is being examined, and to misunderstand it.  Aquinas certainly worked in a different setting than Augustine, but Augustine came at the collapse of the Roman Empire (hence The City of God), while Aquinas came along at the end of the Middle Ages, and died just before the Renaissance created avenues of thought and social order unimaginable to either saint.

3)  Acting without the "aid of faith" would have been unimaginable to the monk, and a category error besides.  Earlier Catalano notes about Aquinas' understanding of a human being:

Aristotle granted that the human soul was unique--the highest of all souls--capable of absorbing the forms of all natural things lower than itself; and beyond this, the human soul was, through reason, able to touch the divine.

Now clearly "the divine" would mean something quite different to Aquinas than to Aristotle, but to the saint that ability to contact the divine was possible through faith.  While reason might assist the soul in making that contact, only faith could assure it, and since contact with the divine was the highest and best goal of life (hence being a monk), that makes faith something superior even to reason.  Which is not an argument about whether Aquinas was right or wrong (not yet, anyway), but to point out Catalano is trying to slice Aquinas thinly enough that the "awkward" theological views are sheered away from the more "acceptable" philosophical ones.  And that's the crux of my argument:  that he thinks that separation is both necessary and fruitful.

4) When Aquinas doesn't invoke faith, it's not because he's trying to converse with Jewish and Arabic philosophers (who themselves probably didn't cleave their religion from their thinking; Spinoza is still 400 years in the future).  It's because the matters he is concerned with that can be understood with reason don't invoke the need of faith to discuss.  We'll see just how important that distinction is, IMHO, in a moment.

5) I'm sort of intrigued by this idea that, without the sustaining presence of God, the universe falls into nothingness.  It's subtly Greek, for one thing (there's no support for such an understanding of Creation in the Scriptures; but then the lack of God's presence, even the withdrawal of it, from Creation is not even imagined there, either.).  It's also very modern, starting at least with the works of Eliot ("The Waste Land," in particular; echoes remaining in "Ash Wednesday") and Hemingway (especially "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," which is the theme of that story).  It's common now (70 years after Hemingway) in movies and TeeVee, to write stories where the absence of God is the reason for despair and bleak resignation to the absurdity of existence (i.e., we and the world are falling into nothing). Which makes it even more interesting.

6) The counter to that is connected to faith, according to Aquinas; something else we think we have lost in the modern world.  Again, to Aquinas, such mass despair and absence of faith would have been unimaginable.  But we have to understand "faith" not as a religious concept or substitute for the world "belief," or worse as "believin' what you know ain't so."  For Aquinas faith was a trust in God reinforced by society itself, a society centered on the church, a society where anchorites like Julian of Norwich were not so unknown it takes almost a history lesson to explain what the word “anchorite” means, and what it meant to the churches and communities where they were found.  Their expression of faith was far different from the popular ones today, where faith means acceptance of certain political leaders or politics, or political issue; or it means waiting fervently for God to make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice, with never a thought for your sister or brother who is naked, hungry, or sick, and in need of no more than a moment of your attention.  A faith that sees God in every person you could help, if only with a kind word or an extra shirt or a warm meal, is not a faith that believes what you know ain't so.  It may not be a faith that can be proved by reason, but to call it unreasonable is to call into question the definition of "reason" you are using.

7) Ironically, "that the world began to exist" is a demonstration of faith; we just call it science.  The Big Bang doesn't explain how, or even that, the world began to exist.  It is a theory based on available information that posits a cause, an almost Aristotelian unmoved mover at the beginning of time; at least time as counted by the cosmic clock set ticking by the Big Bang.  Beyond that, it is no more scientific than Genesis 1 or 2.  It just draws from circumstance ("these things are here") the same presumption of origin as Genesis:  that this began earlier, and it was caused by something of which all that is now is the result, the consequence, the effect of that that initial cause.

8) I started this because the consideration of Aquinas by Catalano is not likely to end where Aquinas did.  The story is that, after completing his Summa, Aquinas had a mystical vision.  A vision of God or of heaven or of the truth of Creation, I don't know.  But the story continues that after this vision Aquinas considered all he had written (and it is a considerable thing, his Summa) to be mere straw.  He never wrote another word, devoted himself to his monastic duties, and died in his 40's.

