Formal Immanence, Effective Transcendence

As discussed previously here and here, the Greek understanding of reality, form, and meaning was all bound up in the notion of kosmos wherein that which was real possessed by nature the urge to reveal itself, to make itself manifest.  That quality of self-revelation was the logos and it was what animated the intelligibility of the kosmos.  In my last post, I distinguished this from the Christian metaphysical paradigm in which the logos is not a quality belonging to the physical universe itself but is rather located within the Godhead where He, not it, resides as the Second Member: Jesus Christ.  So, using the Greek understanding of logos, the Incarnation can be conceived of as a necessary manifestation of the nature of the Logos himself, a nature which always makes itself appear.

Returning to Creation itself, Dupre continues his discussion on Greek and Christian conceptions of nature, stating:

If nature for the Greeks emerged, for Christians it was brought to emerge. [...] Nevertheless, since the creative act transfers a form aboriginal in God to an extra-divine existence, a divine presence somehow continues to dwell in creation.  Divine causality is formally immanent as well as effectively transcendent. (30)

Put more simply, this should be no more difficult to express than through the words of the Psalmist when he rejoices that “the heavens declare the glory of God.”  Creation necessarily bears the personal imprint of its Maker and this imprint is not the equivalent of some divine name-tag stuck upon the world; as Dupre indicates, God is present in the forms of the universe because those forms are His but the existence of those forms are credited to His transcendence over their manifestations.  Therefore, as Dupre continues:

The doctrine of creation redefined the teleology of the Greek physis by rendering the course of nature intrinsically dependent on a transcendent principle.  But it did not reduce nature to a mechanism that was moved from without, as the later theory of creation as efficient causality was to do.  Indeed, the idea of God’s immanent presence in creation soon drove Christian theologians, especially in the Greek-speaking world, to Neoplatonic philosophy.  In Plotinus’s and Proclus’s theologies the One — which Christians identified with God — remains present in its emanations while nevertheless transcending them.  Nature itself re-presented God and this representation laid the basis for a theology of the image and for an original Christian mysticism.  Already the Epistle to the Colossians (1:16) had referred to Christ as ‘the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creatures.’  The creature, archetypically present in the Son, is an image of that uncreated image.  For the fourth-century Cappadocians Gregory of Nyssa and his brother Basil, human physis bears the image of its divine archetype, the Logos, image of the Father.  The soul recognizes the divine image in itself and in the cosmos and returns both it to their divine archetype. (31)

So, the bridge of intelligibility that lies between the human subject and the cosmos around him is a shared possession of the divine image which is, as Dupre said, “archetypically present” in Jesus Christ.  The means by which we apprehend the beautiful  in others and Creation is the soul’s perception of the common representation, the epitome, of the Triune God that is manifestly expressed in all that exists.

To Be Real is to Appear

Continuing my study into the intelligibility of the cosmos within Louis Dupre’s Passage to Modernity.  In his words:

If there is one belief Greek thinkers shared, it must be the conviction that both the essence of the real and our knowledge of it consists ultimately of form.  Basically this means that it belongs to the essence of the real to appear, rather than to hide, and to appear in an orderly way.  By envisioning the real as such as harmonious appearance, the Greek view displays a uniquely aesthetic quality, expressed as much in architecture and sculpture as in philosophy.  That appearance, however, derives not from our subjective perception of the real; it is the form itself that shines forth. (18)

A couple thoughts as I work through all this.  Firstly, is the fact that the essence of the real is to appear a direct reflection of the fact that it is the nature of God to create?  The notion of logos which, according to the Greeks, was the “ideal quality of the kosmos that renders its rule intrinsically intelligible” (23).  Logos is the quality of the real that invokes it to reveal itself by virtue of its reality.  Thus, human art was as capable of apprehending the truth as philosophy was because the real was something fundamentally revealed in the cosmos.  However, for the Greeks, the real did not depend upon a transcendent deity for its existence as it does with Christian theology.  As Dupre notes:

