Tag: theology

Augustine and Sex

~ Vincent ~ 5 Comments

I just finished taking a class where the professor warned us about writing about Augustine and sex on blogs. Apparently it tends to attract people who have STRONG OPINIONS! But telling me not to do something is practically encouraging me to do it, so here we go. And since opinions in the modern era regarding bodies and sex are hot-button issues, give this one a sympathetic read, assuming that there’s no secret agenda. It’s just an adventure in one fifth-century theologian’s thought processes.

The look on his face says it all.

It’s easy to point out that Augustine has VERY different opinions on sex than the average modern person. And I don’t just mean that he’s a little conservative for modern taste; he’s way out there in uncharted territory. He’s pretty negative about sex, regardless of the context. I mean, one of the subchapters in City of God is literally titled, “the sense of shame in sexual intercourse.” I don’t know that anyone today really thinks, “Yeah, it’s normal to be a little ashamed during sex. Nothing weird there”. But rather than take the opportunity to discuss how his thoughts are bad (which I’m sure has been done a million times before), I want to look at the insights that he can give a modern reader. Augustine’s odd insights can remind us that our bodies are not as purely neutral or good as we moderns often imagine them to be. Bodies are tainted by sin in this life, just like everything else, and they won’t fully align with our saintly ambitions until the end of time.

In the circles I study in, it’s safe to say that bodies are normally thought of as highly positive elements of our being. People emphasize the line in the Apostle’s Creed “the resurrection of the dead,” they talk about the body’s role in our current and future being, and carefully choose language intended to destigmatize bodily aspects of existence like sex and disability. And, of course, none of that is bad. Nobody that I know wants to live in a society where the disabled are stigmatized and sex feels like a sin. But the methodology that’s used tends to make the core assumption that bodies are de-facto good. They’re extensions of our own being, complete with natural and good inclinations that we ought to listen to if we want to be happy. If our body is not as we would like it to be (regarding appearance, food intake, sex, ability, or any other number of factors) we need to accept it as differently good, rather than problematic.

The problems begin when we have Jesus saying things like “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:28). Lust is one of those bodily emotions that we just sort of… feel. We don’t choose to lust; it just happens. What do we do about that? On one hand, we have groups that have normalized sexual expression whenever a person feels lustful. It’s almost viewed as a form of hunger. If you’re hungry, you eat. If you’re lustful, you have sex. Many of the wellness systems that I’ve seen encouraged in colleges list sexual expression as a basic need for wellness. Lust is portrayed as one more positive emotion that helps us regulate our bodily well being. This, of course, simply assumes that Jesus was wrong. Another common understanding is that there is a big difference between thought and action. To think a lustful thought isn’t ideal, but it’s not as bad as actually acting on it. True though this may be, it’s not the high bar that Jesus presented. He didn’t say that a few lustful thoughts were well within the boundaries of reason. He said to knock it off completely.

This is where we can start to understand Augustine’s perspective. What makes sex so troublesome to him? It’s attached to these bodily emotions that are almost impossible to control. It’s not the only activity capable of arousing these sorts of passions, but it’s certainly one of the most prominent.  Despite our most careful attempts to cultivate virtue, we’re always subject to bodily lust. In City of God he writes:

There are lusts for many things, and yet when lust is mentioned without the specification of its object the only thing that normally occurs to the mind is the lust that excites the indecent parts of the body. This lust assumes power not only over the whole body, and not only from the outside, but also internally; it disturbs the whole man, when the mental emotion combines and mingles with the physical craving, resulting in a pleasure surpassing all physical delights. So intense is the pleasure that when it reaches its climax there is an almost total extinction of mental alertness; the intellectual sentries, as it were, are overwhelmed.

City of God, Book XIV, 16

Here, we see lust portrayed as this sin that’s rooted in our body, capable of completely drowning out our own free will.  It can stop us from being the saints that we want to be and drag us towards sins that our minds would never choose for us.  This isn’t a battle that can be corrected either.  Until we receive new bodies/restored bodies in the resurrection, we’re stuck fighting our own lust. Our bodies are affected by the fallenness of the world, and lust is a sin that’s etched into them for the duration of our time on Earth. The gift of sexuality that God gave us is always muddied by the unavoidable, uncontrollable presence of lust.

