Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.
Romas 12:9-21 ~~ The verses that follow and conclude Romans 12 are a series of largely miscellaneous exhortations by Paul to the congregation at Rome regarding Christian behavior and belief.
Romans 12:9a ~~ "Let love be without hypocrisy." We are called to live with a spirit of Christian charity (caritas, the highest form of love) that is genuine and without deceit. Hypocrisy in its original Greek sense referred to play-acting, specifically the masks or personas worn by actors on stage.
Romans 12:9b ~~ "Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good." This is a largely unextraordinary verse, except for the realization that it is prescribing specific emotional reactions to moral questions. We sometimes find it easy to distinguish between "the true," "the good," and "the beautiful." This ought not be. Paul exhorts us to abhor evil, and cling (a word connoting unyielding fidelity, perhaps even a sort of desperation) to the good. In other words, he exhorts us to make a habit of responding to questions of good and evil with the same kind of aesthetic judgment that we normally associate with beauty: that is, pleasure or disgust.
Romans 12:10 ~~ "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor." This exhortation reminds me of nothing quite so much as the passage beginning with Ephesians 5:21 -- "be subject to one another in the fear of Christ." The rest of that passage is concerned with the implications of that general (catholic in the sense of universal) command: how we truly are to rank ourselves beneath others, and become eager and diligent servants working for each others' good.
Romans 12:11-13 ~~ In the next three verses, Paul's grammar switches from imperative (giving direct commands in the previous verses) to a participle (denoting an ongoing present action). I honestly couldn't say why there's a change, though (unless it is merely the caprice of the translators) I'm sure there's some meaning to it.
Romans 12:11 ~~ "Not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Having established the conduct (to serve one another) as an expression of Christ's command (to love one another; love your neighbor as yourself), Paul moves on to speak of the Great Commandment: "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind" (Luke 10:27). In this case, there's particular emphasis on being a servant of God, with all the attendant virtues of diligence and fervor in that service.
Romans 12:12-13 ~~ "Rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality." There's an interesting dichotomy in these two verses that is also present in the chapter as a whole. Paul begins with internals -- directing how one ought to respond to times of hope or tribulation -- but moves on to externals -- how one ought to express Christian charity to fellow believers or to strangers.
Romans 12:14-21 ~~ "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." Paul resumes writing in the imperative tense, and the rest of the letter emphasizes conduct-oriented externals (with the possible exception of verse 16).
Romans 12:15 ~~ "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." We are directed to empathize totally with others, to identify ourselves so entirely in others that we can become their brother or sister regardless of the moods of the moment.
Romans 12:16 ~~ "Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation." Considering the first and last parts are concerned with the conduct of one's mind, the middle part of this verse seems distinctly out of place. Why is "associate with the lowly" sandwiched between intellectually oriented exhortations? The answer may be found in the alternate text, found in some manuscripts: "Do not be haughty in mind, but accommodate yourself to lowly things." This strikes me as a truer and much more intriguing statement, especially as it sheds light on the next part of the verse: "Do not be wise in your own estimation." We are to consider the "lowly things" (does Paul mean material things, or menial things, or perhaps even things we might consider boring?) in part as an antidote to our own haughtiness of mind and our tendency for self-satisfied reflection.
Romans 12:17 ~~ "Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Take thought for what is right in the sight of men." What a phenomenal verse. Our emotional reactions to evil are to abhor it (v. 9), but we are not to allow that emotion to direct our behavior in response. We are to "take thought for what is right," and conduct ourselves in accordance with that reasoned moral path. Also, note that we look for "what is right in the sight of men": the moral standards of other humans is to be our guide, though we are probably to rely more on collective conscience than on culture.
Romans 12:18 ~~ "If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men." Another great verse. It doesn't set unrealistic expectations, in the sense of demanding peace with all men regardless of what "all men" may have to say in response. But the exhortation is to do your darnedest to ensure that peace. We are expected to contribute to moral outcomes and judged by those outcomes, but that judgment is solely to the degree that we were responsible for them.
Romans 12:19 ~~ "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God." Interesting addition of "beloved" in the middle of that statement. It almost comes across in a patronizing or condescending way, as though this were a regular reminder by an apostolic parent to the wayward child-church. Check out the next verse, though, which quotes Proverbs 25:21-22.
Romans 12:20 ~~ "But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." (Proverbs 25:22 concludes, "and the Lord will reward you"). I'm pretty sure this verse should disturb us in a number of ways. The editorial notes in my study Bible takes a more charitable approach: "doing good to one's enemies... may bring about his [sic] repentance." But the actual text of the verse operates in a rather less charitable vein. For one, it points to the simple truth that revenge (paying back evil for evil) is not nearly as satisfying on an emotional level as the moral one-upsmanship of repaying evil with good. To know in your heart "in this moment I am a better and bigger man than he" is almost infinitely more satisfying than a thrill of instant gratification that is tainted by a loss of your moral self-respect. Moreover, the verse indicates that a charitable response is in itself a judgment against the evildoer: for if judgment is in accordance with the good done unto us, then we are in reality heaping "burning coals on his head." The very charity of our response, if it doesn't inspire repentance, serves as a divine receipt that our enemy is truly and royally screwed. Lastly, the very verse that Paul quotes from Proverbs indicates that a moral response will not only guarantee our ultimate triumph over our enemies, but will also be a cause for our reward. Our ability to overcome our grievances -- to forgive and serve those who hate and hurt us -- will be a source of our eternal reward.