In sum, for the Greeks, the principle of form contains the definitive justification of the real.  The decisive question was not why something existed, but how could it exist meaningfully, that is, in orderly form.  Real being begins with intelligible form, with a multiplicity rendered harmonious through unity.  In this respect the fundamental question of Greek metaphysics differed from the Christian one.  Having deprived the form of its intrinsic necessity, the Christian doctrine of creation evoked a further question: Why does form exist?  Even if the Greeks had raised that question, their gods would not have provided the answer.  The gods’ own being had to be justified by the form principle. (22)

In other words, for the Greeks, reality was self-justifying because it exists and the essence of the real (form) by nature was to appear.  By locating the logos within the kosmos, the Greeks absolved themselves from having to consider the “why” of what exists.  But Christian theology, of course, does not locate the logos within reality, but located reality in, from, by, for, through, and to the logos which is Christ.  And by locating the logos within the Godhead, it becomes characteristic of God’s nature to create the universe according to an intelligible and orderly form.  The existence of the real is justified by God’s creativity which is due to the divinity of the Logos.  But there is more to this.  Since the Greeks conceived of the logos as being the quality of the kosmos which yielded its intelligibility, the forms that were displayed therefrom were as ultimate a manifestation of the logos as possible.  However, as Logos is not merely a quality but rather a Person, the second member of the Trinity, while it is true that Creation is yielded from his divine nature, it is the nature of the Logos himself as a Person to make himself intelligible and the all-encompassing revelation of the real is not completed until the manifestation of the Person of the Logos.  The Incarnation, therefore, is the means by which “all things consist” by Jesus Christ as stated by St. Paul in Colossians and represents the Christian revolution in metaphysics.

Postscript

Part of my goal in these posts is to receive all manner of correction and fine-tuning.  So I ask my readers who are more versed in philosophy and theology to offer their thoughts and opinions for the betterment of my study.  Thanks!

No Friend of Dichotomies

I’m obviously no theological heavyweight who’s spent decades contemplating the inner recesses of truth so I state this with a few grains of salt, but it appears to me that as a general rule, Christian theology is no friend of dichotomies — or rather, good Christian theology is no friend of dichotomies as you’ll find plenty of them in flawed theologies.  My proof of this is entirely anecdotal and based solely upon the stuff I’ve happen to ponder for the last 5 years or so but it seems like every theological dichotomy I’ve encountered has turned out to be a false one.  Among other things, Peter Leithart’s Against Christianity almost reads as a treatise against false dichotomies that currently plague your average evangelical’s assumptions.  But I recently set out to consider why this may be.  Why do so many of the theological dichotomies we construct turn out to be false?

It then hit me that it may be because the foundation of all theology, the Triune God, is comprised not of dichotomies, but of paradoxes.  And paradoxes almost seem to be the complete opposite of dichotomies.  Think about it.  A dichotomy takes two elements which, on the surface, seem to be mutually exclusive and then systematizes their exclusivity, abstracting the concreteness of their opposition into a maxim.  A paradox, on the other hand, looks upon those two seemingly exclusive elements and embraces them both, proclaiming both to be not only true in part, but necessary for truth together.  Paradoxes then accept and celebrate the mystery of how the compatibility actually works out.  So, you’d be reasonable to suppose that a rather bullet-proof dichotomy exists between God and man, but then the Incarnation happens.  You’d be reasonable to suppose that there’s a dichotomy between God being one and God being Three, but God is Triune.  If we put our heads together, we could probably keep thinking of more examples for awhile.  The point is that paradox, not dichotomy, seems to characterize the objects of theological inquiry and therefore theological inquiry itself provided that it is in alignment with the objects thereof.

