Daily Episcopalian

By Derek Olsen

I believe in good people. Matter of fact, I believe there are quite a lot of them scattered throughout history in various times and various places. We can learn a lot from them about what it means to enact respect and dignity for others, to right the wrongs of society, and to bring people together despite their differences and grievances. Yes, I do indeed believe in good people and in following their examples.

I also believe in saints.

But I don’t believe that the first category is the same as the second.

That is to say, I believe that good people should be both honored and imitated by all—but saints are something different; saints are something more peculiar and more mysterious. I would say that most saints also fall into the first category, being a certain subset of “good people,” but to see them only as good people is a mistake.

My friend Donald Schell has written two (I, II) articles about how the people in the icon on the wall of the parish he founded got to be there. As I read his words I found myself alternately nodding and shaking my head. Yes—and no. But it moved me to think and to consider the difference between the good and the saints. From where I sit, there are two central factors in what it means to be a saint that make them fundamentally different from those who are good. First, the saints force us to consider what it means to live as a result of resurrection power.

Bloggers and Saints

When I need it—and it’s not that uncommon—I ask my wife and my parents to pray for me. People at church—I ask them to pray for me too. Why? ‘Cause we’re a faith community, a spiritual family who are bound together and care for one another and one of the ways that we do that is to pray.

I sometimes ask my bloggy friends to pray for me as well. Now there are several levels of relationships that I share with folks who read my blog. Some are friends who now live in different places. We’ve laughed, cried, and quaffed beer together. Some are lurkers who leave nary a trace and who, in praying for me, do me a good that I will never know and form part of the community that I will never know. But many are people that I have grown to know. I’ve never met them in the flesh, but I know them through their writings. In their writings I see them thinking through their struggles, their doubts, their joys—enacting the never-ending work of embodying our Baptism in the world, wherever that may be and in whatever circumstances we are found. I ask them to pray for me and I do the same for them. They too are part of my faith community, my spiritual family, and have a very real and tangible effect on my life—spiritually and otherwise.

Likewise, when I ask St Benedict, St Bede and St Cuthbert to pray for me, I approach them in just the same way. Call it the blogger model of the communion of the saints. I’ve never met them in the flesh, but I know them through their writings. In their writings I see them thinking through their struggles, their doubts, their joys—enacting the never-ending work of embodying our Baptism in the world, wherever that may be and in whatever circumstances we are found. I ask them to pray for me and I do the same for them. They too are part of my faith community, my spiritual family and have a very real and tangible effect on my life—spiritually and otherwise. (And there are a host of lurkers here as well!)

What’s that? But they’re dead, you say? But—that’s precisely the point, isn’t it. As Christians—particularly as Episcopalians who ground our theology in Baptism—we say that we believe that they live with the very same life that we do. Through our Baptism we have been incorporated into the life of God. The resurrection has rent the veil between life and death making it—while still very real, and shocking, and painful—different. Our common life flows through Christ, He who reminded us that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of the living and not of the dead. And therefore if God is the God of the living then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yea though they have died yet they live—and so do Benedict and Bede and Cuthbert, and so do we.

The communion of the saints that we refer to in our creeds is the admission of a mystery. That Christ binds us in Baptism with not only himself but into all who are bound into him. He is the vine and we are the branches and the branches entwine and entangle as we weave and grow and reach for the sun of righteousness and the source of our life. Each time I ask for intercessions from my extended spiritual family it reminds me of barriers broken down, of lives and loves united in Christ.

The Holiness that Shocks

The second aspect of the saints comes from reflection on Donald’s comment about “common law” saints. In the early days, of course, all of the saints were common law. Central control of the canonization process didn’t start until the twelfth century; the idea that only Rome could declare a saint comes from a papal bull issued in 1634. In early medieval England the situation was quite a bit different. Saints were declared sometimes by bishops but more often by local acclamation. The chief criterion, however was not whether the deceased were a “good” person. The question was not one of goodness but of holiness.

Now, when we think of holiness we tend to associate it with holier-than-thou-ness, of a self-righteous piety. That’s not what we’re talking about here. The holiness that received attention in the early medieval world was knock-your-socks-off downright weird holiness. As good Protestant sorts we don’t like to talk about this kind of thing, of course. The problem, however, is that the Bible doesn’t seem to have any problem with it at all. There are passages that we like to ignore or skip over like Acts 5:15 where the people put the sick in the streets so that Peter’s shadow would heal them as he passed by or like Acts 19:12 where the people took away cloths that had touched Paul with which they healed the sick and cast out demons. For these folks, holiness wasn’t about pious moralism—holiness was a tangible power.