Romans 12:21 ~~ "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." This is a delightful verse, readily accessible for devout kids to memorize at AWANA camps. Speaking for myself, whenever I see this verse I think of the Newsboys song "Elle G" -- a haunting dirge ("elegy") about a girl who commits suicide in despair for her inability to overcome evil with good. Returning to the verse, however I wonder if there might not be a more direct meaning than we suspect. In light of the previous verse exhorting us to "heap burning coals on his head," the statement "overcome evil with good" starts to seem rather disconcertingly literal.
Take a deep breath. After the last three verses in Romans 12, that's a distinct necessity. In light of our moral intuitions, I think it's only natural (and certainly forgivable) that we find those last few verses either dismaying or outright disturbing. There is a grotesque directness to the appeal, as though the promise of judgment or wrath were a sort of heavenly bribe. God seems to be bribing us to act morally: He flavors the exhortation "never pay back evil for evil" (v. 17) with the promise that "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay" (v. 19). He diverts the flow of our wrath, keeping us from wreaking our own revenge by guaranteeing His own. But God is an unscrupulous fellow, and a master chessman. He doesn't shy away from using any and all means of persuasion to bring us around and into His Presence. This is evident in Isaiah, where the Lord says: "Come now, and let us reason together.... If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the land but if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. Truly, the mouth of the Lord has spoken" (Isaiah 1:18-20). Can we fathom the Divine Humility that would accept us on such terms, that would permit us to enter His Kingdom even if we are solely motivated by self-preservation. We are such base creatures that in many cases we can only be enticed into eternal paradise with such offers, offers to keep our lives in order and our pride intact. Blessed is the Name of the Lord.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Quantitative Quiddity
In my first post on this theme, I spoke of simple dualism as the dominant moral metaphor of modern times. In my second post, I suggested a metaphor taken from Lewis of "bent"-ness. In my latest post writing Of Morals and Metaphors, I advanced a third metaphor, retaining the same associations with "distortion" but relying on wormhole imagery taken from modern physics and science-fiction.
These are obviously not the only moral metaphors on which we rely. One common image association is to social status: as C.S. Lewis noted in Studies in Words, this is how "nobility" came to mean good and "villainy" became bad. To take another example, we inherit from Latin an image association between evil and the left hand (sinister).
More pointedly, our language also preserves such phrases as "stout-hearted," which analogize between goodness and body mass. The word "great" carries a similar history: before it became a synonym for 'cool' and 'groovy,' it meant 'big,' 'thick,' and 'massive.'
It is lucky I don't put stock in my own originality, or I should be very disappointed. This is precisely the metaphor I propose. To be good is to be substantial or solid. To be bad is to be translucent or ephemeral. Evil is as an abscess in the skin; immorality, a hollow in the heart.
It was this image I first encountered in C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, towards the end of a chapter on moral education.
Good God! I love that quote, especially the line "Men without Chests." If I lived in an earlier age, I'd probably wax rhapsodic of felicitous expression and many-splendored meanings. As it stands, I got nothing save perhaps an appreciative mumble.
In The Great Divorce, Lewis presents a whole slew of similar metaphors. As the bus ascends from hell to heaven, it rises from a deep valley over the edge of a cliff, until finally resting on a grassy meadow. We are later informed that the bus was "moving" only in terms of size: hell might fit into the merest grain of sand in the heavenly beaches. Likewise, as the 'tourists' exit the bus to walk over the plain, they soon learn that the world is more real than themselves. They are like wan apparitions, ghosts haunting a landscape, unable to bend nature to their will or even walk on blades of grass without searing pain. Heaven is simply more real -- more substantial -- than hell.
I've begun to utilize a rather idiosyncratic term for this sort of metaphoric imagery. I call it quantitative quiddity. Let's parse!
"Quantitative" should be obvious: it means something measurable, whether by volume or weight or dimension. "Quiddity" is far more peculiar. It's actually a term from medieval scholastic philosophy, derived from the Latin word quid (meaning "what"). Quiddity means, literally, the "what-ness" of a thing, the essence or substance of it. The medieval School-men contrasted it with haeccity, the "this-ness" of a thing, that which makes it unique or individual.
'Quantitative quiddity' is a deliberately oxymoronic phrase. An essence is non-physical and therefore, by definition, immeasurable. But, relying on this association of morality to mass, we might perceive goodness as a sort of solid substance that can be 'measured' by moral intuition and judgment.