Can you separate Aquinas's work from that vision?  Can you split the monk from his monastery, and divide the man from his mystical experience?  You can certainly discuss his understanding of matter, and being, and what it means to be human.  But can you separate his thoughts on matter from his mystical experience?  I won't say his "belief in God," because we've already separated that from discourse, we've already almost irreversibly decided that "belief" is a matter apart from the considerations of reason and not even really a proper subject for discussion outside of a wholly religious context.  So I stick to the particular, peculiar, and individual experience the saint claimed as the reason he set aside his efforts at theology (which we know trim down into "philosophy," the better to be comfortable with it).  Do we undestand Aquinas without including that?  I've read a biography of Wittgenstein with the aim of understanding his philosophy.  I've read the comments of Russell on how he thought Wittgenstein veered away from his Tractatus to mysticism (a popular interpretation of Wittgenstein which has fallen into disrepute).  Or the anecdote of Rusell coming upon Wittgenstein in a brown study, and asking mockingingly "Are you contemplating philosophy?  Or your sins?," to which is former student answered "Both." 

Should I ignore these things when considering Wittgenstein's thought?  It is often commented on that Derrida was an Algerian Jew; I met the works of Emmanuel Levinas with the identification that he was Jewish.  These were not racial matters, but matters of context, of the culture and thinking they came from. It's not a restriction on either of them to note they were Jews, anymore than it is to note Wittgenstein can be understood as a religious thinker.  So if I separate Aquinas the reasoning monk from Aquinas the mystic, am I understanding Aquinas correctly?  Or not?

Whole sight, as John Fowles wrote; or all the rest is desolation.

Wednesday Of The Fifth Week Of Lent 2021

Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;

21 Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

22 Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?

24 For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.

25 For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

26 I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.

--Job 3:20-26 (KJV)

We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, sot that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.

--2 Corinthians 4:7-11

The scholar and bishop Krister Stendahl introduced me to the concept of Paul's "robust conscience."  He pointed out that Paul was not groveling when he wrote about the "miserable sinner that I am." It is Augustine who taught us to read Paul that wasy; a way wholly alien to Paul's understanding of his state.  The same "robust conscience" is seen in Job.  He moans aloud after everything is taken from him but his wife and three friends; who wouldn't?  But Job insists, to the end, that he is righteous and not at fault; And he is right; and he is proven right.

Observe those who hold erroneous opinions concerning the grace of Jesus Christ, which has come to us, and see how they run counter to the mind of God! They concern themselves with neither works of charity, nor widows, nor orphans, nor the distressed, nor those in prison or out of it, nor the hungry or thirsty.

--Ignatius of Antioch, 2nd century

It is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls.  Is is in this darkness that we find liberty, it is in this abandonment that we are made strong.  This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.

--Thomas Merton

Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? are not his days also like the days of an hireling?

2 As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work:

3 So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.

4 When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.

5 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome.

6 My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope.

Job 7:1-6 (KJV)

When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us.  So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of people we are.

--Cesar Chavez

Palm Sunday Evening

 

The preacher on television this morning recounted the atonement theory of Christian salvation right down to the last dotted "i" and crossed "t".  I wasn't having it, but I was in the other room anyway.  The Lovely Wife asked me what I thought, and I ended up handing her my copy of Paul Among Jews and Gentiles,  by Krister Stendahl.

I still owe you all a post on Stendahl.  I'll get back to it in Holy Week.  Pinky swear.

Anyway, the idea that God is too holy for humankind, and humankind too sinful for God, is not a universal one nor even a core Christian belief.  Julian or Norwich had visions of Jesus who told her "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."  Hardly the harrowing of souls at the end of time.  In my own church's traditions, German immigrants came here and set up orphanagaes and a hospital and a mental care facility and a place for river workers on the Mississippi to go at the end of the journey, rather than to bars and bordellos.  The preacher assured me that faith alone (sola fides, as Luther put it) would save us, and that works were not a path to salvation.  The old Protestant complaint about indulgences, which were pretty much dead by Luther's time, anyway. To put it bluntly, nowhere in the gospels (well, John, but that's why I'm not fond of John), so nowhere in the synoptics, does Jesus say "No one comes to the Father except through me."  John was fighting with the Hebrews, later Jews, in the early 2nd century.  It was a family fight.  Jesus in the synoptics stresses "works," as in caring for the sick and the helpless (women and children in a patriarchal society), and taking care of each other.  "The first of all will be last and servant of all."  The power of powerlessness.  Works without faith is dead; but so is faith without works.  The preacher emphasized evangelism, as in telling people "about Jesus" in order to save their souls.  My German spiritual ancestors let their deeds speak for them.  No translation into English needed.