But the fullness of Augustine’s concerns with sex are a little deeper than that.  The ancient era was dominated by the thoughts of Plato, who warned people not to focus on things in this world, but to focus on the things beyond this world.  For Christian Platonists, the world below was something that should draw our attention to our God above.  If we get bogged down in focusing on earthly things because of their own beauty, we’ll miss the greater beauty that they’re pointing to. The Bible has passages that these ancient, Plato-influenced readers would have focused on to a far greater degree than we do, such as Colossians 3:2, “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.”  That’s why we have bishops like Augustine creating whole theological systems that encourage people to put their whole heart and mind on God, regardless of what they’re doing. He says that things in this world are here for us to use, while the God beyond this world is there to be enjoyed:

To enjoy a thing is to rest with satisfaction in it for its own sake. To use, on the other hand, is to employ whatever means are at one’s disposal to obtain what one desires, if it is a proper object of desire; for an unlawful use ought rather to be called an abuse.

De Doctrina, Ch 4

A good Christian only uses the things in this world. We use our tools. We use our modes of transportation. We use our friends. We use everything to seek God, in whom we rest. And yes, “use” is a word that hasn’t aged well to talk about people, but hopefully you can see what he’s trying to do here. He’s not suggesting we use them in a way that is disrespectful or abusive. He’s suggesting that they’re here to help us seek God and enjoy him. That’s why all of us are here: to point to God.

You can see why all of that would make lust extra concerning.  Someone experiencing lust is probably not thinking much about God.  Their faculties are overwhelmed with the pleasure of an earthly thing, and they’re not giving much thought to heavenly things.  In that light, lust is something that is continually pulling us away from heaven, down into the dust from which we were made.  It’s a way to enjoy something for its own sake, rather than to enjoy God through it.

To Augustine, not only is lust something that’s bodily and uncontrollable, but it’s pulling our minds away from God and down towards things that can never fulfill us. That’s why it’s so worthy of concern.

 In an era where assumptions about bodies and sex have changed so vastly, what do we have to gain from reading Augustine’s thoughts about sex?  A reminder that our bodies are not purely reliable entities.  They’re tainted by sin, just like everything else.  Rather than always differing to the wants of our bodies (sexual or otherwise), we can remember that there’s something beyond all of this that demands our loyalty.  That’s where real enjoyment is.

The Father of Monks

~ Vincent ~ 1 Comment
The Torment of St. Anthony by Michaelangelo

Anthony of Egypt is one of the most meaningful Christian mentors I’ve ever had, and he lived over a thousand years ago as a poor, solitary monk in the Egyptian desert.  All I have from him is a biography that someone else wrote (I mean, the famous bishop Athanasius wrote it, so, to be fair, it’s pretty good), a few letters of questionable authorship (they use some pretty technical terminology for a poor, uneducated monk), and some wise quotes from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (a collection of wise quotes from 4th century monks in the Egyptian desert).  Even though he doesn’t have the same body of work as someone like Augustine or Calvin, Anthony is so much more than his writings.  He’s the holy man that drew a generation of Christians out to the desert.  He’s the father of monks.  He’s the originator of monastic wisdom.  He’s a legend.

I love Anthony.  And since January 17th was his official memorial/feast day/commemoration/whatever other name for celebrating a saint the different denominations can come up with, I wanted to take a minute and appreciate him.

Anthony, or Abba (father) Anthony, as the desert monks would have known him, offers a spirituality that’s untethered by the quest for hedonistic pleasure and self-fulfillment that modern spirituality is so often tied to.  He didn’t pray because he needed a divine favor or because he was hoping that he’d get some sense of euphoria from the experience.  No, this is someone who gave everything for God.  He bled for God.  He hungered for God. He had an uncomfortable, no holds barred spirituality that commanded that he give over everything and spend every second in service to properly live the Christian life.

If all of that suffering makes it sound like he had some weird system of works righteousness or was a wild masochist, I assure you that isn’t at all what he was like.  He just loved God.  He would do anything that God asked of him, regardless of the physical toll it would take. Take, for example, his reaction to the classic verse Matthew 19:21:

[Anthony] entered the church, and it happened the Gospel was being read, and he heard the Lord saying to the rich man Matthew 19:21, ‘If you would be perfect, go and sell that you have and give to the poor; and come follow Me and you shall have treasure in heaven.’ Antony, as though God had put him in mind of the Saints, and the passage had been read on his account, went out immediately from the church, and gave the possessions of his forefathers to the villagers

(Life of St. Anthony, 2)

Who actually does that?  It takes an iron will to legitimately actually do what Jesus said to do in that instance.  We usually spiritualize it away or say that it really only applied to the specific person that Jesus was talking to in the story, but Anthony?  He just… gave away everything.  He didn’t even take a week to think about it!  He knew what God wanted, and so he did it, regardless of the cost.