I didn't realize it at first, but over time this imagery has become second nature for me. I first noticed it after my then-girlfriend pointed out how often I used the word "solid" as a term of approval or praise. I started using it in the ordinary sense of reliable or dependable, but over time it took a much deeper meaning. Solid meant substantial, and substantially human.
This raises a possible objection: namely, the danger in how this imagery might move us to treat immoral individuals. The temptation under this framework would be to treat evildoers in a condescending manner, as though they were less than human. At the same time, similar dangers surround every moral metaphor: dualism might lead to antagonistic behavior, treating evildoers as enemies, while the "bent" imagery might lead to patronizing behavior, treating them as though they were lumps of inert matter, as machines broken and in need of fixing.
To be sure, this idea has shaped and affected my moral judgments and intuitions. To be immoral is to lack the 'stuff' or substance of our common humanity. Therefore, when I look upon human evil, or even apathy to evil, I see something less than fully human. My instinctual or emotional response is a sort of pity, mixed with contempt. But this response is first and foremost directed towards the act, not the person.
We have all heard the maxim (coined by Augustine, loosely paraphrased by Gandhi) to "love the sinner but hate the sin." By distinguishing so sharply between what is the "true" person (the good) and what is not, I find it is quite possibly to live out that dictum.
Sins in the soul are like pockmarks on a face: we notice them, but it's good manners not to stare or point. There may be holes and tiny gaps where your humanity should be, but so long as they're not too egregious we'll treat you no differently. Indeed I understand this was once a sign of good breeding, or even true nobility of the soul. Like the dear old Don (Quixote), we treat the lowly-born Aldonza as though she were a princess Dulcinea. We cast others in the best light, and implicitly look for the best behavior even where we would expect the basest.
Indeed, this moral metaphor should not point us to contempt so much as profound hope. Contra the Calvinists, man is not totally depraved. Moral conduct is always within our grasp. Goodness is not foreign to us, but is the fulfillment and perfection of our nature.
There really is no convenient point at which to draw this note to a close: there are so many implications of this moral metaphor, the extent of which I'm only now beginning to grasp. But I think one final reflection might satisfy the desire for resolution.
From this metaphor, we see that moral conduct is intrinsically ennobling. Our good deeds create habits, patterns of moral behavior that fill in the gaps in our own humanity. The phrase "fake it until you make it" contains surprising insight. We don't have to be good in order to behave well; we become good by behaving like it. This lifts a tremendous burden from our shoulders.
Perfect holiness, heroic virtue, and salvation itself -- these are the outcomes of a well-lived life, not the prerequisites for it.
These are obviously not the only moral metaphors on which we rely. One common image association is to social status: as C.S. Lewis noted in Studies in Words, this is how "nobility" came to mean good and "villainy" became bad. To take another example, we inherit from Latin an image association between evil and the left hand (sinister).
More pointedly, our language also preserves such phrases as "stout-hearted," which analogize between goodness and body mass. The word "great" carries a similar history: before it became a synonym for 'cool' and 'groovy,' it meant 'big,' 'thick,' and 'massive.'
It is lucky I don't put stock in my own originality, or I should be very disappointed. This is precisely the metaphor I propose. To be good is to be substantial or solid. To be bad is to be translucent or ephemeral. Evil is as an abscess in the skin; immorality, a hollow in the heart.
It was this image I first encountered in C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, towards the end of a chapter on moral education.
We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the 'spirited element.' The head rules the belly through the chest--the seat, as Alanus tells of us Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment--these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and viseral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal. The operation of The Green Book and its kind [of moral education] is to produce what may be called Men without Chests [emphasis added].
Good God! I love that quote, especially the line "Men without Chests." If I lived in an earlier age, I'd probably wax rhapsodic of felicitous expression and many-splendored meanings. As it stands, I got nothing save perhaps an appreciative mumble.
In The Great Divorce, Lewis presents a whole slew of similar metaphors. As the bus ascends from hell to heaven, it rises from a deep valley over the edge of a cliff, until finally resting on a grassy meadow. We are later informed that the bus was "moving" only in terms of size: hell might fit into the merest grain of sand in the heavenly beaches. Likewise, as the 'tourists' exit the bus to walk over the plain, they soon learn that the world is more real than themselves. They are like wan apparitions, ghosts haunting a landscape, unable to bend nature to their will or even walk on blades of grass without searing pain. Heaven is simply more real -- more substantial -- than hell.
I've begun to utilize a rather idiosyncratic term for this sort of metaphoric imagery. I call it quantitative quiddity. Let's parse!
"Quantitative" should be obvious: it means something measurable, whether by volume or weight or dimension. "Quiddity" is far more peculiar. It's actually a term from medieval scholastic philosophy, derived from the Latin word quid (meaning "what"). Quiddity means, literally, the "what-ness" of a thing, the essence or substance of it. The medieval School-men contrasted it with haeccity, the "this-ness" of a thing, that which makes it unique or individual.
'Quantitative quiddity' is a deliberately oxymoronic phrase. An essence is non-physical and therefore, by definition, immeasurable. But, relying on this association of morality to mass, we might perceive goodness as a sort of solid substance that can be 'measured' by moral intuition and judgment.
