Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Review of Christopher Pramuk's 'Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton' - by Andrew Louth

Sophia. The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton, by Christopher Pramuk. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009. Pp. xxxii + 322. 9 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978-0-814-5390-6. Hbk. $29.95.

In the past I have read a good deal of Thomas Merton, but never really thought of him as a theologian.  His life and voluminous writings—many autobiographical, not to mention the diaries, and compelling works, the later ones I seized upon as they came out in the 60s—trace an itinerary from a young convert to Catholicism, all too at home in the rather hot-house atmosphere of pre-Vatican II Catholicism (delighting in the gold edging and coloured ribbons of his new breviary), but quickly opening out: embracing the social concerns of the 60s, while remaining rooted in the contemplative prayer central to his life as a Trappist monk, and with serious ecumenical concerns, primarily with the contemplative traditions of the East—Buddhist, Taoist.

Throughout all his changes, he remained constantly popular (though also regarded by some with deep suspicion); it seemed that, right up to the moment of his death, he anticipated the changes—not too much, by just a little—Catholicism went through in the 50s and 60s.  His death was sudden: electrocuted in a faulty shower in Bangkok on a trip to meet fellow contemplatives of the East, not least the Dalai Lama.  His works, though mostly to be classified as ‘devotional’, were always intellectually serious and indeed challenging; they were marked by real learning, borne lightly.

Christopher Pramuk’s wonderful book, however, reveals Thomas Merton to be a real theologian.  I suppose I should not be surprised: Evagrios’ much-quoted ‘A theologian is one who prays; one who prays will be a theologian’ should have led me to expect it.  That saying, however, often suggests that theology should be radically reconsidered, in such a way that ‘professional’ theologians often are at a loss to make of what emerges, and sense a lack of rigour, a lack of intellectual seriousness.

The Centurion's Faith - Bob Ekblad

In my reading of Jesus’ many encounters in the Gospels I am continually moved by what these stories tell us about how God meets people. Throughout Luke’s Gospel we see Jesus ministering mostly in public non-religious places. He teaches beside the seashore, in cities, in homes, along the road. In Luke 6 he chooses his twelve disciples while in prayer on a mountain, then descends to a level place where he welcomes crowds who come to be healed of their diseases and freed from unclean spirits (6:17). Reading the Gospels regularly with inmates sheds fresh light on old stories due to the threatening conditions in which inmates find themselves.

We read the story of the Roman centurion in Capernaum whose beloved slave is about to die. We read about how he sends some Jewish elders to ask Jesus to come and save his slave’s life. We notice together that the Jewish elders come to Jesus, insisting on the centurion’s worthiness. “He is worthy for you to grant this to him; for he loves our nation, and it was he who built us our synagogue” (Luke 7:4-5).  Jesus goes to his house, and I ask the men if they think he is going because Jesus thinks he is worthy?

We know from the beginning that Jesus is willing to come to his house, though the text is not clear regarding whether Jesus is going because the Jewish leaders have convinced him that the centurion is worthy. I ask the inmates what they think.

I know from years of experience that people in crisis often try to make themselves as worthy as possible when they really need God’s help. I find myself doing this too. There is a deep seated assumption in most people’s thinking that God is in reality like a probation officer or judge, looking to see if people are complying with requirements, evaluating evidence proving innocence or signs of measuring up to demands. Even if people claim to believe that God saves by grace, when we really need a miracle we will make sacrifices perceived as pleasing to God.

Inmates might make a special effort to clean up their language, confess all their sins, not miss a service, read the Bible more than usual, pray a lot, offer answers they perceive to be right in Bible studies, forgive enemies, fast, etc. The Jewish elders reflect this theology that everyone is familiar with. They emphasize the centurion’s merits to Jesus. We don’t yet know whether Jesus goes with them because he thinks the centurion deserves it. All we know is that Jesus is on his way to this pagan, Roman centurion occupier’s house to heal (rather than free) one of his slaves. We read on looking for clues about what’s really happening here.