Which brings me around to "Jesus Christ Superstar," still a major subject in my faith history.  A personal one; don't worry yourself with it.  The great controversy about “JCS” when it was released was that it treated Jesus as human. An ironic complaint, given that Holy Week is the church’s annual remembrance that the Christ was Jesus: was arrested, whipped, tortured, and executed in one of the most brutal and inhumane ways ever devised. And then died. Yes, “executed” incorporates “died,” but Christians have to remind themselves of that. They aren’t uniformly good at it.

The tenor of the times, the reason, I’d argue, for the controversy, is contained in the title song, sung by Judas just after the whipping and just before the crucifixion ends the opera. The repeated chorus says “Don’t you get me wrong/I only want to know.” The song is addressed to God, who supposedly would be offended by such questions. Ironic, that, since theologians and church leaders and Biblical scholars have been asking such questions for 2000 years. But among congregations and “ordinary people”? The status quo of religious belief is to be preserved at all costs. God knew what God was doing 2000 years ago, and don’t question it now.

“O that you would come down!” Yeah, nobody was reading that part of Isaiah to me in high school. AFAIK, I first read it in seminary a good 20 years later. It wasn’t pointed out to me before seminary how many times people question God in the scriptures, or how many times God demands they question God. Judas’ questions and proviso seemed pretty sensible to me. It would take me another 10 years out of seminary to realize the problem with Judas’ situation in “JCS” was not that God intended Judas to be damned for all time (we get that through Calvin, actually. Or rather, through mixing Calvinism (which ain’t all Calvin all the time) and Greek fatalism (via Greek tragedy). It’s a bad combination.), but the doctrine of the atonement that says Jesus had to die. I think now even Paul would at least mutter “You stupid Galatians” over that one.

Pauline theology was that Jesus became divine because of his absolute faith in God, and at the time of the resurrection. After death, in other words. It’s no coincidence Paul has virtually nothing to say about the life of Jesus (or his sayings). That alone poses a problem for the gospel writers, who don’t want to leave the reveal to the end. Mark manages it (no nativity story, and no encounters with Jesus after finding the empty tomb), but Matthew and Luke and John push the godhood in Jesus of Nazareth back further and further, and the nature of the man qua man becomes more difficult to interpret. The atonement theory, Christ was born to die on the cross, was meant to be a solution to that problem.  Jesus had to be human to die, but God in order to atone. But the central conflict of “JCS,” that Judas was born to play his role in making the crucifixion happen, raises a new problem. Do we thank Judas for his timely betrayal? Or damn him for all time? And what kind of salvation scheme is this, anyway? One that depends on a particular person being damned so the rest of us can step over him like a bridge to our salvation?

Thank you, Judas?

I should not be understood by this to be denying the mystery of the Holy Trinity. I’m not going Unitarian on you. I just think the atonement theory has outlived its usefulness, because the truth is, we are always struggling to understand ourselves and God and the revelation not just of God but of the creation and our own humanity. Theories change, in other words. That doesn’t mean God does, anymore than the universe does because our theories about it change. But we do, and what and how we understand does. God does change, in fact, even as we do. But mutatis mutandis, we remain who we are.

Consider it another mystery.

But JCS is mired in the atonement Christ, and caught in that theory is the human Jesus of Nazareth. The value of this is that it reminds us the Easter morning we take as an inevitability was impossible to even imagine during the original (un)Holy Week. Part of the purpose of Holy Week is this remembrance, and the effort to live it over again as if we don’t know the outcome. Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday used to follow each other in the last weeks of Lent, opening Holy Week by remembering the crucifixion, which itself is observed on Good Friday. Good Friday itself was actually the beginning of Triduum, and the Easter Vigil which lasted until Easter morning. Sunrise services on Easter were an echo of the Great Vigil (the other vigil on the liturgical calendar was Christmas Eve, the remnant of which is the midnight service that welcomes the birth of the Christchild. One vigil sits up with the dead and the mourners; the other waits with the expectant parents). 