That leads to an intense war with devils and demons in the early part of his biography.  The devil comes in and reminds him of his past wealth, or tries to distract him with his own lust or boredom, and Anthony responds with prayer, conquering the Devil’s temptations through the power of God.  These scenes are often wildly dramatic.  My favorite is when he travels into a tomb filled with demons to pray and demons show up and beat him all night.  The villagers find him and take him back to town and try to heal him, but when he regains his consciousness, what does he do?  Asks to be carried back to the tomb, where he screams to the horde of demons:

Here am I, Antony; I flee not from your stripes, for even if you inflict more. Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ! (Rom 8:35)

(Life of St. Anthony, 9)

and then he starts singing some of his favorite hymns until the demons show up again in the forms of animals to resume their attack.  Now, is this a literal story?  Probably not.  I don’t think that demons can just physically show up in the form of animals and start pummeling you (at least, it hasn’t happened to me just yet), and I can’t imagine a village of people finding you half dead in a demon tomb and then throwing you back in the next day, even if you begged them.  But it’s a really neat way of expressing the spiritual journey that Anthony went on to die to this world, the temptations that he wrestled with with along the way, and how his efforts to live a holy life weren’t something that gave him any degree of physical comfort.  He didn’t do it to feel good.  He did it because he loved God and wanted to be closer to him.  He emerges from the tomb with an ultradramatic ray of light from heaven coming down on him, showing that Anthony’s love and obedience have made him holy.

The biography might be ultra-cheesy, but it’s got a lot of good stuff in there.  And his wisdom sayings are even more approachable, as found in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.  My personal favorite is:

A brother said to Abba Anthony, “Pray for me.”  The old man said to him, “I will have no mercy upon you, nor will God have any, if you yourself do not make an effort and if you do not pray to God.

(The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 4)

Some of the other quotes are more comforting than that one, but to me, this captures the rigorous spirituality of Anthony’s life.  You want to grow holy?  Stop talking about it and do it.  You don’t need a new book on your shelf.  You don’t need the right person to pray.  You don’t need some fancy new technique.  You need to get up, stop making excuses, and do it.  As John Chrysostom said so eloquently, “human effort is profitless without help from above; but no one receives such help unless they themselves choose to make an effort,” (Philokalia, Loc. 13,333).  Anthony’s little warning to pray for yourself is one that I come back to a lot.  When my spiritual life is bad and I’m frustrated, I have to ask myself, am I actually putting in time and effort?  Or am I just expecting God to work magic on me while I go about my life as I choose to live it.  It’s a call to repent and live life intentionally, and if there’s any lesson I hear from the father of monks, it’s that the Christian life takes effort and intention.

Here’s the prayer from the Catholic breviary (Christian Prayer, 1064) for January 17th.  Whether you feel comfortable praying it or not is up to you, but I’d like to close with it either way:

Father,
You called Saint Anthony
to renounce the world
and serve you in the solitude of the desert.
By his prayers and example,
may we learn to deny ourselves
and to love you above all things.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen

Christianity-and-Water with C.S. Lewis

~ Vincent ~ Leave a comment
Life hack: Taco Bell napkins make great bookmarks.

Continuing my grand tradition of reading way too many books at the same time, I picked up C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity again this week.  Lewis is so easy to read.  When he writes, I find that he doesn’t have to persuade me about much.  Instead, it’s almost like he’s uncovering all of the things I already believed in my heart, gathering them up, and presenting them back to me in a way far more logical and clever than I ever could have managed.  Don’t get me wrong.  I went through a period where I hated C.S. Lewis with a burning passion.  When you’re a Christian that wants to learn more about faith, he’s one of the only serious theologians that many pastors seem to be comfortable prescribing.  You’d get sick of anyone if they came up that many times!  But ultimately he’s prescribed for a reason: he’s phenomenally good.  Perhaps the closest thing to a mutual source of authority for Protestant churches in America.

In any case, this quote particularly struck me: 

I will tell you another view that is also too simple.  It is the view I call Christianity-and-water, the view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right- leaving out the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil and redemption.  Both of these are boys’ philosophies.  It is no good asking for a simple religion.  After all, real things are not simple.