Lantfred was a German monk who came to Winchester in the closing years of the 10th century. In his “Life of St Swithun” (yes, there Is a real St Swithun…) ,he describes the sick and injured who used to come to the saint’s shrine, sometimes so many that the monks would have to clear a path for the clergy to move through the nave. But it wasn’t just people coming. Lantfred recounts the issues of monastic disobedience that would arise whenever the bishop left town; they flat refused to get up and sing a solemn Te Deum at each miraculous healing by St Swithun—because they were getting roused out of bed four or five times every night! For them, the saints were the people through whom the eschatological power of God broke loose upon the world. Through their embodiment of Scripture and cultivation of holiness, power flowed from them to literally change the world through God’s love.

As modern people this sort of talk tends to make us uncomfortable. It safer to go and find good people to emulate. It’s safer to celebrate people who founded institutions and organizations we approve of. Surely these earlier stories were somehow just mistaken—does the power of God really work like that in the world? Surely they were just primitive—or perhaps deluded.
Or perhaps we’re not paying attention.

And perhaps ironically—this is another way in which Donald and I agree. When we ponder how change happens in the world, how injustices get reversed, how righteousness takes root in systems of injustice, perhaps seeing it as the result of collective political action simply isn’t enough. Perhaps we need to start looking more for the eschatological power of God—and asking for it.

In short, I’ve got a different understanding of who and what a saint is than what is depicted on St Gregory of Nyssa’s wall. There’s no doubt in my mind that all of the people there are good people and, as good people, eminently worthy of emulation. But that’s not a saint. The saints are our elder siblings in the faith, those who share with us the burdens and blessings of the baptized life and who point in a myriad ways to consciously living Christ in the world. More than that they are those through whom God has touched the world. Some in small ways, others in larger, but all in ways that proclaim the “already” of God’s reign and the defeat of sin, death, and the devil.

Derek Olsen is in the final stretch of completing a Ph.D. in New Testament at Emory University. He has taught seminary courses in biblical studies, preaching, and liturgics; he currently resides in Maryland. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X/Y dad appear at Haligweorc.

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Comments (13)

Derek - Thank you and Donald both for not "refuting" each other and pulling us into an either/or sort of debate. There is no difference between the vision presented here and the vision presented by the earlier pieces. Only if one presumed to say "I am right and he is wrong, his saints are idols" would there be an issue. Thankfully, neither of you do so!

Saint Gregory of Nyssa parish never says "Surely these earlier stories were somehow just mistaken — does the power of God really work like that in the world? Surely they were just primitive—or perhaps deluded." If they did SGN would be missing St Francis of Assisi and St Seraphim of Sarov, to name two. And when I read the lives of the some of the people who dance on the wall, the "Holiness that shocks" is clearly present. Likewise, when I read the life of St Anthony the Great (not on SGN's wall) I hear of an Alexandrian Cobbler whom the Angels say was far holier than St Anthony because he prayed for the people whose shoes he repaired. "Common" holiness and the "Shocking" brand are both needed, although the former may never develop pilgrimage shines and the latter may do so to the distraction of the faithful (and the need for reformation).

Your saints and SGN's saints dance together. SGN and you paint a picture of the fullness of the Communion of Saints - such that no one of us can paint on our own. But neither image is a complete picture of that Communion which we can't yet see.

Much love!

Huw

Posted by Huw Richardson | May 22, 2009 6:46 AM

Thanks, Huw. There is, however, I think the key difference is in my first point. I understand the saints to be within the community of the baptized; the icon at Saint Gregory of Nyssa goes beyond it. Hence my remarks on good people--I honor Heschel and other non-baptized as well, but I cannot see them as saints within the definitions given us by the church. The issue is *not* their righteousness; it's how saints are connected into Baptism, Christ, and resurrection.

Posted by Derek Olsen | May 22, 2009 8:13 AM

Derek, As I wrote in my response to one of Donald's postings: St Justin says that they count Plato and Socrates (among others) as Christians. And I've seen icons of Plato and Socrates and others in wonderful Orthodox churches (GOA parishes) where this patristic tradition is honoured. Where Truth is found say the Fathers, it is only The Truth himself who put it there.