Bringing this down to the practical, I have found that I usually approach theological dichotomies with suspicion, a guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude.  And if a certain theological house seems to be constructed with a lot of dichotomies, well, I have a hard time feeling safe inside if you know what I mean.  So, as an example, let’s consider a false dichotomy, kids!  Robin Phillips already addressed this quote from PCA pastor Ligon Duncan sufficiently, so I’m just going to add a few thoughts of my own.  The quote from Duncan in reference to Eastern Orthodoxy goes like this:

There are only two systems of salvation in Christian history: the sacerdotal system which depends upon the dispensation of the sacraments by the Church and there’s the evangelical system which acknowledges the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the sinner, drawing that sinner to Christ, uniting him to Christ by faith.

So what you have here is a proposed dichotomy between the “evangelical system” and the “sacerdotal system” with the former being that which depends upon the Holy Spirit for salvation and the latter being that which depends upon the sacraments for salvation.  In other words, it’s either salvation by the Holy Spirit, or salvation by sacraments; take your pick.  And under this definition, I would most surely be one of those wretched “sacerdotalists”.  But Duncan presents this dichotomy as if it’s a general feature of theology describing them later as “the two main alternatives” in Christian history implying that his distinction is self-evident and would be agreed upon as accurate by both sacerdotalists and evangelicals.  Unfortunately, it’s not general at all; in fact, the distinction itself is a product of the evangelical system.  The fact is that no one labeled as a “sacerdotalist” under Duncan’s definition would ever say that, “Yep, evangelicals trust the Holy Spirit for salvation and we sacerdotalists trust our sacraments.” and its incredibly careless/ignorant to even suggest that.  Both sacerdotalists and evangelicals believe that salvation comes from the Holy Spirit’s activity, the difference pertains to the nature of that activity.  So, if Duncan said that the sacerdotal system believes that salvation comes from the Holy Spirit’s work through the sacraments of the Church and the evangelical system believes that salvation comes from the Holy Spirit’s work through absolutely nothing, then that would be a fair distinction.  But Duncan’s caricature of sacerdotalism does nothing more than showcase his evangelical lens as he has already assented to the premise that grace and salvation cannot be mediated through physical means or institutions.  Therefore, when he looks upon the “sacerdotal” churches who have the sacraments at the center of their ecclesial lives, he then concludes that they must not trust the Holy Spirit for salvation since “trusting the Holy Spirit” means that one places no efficacious significance to sacraments or the Church.  But again, that is not a universally accepted definition of how the Holy Spirit operates in salvation and thus, Duncan’s dichotomy is basically worthless except for its accurate description of the evangelical system (which, since it was given in the presence of evangelicals, wouldn’t have been needed in the first place.)

It is because of dichotomies like these that are constructed according to evangelical assumptions that I have eschewed the label.  I am not an evangelical precisely because being one leads to conceptions of important matters like salvation described by Ligon Duncan above.  I go for paradox instead, the paradox that God became man, Body becomes bread, Blood becomes wine, and Water becomes regeneration.  And I guess that makes me a sacerdotalist.

The Dismemberment of Physis & Kosmos

According to Louis Dupre in Passage to Modernity:

“Only when the early humanist notion of human creativity came to form a combustive mixture with the negative conclusions of nominalist theology did it cause the cultural explosion that we refer to as modernity.  Its impact shattered the organic unity of the Western view of the real.” (3)

And in describing this “early humanist notion of human creativity” that was destroyed by nominalism, Dupre references “the earliest Ionian concept of physis” which “combined a physical (in the modern sense!) with an anthropic and a divine component.” (3)  Thus, the origin of early humanism rested upon a holistic understanding of human nature, one which not only possessed the basic constitution of the human body (physical), but also a universal form of man (anthropic), and an imprint of the divine (a soul or the Imago Dei).  This organic unity of human nature was also a direct reflection of the organic unity of the universe itself as expressed by the classical notion of kosmos which, according to Dupre, “preserved the idea of the real as an harmonious, all-inclusive whole.” (3)