Mere Christianity, 40

It was such a relief to hear that a man as distinguished as Lewis had experiences with pop faith that are so similar to ours today.  After all, how many people do you know that are just Christian enough to acknowledge that God exists, but can’t imagine that this God would want anything aside from their own happiness?  It’s so common! The term “moral therapeutic deism” is thrown around to describe that kind of faith today, and Lewis is talking about it all the way back in 1952.  That flimsy faith rarely gets further than this: God exists and he wants us to be happy.  Don’t be mean, love yourself, and everything will work itself out.  The best of secular wisdom is echoed back at an individual with a tint of religious nostalgia.  It’s distinctly frustrating to hear for those of us that are eager to dig in to Christianity as the core of our life, and a core that continually forces us to give things up, to repent, and to turn back to the baffling God that demands everything.  A faith less than that would seem frivolous to us!  As the famous agnostic philosopher Julian Barnes wrote, “there seems little point in a religion which is merely a weekly social event (apart, of course, from the normal pleasures of a weekly social event), as opposed to one which tells you exactly how to live, which colours and stains everything,” (Nothing to be Frightened Of, 64).

On one hand, it was self-justifying.  I remembering being in seminary and seeing that the United Methodist baptismal liturgy didn’t contain the traditional question “Do you reject the Devil and all of his works?”  I asked the professor about the exclusion and his answer was blunt: “Oh, yes, they replaced that with ‘evil, injustice, and oppression.’  The governing body didn’t think they would be able to get the traditional language approved by a vote.”  What a loss! It’s a tragedy to throw away a liturgy over a thousand years old because we’ve fixed the language with something moderns find more comforting.  That stuck in my head. I imagined myself as the bold Christian, right alongside Lewis, representing the real faith for the world.

But don’t’ worry.  That spiritual cockiness didn’t make it through the week.

I’ve been working on a little project to try to understand how we can be better at Christian service. And as since I want to be better at serving in a distinctly Christian way, I have to understand what “Christian service” actually is and how it differs from other ways of serving it the world (community service, quid pro quo, etc.).  It’s been a delightful adventure so far.  A challenging one too!  I’ve begun by recording each narrative of service in the book of Acts and then recording commonalities between the events to see what consistently comes to the top.  And geeze!  It’s convicting! 

Two of the most common pieces of service in Acts are the invocation of the name of Jesus, and the proclamation of the Gospel.  I have to ask myself, do I do them?  Do I actually use the name Jesus?  The name that caused scandal all those years ago because of the brash claims that accompanied it?  Not really.  I often use “God,” which is a name that’s a lot more culturally comfortable.  It’s easy to say, causes less tension with other traditions, and is printed on all the money for maximum cultural complicity.  And how often do I proclaim the Gospel apart from preaching and teaching in the church?   The popular (and probably fake) St. Francis quote “Proclaim the gospel always.  Use words when necessary,” suits my sensibilities so well.  But is that what the apostles did?  Or is it a way that I can comfortably move in a secular world without risking discomfort?  I suppose none of this is “theology” in the way that Lewis meant it, but it’s certainly a way in which the faith I’m living is not like that of the Christians in the Bible.  I may include the “terrible doctrines” about Hell and sin, but I exclude the terrible actions that would risk embarrassment as I move through the world.

Lewis not only believed uncomfortable truths in the comfort of his own mind, but he lived them out in the real world.  And not always in a way that won him admiration!  Close Christian friends like J.R.R. Tolkien thought he was too evangelistic, and more than a few promotions went to other people because he was “too Christian” for the taste of others (131 Christians Everyone Should Know, 135).  He’s proven himself invaluable one more time on my journey.  On one hand, he gives a word that comforts.  On the other hand, the same word cuts to the core. I hope my faith is never too comfortable, in thought or in deed.

Theology Battle: Luther vs Erasmus

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I get weirdly excited whenever I read about two theology legends having a showdown.  I probably shouldn’t.  It almost never ends well for one of them (see anyone who debated anything against Augustine), but seeing these legendary ideasmiths meet on the field of battle feels like a larger-than-life moment.  I guess it’s the theology geek’s equivalent of having an action movie with a showdown between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne Johnson; you know someone has to lose the exchange, but you’re gonna buy that ticket.

Recently, I’ve been poking around in Luther’s history and it turns out he had a showdown with the humananist scholar, Erasmus!  Today, Erasmus isn’t seen as in the same league as Luther, but in his time, he was a huge deal.  He was one of the most published authors in Europe, an international theological scholar, and a strong advocate for reform in the church.  Little did he know, Luther would experience a meteoric rise and end up eclipsing him in each of those categories.  Luther would be the author that legitimized the printing press, the scholar that would give a massive theological school it’s foundational logic, and the reformer that would kick off Protestantism.

