Toward Attention

The Spirit, a Seed

"(The parable of the mustard seed, Mt. 13:31ff.) Now consider God's wisdom with me here, how, by using examples of things which appear to us to be of little significance, He outlines what surpasses our intellect and reason. And He does all this in order that those who are unbelieving, and by consequence of their unbelief become unworthy of such matters, may remain blind and have no portion in these good things, and that the believers, who receive the word of the parables with assurance, may behold the manifest fulfillment of what occurs in them, the truth itself. For these parables are images of things which are actually happening. Listen to how this is so. The grain of mustard is the Holy Spirit, and the latter - understand me well! - is nothing other than the Kingdom of Heaven. The man is every believer who wants to receive this seed by doing the commandments. The field is no other place than the heart of each one of us. It is there [in our hearts] that we receive and hide that one
seed which is not many, nor divisible, but Who is by nature undivided and inseparable."

St. Symeon the New Theologian.

I have often argued that the talent (in the parable of the talents) and the seed (in the parable here referenced) are images of the divine and life-giving Spirit: this is late confirmation of this tradition of exegesis (if St. Symeon's reading reflects a tradition), but confirmation that this is quite canonical, and thus ordinary (in the etymological sense of that word) quite late into the tradition.

It is nice to see this imagery joined explicitly to the commandments, as I've never seen the relation between these things discussed in the same passage.

Empirical Fidelity vs. Faithful Translation

One of the ways in which our modern preoccupation with rendering empirically accurate models is inappropriately brought into the study of ancient texts related to history is the way that we tend to judge the text based on whether it can supply a correspondence or be verified by other correspondences. This may not be the best way to approach the meaning and intention of ancient texts.

I am reading Anna Silvas' The Asketikon of St Basil the Great (New York: Oxford, 2005) right now for a paper on St. Gregory of Nyssa, and she cites a large chunk from St. Rufinus on his intentions in translating a work of St. Gregory's about another St. Gregory:

When experienced teachers of the Sacred Scriptures try to convey something from the Greek language for Latin ears, they take care not to translate word for word, but sense for sense. And well they might. For if Latin discourse intended to imitate the Greek idiom, it would quite choke both the rhythm of speech and the sense of meaning. And this is also true for us in translating the life of Gregory Thaumaturgus from Attic speech. In recasting what the holy Gregory of Nyssa composed in a foreign, that is, in the Greek tongue, we have made many additions and many omissions, as the most suitable meaning required, attending to the sense while fittingly accomodating Latin readers.

Silvas continues: "Rufinus, in short, sought to refashion his Greek source document as a Latin work of art in its own right." This freedom simply wasn't necessarily seen as deceptive, but could be an honest effort at faithfully translating the meaning of a text.

Think of what this means for the Gospels: we should not read them imagining them as corresponding empirically to things as though they were camcorder reels. That doesn't mean we shouldn't deal with the very concrete images of the text, but we shouldn't confuse that with history unless it intends us to locate the meaning in history, or in relation to history.

How to Make a Failed Attempt at Voting Saints Off the Island

So I was looking for St. Ambrose of Milan's commentary On the Song of Songs in English, but couldn't find it: I did find this, however.

I challenge the reader to tell me what's wrong with this sentence on this particular web-page:

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN COMMENTARY ON SCRIPTURE. Edited by Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall. This will be a 27 volume series of Patristic Commentaries on the Old and New Testament. This series gives the commentaries of the Church Fathers, as well as ecclesiastical writers like Augustine, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, on the Holy Scriptures.

I get tired of seeing these little jabs. No one does this for St. Gregory of Nyssa. 

Genesis, Creationism, C. John Collins

I'm not a Creationist, if by Creationist one means (A) "someone who believes that the world is (very roughly) 6,000 years old and was made in seven literal 24-hour periods," (B) "Man did not develop from the lower animals, but is the immediate and special creation of God" or (C) "the Bible is literally true, and the Paradise story records historical events that one could have seen with a camcorder."

Nonetheless, the Fathers generally seem very clearly to favor the interpretation of an historical Adam (see St. John Chrysostom here), and this is such a widespread belief, that to deny it seems to call into question, for me, the assumptions of Orthodoxy regarding the inspiration of the Tradition as well as the inspiration of the Scriptures (which also seem to teach an obsolete cosmology -- which wouldn't be a problem for me if the obsolete cosmology did not seem inseparably tangled-up with dogmas such as the Ascension and the Fall and whatnot).