The Great Vigil was a service of four services, recapitulating the salvation history of scripture (I haven’t abandoned soteriology, just relocated it). They are: a service of light (Christ as light of the world); a service of water (Christ as water of life, and recalling baptismal vows); a service of the word (Christ as logos); and a service of bread and wine (Christ as the Eucharist).I used this service as my Easter service, starting in a dark worship space and introducing light, and then music. The scriptures began with the Exodus story, ending with the resurrection story. The service ran from darkness to light to baptism remembered to a joyful Eucharist.

JCS is about the week before the victory was known or expected. It's not presented as a great celebration, despite the Hosannas of Palm Sunday in the beginning of the second act. Judas reflects the Pauline theology: Jesus is not God before Easter morning. “You’ve started to believe/the things they say of you/You really do believe/This talk of God is true.” And a twist on Paul, who seldom mentions what Jesus said: “You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say.” I often think of that line when I’m in the presence of people who emphasize salvation over servanthood.

The enemies of Jesus don’t see him as God; they see him as human. All too human, and dangerous for it. And here is where JCS clearly follows the gospels, rather than history. It’s unlikely the religious authorities (it’s anachronism to even label them “Jewish” at the time if Jesus, even though John uses the term some 75 years after the first Easter Sunday) were upset enough by Jesus of Nazareth to want him dead. Crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, reserved for political prisoners, the greatest threat to the Pax Romana. Pilate probably executed Jesus without a second thought. In fact, he was removed as governor of Judea because he crucified too many, too freely, even for Rome. Most of the gospel stories of Pilate dithering or arguing with Jesus or washing his hands in public, or even agonizing over the decision to execute Jesus, are pure invention. The gospel writers wrote that so Rome would not look harshly on them.  They weren't that sure about their resurrection.  Jesus was executed for being the guy who caused so much trouble in the Temple the week before Passover. It took a while to identify him, but when they did, Pilate didn’t need priests and Sadducees asking to rid them of this troublesome prophet. He probably didn’t care what they thought in the first place.

Whether that took place on "Palm Sunday," Christians commemorate it on this day. It is the beginning of the darkest week on the liturgical calendar, one traditionally concluding with a music-less service of word and prayer on Good Friday, with the church draped in funereal black.  At least, that's the way I used to do it.  In the Episcopal practice, the altar was cleared of all adornment and paraments, and ritually washed.  All in silence.  It is not a celebration in any sense of the word.  Some churches leave the sanctuary open on Holy Saturday, for vigils and silent prayer.

The gospel writers cared what Rome thought, though, they blamed their enemies: local religious leaders who were opposed to their religious movement. Rome had the power to do to them what it did to Jesus. Even Herod couldn’t do that. As I say, they weren't that assured of their own resurrections.  Who can blame them?  They were only human.

But JCS reminds us Jesus was human. Luke says he sweated blood in Gethsemane. He was truly afraid of death, the Synoptics agree. JCS presents this as part of God’s plan, as John does, but I think that lets us off the hook. We killed Jesus. People like us. Human beings. JCS hits this, too. It’s the chorus, literally the Greek chorus of a tragedy, the voice of the people affected by the decisions of the tragic hero, who demand Jesus’ death. This I find more likely. What Jesus says becomes a burden. First shall be last? The first of all shall be last and servant of all? The sheep are the ones who served others, the goats are the ones who served only themselves? And the sheep are ushered into the presence, the goats left out where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth? No wonder salvation is about "letting Jesus into your heart.” No wonder that matters more than the things Jesus said. It’s so much easier on us.

JCS reminds us that Holy Week, especially, was about Jesus being fully human. And that we are fully human, too. Capable of the humanity of Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman was justly praised for her love song in the opera, but her brief passage gently rebuking Peter for denying Jesus literally throbs with sorrow, confusion, and heartbreak. Her character represents all the women who are Jesus’ disciples in the gospels. That portrayal is very true to the gospel stories.), as well as the blunt cruelty of the crowd demanding Jesus’ head.

Who killed Jesus? We did. Why was Jesus resurrected? In spite of us. What should we do about it? Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. And love one another, as Jesus loved us . Because, after all, Jesus was one of us, too.