Erasmus first heard about Luther when a mutual friend passed on a critique.  George Spelatin told him that an Augustinian monk friend of his was concerned about the way that he framed works and original sin in his translation of the New Testament.  At the time, Erasmus didn’t think much of it. And reasonably so! Imagine a young professor at the rinky-dinkiest community college sending a Harvard professor their critiques.  That’s the modern day equivalent.  But as time went on, Luther’s star rose and Erasmus’s waned.  Before too long, Erasmus wrote a book attacking Luther’s understanding of free will (De Libero Arbitrio) and Luther was the one to ignore the critique.  He said it was “an unlearned book from such a learned man,”(Brand Luther, p. 233) and didn’t bother to respond for five years.  When he finally did respond with his own book, Erasmus churned out another response as quickly as he could, but Luther just ignored him.  The once-mighty Erasmus was old news.

What happened? Why couldn’t these two fans of church reform get on the same page? And how did Luther crush him so easily?

Fans of both men paint their inability to cooperate as a matter of temperament.  Luther was a bombastic, larger-than-life fighter.  He was happy to verbally obliterate the church hierarchy when they were wrong, and he would fight until the end for what he thought was right.  He was also always finding ways to reach out to the everyman.  His bestselling pamphlets boiled down complicated theological ideas into little papers that anyone could read.  He was a parish priest as well as an academic.  To detractors, he was a populist demagogue, and to fans, he was a fiery prophet of the people. Either way, he was an unrelenting fighter, willing to give everything for what he loved.  To him, Erasmus was a naïve coward, hiding in an ivory tower:

“[Erasmus is] not concerned for the cross but for peace thinks that everything should be discussed and handled in a civil manner and with a certain benevolent kindliness.”
(Letter from Luther to Spalatin, Sept 9, 1921, as quoted in Brand Luther, 231)

Erasmus, on the other hand, was more moderate, patient, and renowned for his cleverness.  He wrote big books for people that were educated enough to read them.  His legendary wit was his best tool for reform.  He railed against the corrupt priesthood in veiled satire, and he wrote in Latin or Greek (the languages of the educated).  Even though he agreed with Luther on some points, he never entertained splitting from the Catholic Church.  This was his home.  He wouldn’t break from tradition and the path that the Fathers had passed down (even if things had gotten a bit muddled).  To him, Luther was a tradition-killer who was willing to warp all of Christianity to his will:

You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture. (Hyperaspistes, Book I, Collected Works of Erasmus, Vol. 76, pp. 204–05.)

Naturally, two men as different as this would come to different conclusions about the right course of action in the face of religious corruption.

There are lots of other differences between these two that could be key as well.  One emphasized the power of God, the other focused on the capacity of men.  One signaled an emerging nationalist sentiment, the other was an international figure.  One divided the church over doctrine, while the other longed for internal reform. 

In modern conversation, I’ve noticed that this showdown is heavily politicized.  Liberal readers associate Erasmus with some kind of proto-secularism that emphasized behavior over religious doctrine, while they see Luther as a small-minded populist.  More conservative readers see Luther as a man of integrity, standing for religious liberty, and Erasmus as a sniveling puppet of the bureaucracy, happy to speak in safe, smart circles about how he’d like change, but too cowardly to do anything that put him at risk.  Frankly, both views reek of more interest in modern politics than the Christian past.  Like him or not, Erasmus legitimized Luther and paved the way for the Reformation with his cries about corruption and demands for reform.  Even if he never jumped ship, he was crucial. You lose a key player in the religious landscape of the time if you cut him out. And a 15th century medieval priest like Erasmus said and did things that would make a modern secular humanist cringe.  A lot of his complaints were also echoed and escalated by Luther. These people are from their own times, not ours.  Modern caricatures equating these two to modern political stances are almost always inaccurate and lazy.

But I suppose we all have to understand their story on terms that make sense to us.  I’m still wrestling with their little scuffle myself!  Strangely, I feel closer to Luther, but I imagine I’d probably get along better with Erasmus.  Part of that is probably Protestant pride.  Sola scriptura and all that, right?  Luther’s reputation certainly hasn’t hurt him either.  He’s a hero! There’s something admirable about risking your life for what you believe.  Luther putting his blood on the line makes Erasmus’s scathing quill look kinda wimpy in comparison.  On the other hand, it’s hard to not lament over the divisions in Christianity, and Luther decisively struck the blow that would shatter the establishment.  Was it worth it?  Was Rome so irredeemably corrupt that division was the only solution with any integrity? Or was Erasmus an unheard prophet for unity that the reformers desperately needed to hear?