We can play semantics here, if you'd like, but "as Christians" sounds like "in the communion of saints" to me. One chooses to invoke who one wishes. Even after falling out of the Orthodox Church I still feel free to invoke St Raphael of Brooklyn. Anglicans invoke many Saints who wouldn't even have seen us as Christians - or at least as heretical schismatics - although we know better than them, of course.

Again, your image of holiness and Donald's are only exclusive if you force it. I don't think we need to. And to do so cuts us off from another part of our own, inclusive patristic heritage.

Much Love!

Posted by D. Huw Richardson | May 22, 2009 9:45 AM

Derek,

Very fine.

I am reminded that I tend to think of SS Mary, Benedict, Seraphim, JS Bach, and others as family and friends.

This family sense of Life in God is closer to the East than Medieval West, so I don't tend to divide out say, my uncle, in such a way that we do in the West with certain notions of purgatory. I would note also the East prays to and prays for the Saints, including praying to and for the BVM. One of the earliest example of praying involving the Saints is in the Armenian Church where they pray for Saint Mary. In that liturgy as well, we pray for the living (and the dead) got added in later. This is precisely so because as you note in Holy Baptism, we are kept in God's life--hidden in Christ.

Holiness always takes shape in a specific person, and thus, looks different for each. We are never repeatable, and hence, why holiness will take us beyond imitation. We might even say holiness is that a person is becoming, has become more a person in the Three-in-One.

I would also suggest that our present versus populum tends to obscure a notion of the full company of heaven joining us at Holy Communion. In Christ, all of heaven comes down and all of earth is lifted up.

Posted by Christopher Evans | May 22, 2009 9:53 AM

Hi Hugh,

No, I do see my view and Donald's on holiness as complementary--I just want to be more upfront about its eschatalogical component which I doubt Donald would disagree with.

On the baptism issue again, in responding to some emails I've received privately on on this piece I've been able to wrap words better around what I'm trying to communicate:

The line that I'm trying to walk is one that embraces all people of good faith and action as moral models but that does understand the the saints as our exemplars and intercessors within the Christian life. Coming from a perspective more rooted in ascetic than systematic theology, I do maintain that the saints who are baptized and understand themselves to be aided by the grace of God in Christ and experiencing conversion into the life of Christ as being a qualitatively different kind of model for us and relation to us than those who are not consciously within the church.

I know that this can seem exclusive--especially in today's environment--and I find myself wanting to deny a notion of exclusivity while still highlighting a certain particularity. That is, how God sees the "unbaptized good" I do not know and will not know this side of the veil. As a result, that's not a question I'm wrestling with--I'm going the other way: as people wanting to learn what it is to live a life hid in God, the saints (i.e., the baptized who have made recognized steps towards Christian perfection) are both guides and, through intercession, active supporters in our quest towards Christian perfection.

(And thanks to those whose emails helped me be more clear!!)

Posted by Derek Olsen | May 22, 2009 2:02 PM

I guess, Derek, my only defense would be to say, again... some (at least) of the Fathers seem to say differently. I will hold on to that wider, more universalist reading. But I, with you, agree: "I do not know and will not know this side of the veil." I will trust in God's grace that all will be well in what all our human points of view may be lacking!

Much love (and Shabbat Shalom)!

Posted by D. Huw Richardson | May 22, 2009 4:41 PM

I do appreciate your emphasis on the eschatological quality of saintliness. That wasn't my first thought reading your piece (and thank you for taking us to dialogue with your thoughtful and compelling response to my pieces here). My first thought was that the spiritualty of "I sing a song of the saints of God" might make sense of our asking the question of how holiness shows up in any particularvsort of human life- so a scientist like Margaret Meade or a singer like Ella Fitzgerald or a peacemaker and leader like Gandhi or a attorney and judge like Thurgood Marshall.

Then I thought of Seraphim of Sarov and Simeon the New Theologian and agreed with you. We weren't looking for perfect lives but did want resurrected lives, lives drenched in grace, lives that shine for us with the light of Christ. With a committee of eight talking and thinking and praying together, I imagine each person on the committee looks back and thinks (as I do) "other committee members saw that one so clearly that I was glad to concur; I didn't see that one so clearly as they did."