For my purposes, if the organic physis of the human person is epitomic of an equally harmonious kosmos, then there is an interplay of intelligibility between the human physis and that which corresponds to it in the kosmos.  The activity of this interplay can be attributed to the human imagination which, above all else, actively perceives the nature of God as manifested and declared by the created order.  If this is true, then at the moment the notion of human creativity animated by the classical physis was coupled with a dismembered kosmos stripped of its intrinsic intelligibility at the hands nominalist theology, the human physis also suffered a similar fate and was fundamentally changed.  For the West, the consequences of this dismemberment are darkly summarized by Dupre when he concludes that “Only what it [the human mind] objectively constituted would count as real.” (3)

A Preview for 2012…

Greetings to you all on this Feast of the Circumcision which this year also happens to be known as New Year’s Day!  I hope the festivity is still going strong with you all as we still have a few more days left of Christmas.

As it is the beginning of the year, I thought I’d give you all a sneak peak into a new trajectory this blog is taking, one that is more structured than the random musings I’ve put up here since the blog’s inception.  I have set a goal to enter graduate theological education somewhere beginning in the Fall semester of 2013 which gives me the entirety of this year to prepare for the application process.  Of course, that includes a writing sample which I will be writing from scratch and using this blog as a sort of storyboard for the research and study I’ll be doing for it.

It would be difficult at this point to even detail a tentative topic but I do know that I’ll at least be looking into Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jacques Maritain, and others perhaps juxtaposed with the development of modernity, nominalism, etc in the general realm of aesthetic theology.  Perhaps some discussion of apprehension vs. comprehension in relation to all those elements/people above.  So to kick it all off, here are the first two books on the docket waiting to be worked through:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here on the left is Imagination and the Playfulness of God: The Theological Implications of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Definition of the Human Imagination by Anglican Priest-in-Germany Robin Stockitt which is pretty self-explanatory given the title.  Over on the right is Yale’s Louis Dupre’s Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermenuetics of Nature and Culture which I first heard of on an interview of the Mars Hill Audio Journal wherein Ken Myers read this intriguing quote from the book that I penned down in my notebook as to not forget it.  To share the intrigue with you all, here is that quote:

“At the end of the Middle Ages, however, nominalist theology effectively removed God from creation.  Ineffable in being and inscrutable in his designs, God withdrew from the original synthesis altogether.  The divine became relegated to a supernatural sphere separate from nature, with which it retained no more than causal, external link.  This removal of transcendence fundamentally affected the conveyance of meaning.  Whereas previously meaning had been established in the very act of creation by a wise God, it now fell upon the human mind to interpret a cosmos, the structure of which had ceased to be given as intelligible.  Instead of being an integral part of the cosmos, the person became its source of meaning.  Mental life separated from cosmic being: as meaning-giving ‘subject,’ the mind became the spiritual substratum of all reality.  Only what it objectively constituted would count as real.  Thus reality split into two separate spheres: that of the mind, which contained all intellectual determinations, and that of all other being, which received them.” (3)

Whew.  Back to you all soon.

Poetic Connectivity

In chapter one of the Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky’s book Sculpting in Time, a book laying out his meditations on aesthetics and filmmaking, Tarkovsky defines poetry (and perhaps art in general) as “an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.”  And since he talks elsewhere of man’s poetic awareness as the sense by which we apprehend the true, the good, and the beautiful, for Tarkovsky, this poetic awareness is of the essential consciousness of man perhaps even transcending his sensual and rational faculties.  Therefore, when one perceives an art form, his poetic awareness is stoked such that:

Through poetic connections feeling is heightened and the spectator is made more active.  He becomes a participant in the process of discovering life, unsupported by ready-made deductions from the plot or ineluctable pointers by the author.  He has at his disposal only what helps to penetrate to the deeper meaning of the complex phenomena represented in front of him.

Both art and the world are “complex phenomena” that stand in front of us, both possessing a “deeper meaning”, with art being an epitome, a microcosm, of the cosmos itself.  Since the “process of discovering life” happens independently from judgments or “deductions” that could be intellectually ascertained, Tarkovsky suggests a trans-cognitive or trans-rational element of man’s nature, one that senses the really real, the real that mysteriously animates the reality we immediately experience with our senses.  For as Tarkovsky notes, our “poetic visions” are not things that are normally perceived in the “framework of the patently obvious.”