Was PM Harper a Tory? Terry Gavin on Ron Dart and the Red Tory tradition (2006)

Editor's comment: In 2006, the Georgia Straight published an article asking if PM Stephen Harper was properly termed a Tory. The article focused on Ron Dart's insights into the 'Red Tory' tradition. The article is an interesting read as a retrospective of the Harper regime.  

Stephen Harper is no Tory

by Terry Glavin on February 2nd, 2006 at 9:00 AM

 

Milton Acorn was Canada's "people's poet". He was a founder of the Georgia Straight. There was a time when his poetry readings filled union halls across the country with adoring legions of communists, feminists, and student activists.

Stephen Leacock was the founding father of the Canadian sense of humour, but he was also the chairman of the political-science department at McGill University. His Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich was a bestseller in Moscow in the heady days following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.

Just a few steps from the plot where Leacock is buried, at Sibbald Point, Ontario, is the grave of Mazo de la Roche, who was once Canada's best-loved novelist. She authored the internationally acclaimed Jalna series, which was a sort of multivolume, epic Brideshead Revisited.

Then there was Eugene Forsey, proud Newfoundlander, socialist, Rhodes scholar, and constitutional expert. He was a founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner of the New Democratic Party.

Apart from being dead, the thing these people have in common is that they were all Tories.

Here's another Tory: Ron Dart, a prolific, polymathic, and very-alive political-science professor at the University College of the Fraser Valley. 

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Why Genesis One Does Not Teach Creationism - Spencer Boersma

“One does not read in the Gospel that the Lord said: I will send you the Holy Spirit who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon. For He willed to make them Christians, not astronomers.”

– Saint Augustine, regarding Genesis chapter one.

In Genesis one we see what can best be described as a “counter-myth,” a story that intentionally resembles myths that proceeded it, the geo-centric cosmology of culture that surrounded it (as the above picture shows), but is crafted through the covenant relationship with God the people had in order to counter pagan ideas of worshiping the wrong things like kings or the sun. Thus, the idea that Genesis one has “mythic” qualities does not disprove its enduring theological worth. Far from, it shows its incarnational beauty. This passage is offered in the form or medium of a nonscientific counter-myth (which is how the ancient people thought), yet its enduring message or substance is that God is creator, nothing else is, the creation is good, life-giving ordered, and beautiful, and humans are made in God’s image, designed to inherent dignity and to find themselves in him’s love.

Genesis one becomes a scandal to people who refuse to take their hermeneutical responsibility seriously. Young-earth creationists and other creationists assert that this passage should be taken as a literal scientific description of the earth. However, as we will see, I get frustrated with creationists, because for all their talk of taking the text seriously, they do everything possible to dismiss the actual details of the text. Creationism is really an arbitrary picking and choosing of what Genesis says and how it says it in order to make the doctrine of creation about something that is quite incidental.

There are some very good reasons not to take Genesis one as offering a scientific description of the creation of the world. Not doing so is the most consistent way to interpret it. In fact, I will go so far as to say that if we do take it as a historical description of the material origins of us and the cosmos, we force the text to contradict itself, reducing a literalistic strategy to absurdity.

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Eden: Physical Place or Spiritual State? Spencer Boersma

The truth of Genesis two, the truth of Eden is that we are all the man and the woman of this passage. We are all born into a state of innocence, and we all have the choice before us: to live life with God, eating of the tree of life, or to be our own god, eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. One means death; the other means eternal life.

It is amazing how this simple truth gets obscured by loony assertions about the geographic nature of Eden, attempts to find it, and the requirement to have it as a historical place or else the whole Bible is worthless. Consider the following a therapy to return us to a more spiritual simplicity. This may take some explaining of some complex fine points, but, like I said, it actually returns us to the simple truth of the text.