We knew we wanted something stronger and more doxological than a religious/secular hall of fame. We. Knew that saying someone's life shone for us with Christ's light did not mean we thought that person was somehow REALLY a Christian. We were very clear that wasn't a way to celebrate Ann Frank or Abraham Heschel or Malcolm X, for example. We talked about Gandhi, the Hindu who also acknowledged he was a follower of Christ, but not a Christian. We saw some hint there.

Huw has hit on part of what we wanted to see and declare, that there were non-Christian lives that spoke strongly to us of Jesus and hinted at being "in Christ" as St Paul would say. In contemporary termsi think of Liviu Lebrescu, the professor at Virginia Tech who gave his life, making himself a human shield for his students. When I read a discussion on conservative Anglican blog wondering how God would judge the soul of this Romanian Jew and holocaust survivor, I thought that Gregory of Nyssa's strand of Christian tradition was clear. All humanity is the Body of Christ, and the Lord Jesus who said no one could have greater love thanto lay downhis life for his friends must recognize the holiness of a heart and courage like his own. Love as St Paul and Johannine writings teach IS the eschatological power of God.

I'm thinking of other saints on the wall. John Coltrane, a recovering addict writing "a love supreme," Bishop Shereshevsky giving thanks for the paralysis that confined him to a wheelchair and compelled his doing his "real work" of translating the Bible, Malcolm Xgiving his life for teaching the one reconciling embrace of One God. Moral exemplars sounds tidier and smaller than what drew us to those people.

I believe, Derek, that the difference in our perspective isn't moral lives versus holy lives. I also know you are not saying that God's Spirit is absent from the lives of non-Christians. I think our difference may be that the dancing saints icon (following Gregory and a solid minority strand of Christian mystics and theologians) proclaims the same transforming Spirit leading all life into Christ the Life of all, regardless of and one's knowing or naming that Spirit.

I also do know that generous voices like yours leave plenty of room for God to deal graciously with the salvation of whomsoever God will, that versions of Purgatory like C. S. Lewis's hope and pray for all to have their opportunity to come to the fullest vision of God's grace, and that are plenty of good (and I would say holy) people who would be baffled to see some of their own co-religionists honored asdsints by a Christian church.

Our choice was to listen to our own call (adweheard it) to celebrate God's unreserved, life-giving presence in all people by remembering the holiness, Jesus' human/divine holiness where we see it in ChristIan and non-Christian alike.

Derek, if I missed what you were saying let me know. I'll gladly read and think some more. For now, my iPhone index finger typing has slowed my writing and made it difficult to review this from the top. So for now it's thank you, blessings and good night.

With love and very considerable appreciation,
Donald

Posted by Donald Schell | May 23, 2009 12:01 AM

Donald, thanks for your response. I think a bottom line disagreement that I have with the practices that I see coming out of St Gregory of Nyssa--and there were two in particular mentioned in your pieces--is around the place of Baptism. One of the things that I signed onto after I, with much deliberation, left the Lutheran Church was the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. There are rites and elements in medieval liturgies that I find superior, elements and rites of the current Rome Rite that I prefer, even formulas and formulations in the English 1662 book I think better. Nevertheless, I committed myself to this book as a legitimate expression of the Historic Liturgy as it's been received in the West. One of the great divergences between this book and its predecessor rites is its recapturing of a more 4th century perspective on Baptism (following the renewal of Vatican II) and insisting that Baptism is full and sufficient initiation. Indeed, one of of the most frequently heard arguments for the full inclusion of people who are gay and lesbian (among others) in our church is an appeal to the Baptismal Covenant.

My concern is that your emphasis on communing the unbaptized and honoring those not baptized as saints fundamentally attempts to undermine our sacramental understanding. Furthermore, the sacrament that you undermine is the one that does support inclusion. In the name of inclusion, you are undermining one of its major theological supports.

This isn't just about church politics, of course. I believe strongly in Baptism as a spiritual and mystical reality that does fundamentally and indelibly alter those who are so marked. While I know not all in the church hold this same view, it pains me to see the spread and promotion of practices that seek to marginalize the sacrament that binds us into the death and new risen life of Christ.