We know from St. Paul that we now only see “through a glass, darkly“, that this present world is anticipating the final coherence and culmination of all things when we shall see “face to face” and know ourselves even as we are truly known.  And if Tarkovsky is right, our poetic awareness and connectivity is of the essence of the Imago Dei and through it, the image creates an image and knows that image.  And in that image we create, we can perceive more clearly the nature of the Image which we ourselves embody and live within, having recapitulated the creative act of God.

Art is then knowledge of that which now abideth: faith, hope, and charity.

Image Credit.

Some Thoughts on Gay Marriage

This post is so late after what were recent events that I’m sure it will be perceived as totally random.  But I’ve been bouncing around some thoughts on the issue of gay marriage for a few months and only now have I achieved enough clarity to adequately address them.  What has occupied my thinking has been how gay marriage, which is much more specific than a quesion about homosexuality, entails the jurisdictions of church and state in addition to the nature of marriage itself. And since political theology is an area that I am only superficially acquainted with, I hope I can perhaps entice Brad Littlejohn over to this humble hall of mine to give his insight.  The conflict in my mind has not been over whether to accept to reject gay marriage, nor has it even been regarding homosexuality that much, but rather over the extent to which the specific issue of gay marriage alone should concern us as American Christians and/or enlist us in a cultural battle.  Lest anyone be worried, rest assure that I am thoroughly orthodox in my position toward homosexuality and any thoughts questioning the manner of opposition toward gay marriage amongst conservative Christians does not suggest that I am an advocate of it.

The first step I made in my thought process, referenced previously, was to separate the broad sin of homosexuality, one that touches just about every sphere of human life, from gay marriage specifically.  Obviously, homosexuality doesn’t need gay marriage to exist and since most of the culture war over this issue is over gay marriage, it’s helpful to distinguish the two.  Having absolved myself from having to consider homosexuality in relation to gay marriage, I could focus in on the two (relatively) easier-to-handle issues contained therein: (1) the nature of marriage and (2) the relationship of the magistrate to it.  So the first questions I asked myself were these:

• Is marriage primarily an ecclesial or a civil institution?
• In what capacity does the state serve in relation to the institution of marriage?  Is it merely one of passive recognition?  That is, should the state merely look upon the marriages that the Church churns out and at most, for the purpose of civil order, “officially” acknowledge them as such?  Or does the state actually share in the preservation of the sanctity of marriage as a sort of co-guardian alongside the Church?  If the latter, does the sanctity of Holy Matrimony depend at least in part on how the state defines it?

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Now as to the first question, marriage is most assuredly both an ecclesial and a civil institution.  Ecclesial because St. Paul tells us that it shows forth the sacramental union of Christ and His Church and civil because all manner of practical things (property, children, etc) are entailed within it.  But where is it primarily located and which is its ultimate guardian?  As a catholic Christian, I would have to say that marriage finds its essence and identity within the Church since it is fundamentally animated by Christ’s relationship to the Body.  Ecclesial in nature with civil ramifications.  And if it is Christ and His Church which ultimately maintain the sanctity of marriage, then no matter how many states take it upon themselves to grant marriages to gay couples, Holy Matrimony in its true state suffers no harm.  Consequently, there is no such thing as a gay marriage anymore than there is such a thing as a square circle and just because some states try their hand at the sacrament business and distribute marriage licenses to any two people who “want to share a bed and a tax form” doesn’t mean that gay marriages all of the sudden actually exist.  A state-sanctioned gay marriage is a nominalist fiction.  A true marriage in its fullness is obtained only within the Bride of Christ and is, in the poignant words of James Matthew Wilson, a “reality unalterable by human choice because [it is] determined by the dual-grip of natural law and divine sacrament.” (Wilson’s a Roman Catholic and I’d differ perhaps a little on that minutia behind that quote, but you get the idea)