So I read and I read and I read on this topic, because it causes me such pain. The texts seems to me to have been written by a priestly school that did not understand them to be literal reports, but how to reconcile this with the Tradition? The function of Adam language is logically seperable from the question of the correlation of such statements to historical events. That seems the way to go.

Unfortunately, not everyone who is bothered by this issue is honest about it to the end. I don't really have a solution, only fragments. Some people, in their published writings on this topic, wish for you to grant them premises that are not obvious, would like to make it look like some things are plainly obvious to all that are not obvious (at least, not to me).

So I'm reading an article by a Protestant writer on this topic, Mr. C. John Collins. I came across it elsewhere, and I don't want to buy another book (the article is an abridgment of a book). It is frustrating to skim past what strikes me as superficially technical discussions of "story" and "history" (they're almost good at some points, but miss the mark), and especially "worldview" (such a meaningless word: it really can only mean "perspective"...if it's used to mean something else, reach for your purse, because you're being had).

He rightly touches upon the relation between the Church's dogmas and the historical affirmations they are bound up with. Though he fumbles with articulating the problem clearly, he clearly does get that there is a problem in this general area: people like me, who wish to schuck the early chapter of the Genesis text (and the Church's traditional interpretation of them) to any concrete historical Adam, Eve, or Garden, may not be able to hold on to the Church's corresponding teachings regarding Creation, Man, Evil, Theodicy, Salvation, etc.

Does the story carry the worldview, equate to it, communicate it, or something else? However we articulate this, there is one common affirmation: the worldview is not an abstraction derived from the story; one cannot treat the story simply as the husk, which we then discard once we have discovered the (perhaps timeless) concepts. Of course, there may well be transcendent truths (such as moral norms); but they gain their power from their place in the story—that is, they equip the members of a community to play their parts in the story meaningfully. It is the worldview story that, if well told, captures the imaginations of those who own it, thereby driving them on and holding their loyalty.

As you can see, the word "worldview" should be dropped. It brings needless obfuscation. How do we tell the story of the world and of salvation if we reject the historical nature of the Genesis texts, of their characters and events? Elsewhere he better states the problem:

[...] authors who say things like, “Genesis 1–11 aims to tell us, not history or science, but theology,”31 are trying to say something worth saying about Genesis 1–11, but they are indulging in a problematic disjunction. The theology is not separable from the story, as we can see from the fact that one of those “theological truths” is that the One who created the world is the good God who revealed himself to Israel, and not the capricious gods of the other peoples—a historical assertion!

If he's correct, then the Church will fade away: or rather, it will be broken, and her fragments, her components -- her corpse -- will be gathered up into new religious configurations. This seems to be already happening in some places (I dare not name them, for I may include some who ought to be excluded, or exclude some who ought to be included, or it may simply be ubiquitous, and Nietzsche's Death-of-God may truly have fallen upon us).

He'll make some OK distinctions about the different ways that people read the text, such as 

there are at least four possible ways of taking the material in Genesis:

1. The author intended to relay “straight” history, with a minimum of figurative language.

2. The author was talking about what he thought were actual events, using rhetorical and literary techniques to shape the readers’ attitudes toward those events.

3. The author intended to recount an imaginary history, using recognizable literary conventions to
convey “timeless truths” about God and humans.

4. The author told a story without even caring whether the events were real or imagined; his main goal was to convey various theological and moral truths.

(Unfortunately, Collins favors (2). He might be correct: but then the biblical author(s) of Genesis 1-3 would be wrong.) Then he goes on to write things that sound very sensible, followed by quotes that seem completely at odds with what he writes about them:

No one knows what materials the author of Genesis used in composing this story. Probably he had access to some versions of the Mesopotamian stories; but beyond that, God alone knows what else he might have had. Maybe there were Hebrew stories of the patriarchs, beginning with Abraham; some of them might even have been written. Perhaps Henri Blocher’s suggestion is best, that the author of Genesis “reconstructed” the past, working backwards from ordinary human experience to what must have caused it, giving us a tale that provided a contrast to the other stories:

"Genesis aims to supply the true reconstruction, guided and guaranteed by divine inspiration, over against the fantasies and errors reconstructed by the others. There is nothing in that which allows us to take the event as a symbol."