I’m not sure where I fall in the end. I love so many of the gifts that Protestantism has brought, but I lament the divisions that came with it.  Both men are heroes in their own right, even if only one made it to popular history books. Luther definitively won the day and brought so many wonderful things, but maybe Erasmus’s cry for tradition and unity needs to be heard today by the thousands of denominations that represent the children of the Reformation.

If you want to know more about these two, check out Andrew Pettegree’s Brand Luther or Michael Massing’s Fatal Discord.

Becoming God: Gregory Of Nazianzus and Theosis

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Gregory’s poetry is inseparable from theosis.  If you can’t quite remember what that is, or don’t know, theosis is the Eastern Christian doctrine that the ultimate goal of humanity is to become God.  If your heresy alarm is going off, don’t worry.  Nobody is becoming a lightning-bolt flinging god in and of themselves.  It’s more nuanced than that.

A lot of the nuance comes down to understanding essence and energy.  Humanity is supposed to become a part of God’s energy (his action in the world), but is incapable of becoming a part of his essence (his core being). Consider the classic example of the sun.  Can you see the sun?  No, actually.  You can’t see it at all. You can see the sun’s rays.  The sun is that burning ball of gas that sends off the rays of light that we see.  All the same, when we look up at the sky, we don’t say that we see the sun’s rays of light.  We say that we see the sun!  The essence of the sun would be that burning ball of gas, while the rays would be the energy of the sun.  Both are considered “the sun,” but one is the sun proper, while the other is actually the product of the sun’s action that is tied to it’s identity.

Consider God to be like the sun.  God’s essence is that is so holy and beyond our understanding that we can’t look at him directly (Exodus 33:20).  We can’t be this all-powerful, all-holy, pure being! That is for God and God alone. But sometimes we might say, “I saw God today in that person’s actions!”  We didn’t see the burning, mind-blowing essence of God; we saw his energy, or the action of God throughout the world.  Through theosis we become God, but we don’t become his essence.  As creations, we participate in God’s energy, and thus become him since his action in the world is a part of who he is.

As cheesy as it is, we are not the Son.  We are the Son’s rays of light (which are a part of the Son).

It’s a very participatory understanding of God, and one that’s thoroughly ancient.  For example, Athanasius (the guy who usually gets credit for establishing that Jesus is actually God) coined the popular phrase: “God became man so that man might become God.” (54:3, On the Incarnation). 

Gregory’s writing is absolutely soaked in the same logic.  For example, who could read this line from On the Son without hearing the logic of Athanasius?

through Christ’s sufferings, you may become God hereafter (48-49, On the Son)

Similarly, his poetry on the Father and the Holy Spirit both include references to humanity’s ultimate theosis:

Oh Spirit of God, may you waken my mind and tongue
As a loud-shouting clarion of truth, so that all
may rejoice who are united to the entire Godhead. (23-25, On the Father)

God’s gift [is] his own divinity. (On the Holy Spirit, 54)

To properly understand the Triune God, he expects people to understand how they’re being asked to become a part of it. You can’t know God without knowing how he’s inviting you to join the divine life.

The theme of theosis isn’t limited to those God-centric poems either. In considering the world and humanity’s ultimate journey towards heaven, he writes:

Of these worlds, the first-born was that other heaven,
The region of those who bear the divine, perceptible to minds only,
All-luminous; To it the man of God wends his way from here
Later, once he’s perfected as god, purified in mind and flesh. (95-96, Concerning the World)

Again and again, waves of theosis crash over the reader.  We are expected to become one with God. 

Why is it so hard to imagine someone saying this in a Western church today?

I’ve seen a few writers attempt to answer that question by blaming the way Westerners think about knowledge.  Western knowledge is often understood to be knowledge about something.  This type of knowledge is a dispassionate, supposedly objective, factual sort of understanding. Science textbooks are full of this kind of knowledge.  For example, if I look up knowledge about an apple, I might learn where it best grows, what it’s Latin name is, and how many of them were sold commercially last year.  All of this is technically true, but removed from the more intimate knowledge that comes from a genuine, firsthand experience with an apple. People who have knowledge of an apple know what it tastes like, they know the tension of an apple’s skin beneath their teeth, and they remember the shine that reflects off an apple as it’s held up to a light.  You can’t find that on Wikipedia!  That’s a different kind of knowledge; knowledge that is usually relegated to poets and artists. It might even sound more like feelings than art, but both are valid ways of gaining knowledge about something. Westerners just favor knowledge about over knowledge of.