In this post and those subsequent we will look at Genesis two and point out obvious literary contours that suggest its character is often just as spiritual or poetic as it is historical, and so, its truth is its theology not necessarily its geography or history.

Myth or History?

Are the early chapters of Genesis history or myth? Well, technically both and neither. The either/or notion of history or myth is a modern invention. In fact, conservatives that attempt to force these passages to be history in the modern sense, ironically accommodate the Bible to a system of thinking very foreign to Genesis. While the Gospels are eyewitness accounts and memoirs, Genesis is not. While the whole Genesis narrative is enveloped in features of historicity – being written in a genealogical account with a rough chronology, it is simply not history in the precise modern sense. Ancient story tellers passed along their accounts orally, embedding them with rich poetic detail from the surrounding culture and its mythology. The stories were a set of oral traditions, passed along in a tradition of story telling and they retain that flavor. God was pleased to have it that way. Eventually the stories were written down hundreds of years later. God was pleased to do it that way.

Note what this process looks like: 

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Unchristlike Images of God in Matt 22:1:14 - B. Jersak, B. Zahnd, D. Flood, A. Klager

Matt 22:1-14 

Unchristlike Images of God in Matthean Parables

A Mini-Minyan with Brad Jersak, Brian Zahnd, Derek Flood, Andrew Klager

 

Introduction (Brad Jersak)

I was recently invited to share thoughts and respond to questions about my book, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel, among a theologically mixed group of very perceptive readers.

Prior to the meeting, the facilitator gave me the consideration of a heads up about a question he was planning to ask. He wanted to me to address the problem of why Jesus’ parables sometimes seem to represent God in a rather un-Christlike light—especially as an infuriated and vengeful king who not only destroys, but even tortures those who do not respond to his invitation. Specifically, he asked me to look at the parable of the banquet as told in Matthew 22.

I was aware of the difficulties in that passage and thought to invite three colleagues to weigh in with their collective wisdom, rather than speaking on my own. Namely, Brian Zahnd, Derek Flood and Andrew Klager. I also received behind the scenes input from Pastor Jason Tripp, who I’ll reference later as well. The conversation that followed seemed well worth sharing, so the following represents excerpts from it.

We begin with the text: 

Matthew 22 ¹Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, ² “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. ³ And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. ⁴ Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.”’ ⁵ But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, ⁶ and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. ⁷ But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. ⁸ Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. ⁹ Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ ¹⁰ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.

¹¹ “But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, ¹² and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. ¹³ Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ¹⁴ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

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Three Waymarks - Ron Dart

Our faith journey is often and necessarily so aided by waymarks, markings or cairns along the pathway of life. Such waymarks might be thinkers once dead but whose ideas live, creeds, communities, lectures and, more to the pertinent point, those we have interacted with on the journey.  We each and all, for different reasons, can reflect on people who have come into our lives at specific seasons (some shorter, some longer) that act like waymarks for us where there often is no clear path or trail. There have been many people in my life that have been important waymarks, and three of them have died this year. I would, briefly, like to highlight each one of them.

When I was doing my Masters of Christian Studies (MCS) at Regent College between 1979-1981, I had the good fortune to take many courses in Church History with Ian Rennie (1929-2015). Many consider Ian to be one of the pre-eminent Canadian Church historians of the latter half of the 20^th century. Ian had an encyclopedic mind and a generous and kindly pastoral heart. Many were the hours I spent in his office as a result of doing formal and guided studies with him. Much of my interest at the time was in Patristic thought (which was not exactly front and centre for a Presbyterian—of which Ian was), but Ian patiently and in a most curious and inquisitive manner, journeyed with me as we read and pondered the contemplative insights of many of the Desert and more Urban Christian contemplative theologians. When thesis time arrived, Ian Rennie and Jim Houston were my supervisors and examiners. The thesis was on “The Spirituality of John Cassian” (perhaps one of the most important contemplative bridge theologians between the East and West). Ian left Regent in 1981 (the same year I did). Ian went to Tyndale in Toronto to become the academic Dean. I continued my academic journey. The final years of Ian’s life were not easy. Alzheimers, week by week, month by month, stole his mind and by the end of his earthy journey, mind and body had shrunken to but a shell—such a slow and sad end for such a generous, gracious and good man.