Finally,

Blocher also points out that “the presence of symbolic elements in the text in no way contradicts the historicity of its central meaning.”

Of course, as Collins presents it, and as it stands, Blocher is not really pointing out anything, but asserting something.

I'm still working my way through the article, but that's my two cents so far. Frustrating. Does anyone actually want to engage the science? No. Creationists, by definition, seem to always avoid dealing with the science in a direct, sustained way. They sometimes pick off bad science, it is true, but then they expand their legitimate critiques into the foundation for counter-positions, which they are not adequate for.

St. Maximus on Warring Against Rancor by Prayer

"If you harbor rancor against anybody, pray for him and you will
prevent the passion from being aroused; for by means of prayer you
will separate your resentment from the thought of the wrong he has
done you. When you have become loving and compassionate towards him,
you will wipe the passion completely from your soul."

                       St. Maximus the Confessor.

To Speak and to Write

There is much to commend Arturo's Reditus, and I lament that I haven't read more of it in the past. One recent post that got my attention was about the spoken word vs. the written word. This is one of the issues that drove me to Holy Orthodoxy, the presence of spiritual formation as the passing on of the Spirit from a master to his disciples. It's not primarily about books.

Concerning the written word in Early and Late Antiquity:

Plato and Pythagoras were against it. Clement of Alexandria likened writing a book to putting a sword in the hands of a child. A master can choose his disciple, but a book cannot choose its reader. It is no wonder that many ancient cultures have a law of the arcanum.

I wrote a blog entry once on texts as surfaces. Perhaps I should dig up that old post and re-post it.

 

Guarding the Heart

"If...the spirit that rules over the evil demons and passions rises up against you, do not desert your place (cf. Eccles. 10:4)  - that is to say, do not leave any part of your soul or body unwatched. In this way you will master the evil spirits that assail you and you will boldly present yourself to Him who examines hearts and minds (cf. Ps. 7:9); and He will not scrutinize you, for you will have already scrutinized yourself. As St. Paul says, 'If we judged ourselves we would not be judged' (I Cor. 11:31)."

St. Gregory Palamas.

I have been realizing lately how little I've been monitoring the "thoughts behind my thoughts," how little I've been weeding out evil impulses from flesh and spirit that promise little delights that together form the foundation of more serious sin and disable virtues from taking root in the soul. I suspect that, without realizing it, I thought that I could put up fences around my heart and leave it unattended, and that this would be sufficient. The problem is that this doesn't work. It is written that we must "guard our hearts," not "set up fences around our hearts." Guarding is an activity that requires constant attention, as any good goalie knows. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

The Lord makes it very clear, in the Gospel According to St. Mark, that uncleanness comes from our hearts. How then, can we not attend to our hearts without risking categorical uncleanness? Yet vigilance, though necessary, is not enough, of course -- "unless the Lord watches, the watchmen watch in vain." We must be vigilant, but we must keep watch before the Lord's Countenance. Only Light can drive out darkness.

St. Symeon the New Theologian: the Gospel in Brief

"The purpose of the incarnate economy of God the Word, which is proclaimed by all the divine scriptures and which we read but do not understand, is surely summed up by saying that He has shared in what was ours to let us share in what was His. The Son of God became the Son of Man in order to make us men the sons of God. By grace He lifts up our race to what He is by nature. He gives birth to us from on high in the Holy Spirit, and then straightway leads us into the kingdom of heaven; or rather, He gives us the grace to have this kingdom within us. We therefore have more than just the hope of entering here; we really possess it as we cry out: 'Our life is hidden with Christ in God.'"

St. Symeon the New Theologian.

Accusations, Cosmic Collapse, the Need for Chastity

If we do not accuse ourselves, but others, we become demonic. In the prayer of St. Ephraim which we say during Lent (and which those of us who are less spiritual than most say year round), we say quite simply:

"O Lord and Master of my life,

drive far away from me

the spirit of despondency,

negligence,

avarice,

and idle talk.

"But grant unto me, thy servant,

the spirit of chastity,

humility,

patience,

and love.

"Yea O Lord and King,

grant me to see mine own transgressions,

and not to judge my brother,

for blessed art thou unto ages of ages, amen."