I didn't realize it at first, but over time this imagery has become second nature for me. I first noticed it after my then-girlfriend pointed out how often I used the word "solid" as a term of approval or praise. I started using it in the ordinary sense of reliable or dependable, but over time it took a much deeper meaning. Solid meant substantial, and substantially human.
This raises a possible objection: namely, the danger in how this imagery might move us to treat immoral individuals. The temptation under this framework would be to treat evildoers in a condescending manner, as though they were less than human. At the same time, similar dangers surround every moral metaphor: dualism might lead to antagonistic behavior, treating evildoers as enemies, while the "bent" imagery might lead to patronizing behavior, treating them as though they were lumps of inert matter, as machines broken and in need of fixing.
To be sure, this idea has shaped and affected my moral judgments and intuitions. To be immoral is to lack the 'stuff' or substance of our common humanity. Therefore, when I look upon human evil, or even apathy to evil, I see something less than fully human. My instinctual or emotional response is a sort of pity, mixed with contempt. But this response is first and foremost directed towards the act, not the person.
We have all heard the maxim (coined by Augustine, loosely paraphrased by Gandhi) to "love the sinner but hate the sin." By distinguishing so sharply between what is the "true" person (the good) and what is not, I find it is quite possibly to live out that dictum.
Sins in the soul are like pockmarks on a face: we notice them, but it's good manners not to stare or point. There may be holes and tiny gaps where your humanity should be, but so long as they're not too egregious we'll treat you no differently. Indeed I understand this was once a sign of good breeding, or even true nobility of the soul. Like the dear old Don (Quixote), we treat the lowly-born Aldonza as though she were a princess Dulcinea. We cast others in the best light, and implicitly look for the best behavior even where we would expect the basest.
Indeed, this moral metaphor should not point us to contempt so much as profound hope. Contra the Calvinists, man is not totally depraved. Moral conduct is always within our grasp. Goodness is not foreign to us, but is the fulfillment and perfection of our nature.
There really is no convenient point at which to draw this note to a close: there are so many implications of this moral metaphor, the extent of which I'm only now beginning to grasp. But I think one final reflection might satisfy the desire for resolution.
From this metaphor, we see that moral conduct is intrinsically ennobling. Our good deeds create habits, patterns of moral behavior that fill in the gaps in our own humanity. The phrase "fake it until you make it" contains surprising insight. We don't have to be good in order to behave well; we become good by behaving like it. This lifts a tremendous burden from our shoulders.
Perfect holiness, heroic virtue, and salvation itself -- these are the outcomes of a well-lived life, not the prerequisites for it.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
What Is, Is Good
In my last two posts writing Of Morals and Metaphors, I dealt with the two common metaphors we use for morality: a straight line dividing good from evil, and and evil as a bent or corrupted image of the good.
My issue with the second metaphor boils down to Christian theology, specifically the problem of evil. In my experience, most Christians (with the exception of hard-boiled five-point Calvinists) tend to address this issue by citing free will. They are within their rights to do so, but this leaves a deeper question unanswered. By the doctrine of omnipresence, God is both Creator and Sustainer of all reality. How could God sustain evil within His very Presence, His very Self?
St. Augustine converted to Christianity after a brief fling with Manichaeism in his youth. He wrestled with this issue during his conversion, and provided what is (in my opinion) the definitive answer to the paradox: quite simply, evil doesn't exist. God doesn't sustain evil within His Presence because there is no "it" for God to sustain.
Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is purely the negation of the good. The previous metaphors, treating evil as the equal or even the refracted image of the good, fail for precisely this reason. Evil is no equal opposite, nor some kind of "bent" existence. Only the good exists in reality; the evil lies solely in the bend.
What is, is good.
How to envision morality on this basis? We can take a variety of approaches. If we want to keep the same vocabulary from before-- the vocabulary of distortion and "bent-ness," we can always plagiarize from Einstein.
The classic Newtonian model of physics treated gravity as something comparable to magnetism, with physical objects impelled towards one another, drawn by some attraction between them. It was action at a distance, without an explained mechanism but with the brute regularity of a natural law.
Einstein took this model, threw it in a blender, and made a cocktail he liked to call "general relativity." He bestowed to the scientific community an entirely new model of physics, one of 'gravity wells' comparable to whirlpools. Einstein introduced to modern cosmology this concept of 'space-time' that defines the physical universe. Physical objects -- anything with mass -- warp and distort the "fabric" of space-time, like bowling balls in a blanket (or so the metaphor goes). We perceive that distortion as gravity. The larger the mass, the greater the distortion. Too large a mass, and the fabric might even rip. This is the science, in very simplified form, behind black holes and so-called "wormholes."
All that was fairly technical, but I hope you caught the metaphor. Mass distorts and even tears the fabric of space-time. Might we say, just as evil distorts and even negates the reality of goodness?
