Midday Meal Postponed

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

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

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

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

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

St Augustine on the Transfiguration

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

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

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

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

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

The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism- Part 2

The Negative Principles of Protestantism

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

1) Sola Gratia -> Extrinsic Justification

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.1 Barthism vs. Thomism on Revelation

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

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

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

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

3. Personal Religion -> Individualistic Religion

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

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

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

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

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

Positive and Negative Principles Confounded

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

Exhibit A: Luther and Erasmus on the Will

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

Exhibit B: Personalism vs. Authoritarianism

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

Exhibit C: Predestination

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

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

Decay of the Protestant Principles

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

From Sola Gratia Back to Pelagianism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Sola Scriptura to the Jesus Seminar

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

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

Protestant Revivals

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

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

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

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

The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism- Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive Principles of Protestantism

1. Sola gratia

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

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

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

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

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

2. Soli Deo Gloria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Personal Religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Sola Scriptura

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End of the World As We Know It

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

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

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

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

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

(3) Release a sequel.

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



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

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

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

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

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

Tarrawarra Abbey (or The Benefits of Monkery)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St Thomas

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

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

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

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

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

Zizioulas' Eastern Critique of the West

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jumping Castle War Memorial and the Inherent Significance of Bodily Acts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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