 

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And yet, I’m not blind and this confidence would seem to be weakened by a cursory examination of the state of heterosexual marriage in this nation today.  Just about everybody, including much of the Church which is supposed to be marriage’s guardian, is confused and compromised not only over homosexuality but of the reality of marriage itself.  As Wilson noted in the previously linked Front Porch Republic piece awhile back:

Regardless of whether same-sex “marriage” ever becomes the legal fiction of our land, most persons have already assented to the principle on which it is based: the only thing requisite for a binding familial union between two persons is sincere affection (needless to say, the “binding” may be dissolved should that affection abate).  To speak of marriage’s broader social function, or the inadequacy of feeling as a basis for (rather than a complement of) the indisoluable tie of man and wife that makes possible the coming-into-being and the sustaining of households across generations is, at present, to speak a language that makes sense to almost nobody.

And when I survey the predominant position of conservative Christians toward gay marriage, I not only see the anemic ecclesiology and but the subsequent view of marriage evacuated of sacrament and cosmic reality that Wilson described as well.  I get the feeling that the majority conservative opinion is that it is the state which bears the sole responsibility of guarding the sanctity of marriage and since our government is floundering in its protection, it’s our job to rise up and lobby them to protect it.  The Church is merely the special interest group that works to ensure that the state keeps its definitions correct.  And accordingly, witness the James Dobson types talking as though marriage itself either stands or falls with the pronouncements of the various states in favor or not of granting marriages to gay couples.  This is what has always puzzled me about the common rhetoric from the Christian Right.  You’ll see Dobson putting the “marriage” of gay marriage in scare quotes as if it’s counterfeit but then act as though marriage in its real state would take a serious blow if gay marriage were to be legally sanctioned.

 

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But even if I were to grant that the sanctity of marriage was in some way dependent upon its definition by the state, with all other aspects of our culture being held the same, I’m neither sure how much worse things would be if gay marriage became legally-sanctioned nor how much better things would be if every state passed amendments to define marriage as between “one man, one woman”.  I mean, seriously, if our culture is as infected with assumptions about marriage and sexuality as false as those that Wilson described, then even if our efforts paid off and gay couples didn’t get to receive a piece of paper that says “marriage” on it, it would be like rejoicing that a disease that had already possessed an entire body didn’t spread into a pinky toe.  And on the flip side, what’s a pinky toe if the whole body is infected?  Maybe I’m being naive, but I have a hard time seeing how truly consequential the gay marriage issue really is to the state of things we find in our culture today.

 

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I’m going to take an alternate position.  While acknowledging that the Church in America has largely succumbed to modernity’s assumptions about marriage and sexuality of which we must repent, we’re still the referees of the game.  And just because referees sometimes have difficulty discerning what’s foul or fair doesn’t mean that it’s time for a self-assured congressman, confident in his own understanding of the rules of the sport, to walk out on the field and start making calls.  Even if he happens to make a good call doesn’t change the fact that he’s out of his jurisdiction.  And this is why I’m a bit uncomfortable even with states’ proposed constitutional amendments that happen to get the answer right on the “what is marriage?” test.  Given the marginal place that the visible Church inhabits in the psyche of the average American Christian, I get uneasy at the thought of marriage having any of its sanctity or legitimacy tied to a pronouncement of the state.  Maybe it wouldn’t be so distasteful if we as American Christians had a sufficiently robust ecclesiology and rightly located the institution of marriage within the Church.  Then, if the Legislature of the State of Oklahoma came around and passed an amendment defining marriage as “one man, one woman”, we’d say “hey, thanks” in the way that one expresses gratitude for a complimentary brochure.  But, unfortunately, we don’t have this solid certainty and as long as we lack it, I’m going to have a hard time being ok with marriage being brought into House Chambers to be defined and protected, correctly or not.*

 

No, we the Church should humbly submit to the revealed will of God in His Word and in the testimony of the Christian Tradition and continue marrying couples properly in the eyes of God and His People.  And I am sympathetic to the concern that the legal sanctioning of gay marriage is one step closer to the persecution of Christians who are bold enough to preach the truth concerning marriage and sexuality.  But the specter of homosexuality and self-centered assumptions are still deeply malignant with or without gay marriage, so our work is cut out for us and it is likely to be wearisome.  God grant us strength.