What is good, is present. What is evil, is like a vacuum. Evil is the wormhole of science-fiction, the ocean vortex in Moby Dick, or that sinkhole in Guatemala.
To be continued.
My issue with the second metaphor boils down to Christian theology, specifically the problem of evil. In my experience, most Christians (with the exception of hard-boiled five-point Calvinists) tend to address this issue by citing free will. They are within their rights to do so, but this leaves a deeper question unanswered. By the doctrine of omnipresence, God is both Creator and Sustainer of all reality. How could God sustain evil within His very Presence, His very Self?
St. Augustine converted to Christianity after a brief fling with Manichaeism in his youth. He wrestled with this issue during his conversion, and provided what is (in my opinion) the definitive answer to the paradox: quite simply, evil doesn't exist. God doesn't sustain evil within His Presence because there is no "it" for God to sustain.
Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is purely the negation of the good. The previous metaphors, treating evil as the equal or even the refracted image of the good, fail for precisely this reason. Evil is no equal opposite, nor some kind of "bent" existence. Only the good exists in reality; the evil lies solely in the bend.
What is, is good.
How to envision morality on this basis? We can take a variety of approaches. If we want to keep the same vocabulary from before-- the vocabulary of distortion and "bent-ness," we can always plagiarize from Einstein.
The classic Newtonian model of physics treated gravity as something comparable to magnetism, with physical objects impelled towards one another, drawn by some attraction between them. It was action at a distance, without an explained mechanism but with the brute regularity of a natural law.
Einstein took this model, threw it in a blender, and made a cocktail he liked to call "general relativity." He bestowed to the scientific community an entirely new model of physics, one of 'gravity wells' comparable to whirlpools. Einstein introduced to modern cosmology this concept of 'space-time' that defines the physical universe. Physical objects -- anything with mass -- warp and distort the "fabric" of space-time, like bowling balls in a blanket (or so the metaphor goes). We perceive that distortion as gravity. The larger the mass, the greater the distortion. Too large a mass, and the fabric might even rip. This is the science, in very simplified form, behind black holes and so-called "wormholes."
All that was fairly technical, but I hope you caught the metaphor. Mass distorts and even tears the fabric of space-time. Might we say, just as evil distorts and even negates the reality of goodness?
What is good, is present. What is evil, is like a vacuum. Evil is the wormhole of science-fiction, the ocean vortex in Moby Dick, or that sinkhole in Guatemala.
 |
| Yeah, this sinkhole. See also: Hell, service entrance to. |
To be continued.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Commentary on Scripture: Romans 12:1-8
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Romans 12:1 ~~Romans 12 is rapidly becoming one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, and this verse illustrates why. Look at how much content is condensed into this verse! Paul's readers are urged to worship in light of the mercies of God, referenced in Romans 11. Their "spiritual service of worship" consists of presenting their bodies to the Lord, implying that ours is a corporeal (or Incarnate) faith and our worship ought to involve all of us. More than that, we are called to present our bodies as living and holy sacrifices acceptable to God, which pretty directly points us to the fact that our bodies can be pleasing to God, contra the gnostic or Manichean heresies. That's not even to mention the other point, which is that the goal of worship is to make an offering "acceptable to God." This is not a legal or juridical notion of imputed righteousness, in which God constructs a legal fiction for our salvation, but a true or ontological status-change of infused righteousness, in which we become members of the Body of Christ. And that's just one verse!
Romans 12:2 ~~ "Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed...." Thus far 12:2 is a perfectly standard Pauline remark against the world as a source of sin, and the necessity of a counter-cultural faith. But he doesn't end there. "...transformed by the renewing of your mind...." What, wait? We assume we are transformed by grace through faith, but it seems that the mechanism of that transformation (the efficient, not the final, cause) is by the effects of those on our minds (presumably including our reason and our will). But the sentence doesn't end there. "...so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." By renewing our minds, both rationally and morally, we become so virtuous that we are able to prove (perhaps in the archaic sense of 'test the soundness of,' or the modern sense of a logical demonstration) what the goodness of God consists of. By our holiness, we point others to the holiness of God. We become epistemic shortcuts to others who are seeking to know God's will.
Romans 12:3 ~~ "For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you...." Paul is both able and authorized to speak, according to the apostolic and pastoral grace given to him. By this authority he exhorts humility, especially in our self-evaluation. "Think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith." The latter part of the sentence is interesting in its own right: faith is a gift of God, and that it may be allotted to individuals in different amounts. But look to the former part of the sentence: because God has allotted faith to each (and presumably, because we do not know what or how much we have received), we are to cultivate our intellects so as to have sound judgment. This sounds like an exhortation for the four cardinal virtues (justice, temperance, courage, and prudence), that we may be able to overcome (by those virtues) any apparent deficiency in the three spiritual virtues (faith, hope, and love) with which we may wrestle.
Romans 12:4-5 ~~ This is one of the more famous analogies in Scripture: "For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one Body in Christ, and individually members one of another."