Posted by Derek Olsen | May 23, 2009 10:28 AM

"communing the unbaptized and honoring those not baptized as saints fundamentally attempts to undermine our sacramental understanding..." I get what you're saying here and agree. And I'd say that the ironic or paradoxical dilemma is that inviting all to Jesus' table enables us to enact eschatologically the baptismal vision of Galatians (for those baptized into Christ there is no more male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek). Baptism washes away what divides us into tribes and groups and begins to manifest the graceful shape of the Body of Christ (again, Gregory's vision is that Body is all humanity; St. Paul leans that direction in the cosmic birth-giving in Romans 8 and his daring suggestion that us, the baptized, 'make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ' perhaps on behalf of all in our own life and body struggles). When Christ us all in all and hands a reconciled world back to the Father, sacraments DO cease. The holy chaos of welcoming the worst sinners and most unprepared and even unrepentant egos (even ours) to Jesus' table breaks the orderly boundary of how we pass into grace as grace breaks in on us.

much love,
donald

Posted by Donald Schell | May 24, 2009 7:35 PM

And I'd say that the ironic or paradoxical dilemma is that inviting all to Jesus' table enables us to enact eschatologically the baptismal vision of Galatians (for those baptized into Christ there is no more male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek).

Ok... I'm not sure how to interact with a statement of this sort except to say that I do not see the irony nor do I see that the paradoxical elements have been fulfilled.

On the issue of Gregory, I'll confess I haven't read him extensively--could you point me to the passages in his writings where he takes up the theme to which you refer? Certainly God wills the redemption of all humanity--all creation--but we're still in the groaning stages; reconciliation has not yet occurred.

How does this approach differ from Bonhoeffer's description on cheap grace--where the grace and love of God are presented bereft of the cost and consequences of discipleship? Yes, God's love and grace are for all and showered on all; I would never dispute this. But does this grace not require a response? Are commitment and sacrifice not an integral part of the message? Can the full message of the love and grace of God be told without the cross which is the commitment and sacrifice of God on our behalf and the model of an adequate response?

Without this call to commitment and sacrifice I can't see how it can be anything other than a different Gospel than that preached by Christ.

Posted by Derek Olsen | May 26, 2009 11:00 AM

I'm going to reply in three separate postings. First responding to your saying, 'reconciliation has not yet occurred.' I know this is a standard Christian teaching, but we also do see fully realized eschatology in John's Gospel and (according to some good Gospel scholars beginning with Norman Perrin) in the foundations Jesus' teaching as they found them the synoptic tradition. Does Jesus proclaim that the kingdom 'is coming' or that it is here? I'm with Perrin.

I remember Will Campbell quoting II Corinthians 5:19, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting men's faults against them and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled."

Will said the three words, "They are reconciled" were the most radical in the Bible. And they're radical because they say that we are living in God's reconciliation now. Obviously this raises two problems - evil we see in the world, and seemingly delivering grace to all effortlessly and without distinction.

I'll respond to those in the next note.

Posted by Donald Schell | May 26, 2009 6:20 PM

Continuing from the previous note - if God's reconciliation of all in Christ is done, what about evil and is there any incentive left for people to strive to please God?

1. evil. There is no good answer to the problem of evil. The Christian East pretty consistently says it doesn't 'exist,' which is different from saying it doesn't happen. They mean that it's a terrible, destructive and even killing unreality. That mean that what 'is' is comprehensible to us in seeing God's good creation and what's not there, what's not good, is unreal. As near as I can tell it's the only way we can ever (whether now or in the age to come) talk about Christ all in all, about the union of all in God. Other choies make evil a separate, real existence (Manicheanism which Augustine gave up but which our culture may have carried on) or some kind of unfortunate side creation or noxious waste implicit in God's goodness, our freedom, or other divine act. I find it hard to argue that one without quietly conceding it's God's fault, making God responsible for evil.

Love and healing justice are the Gospel answers to the dilemma. They don't explain where evil came from, but their presence marks the work of God. Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan has a religious heretic and enemy of the Jerusalem Temple, one of 'those people' who'd scattered dead men's bones to desecrate the temple in Jesus' lifetime responding to moral and natural evil (thieves and an attack on a man they leave wounded so badly that he's likely to die). Religious leaders obey God's law as they've been taught it and cross to the opposite side of the road, maintaining their ritual purity. The Samaritan doesn't care about God's law but does allow compassion and loving action to stir in his heart and he touches the man, loads him on his beast, spends his money on him and promises to come back and see to him. The evil in the story remains wholly unexplained, but the peace-making act that embodies God's reconciling all people to God's self shows the truth of God's law - of how it really is, that our life is about loving God with our whole heart and our neighbor as ourselves...or here as listeners, accepting the love of our neighbor (our hated enemy) that embodies God's love.

