Two things came together in my mind recently:
In some random movie I was watching, I heard the character personify the universe - you know, so the writers can talk about divine Providence without giving credit to God - so the character says something like, "I guess the universe wants me to..." This kind of thing has always annoyed me, but I never thought about it too much.
Around the same time, I read Wisdom 16, specifically verses 17 and 24-25, which say, "the universe fights on behalf of the righteous... For your creation, serving You, its maker, grows tense for punishment against the wicked, but is relaxed in benefit for those who trust in you. Therefore at that very time, transformed in all sorts of ways, it was serving your all-nourishing bounty according to what they needed and desired." In other words, in Scripture the universe IS personified, but NOT deified. The universe is a created thing that God uses to provide for his people, but it is currently in a state of tension because of human sin, and so creation itself waits in anticipation of the redemption of all things. But the universe does not have a will for your life, any more than the fire hydrant or your car does. The universe is on the same side of the Creator/creation divide as we are.
St. Paul describes this tension that creation is in, as something like being in labor (See Romans 8:22-24). But of course, Paul got this from Jesus (see Matthew 24:6-8). There is a sense in which, in the Church age, creation is like a woman being in labor, beginning with the first contractions of Jesus' passion (John 16:20-22) and ending with the "birth" of the revealed Kingdom of God. There is suffering in this life, and all of us created beings long for the time when the labor is over.
This is what I think of when I think of "labor" - all the stuff in Scripture about creation being in a state of anticipation. But this is precisely because the universe is created, and needs to be redeemed.
So, as Christians, let's never allow ourselves to fall into this habit of personifying the universe in a way that makes it a secular replacement for God. It may get to the point where it sounds odd to give credit to God in casual conversation (if it doesn't already), but do it anyway. Bring God back into the conversation! The universe does not have a will, the universe cannot want anything for you, except what it wants for itself (and that only by way of analogy), which is redemption. Without God, the only "will" the universe has is the law of entropy, which says that everything decays. Without God, everything decays, and dies. With God, we hope for resurrection, and life.
So happy labor day - and may we all let it remind us that in God there is relief after the suffering; there is rest after the work.
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!
Here is our next set of texts - as we get into John chapter 6, we first encounter Jesus feeding the multitudes - in this case 5,000 families!
Now, as you know, there is also an account o Jesus feeding 4,000, and so you may also know that some scholars might speculate that these are just different versions of the same story that circulated and were handed down orally, until they were written down. Even the fact that both stories occur in the same gospel would not stop that kind of speculation. So I thought the first question I would have to ask was whether the Church fathers thought this was one event or two - BUT (and you see where this is going) I forgot that Jesus himself makes reference to two separate events (in Matthew 16 and in Mark 8) so there is no question for the Church fathers - these are two separate events. So it seems that Jesus performed this sign (miracle) of the feeding of the multitudes on two occasions. It's not just one event told two different ways, and it's also ...
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 ...