Romans 12:6-8 ~~ Because our individual gifts differ amongst ourselves, in proportion to the grace given, we are to exercise them in this light: each gift utilized in proportion to the relevant grace. Paul then lists a number of individual gifts and graces. Many of these seem somewhat redundant: "service, in his service; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation." But others are more apparently disconnected and therefore more noteworthy: "prophecy according to the proportion of his faith... he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness."
As I said above, Romans 12 is quickly becoming one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. It's remarkable to me how much content there is, even in the first half (first third, even) of the chapter. I'll finish the rest of the chapter in next week's installment: Romans 12:9-21.
Romans 12:1 ~~Romans 12 is rapidly becoming one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, and this verse illustrates why. Look at how much content is condensed into this verse! Paul's readers are urged to worship in light of the mercies of God, referenced in Romans 11. Their "spiritual service of worship" consists of presenting their bodies to the Lord, implying that ours is a corporeal (or Incarnate) faith and our worship ought to involve all of us. More than that, we are called to present our bodies as living and holy sacrifices acceptable to God, which pretty directly points us to the fact that our bodies can be pleasing to God, contra the gnostic or Manichean heresies. That's not even to mention the other point, which is that the goal of worship is to make an offering "acceptable to God." This is not a legal or juridical notion of imputed righteousness, in which God constructs a legal fiction for our salvation, but a true or ontological status-change of infused righteousness, in which we become members of the Body of Christ. And that's just one verse!
Romans 12:2 ~~ "Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed...." Thus far 12:2 is a perfectly standard Pauline remark against the world as a source of sin, and the necessity of a counter-cultural faith. But he doesn't end there. "...transformed by the renewing of your mind...." What, wait? We assume we are transformed by grace through faith, but it seems that the mechanism of that transformation (the efficient, not the final, cause) is by the effects of those on our minds (presumably including our reason and our will). But the sentence doesn't end there. "...so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." By renewing our minds, both rationally and morally, we become so virtuous that we are able to prove (perhaps in the archaic sense of 'test the soundness of,' or the modern sense of a logical demonstration) what the goodness of God consists of. By our holiness, we point others to the holiness of God. We become epistemic shortcuts to others who are seeking to know God's will.
Romans 12:3 ~~ "For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you...." Paul is both able and authorized to speak, according to the apostolic and pastoral grace given to him. By this authority he exhorts humility, especially in our self-evaluation. "Think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith." The latter part of the sentence is interesting in its own right: faith is a gift of God, and that it may be allotted to individuals in different amounts. But look to the former part of the sentence: because God has allotted faith to each (and presumably, because we do not know what or how much we have received), we are to cultivate our intellects so as to have sound judgment. This sounds like an exhortation for the four cardinal virtues (justice, temperance, courage, and prudence), that we may be able to overcome (by those virtues) any apparent deficiency in the three spiritual virtues (faith, hope, and love) with which we may wrestle.
Romans 12:4-5 ~~ This is one of the more famous analogies in Scripture: "For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one Body in Christ, and individually members one of another."
Romans 12:6-8 ~~ Because our individual gifts differ amongst ourselves, in proportion to the grace given, we are to exercise them in this light: each gift utilized in proportion to the relevant grace. Paul then lists a number of individual gifts and graces. Many of these seem somewhat redundant: "service, in his service; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation." But others are more apparently disconnected and therefore more noteworthy: "prophecy according to the proportion of his faith... he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness."
As I said above, Romans 12 is quickly becoming one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. It's remarkable to me how much content there is, even in the first half (first third, even) of the chapter. I'll finish the rest of the chapter in next week's installment: Romans 12:9-21.
Friday, July 1, 2011
What Do I Ask?
As the year began I discovered, much to my own surprise, that even though I was Protestant a full half of my theology was wholly and unreservedly Catholic.
This led me to investigate Catholicism in much greater depth, and within a few months each of my objections had fallen away.
By the middle of Lent I realized I was becoming Catholic, and had spoken to the priest, parochial vicar, and head catechist about joining the Church.
After the Easter Vigil, I began participating in the Inquiry meetings, in preparation for joining the RCIA program: that is, the "Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults."
I will officially enter RCIA on July 10th during the "Rite of Welcome" conducted at my parish's morning Mass.
As part of the Rite of Welcome, I will be asked two questions by the presiding priest or deacon. These questions are:
1) "What do you ask of God's Church?" and
2) "How can this faith community help you?"
How shall I answer? I ask for your advice and feedback, my friends and fellow Christians.
The second question strikes me as more personal, speaking to myself as an individual and my parish as a community. But even this I hardly know how to answer. I have some idea of my own needs, but how can I ask to receive unless I know what others can willingly give? I should be ashamed to request a mite only to be receive it from the hands of the widow. What can I ask for?
With regards to the first, I find there is a more pressing question: what should I ask of God's Church?
For I believe that the Church is the one holy and spotless Bride of Christ, mystically united in the Body of Christ, and bearing apostolic witness to the Life of Christ, the words and deeds of God. Next to that, I got nothing.