None of it makes any sense without love and its seedling of open-heartedness to the other and compassion. And that's the answer to Bonhoeffer's concern of cheap grace. The religious leaders in the parable are putting serious, conscientious effort into showing their love for God by obeying God's law. The Samaritan does what God does and saves a life. Neither, in fact, is cheap. But the grace we feel the Samaritan acting into is refreshingly unforced.

Two other Gospel stories come to mind: Zacchaeus and the Prodigal Son.

So in the story of Jesus' encounter with Zacchaeus, forgiveness and an unreserved messianic to Jesus' prophetic sign of feasting with Zacchaeus the sinner precedes any word from Zacchaeus. It's not
repentance followed by forgiveness but forgiveness followed by repentance. Jesus' unanticipated and uncondtional gesture of reconciling love changes Zacchaeus' heart. And how does he find his heart changed? When the neighbors, the people he's been gouging for taxes object to Jesus eating with a sinner, Zacchaeus makes a public offer to pay back all he's cheated four times over. The grace came for free but, because he'd experienced it, he willingly paid a high cost.

Consider the instance of a confession of sin hoping for an absolution in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The son 'comes to himself' (apparently to his wily, resourceful, self-promoting self) while he's feeding pigs in a foreign land and he imagines what he'd say to get his father to take him back in, 'Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you and am no longer worthy to be called your son. treat me as one of your hired servants.' In the parable we get his worst case explanation - he figures that will certainly get him a roof over his head and food in his belly. As a storyteller, I think I sense the unspoken hope that if he grovels enough, he'll get more. He rehearses his speech on the way home. What he doesn't know is that his father watches the road every day waiting for him. He's father is running to embrace him before he even knows he was close enough to be seen. He starts his little speech and his father silences it and sends for the best robe and the ring and orders the servants to kill a fatted calf. Both the righteous older brother and the repentant sinner younger brother do their best to control the father's too ready generosity. The younger son's plan would have let him keep his pride. Instead he has to live with knowing he doesn't deserve the love he's receiving. The older son WANTS his brother to grovel and be reminded he needs to prove his reform and find some way to atone for all the wasted property. The father won't have it.

I used to go into the county jail to lead a Saturday eucharist and Bible study. For three or four weeks in a row there was a guy coming he really seemed to be getting something that mattered to him. Then he disappeared. Still in but wouldn't come to liturgy. Refused to see me when I offered to visit him. A man inside the walls was through up another wall. A couple of years later, I was waiting for a church meeting space with, as it happened, the board of the jail ministry. There was an N.A. meeting inside so we waited. And as the N.A. meeting broke up, my old friend from jail emerged, recognized me, smiled broadly, began to cry and hugged me. "Did you ever wonder what happened?" he asked. "After those three services, I refused to see you because I saw what I'd stepped into and it scared me. Easy enough to talk about Jesus and loving God and your neighbor inside. Outside it's tough. I didn't want to fool you or myself. But I didn't forget what I'd felt and known. When I was out, I went straight to N.A. I've got fifteen months clean. I've got a job. I'm married. Those services told me God loves me and that gave me a life."

In my thirty years of pastoring a congregation that deliberately imitated Jesus' invitation to all to his table, we celebrated a lot of adult baptisms. People who felt grace and the power of Jesus' presence in the community would sometimes articulate it as clearly as, "I don't want to just feed on Jesus in the bread and wine, and I want to start becoming Jesus, so I want to be baptized."

Knowing we're loved, knowing God's love is the most powerful impetus for change I can think of. Bonhoeffer's warnings against 'cheap grace' make sense if we're not enacting God's welcome powerfully enough. If 'Good News' is information, people can 'learn it' and retain their complacent self-absorption. If it's enacted love, Jesus' Good News gives us the eyes to see sisters and brothers and a longing to love them as he does.

Posted by Donald Schell | May 26, 2009 7:15 PM

This third of this - Sources.