Review of Four Feminist Works on C.S. Lewis by Monika Hilder -- by Ron Dart

Monika B. Hilder, The Feminine Ethos in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (Peter Lang, 2012).

Monika B. Hilder, The Gender Dance: Ironic Subversion in C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy (Peter Lang, 2013).

Monika B. Hilder, Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C.S. Lewis and Gender (Peter Lang, 2013).

Carolyn Curtis and Mary Pomroy Key (eds.), Women and C.S. Lewis: What his life and literature reveal for today’s culture (Lion Hudson, 2015). 

There are a variety of ways of approaching and understanding the attitude of C.S. Lewis towards women both in his complex life and multilayered writings. There are those who see Lewis as reinforcing a rather dated and antiquated notion of gender, hence more of a fossil and dinosaur in our age of progressive liberalism. There are others who, in suggestive and probing ways, note that Lewis cannot be viewed in so limited and one dimensional a way---it would be too easy to dismiss him if this was the case. There are those who, gender aside, argue that Lewis realized the deeper issues of character and the virtues were neither a male nor female preserve. Both men and women, in their all too human journey, inevitably must face, again and again, situations and experiences, both within and without, that call forth the best, worst and most mediocre. The sexist and gender issue, if approached in too narrow a manner, might just miss the deeper, more significant and demanding nature of Lewis’ mythic vision for what it means, in an ultimate and penultimate way, to be human.

The brilliance and beauty of the trilogy by Monika Hilder on C.S. Lewis is the way she delves deeper and probes further than most the grander and more epic vision of Lewis---this is done by doing a meticulous and detailed read of both the Chronicles of Narnia (Volume I) and the Space Trilogy (Volume II). The final Volume (III), in an insightful and incisive way, delightfully surprises the attentive reader with a four part ending: 1) The Old Western Enfant Terrible, 2) Old Wives, Virgins, and Temptresses; Their Husbands, Lovers and Tempter, 3) Recovering ‘Femininity’ in C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and 4) Eve’s Last, Best Word. The underlying thesis that Monika returns to, again and again, by a close and closer read of Lewis’s varied literary genres is a way of defining the feminine (and the masculine) that has an uncanny way of transcending the tribalism of a rather sterile clash of genders. Lewis was too substantive a thinker to be merely a thoughtless product of his time and ethos---he was much too grounded in a more complex historic understanding of the cardinal and theological virtues-vices (and what such a vision means for a more significant view of being human) to be preoccupied with limited views of gender.

Love For Enemies in the OT - Matt Lynch

It has become increasingly commonplace in popular theological works to draw a sharp contrast between Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and, well … the whole Old Testament. The most prominent verses cited as evidence are Jesus’ ‘you have heard it said … but I tell you’ statements, especially His statements about enemies. The assumption is that Jesus contrasts the ethics of the Old Testament with His ethics. Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matt 5:43)

The proposed idea is that Jesus turns the vengeance-consumed Old Testament on its head.

As an Old Testament scholar, the proposed contrast is like nails on a chalkboard. In addition to the obvious point that the OT nowhere states that one ought to hate their enemy, and the fact that Jesus describes His teachings as law-fulfilling (Matt 5:17), there are serious problems with this view. I’ll focus on one in this first post, and offer it in the form of a positive thesis. Jesus gets His teaching on loving enemies from the Old Testament. Jesus’ teachings were in deep continuity with the Old Testament. As with other Jewish teachers of His day, Jesus validated it through reuse and reappropriation. And he did so along the grain of its core ethical teachings.

So what about those enemies in the Old Testament? Weren’t they all to be stoned or run through with swords? We read in Proverbs 25:21:

If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink.