I would hardly present St. Peter with a list of demands as I passed through the Pearly Gates. It would hardly do to enter into the visible Church with a similar gesture. What can I request, knowing I receive all things (even my life) through the very grace of God?
This led me to investigate Catholicism in much greater depth, and within a few months each of my objections had fallen away.
By the middle of Lent I realized I was becoming Catholic, and had spoken to the priest, parochial vicar, and head catechist about joining the Church.
After the Easter Vigil, I began participating in the Inquiry meetings, in preparation for joining the RCIA program: that is, the "Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults."
I will officially enter RCIA on July 10th during the "Rite of Welcome" conducted at my parish's morning Mass.
As part of the Rite of Welcome, I will be asked two questions by the presiding priest or deacon. These questions are:
1) "What do you ask of God's Church?" and
2) "How can this faith community help you?"
How shall I answer? I ask for your advice and feedback, my friends and fellow Christians.
The second question strikes me as more personal, speaking to myself as an individual and my parish as a community. But even this I hardly know how to answer. I have some idea of my own needs, but how can I ask to receive unless I know what others can willingly give? I should be ashamed to request a mite only to be receive it from the hands of the widow. What can I ask for?
With regards to the first, I find there is a more pressing question: what should I ask of God's Church?
For I believe that the Church is the one holy and spotless Bride of Christ, mystically united in the Body of Christ, and bearing apostolic witness to the Life of Christ, the words and deeds of God. Next to that, I got nothing.
I would hardly present St. Peter with a list of demands as I passed through the Pearly Gates. It would hardly do to enter into the visible Church with a similar gesture. What can I request, knowing I receive all things (even my life) through the very grace of God?
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Of Morals and Metaphors: #2
In my last note, I spoke of the dominant moral metaphor of modern times: a straight line, spanning good and evil. I also noted several points of weakness in that metaphor, and asked how else we might visualize questions of morality.
In this post I want to offer the first of two alternate metaphors, both of which originated (for me) in the writings of C.S. Lewis.
The first metaphor shows up in his "Space Trilogy," particularly Out of the Silent Planet. The hero, Ransom, is a rather gawky linguist who finds himself unceremoniously deposited on the alien planet of Malacandra. He quickly learns the language, but is surprised to find the natives have no word for "badness" or "evil." This actually reflects the medieval mythopoeia in which Lewis was grounded, a cosmology in which the Fall of Man affected the earth alone and left the heavens unblemished.
Ransom is forced to improvise, to invent a new vocabulary for moral negatives. In order to warn the natives about his enemy, the imperious Dr. Weston, Ransom lands on the term "bent."
As a metaphor, "bent" lacks the simple elegance of a linear black-white spectrum or gray-scale. But through a single modification -- a slight angle in place of a straight line -- it has access to a far richer pool of image associations.
Humans live in a notoriously intractable world. Cars break down in the middle of nowhere, household appliances have to be replaced with alarming frequency, and rain will inevitably fall on the first day of a week-long camping trip. In my family, we call that "God's sense of humor."
This world is profoundly non-cooperative. Even at the most basic level of existence, Nature sometimes seems to rear and buck, itching to rid herself of her riders. Take our bodies, for instance. As Lewis notes in The Four Loves, St. Francis of Assisi was in the habit of calling his body "Brother Ass." Is this not the perfect and quintessential expression to encapsulates the feelings of bemusement and occasional frustration that every man and woman feels at some point in their lives towards to the very bodies by which they live?
So we see the metaphor is indeed a potent one. Through it we may unconsciously associate evil with the malfunctioning machine, a pipe warped out of alignment, a plumb-line or ruler that do not give a straight line, or in some cases a decidedly hostile force of nature.
As stated before, every sin is at root a corrupted or distorted image of virtue. This mental link conveys that crucial information with efficiency and concision.
But in the last analysis, this too fails. The metaphors withstands most critique, far more than the linear model. Indeed, it may be said it withstands all critique but one: darkness is the absence of light.
Evil is purely the negation of the good. We may treat sin as "bent" or corrupted virtue, and this is true in many senses. But the evil lies solely in the bend, in the corruption. Evil consists in what a thing is not, or what it was but is no longer. It never lies in the thing itself. The thing itself is purely good, for only the good can exist in reality.
This is a theological point, but one we will expand on in the next post. In the interim, once again we face the same question. What other ways might we rely upon, to visualize good and evil? What metaphors might incorporate this latest insight, and how might it also incorporate the content-rich imagery of these previous metaphors?
Stay tuned. It's quite a treat.
In this post I want to offer the first of two alternate metaphors, both of which originated (for me) in the writings of C.S. Lewis.
The first metaphor shows up in his "Space Trilogy," particularly Out of the Silent Planet. The hero, Ransom, is a rather gawky linguist who finds himself unceremoniously deposited on the alien planet of Malacandra. He quickly learns the language, but is surprised to find the natives have no word for "badness" or "evil." This actually reflects the medieval mythopoeia in which Lewis was grounded, a cosmology in which the Fall of Man affected the earth alone and left the heavens unblemished.
