Toward Attention

The Glory of Moses and the Glory of the New Testament

The Epistle section for today's daily scripture reading is from 2 Corinthians:

2Corinthians 3:4-11

    And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.

I could not help but wonder, as I read this, whether the Apostle is assuming that some of this glory has to do with liturgical functions (and thus whether there is some significant liturgical continuity between the Jerusalem temple liturgy, which is typologicall united with the Sinai account here referenced), or whether the remark on "spirit gives life" (contrasted with "the letter killing") implies that the glory is not outward (and may very well have no outward manifestations), but inward (which might justify a kind of liturgical minimalism, such as is often assumed by biblical scholars to have been the case in the NT era).

I only ask this because "glory" is a technical word for theophany often, and theophany as it has to do with the divine radiance generated within a creature -- such as Moses, or, within the temple/tabernacle, in the "garments of glory," the garments that the high priest would wear.

Jesus Himself often spoke of "glory," especially in the latter chapters of St. John's Gospel.

Sorry for the sloppy thought, all.

Virtue and Knowledge

"...we ought to learn the virtues through practicing them, not merely through talking about them, so that by acquiring the habit of them we do not forget what is of benefit to us. 'The kingdom of God', St. Paul says, 'resides not in words but in power' (I Cor. 4:20). For he who tries to discover things through actual practice will come to understand what gain or loss lies in any activity that he pursues..."

St. Peter of Damaskos.

New/Old Perspectives

Great post on the newer wave of biblical studies here. Well said, John. The biblical text is not to be schucked in favor of either the history or ur-text that lies behind the canonical, final form of the text itself: the biblical text is not to be translated into something other than the story it presents to the reader.

St. Gregory Palamas on the Divine Light

"This most joyful reality, which ravished Paul, and made his mind go out from every creature but yet return entirely to himself -- this he behold as a light of revelation, though not of sensible bodies, a light without limit, depth, height or lateral extension. He saw absolutely no limit to his vision and to the light which shone round about him, but rather it was as it were a sun infinitely brighter and greater than the universe, with himself standing in the midst of it, having become all eye. Such, more or less, was his vision."

St. Gregory Palamas.

Funnel

The moral decisions required for ethical purity are difficult and entail suffering. They require constant attention, watchfulness, focus. Kedping watch and focused practice is difficult -- it often feels constricting, like going through a funnel. Eventually, we are enticed away from keeping watch to slacken and "be human," to be somnolent/relaxed, distracted, dissolute.

 I call to mind the Lord's words about a "camel going through the eye of a needle" -- it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.  (I wrote before on this passage.)

We see this in St. Paul's argument throughout Colossians, where he sounds it off at the beginning:

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness [of God] should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight— if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister. [Colossians 1:19-23, NKJV, my edits]

[Christ] we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. [Colossians 1:28]

"If you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the Gospel." Immovability entails this funnel -- it is difficult to avoid passionate distractions from this end of our salvation and perfection ("perfect in Christ Jesus"), whether they are publicly recognized as such or not.

We are to

[hold ]fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God. [Colossians 2:19]

Our steadfastness is not necesssary because God wishes to reward it extrinsically, as though our salvation were something external to our cleaving to God in Christ, "in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily" (2:9), but is simply our abiding in Christ, our drinking from the fount of His divine-humanity via our loving attention, obedience, delight. This requires the stripping away of all sin, though:

In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead (2:11-12)

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. (3:1-2)

Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (3:5)

But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him (3:8-10)

And then the goal of this stripping-away, which is the acquisition of holy things:

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (3:12-17)

This is so much more than a Boy-Scout ethic. How far we are from this! --not merely from the virtues listed as though they were to be considered abstractly, and we against them as a background, but singing to each other always, being thankful, letting the peace of God rule in our hearts, teaching one another, giving thanks to God the Father through Christ in all things, doing all in the Name of Christ -- that is, out of a desire for Him and, so to speak, manifesting Him in all things. This really does require the stripping away of the "sins of the flesh" that we have put off in baptism, and the vesting with the New Man, Christ.

It requires that we go through a funnel of sorts, as the camel through the eye of a needle. This cannot be but a painful exercise for those of us who are burdened like the rich man.