If the apple feels to far removed from relational knowledge that you need to consider in Christianity for a being such as God, just think about how you could know a friend in the same ways: “my friend has brown hair,” (knowledge about) or “my friend is delightful,” (knowledge of).

In any case, the claim that has been made that Westerners are so concerned with knowledge about (represented by scholastic theology) that they have little interest in direct knowledge of God (as reflected by mystics and monks). Since theosis is an experiential, intimate knowledge of God, it wouldn’t really appeal to the Western mind as a worthwhile, valid source of theology.

I think that claim is completely wrong. I would even go a step further and claim that it’s biased enough that it was probably written by an Easterner that was explaining the importance of their traditions without full knowledge of vibrant Western Christian traditions.  We have no shortage of influential mystics (Julian of Norwich, Bernard of Clairvaux, St. John of the Cross, etc.) and I’ve met people that passionately seek God without any scholastic bent.  There are whole traditions that (sadly) actively deride an academic approach to faith!  And even if there were some hint of truth to the claim, I do believe that knowledge about God in the scholastic sense is important.  We need both types of knowledge to really thrive as Christians. Pitting one against the other isn’t helpful. To use the example of an apple again, if I only had personal knowledge about apples, I probably wouldn’t be able to grow apple trees.  I wouldn’t know the proper climate, anything about how they’re fertilized, or the best variety to grow for my region.  If I’m really desperately passionate about apples, both kinds of knowledge are crucially important.  The same is true with knowledge about people.  I know what it’s like to spend an evening with my wife.  If, however, I forget her birthday because I don’t value knowledge about her, then I’m going to guess our relationship will suffer for it.

No, the “Westerners don’t appreciate personal knowledge” explanation both derides some very good sources of knowledge and doesn’t speak to the vibrant Western sources of spirituality that actively exist.

My guess is that a large amount of it comes down to language and culture.  The essence/energy distinction sounds very platonic (something derived from the works of the Greek philosopher Plato) and understandings about theosis flourished in places that had close contact and influence from Greek culture and writings (Russia, Greece, etc.). Could it be that an idea with roots in Greek thought made more sense to places influenced accordingly?

The West wrote and spoke in Latin.  The essence/energy distinction was not only unexplored; mindsets shaped by Greek words and philosophies were less common.  Things simply were what they were!  God was God, and not-God was not-God.  Essence defined identity; energy translated as something like “action,” and it was not linked with identity.  The creature-creator distinction ended up being considerably sharper as a result.

Of course, the energy-essence distinction wasn’t officially given as a teaching until the 12th century, but words usually bubble up out of pre-existing logics that require definitive explanations.  And here we see Gregory talking about theosis readily, and he’s all the way back in the fourth century! The Greek language and mindset made theosis reasonable.  The Latin language and mindset made it sound heretical.

In any case, it’s a teaching that inspires me.  It’s intimate.  It’s close beyond close.  To imagine that I might not just achieve a certain level of goodness, but might reflect the actions of God so well that he and I are inseparable?  It captures the idea of being transformed by the Holy Spirit so perfectly. The fact that the guy who helped establish Jesus’s divinity (Athanasius) and one of the fighters for the Godhood of the Holy Spirit (our dear Gregory) are both onboard makes it seem like a crucial truth that we’ve forgotten. Were we made to become divine?

What would it take to make full use of the doctrine of theosis in Western churches?  And is that something we should be aiming for?  It’s a doctrine that is complicated for the Western mind, but one that illustrates the closeness of God and the importance of our transformation so well.  At minimum, I love that Gregory’s forcing me to consider a divine destiny for humanity, and, even with my little explanation, I keep pondering why it’s so hard for us to imagine.

The Patristic Poet: Gregory of Nazianzus

~ Vincent ~ 1 Comment

It feels a little odd to kick things off with Gregory of Nazianzus.  He doesn’t have the star power of Augustine, Calvin, Luther, or the other big-name denominational theologians.  My theology nerd friends haven’t really read him, and truth be told, I only ended up reading his poetry by mistake.  I confused him with Gregory of Nyssa when I was ordering books (strangely enough, the two Gregory of N’s were dear friends in life, so I wasn’t far off).  I’m glad I made that mistake!  Gregory is the poet theologian that I didn’t know I needed.  Here’s why:

1. He’s succinct.

There are plenty of massive theology tomes out there that will take you months to properly understand (if not years).  And most people don’t read them for a simple reason: who has the time for all that? Gregory’s poems are something you do have time for. In his explanatory poem On His Own Verses, he writes”