That sounds like something out of the New Testament, no? Paul quotes this proverb in Romans 12:20, most likely as a specific instantiation of Jesus’ command in the Sermon on the Mount.

And in a world where donkeys and oxen were means of personal livelihood, it is no small thing that the law commands God’s people to love their enemy by rescuing and returning their animals:

When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free. (Exod 23:4-5)

Love for one’s enemy even extended to his animal.

It may come as a surprise that some specific teachings on showing love toward enemies appear only in the Old Testament. The Wisdom books warn hearers not to rejoice when enemies face disaster (e.g., Prov 24:17; Job 31:29; cf. Oba 1:12). Proverbs—and we have to remember that these were ‘popular sayings’—even states that those who rejoice over another’s misfortune ‘will not go unpunished’ (17:15).

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The Hope of Our Resurrection - Kenneth Tanner

Resurrection is not about returning to fight worldly means of power with the powers known by this world.

No...as the body of Christ our death is like the death of Jesus, a great humility accepted voluntarily for the life of the world—with all kinds of conflicting human emotions. "There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends"...even friends that in the moment look a lot like enemies.

Our hope (and our vindication) is not in a resurrection that makes us more powerful than our temporal enemies but a resurrection to eternal life...a great victory for *all* persons over the enemies of all whom God has made in his image, all whom God cherishes...every last human person.

Those enemies are sin, famine, disease, pestilence, sword, decay, calamities, death, and the accuser. If we are in Christ, our enemies are no longer our human brothers and sisters.

If you strike us down, what we become by grace is partakers of the essential essence of God: everlasting lovingkindness; we become indestructible love.

Slippery Slopes and Fixed Ropes - Brian Zahnd

 

The “slippery slope” trope is a favorite among fundamentalists. Basically the argument goes like this: The moment you move away from fundamentalist Biblicism you’re on the slippery slope of liberalism and will wind up sliding down into a crevasse with the likes of Friedrich Schleiermacher and John Shelby Spong. According to those who believe that serious theology is a slippery slope, you’re either with fundamentalists and young earth creationists like Ken Ham or you’re sliding down the mountain with new atheists like Christopher Hitchens. Of course, this is a ludicrous false dichotomy. But it carries a ton of intimidation. Just about the worst thing you can call an evangelical pastor is a liberal. The only thing worse is to go Def-Con 4 and drop the H-bomb: Heretic!

So instead of climbing the holy mountain of theology (study of God) seeking to encounter the Divine as revealed in Christ, many evangelicals feel forced to stay in the flatlands of fundamentalist Biblicism with its flat reading of Scripture. The “flatlanders” idea is that if we will simply read the Bible “as it is” we will be safe from all error. The problem is that the flatlanders tend to end up endorsing unsustainable theories like a literal six day (144 hour) creation and an earth that is only 6,000 years old. They also feel forced to defend morally repugnant ideas from a primitive era, like a God who commands genocide, including the slaughter of children. A flat reading of the Bible fails to notice the back and forth nature of Scripture as the Old Testament maintains a strident debate on important matters. For example: Does God require blood sacrifice? The Torah says, yes, but the Psalms and Prophets challenge this. Should Gentiles be allowed to worship in the second Temple? Isaiah says, yes, but Nehemiah says no.

 

A flat reading of the Bible does not give us the full revelation of God. The full revelation of God is found only in Jesus. Jesus alone is the perfect icon of God’s image and the exact imprint of God’s nature (Colossians 1:15 and Hebrews 1:3). What the Bible does infallibly is point us to Jesus! Jesus is the only perfect theology. But the exploration of God as revealed in Christ — which is what we mean by Christian theology — is an ongoing venture, not unlike climbing a great mountain. So instead of sitting in the flatlands pretending that a flat reading of our sacred text will reveal the full glory of God, we need to grab our ice axes, strap on our crampons and climb the mountain of God!

 

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