Here's today's morning insight. I've found myself reading into some of the Old Testament apocrypha - not just the deuterocanonical books that are in the Catholic OT, but even going beyond that into some of the documents that pretty much everyone leaves out of their OT. Today I'm reading in 2 Esdras, which is a first century apocalyptic book (so it's not from before Jesus, but it is from a Jewish context, though perhaps with Christian additions). So keep in mind this is not considered inspired Scripture...
Anyway, it's interesting that when the archangel Uriel comes to Ezra to explain his visions and teach him things, the archangel speaks for God in the first person ("my judgment," etc.) and Ezra speaks to the archangel as though speaking directly to God ("my Lord," etc.). This is very much like when the three visitors come to Abraham and he treats one of them as divine - but the difference is that in Genesis the Church fathers could say, well that's the pre-incarnate Christ, the Logos, and that makes sense. But here it's clearly not - it's an angel.
In any case, it does show that Jews (at least those more mystically-minded) were ready for the idea of an agent of God speaking as the voice of God, by the first century. Of course this is what Christ is - the agent of creation, the Word of God. But with Christ, he is divine, so we as the Church needed to clarify the doctrine of the Trinity to make sense of that.
Another way to go (and one that a certain faction did choose) would have been to say that Jesus himself was an angel or archangel (i.e., not divine). This became a form of adoptionism called angel christology, and of course it was a heresy. But I think we can see the seeds of that already in this Jewish apocalyptic document. And I believe it also manifests in the document known as The Shepherd, by a certain Hermas, in the second century. So we can see in 2 Esdras a kind of christological fork in the road, so to speak. And for what it's worth, Paul's opponents known as the "Judaizers" would also have taken this other path that leads to adoptionism.
Here's a short (about a minute) video I took going around the Holy Column in the church of Santa Prassede. This is the column that Jesus was tied to when he was scourged by Pontius Pilate. They don't always have the barrier down, so you usually don't get to see it from all the way around. I wanted to get video of the whole thing all the way around because I ran across a note in an ancient document that said that those who made a pilgrimage (at that time to the Holy Land, since it was still in Jerusalem) could visit the Holy Column, and could see marks left from the hands of Jesus where he gripped it as he was being whipped. I assume that this is pious legend, but I figured since the column has that dark & light marble, maybe there's a place where the dark parts look like hands. I did not see it, but if you do, let me know!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
My voice was still recovering from a bad cold, so not sounding my best, but this was a great conversation about pilgrimage, for the Jubilee year - more of this coming in other interviews! (FYI, I think I was the third of three guests that day, so you will have to fast forward to find me)
It seems that one way or another we need to talk about different kinds, or different levels of heresy. What I have been calling heresy vs. heterodoxy, others call heresy on fundamental doctrines vs. heresy on less fundamental doctrines. In other words, Heresy with a capital H (over fundamental doctrines like the Trinity and christology) are the kinds of heresies that move one outside the boundaries of what Christianity is, and that's because the very definition of Christianity is defined according to these fundamental doctrines. To refuse to sign the Creed at the Council of Nicaea in 325, or the Council of Constantinople in 381 - and indeed to reject any of the contents of the Creed today - means that a person is NOT a Christian.
So are the non-chalcedonians, such as the miaphysites (including St. Gregory of Narek, and today's Coptic Christians) - are they heretics? Well, like it is with a lot of things, that depends on your definition of heresy. If you include in your definition of ...
As promised, I thought that this would be a good discussion starter here in the community - this is from a conversation I had with my producer at Catholic Culture, around the podcast episodes on St. Gregory of Narek. If you've listened to the first episode on St. Gregory, you know that he is the first and only Doctor of the Church who was not Catholic! What are we to make of this? How do we explain it? Well, it was within the context of me trying to explain it that two really fundamental questions came up, and had to be hashed out between me and my producer. The first question - and this was surprising, given that we had a whole series on The Heresies - the first question is: What is a heresy? And how you answer that has serious implications for the second question, which is: What is the Universal Church? And that has serious implications for ecumenical dialogue, not to mention how we think about our fellow Christians who are not Catholic. So let's take the first question first (and here's ...