By working for others, I wished
to subdue my own unmeasuredness;
indeed, though I write, I don’t write much
when toiling on meter. (35-37)

“Measuredness” was something of a theme in Gregory’s life.  As the archbishop of Constantinople, Gregory was used to talking a lot.  He railed against heresies! He pontificated about good theology!  He led the Church where it needed to be! But after he retired, his life took a different, quieter tone.  Starting in 375, he spent 3 years among monks.  During Lent of the year 382, he took a vow of silence, only communicating through sign language.  His poetry is one more post-retirement attempt to tame his tongue. Consequently, you don’t need years to get read them them.  You can knock out a couple during your lunch break.

2. He has a ridiculous amount of personality.

Gregory’s poetry is just fun. Even though he’s this serious, saintly theologian, his writing is always delightfully human. For example, when he addressed people that thought his poetry was bad, I assumed he would tell them something generically saintly.  Something like, “If you don’t like these poems, then I beg your forgiveness.  My words are a poor tool to represent a being as great as God.  You may doubt my eloquence, but don’t doubt him.”  Nope:

If these things are petty, do grander ones yourself
You revile meter?  No wonder, when you’re meterless,
An iamb-manufacturer, scribbling abortions.  (On His Own Verses, 67-70)

Or how about when he’s addressing Christians that refuse to acknowledge the equality of the Father and the Son:

if, rendering offerings to the great Father’s Godhead
worthlessly, and gravening in your heart a hollow fear
you’d deny this thing, and would hurl Christ out amongst creatures,
you insult, O nitwit, the divinity of them both! (On the Son, 40-44)

Not a dull moment here!

It’s not all hotheadedness either.  For a significant portion of his poetry, Gregory is wrestling with a profound sadness.  There’s no better example than the poem that he wrote when his best friend died: Epitaph to St. Basil:

I had thought that a body could as well
Live without a soul
As me without you.
Basil, beloved servant of Christ;
But you’re gone and I remain.
What’ll become of us?
Will you not set me, when I arise,
There with you in the choir of the blessed?
No, don’t leave me: I swear by my grave
I won’t leave yours, not willingly.
You have Gregory’s word.

It brings tears to my eyes each time.  I’m not saying every poem is going to do that, but I can promise that Gregory never holds back.  This isn’t dry, dusty theological poetry. It’s vibrant and human! Which leads to a third reason I love his poetry:

3. His beliefs are beautiful.

They really are. Not everyone sees that at first. There aren’t exactly a ton of Amazon reviews on Gregory’s poetry (the copy I’m using, anyway), but a handful of those few complain that Gregory’s poems are too didactic.  They say that they’re tools to express his theology, not genuine pieces of art.  I think they’re dead wrong.

Admittedly, they don’t rhyme, and their meter isn’t consistent, but these are ancient translated poems.  Can we hold them to the same standards as Shakespeare?  Besides, there’s plenty of poems out there that don’t rhyme or have consistent meter.  If anything, those tend to be seen as more avant garde.  We have to look for the beauty of these ancient poems on their own terms.  If anything, his poetry beautifies and elevates the disciple of doctrine.  Take a snippet of his description of God:

There is one God, without beginning or cause, not limited
By anything existing before, or afterwards to be,
Encompassing the aeons, and infinite. (On the Father, 25-27)

Or the description of his own humanity:

I am soul and body: the one, an efflux of divinity,
Of infinite light: the other was formed for you
From a murky root.  (Concerning the World, 32-34)

Sure, it’s directed, doctrinal theology, but the way he spins beautiful words around ideas is beautiful. It’s not just doctrine; it’s art.

With his brevity, his raw humanity, and his beautiful articulation, Gregory has crafted something for the ages. It all makes me wonder, why is so much of modern doctrine dull? We hammer out what we believe in terms that are definitely precise, but if doctrine is the truth of God, shouldn’t it be the culmination of every discipline? Not only philosophy and science, but poetry, art, and music? Why shouldn’t the truth of the most high God be worthy of an art museum? And by no means do I mean that it ought to always please us, as so many inspirational Christian wall hangings strive to do. A lot of art isn’t easy for humanity to swallow, but it’s beautiful all the same. Dostoyevsky famously wrote, “Beauty will save the world.” If God is true beauty (and a fervent Christian like Dostoyevsky knew that he was), I have to imagine that he’s right. We need more theological poets like Gregory in the world. We need people to help articulate beautiful beliefs, not only for evangelization and inspiration, but to write things worthy of God.