 

Origen on Spiritual Adultery

This from Origen's Homilies on Leviticus, published by CUA Press:

"He will not take a harlot." [Lev 21:14] What soul is "a harlot"? That one which takes "lovers" to itself, about which the prophet says, "You were prostituted to your lovers." Who are these "lovers" that enter to the prostituted soul except the hostile powers and demons that are captivated by the desire of her beauty? For the soul was created by God beautiful and becoming enough. Hear how God Himself speaks: "Let us make man in our image and likeness." See how becoming, how beautiful the soul is. It has "the image and likeness of God." When the opposing powers, that is, "the devil and his angels," [Rev 12:9] behold this beauty, they covet its aspect; and because they cannot become his bride, they desire to be a prostitute with it. Therefore, O man, if you receive in the bed of your soul the adulterous devil, your soul has prostituted itself with the devil. If you receive "his angels," if you receive diverse spirits which persuade you to sin, your soul has prostituted itself with these. If a spirit of wrath or envy or pride or imurity should enter your soul and you receive it, if you should assent when it speaks in your heart, if you should take pleasure in these things which it suggests to you according to its mind, then you have prostituted yourself with it. Therefore, "the great priest will not take a harlot and will not contaminate his seed in his people." [Lev 21:14] What is that "seed" by which he does not want "to be contaminated"? It was written in the Gospels, "He who sows sows the word." [Mark 4:14] Therefore, he does not want the word of God "to be contaminated" by those "who sow." But who are they "who sow"? They are those who bring forth the word of God in the Church. Therefore, let teachers hear lest perhaps they trust the words of God to "a contaminated" soul, to "a harlot" soul, to an unfaithful soul, lest perhaps they cast "a holy thing to the dogs and pearls before swine"; [Matt 7:6] but let them choose clean souls, "virgins in the simplicity of faith which is in Christ"; let them commit to them secret mysteries; let them speak to them the word of God and the secrets of the faith that "Christ may be formed" in them through faith. Or, do you not know that from this seed of the word of God which is sown Christ is born in the heart of the hearers? For the Apostle also says this: "Until Christ be formed in us." [Gal 4:19] Therefore, the soul conceives from this seed of the word and the Word forms a fetus in it until it brings forth a spirit of the fear of God. For so the souls of the saints say through the prophet, "By your fear, Lord, we conceived in the womb and brought forth in labor and gave birth; we have made the spirit of your salvation upon the earth." [Isaiah 26:18] This is the birth of the holy souls, this is conception; these are holy unions which are convenient and apt for the great high priest, Christ Jesus our Lord, "to whom is glory and power forever and ever. Amen!" [1 Peter 4:11; Rev 1:6]]

I thought this was an interesting presentation of the motivation of demons. In the daily prayers I constantly hear about how the disordered passions prevent the birth of Christ in my soul.  

Marital Fidelity vs. Polytheism and Idolatry

Sexual fidelity to a spouse, regardless of circumstance, is homologous to fidelity to the Lord, regardless of the “waves of doctrine.”

Infidelity is usually the result of appetites (primarily emotional, as these emotions are bound up with sexuality) going astray from the object of devotion, and searching out other objects for their satisfaction.

(Whether the appetites are frustrated is irrelevant to my argument, but if frustrated appetites precipitate devotional break to a spouse or a deity, then the relationship was never love, but something self-referential to begin with. One must abandon oneself to the object of one’s devotion to receive the other person as such in return (and not figured as a resource for one’s appetites, placed on the procrustean bed of the passions); one must do this to receive oneself back as oneself. One must always ask: am I free? Am I ruled by reason? Does it shepherd my appetites? Or do my appetites rule me and drive my reason to justify their self-centeredness? Very often we break with others or with God because others, or the Master, are not useful tools to acquire what we desire, are not helpful means to the ends of our own self-centered satisfactions. We need real sex, and not what is effectively masturbation.)

This appetitive feature of marital infidelity bears a striking resemblance to devotional infidelity to God, and even to idolatry (which seizes upon an object electively, to elevate it and to move all one’s life around it – “covetousness, which is idolatry” [St. Paul]) and polytheism (once desire is no longer shepherded and concentrated by the will on one object (ultimately, One Object), it usually dis-integrates, dissolves into its component passions, and thus seeks multiple objects to satisfy it, being ultimately self-referential and often exclusive or incompatible – the gods war with one another). Also, polytheism is debasing, for it elects what is lower than the person to strive towards (effecting a descent and dimunition of the soul); in polytheism the soul elects something elemental to worship, even if the elemental object is not intrinsically so, but is made such. Polytheism elemental-izes other people or even God or gods to satisfy the sub-human passions, making idols, enslaving the person to the elemental idols.

Marital fidelity and devotional purity on one hand, and marital infidelity and idolatry on the other hand, are two pairs that are somehow bound up together.

Modern Atheism is singularly unprepared to protect us against polytheism and idolatry, for it cannot commend to us a god to concentrate us. Voiding idols is not sufficient protection, especially when the voiding reflex is triggered by every divinity, whether true or false, becoming some kind of pathological extermination campaign, another debasing enslavement to elemental powers. It thinks it offers freedom, but what it really offers is the deceptions of autonomy.

The god “Autonomy” cannot ever stand at the hearth and weave our hearts together in song. Devotion to Autonomy is devotion to ourselves. The statue of Autonomy is simply the statue of other gods and goddesses, effaced, with every defining feature -- even gender -- broken off or sanded smooth, so that as we approach its marble abstractness, we only see our own features reflected upon it.