 

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So with that, I’m opening this up for discussion.  I’d especially like you all’s take on my bulleted questions toward the beginning.  Since these are still the impressionable thoughts of mine, I’m absolutely open to critique, revision, correction, or whatever.

 

*Addendum*

I wanted to specify the type of feedback I am most anticipating and my thoughtful brother-in-law Stewart beat me to it in his comment below.  Namely, what I most distrust about my own position and want to be refuted is how smacks of R2K Theology, which is odd, given that I reject such a paradigm.  Stewart already specifically addressed this matter quite fully but for anyone else, any additional thoughts on the scope of marriage in its social function or how the Lordship of Christ over the principalities of the world relates to the relevance of the state’s definition of marriage would be great.  Perhaps what I didn’t clarify enough in my post was how I desired to be proven wrong and to be shown how the cosmic, sacramental character of marriage was a reason for Christians to be concerned in how the state perceives marriage, rather than a reason for us to absolve ourselves of such concern. 

 

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Image Credit

Advent Contra Mundum

Like all the Seasons of the Church Year, Advent is a bold proclamation to the world that time is Christ’s and we, as His Church, will primarily order our lives according a Christian Calendar and specifically, it is a season of prayerful and penitential anticipation for both Christ’s Nativity and the Final Judgment in His Second Coming.  As I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of Advent and its intrinsic relationship with Christmas, I’ve been convinced that if we are to celebrate Christmas, we forget Advent to our detriment.

We find ourselves in the midst of this wonderful albeit quiet season but parallel to these humble days of ours stands our culture’s well-established (and well-funded) rival season — the oddly simultaneous preparation and celebration of a secularized and commercialized “Christmas”, one in which Advent has no part.  Every one knows what I’m talking about.  The Christmas season according to Macy’s liturgical calendar officially begins in the wee hours of Black Friday when the laity of Mammon storm into stores everywhere, desperately eager to grab the sacrament (i.e. flat screen tv’s) before everybody else — use violence if necessary.  Now after all the mayhem, the crazed shopping isn’t over by any means — this is merely the call to worship — and the following month is a blur of consumerism and faux-festal decorations all under a sentimental veneer of the “spirit of Christmas”.  Then, after the wrapping paper has finally been laid waste to on Christmas morning, it is imperative that one’s Christmas tree (if real) be upside down sticking out of a trash bin on the curb and the lights be in process of removal no later than sundown the next day.  Thanks be to God.

Now, while I must confess that it’s rather fun to get snarky about all that, it’s unfortunately not the laughing matter it should be.  American culture has a clearly defined liturgical formulary for how one prepares for Christmas, described above, yet all to often, all that American Christians have in response are some trite platitudes about Christ being “the reason for the season”.  Nothing is neutral and to disregard Advent is not to float around in an untouchable bubble but to passively defer to whatever dominant alternative happens to exist.  Christmas will be anticipated in one way or another and if not in the historic Christian rhythms of Advent, then in the “orgy of consumerism” described above whether we consciously assent to the vices or not.

“Contra Mundum” is a Latin phrase that translates “against the world” and for church history buffs, the phrase will remind them of St. Athanasius’ venerable nickname “Athanasius Contra Mundum” (Athanasius against the world) which describes his bold defense of orthodoxy against the overwhelming specter of heresy that he challenged.  It is something to which all of us Christians should aspire, to be contra mundum.  And the Church resists the patterns and structures of the world by simply being the Church, a city unto herself with her own vocabulary and rituals that rival those of the world.  Advent is contra mundum because while the culture around us feeds its addiction to consumerism under the guise of “Christmas cheer”, bypassing the very season for repentance of such sin that would enable a joyous Christmas, Christians observing Advent are quietly and penitently awaiting the coming of Immanuel, the Incarnation of the Logos.  There is no better antidote to the chaos our culture takes for granted than that.