That's the French title for Olivier Clement's wonderful guided collection of good, chewy chunks from early Christian theologians. In English it's titled "Roots of Christian Mysticism," a mis-leading title, I think. "The Soil of Practical Theology" would seem more accurate to me, or "Ascetical Theology for Community and Person" might also be better. I've copied some texts from Clement in reply to your question about sources. The largest number are from Gregory of Nyssa, but they range from the 2nd Century Odes of Solomon to the St. Isaac the Syrian in the 7th Century (whose teaching had a profound influence on Dostoyevsky 1200 years later).

As I've said in our off-line conversation, I appreciate your interest and patience in this conversation, and am enjoying the sense that we're both learning as we talk. The problems you've raised are certainly real. I don't expect to change your mind, but hope this string of quotations helps put some context to Western and English teachers like Julian of Norwich.

ODES OF SOLOMON (early to mid- 2nd century)
When Jesus promises Peter that the gates of hell cannot prevail against the community he is gathering, the classic resurrection icon shows us what that means – Jesus has BURST OPEN The gates of the underground prison to free the prisoners:
[Christ speaks:]I have opened the gates that were bolted
I have shattered the bars of iron and the iron has become red-hot:
It has melted at my presence; and nothing more has been shut
Because I am the gate for all beings.
I went to free the prisoners; they belong to me
And I abandon no one…
I have sown my fruits in their hearts
And I have changed them into myself…
They are my members and I am their head.
- In Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism…or…Sources, pp. 51-52

IRENAEUS OF LYONS (late 2nd Century)
The glory of God is a living person and the life of humanity is the vision of God.
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Clement p. 265
(Starting about twenty-five years ago, people began to paraphrase Irenaeus’ words with a qualifier, like ‘the glory of God is a human person fully alive,’ but ‘living human is what Irenaeus wrote because he sees God’s glory - and breath/Spirit he says elsewhere – vibrant in every human and in the whole of life.)

GREGORY OF NYSSA (4th Century)
It is the whole of [our] nature, extending from beginning to end, that constitutes the one image of Him who is.
- Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man 16 , O. Clement p. 82
To say that there are ‘many human beings’ is a common abuse of language. Granted there is a plurality of those who share in the same human nature…but in all them, humanity is one.
- Gregory of Nyssa, “That there are not three Gods,” Clement p. 82
It is not in a part of [our] nature that the image is found, but nature in its totality is the image of God.
- Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man, Clement p. 83

BALAI (5th Century Syrian)
Thine is the kingdom of heaven: ours is thy house…There the priest offers the bread in thy name and thou givest thine own body to all for food…Thy heavens are too high for us to be able to reach them. But behold, thou comest to us in the church, so close. Thy throne rests on fire; who would dare approach? But the Almighty lives and dwells in bread. Anyone who wishes may approach and eat.
- Balai, “For the Consecration of a new Church,” Clement pp. 125-6

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE (6th Century)
Is it not true that Christ draws near with love to those who turn away from him? That he struggles with them, begs them not to scorn his love, and if they show only aversion and remain deaf to his appeals, becomes himself their advocate?
- Dionysius, Letter 8, Clement p. 299

ISAAC OF NINEVEH (7th century)
What is purity, briefly? It is a heart full of compassion for all the whole of created nature…a heart that burns for all creation, for the birds, for the beast, for the devils, for every creature.
- Isaac of Nineveh, Ascetic Treatises, 81, Clement p. 227
As for me, I say that those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion of love. What is there more bitter and more violent than the pains of love? …Love is offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by the presence of a friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been faithful. That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion- remorse.
- Isaac of Nineveh, Ascetic Treatises, 84, Clement p. 303
O the wonder of the grace of our Creator! O the unfathomable goodness with which he has invested the existence of us sinners in order to create it afresh! …Anyone who has offended and blasphemed him he raises up again…Sin is to fail to understand the grace of the resurrection. Where is the hell that could afflict us? What is the damnation that could make us afraid to the extent of overwhelming the joy of God’s love? What is hell, face to face with grace of the resurrection when he will rescue us from damnation, enable this corruptible body to put on incorruption and raise up fallen humanity from hell to glory? …who will appreciate the wonder of our Creator’s grace as it deserves? In place of what sinners justly deserve, he gives them resurrection. In place of bodies that have profaned his law, he clothes them anew in glory.
- Isaac of Nineveh, Ascetic Treatises, 60, Clement p. 307

Posted by Donald Schell | May 26, 2009 7:27 PM

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