Joints and Ligaments

[Hold] fast to the Head [i.e., Christ], from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. (Colossians 2:19)

What are these joints and ligaments? Did the apostle have something specific in mind?

The Word of God

Colossians chapter 1 (verses 25-27) has an interesting passage, which I will trim to bring out something that I managed to miss while a Protestant:

the word of God [...], the mystery hidden for ages and generations* but now made manifest to his saints [...] this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

The word of God is a mystery, Christ in us.

How much has this guided dogmatic concerns about what the word of God essentialliy is? We say that the Word is the Son Who is made man in Christ Jesus, and this is certainly Christian teaching. 

I'm wondering more specifically about the word of God as words, whether expressed as ritual practice, oral declaration (preaching, etc.), the converse (and other bonds of loving fellowship) born from shared communion in holy things, and spiritual formation at the hands of those who bear the "divine office" (verse 25) that St. Paul talks about.

That is, I'm wondering about what can be said about the essence of the tradition which is expressed in the scripture (on the basis of this verse as it bears witness to the apostolic understanding).

*or, as a note in my RSV has it, from the angels/"the aeons" and men/"the generations"

Dead Matter

I am perenially inquiring into the Protestant objections to the Church's practice of invoking the angels in heaven and the departed, victorious faithful. The Psalm verses where angels are addressed and exhorted to praise and bless the Lord often come up as evidence in the online Protestant-Catholic wars. One objection I came across (in Triablogue, though I no longer have the link to the specific page) was that the Old Testament Psalm verses where angels were directly addressed could not mean that angels were or should be addressed, because mountains and hills are also addressed in the same psalm. In more detail, the objection goes something like this: "we know that mountains and hills are dead things that can do none of the kinds of things they are asked to do (bless God) and cannot hear us anyway, and since they are addressed in the same manner as the angels are addressed, the psalmist must not have meant to invoke the angels in the same way as the Church reads this passage to suggest." This, of course, is complicated by the prophetic passages where the mountains and hills are summoned to witness against Israel, and again in the Gospel According to St. Mark (ch.13) where they literally quake in fear at the Arrival of God.

There's something almost animist going on in these passages. Mountains and trees are alive. They can sing to God and respond to Him. This sounds so very strange to us, since we live in the wake of the scientific revolution. But the Old-World Roman Catholic and Orthodox families that I know seem comfortable with this on some level, even if only on the level of an affinity for such things as Hayao Miyazaki movies, where forces of nature are portrayed sometimes as gods in a very Shinto-like manner. The Orthodox Catholic Church can swallow all that is good about paganism, but not visa-versa. The neurotic fear some Protestants have about these movies suggests that they are not comfortable with interpreting these psalm verses in this way. I wonder how they feel about the Genesis 1 text's presentation of the creation obeying divine commands.

It is interesting that the Protestant reaction is almost one of hostility to creation, which the Protestants seem to share with Secularism in general. Secularism, if it's character is defined by Bacon & Co., was quite explicit about putting Nature "on the rack," to extract her secrets for the sake of human flourishing (in Miyazaki's films, this mentality and its consequences are personified by Lady Eboshi and Irontown in Princess Mononoke). The sometimes-veneration, always awe-full, and frequent personalization of creation that one finds in Miyazaki and, to a degree, in these psalm verses is thus properly contrasted, not with a view that simply depersonalizes them, but one that almost despises them, most especially when this possibility of anything holy in creation (other than a human) is raised.

Certain verses in St. Paul about how we are liberated from elemental powers might be invoked here -- and this is exactly the right context in which they belong -- but the idea in St. Paul is not between slavery to creation and despising it, but between being a slave to it and being filled-out by it to transcend it and shepherd it. In the resurrection, both Daniel and Revelation figure the righteous as shining like stars -- St. Paul himself seems to imply this in his passage in First Corinthians about terrestrial bodies and celestial ones. Stars are not cut-off and separate from the creation in the ancient world, but hold determining sway over it. St. Maximus writes of Man as a microcosm, and there is a 6th century Irish apocryphal story about Adam having the various elements of the cosmos for his body. I believe 2 Enoch tells a similar story. Man is fleshed out by the creation before he transcends it. The very images of God with which we begin our return to Him are images of created things. Veneration of a sort is very appropriate, as is characterization and personalization (in Revelation there is an "angel of the waters," suggesting that these personal elements were perhaps attributed to the angels who oversaw a particular natural force).

Related to this issue of personalized forces of nature is the nature of folk medicine. If folk medicine is not rejected by all Protestants as superstition, it will nonetheless only be accepted by those Protestants who embrace it on the tamest, most Secular "Green Party" terms. Alternative Lifestyle, again. 

Then again, the same is true of most Americans in general, regardless of their ecclesial affiliation. This blight affects us all. Knowing who gave birth to it might not be all that helpful in remedying it.

Selah