This should be enough for us to see the unity of chastity and charity. If we do not chasten ourselves, we will devour our neighbor, even if we do it ever so innocently, and think of them as lower than ourselves, or needing guidance and instruction, or poor and lost, or somehow worse off than we are. "Lord, I thank Thee that I am not like other men..." -- the rude, the impious (or "unsaved"), the braggarts, the tardy, the intolerant, the lazy, the cruel, etc. Now, charity does not mean blindness, but "love covers a multitude of sins" -- covers them, does not make them invisible. Noah's nakedness is covered by the charity of his sons. 

He who washes his neighbor's garment with inspired words, or who sews it up by contributing to his needs, has the outward appearance of a servant, but is really a master. But when he acts in this way he must be careful to do so truly as a servant, lest by growing conceited he loses both his reward and his proper rank. 

St. Ilias the Presbyter, Gnomic Anthology 1.50.

This is, of course, nothing but a reiteration of what the Master teaches: "remove the plank from your own eye before you remove the splinter from your brother's eye," and "he who is first among you must be least of all and servant of all." And certainly, they must not be puffed up with the sense that they are, of course, servant of all. The dangers of the Enemy are everywhere. Without self-accusation and chastity, true and interior chastity that encompasses more than just the groin, the world collapses.

"All The Better to Eat You With, My Dear"

The first public-ministry appearance of Jesus in each of the four canonical Gospels indicates what that evangelist wished to highlight about the Person and work of the Master. In the Gospel According to St. Mark, this appearance is the exorcism of the man in the unclean spirit. 

Note that in the Greek, the man does not merely have an unclean spirit, he is not "the man with an unclean spirit" -- he is in an unclean spirit. The spirit has swallowed him. When he enters the Synagogue, the man cries out with the voice of the demon, "What have we to do with you," etc. Then Jesus addresses the unclean spirit, "Shut up! Come out of him!" -- He addresses the demon, not the man, and does not say "expel him," but "come out of him." That agent which encloses him in spiritual filth is also the man's interiority. The filth of the demon is inside and outside. The man is totally gobbled up, with no hope of escape.

(Of course, this points to the ultimate theme in Mark that sin, death and the devil have swallowed man, and so it is only through the victory on the cross, the resurrection from the dead and the distribution of the power of that resurrection by the Spirit that the power of sin is broken, the stomach of death is ruptured and the dominion of the satan is defeated. Thus, the Lord's rebuke  of the demon here in St. Mark and the Lord's rebuke of the serpentine chaos waters in Psalm 104:7 and in Job 26:10-12. In both the mythic Old Testament images and in the Gospel narrative, a world is established after this conquering of dark powers by the Lord.)

This should instantly call to mind the images in the Screwtape Letters, with demons eating other demons, and feasting on the souls of those they have consumed, in this life, through sin. Our sins literally eat us alive. How many souls do we know, who, in old age, have clearly become their sin? Usually it is not so obvious: people function well-enough in public.

Let us "cast off" every weight that binds us to sin, by taking up our cross! The cross is no instrument of death, though we sin-swallowed men will see the abolition of our sin as the abolition of our loves and even the extinction of our identity (the cross is "foolishness to the Greeks"), for sin has grown so many roots in our heart that we are nearly one with it . We must fight this, and receive the operation of the Spirit, and struggle, or else all is lost for us. God does not save us against our will, even though our will has no power to save itself.

We receive salvation by grace and as a divine gift of the Spirit. But to attain the full measure of virtue we need also to possess faith and love, and to struggle to exercise our free will with integrity. In this manner we inherit eternal life as a consequence of both grace and justice. We do not reach the final stage of spiritual maturity through divine power and grace alone, without ourselves making any effort; but neither on the other hand do we attain the final measure of freedom and purity as a result of our ow diligence and strength alone, apart from any divine assistance. If the Lord does not build the house, it is said, and protect the city, in vain does the watchman keep awake, and in vain do the labourer and the builder work (cf. Psalm 127:1-4).

St. Symeon Metaphrastis, Paraphrase of the Homilies of St. Macarius of Egypt I.1.

We must work with the Worker and watch with the Watcher. It is for this that we are freed from bondage to those things that consume us. If we are freed, and to the measure we are freed. "To him who has [ears to hear and so listens], more will be given, but to him who has not [ears to hear, and neglects to attend to the Mirror of the Son Who reveals the truth about ourselves and liberates us], even what he has will be taken away."

I am afraid, and will leave you while I seek the Hem of His Garment.