Ransom is forced to improvise, to invent a new vocabulary for moral negatives. In order to warn the natives about his enemy, the imperious Dr. Weston, Ransom lands on the term "bent."
As a metaphor, "bent" lacks the simple elegance of a linear black-white spectrum or gray-scale. But through a single modification -- a slight angle in place of a straight line -- it has access to a far richer pool of image associations.
Humans live in a notoriously intractable world. Cars break down in the middle of nowhere, household appliances have to be replaced with alarming frequency, and rain will inevitably fall on the first day of a week-long camping trip. In my family, we call that "God's sense of humor."
This world is profoundly non-cooperative. Even at the most basic level of existence, Nature sometimes seems to rear and buck, itching to rid herself of her riders. Take our bodies, for instance. As Lewis notes in The Four Loves, St. Francis of Assisi was in the habit of calling his body "Brother Ass." Is this not the perfect and quintessential expression to encapsulates the feelings of bemusement and occasional frustration that every man and woman feels at some point in their lives towards to the very bodies by which they live?
So we see the metaphor is indeed a potent one. Through it we may unconsciously associate evil with the malfunctioning machine, a pipe warped out of alignment, a plumb-line or ruler that do not give a straight line, or in some cases a decidedly hostile force of nature.
As stated before, every sin is at root a corrupted or distorted image of virtue. This mental link conveys that crucial information with efficiency and concision.
But in the last analysis, this too fails. The metaphors withstands most critique, far more than the linear model. Indeed, it may be said it withstands all critique but one: darkness is the absence of light.
Evil is purely the negation of the good. We may treat sin as "bent" or corrupted virtue, and this is true in many senses. But the evil lies solely in the bend, in the corruption. Evil consists in what a thing is not, or what it was but is no longer. It never lies in the thing itself. The thing itself is purely good, for only the good can exist in reality.
This is a theological point, but one we will expand on in the next post. In the interim, once again we face the same question. What other ways might we rely upon, to visualize good and evil? What metaphors might incorporate this latest insight, and how might it also incorporate the content-rich imagery of these previous metaphors?
Stay tuned. It's quite a treat.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Of Morals and Metaphors: #1
My previous posts on metaphors and persuasion were mostly by way of introducing this next topic. For the sake of brevity, I'm splitting up my thoughts into multiple installments. For the sake of readership, I'll try to end each post with a thrilling cliff-hanger of a question. For the sake of my own self-respect I probably won't try too hard.
We've already established that our rational minds rely on images and metaphors to an impressive and often unconscious degree. This is particularly true when it comes to questions of of morality.
How do we visualize good and evil?
The moral imagination of the modern age is dominated to a startling degree by an ancient Gnostic heresy called Manichaeism. According to the Manichees, good and evil were equal and opposite forces. Good was associated with God and a spiritual "Kingdom of Light;" evil with Satan and a physical "Kingdom of Darkness."
In other words, the Manichees asserted a basically dualistic moral universe. Sound familiar?
The key metaphor in our modern understanding of good and evil is a straight line: good on one end, evil on the other, and a morally gray no-man's land in between. This metaphor is robust, and with good reason: its strength is its simplicity. But it has one fatal flaw: namely, it just ain't so.
Good and evil are not equal opposites. Every vice is, at root, the corrupted or distorted image of a corresponding virtue. But the reverse is not true: virtue is not at heart merely glorified vice. Likewise, the most successful lie is a half-truth, a fiction spliced with just enough fact to make it persuasive. On the contrary, the most successful truths are judged, not according to persuasiveness, but by fidelity to the real world.
Right and wrong don't even compete in the same weight class.
Thus the question remains: how else might we visualize good and evil? Tune in tomorrow for the answer.
We've already established that our rational minds rely on images and metaphors to an impressive and often unconscious degree. This is particularly true when it comes to questions of of morality.
How do we visualize good and evil?
The moral imagination of the modern age is dominated to a startling degree by an ancient Gnostic heresy called Manichaeism. According to the Manichees, good and evil were equal and opposite forces. Good was associated with God and a spiritual "Kingdom of Light;" evil with Satan and a physical "Kingdom of Darkness."
In other words, the Manichees asserted a basically dualistic moral universe. Sound familiar?
The key metaphor in our modern understanding of good and evil is a straight line: good on one end, evil on the other, and a morally gray no-man's land in between. This metaphor is robust, and with good reason: its strength is its simplicity. But it has one fatal flaw: namely, it just ain't so.
Good and evil are not equal opposites. Every vice is, at root, the corrupted or distorted image of a corresponding virtue. But the reverse is not true: virtue is not at heart merely glorified vice. Likewise, the most successful lie is a half-truth, a fiction spliced with just enough fact to make it persuasive. On the contrary, the most successful truths are judged, not according to persuasiveness, but by fidelity to the real world.
Right and wrong don't even compete in the same weight class.
Thus the question remains: how else might we visualize good and evil? Tune in tomorrow for the answer.
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