Even if you aren’t officially observing Advent, I encourage you to be mindful of the ways you go about preparing for Christmas.  Resist the urge to frantically rush through the chaos that the advertisers impose on you and, though this will be a later post, bear in mind that Christmas doesn’t start until December 25 and the celebration continues until January 6 — the 12 Days of Christmas!

An Evening Prayer for Advent

The Nativity of our Lord

Using elements of the 1928 BCP’s Order for Daily Evening Prayer and Family Prayer with a few imports, here is what I compiled for my family’s use as we prayerfully await the Nativity of our Lord.  The prayers in bold are those which both Julie and I say whereas those in normal print are what I say in leading the prayer.

Advent Evening Prayer

Opening Scripture

To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him; neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws which he set before us.

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.  Amen.

The Collect for the First Sunday of Advent

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever.  Amen.

The Lighting of the Candle(s)

First Week

• O Emmanuel, Jesus Christ, desire of every nation, Savior of all peoples, come and dwell among us. Amen.

Second Week

• O King of all nations, Jesus Christ, only joy of every heart, come and save your people. Amen.

Third Week

• O Key of David, Jesus Christ, the gates of heaven open at your command, come and show us the way to salvation. Amen.

Fourth Week

• O Wisdom, holy Word of God, Jesus Christ, all things are in your hands, come and show us the way to salvation.  Amen.

Confession of Sin, Etc.

Let us humbly confess our sins unto Almighty God.

Most merciful God, who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and hast promised forgiveness to all those who confess and forsake their sins; we come before thee in an humble sense of our own unworthiness, acknowledging our manifold transgressions of thy righteous laws.  But, O gracious Father, who desirest not the death of a sinner, look upon us, we beseech thee, in mercy, and forgive us all our transgressions.  Make us deeply sensible of the great evil of them; and work in us an hearty contrition; that we may obtain forgiveness at thy hands, who art ever ready to receive humble and penitent sinners; for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ, our only Savior and Redeemer.  Amen.

O Lord, open thou our lips

And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.

Praise ye the Lord.

The Lord’s Name be praised.

The Propers

The Psalms

The First Lesson

The Second Lesson

The Thanksgiving

To our prayers, O Lord, we join our unfeigned thanks for all thy mercies; for our being, our reason, and all other endowments and faculties of soul and body; for our health, friends, food, and raiment, and all the other comforts and conveniences of life.  Above all, we adore thy mercy in sending thy only Son into the world, to redeem us from sin and eternal death, and in giving us the knowledge and sense of our duty towards thee.  We bless thee for thy patience with us, notwithstanding our many and great provocations; for all the directions, assistances, and comforts of thy Holy Spirit; for thy continual care and watchful providence over us through the whole course of our lives; and particulary for the mercies and benefits of the past day; beseeching thee to continue these thy blessings to us, and to give us grace to show our thankfulness in a sincere obedience to his laws, through whose merits and intercession we received them all, thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Additional Prayers

Prayer for God’s Protection through the Night Following

In particular, we beseech thee to continue thy gracious protection to us this night.  Defend us from all dangers and mischiefs, and from the fear of them; that we may enjoy such refreshing sleep as may fit us for the duties of the coming day.  And grant us grace always to live in such a state that we may never be afraid to die; so that, living and dying, we may be thine, through the merits and satisfaction of thy Son Christ Jesus, in whose Name we offer up these our imperfect prayers. Amen.

Concluding Prayer

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore.  Amen.

Image Credit

Genu(re)flection Gets Nifty

With my evenings being mostly spent tag-teaming with my wife in our care of Alice, blogging has come to a hault.  But, a little spark of creativity hit me today, so I went and found a place where I could make this:

What do you all think?