Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Guest Post: A Muslim Reflection on the Beatitudes by Safi Kaskas

Editor’s Note: In the spirit of respectful interfaith dialogue, www.Clarion-Journal.com welcomes Safi Kaskas, a noted Islamic scholar, peacemaker, and translator of the Qur’an to share an eight-day reflection on the Beatitudes from a Muslim perspective. 

A Muslim Reflection on the Beatitudes
by Safi Kaskas   

Day 1

Do you know what the Beatitudes are? They are the opening lines of the Sermon on the Mount, spoken by Jesus as a guide to his followers and disciples.

If we Muslims want to live next to our Christian neighbors, we need to know what their Book teaches them. I will mention one of the Beatitudes every day and we will discuss it if you show interest.

Let's start:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). 

What exactly does it mean to be poor in spirit? 

Some propose that Jesus is speaking of financial poverty. While it is true that Jesus elsewhere warned against seeking riches (Matthew 6:24), that does not seem to be Jesus’ point in Matthew 5:3. Jesus is speaking of being “poor in spirit”; i.e., being “spiritually poor.” 

To be poor in spirit is to recognize that without spiritual humility, without truly asking God's help, we have nothing and we are spiritually worthless.

The first step on the path toward God according to Jesus is to admit that we are spiritually nothing and God is everything.

 

Origen, Literalism & the Modern Marcionite Irony - Fr. Kenneth Tanner

As a pastor who deals (almost daily) with the devastation wrought in souls by bad readings of Scripture, I wish every contemporary Christian on the planet could read this passage. It’s the beginning of a section called “How the Divine Scripture is to be read and understood” from Origen’s ”On First Principles.”

Origen first cites certain Old Testament prophesies that the Jews of his time and the first centuries read *literally* and so reject(ed) Jesus as the Messiah *because* Jesus did not do any of the particular things cited, nor did any of these particular things happen when Jesus came in the flesh.

(Please remember that Origen is not anti-Semitic. He’s arguing about the way we read the Scriptures within what he considers his family, his extended tribe.)

What Origen does next struck me like lightning. He cites additional passages from the Old Testament that he says “the heretics” use to reject the Creator.

What blew my mind?

These passages the heretics (in this case, the Marcionites) cite to reject the Creator are the very ones most often cited by contemporary neo-Calvinist teachers and their epigones to *prove* their version of God, passages Origen says both they and Marcionites should not read *literally* and thus “suppose such things about him [the Creator] that would not be supposed of the most savage and unjust human being.”

Dart and Packer's "Christianity and Pluralism" - Review by Brad Jersak

Review of Ron S. Dart and J.I. Packer, Christianity and Pluralism (Lexham Press, 2019), 70 pages. 

Christianity and Pluralism is a fresh and poignant new edition of a booklet first composed just over two decades ago, titled In a Pluralist World (Regent, 2008). The collection of essays was originally written in response to Anglican Bishop Michael Ingham's controversial pluralist manifesto, Mansions of the Spirit. Ron Dart and J.I. Packer, also both Anglicans (though of very different streams), each offer their respective and respectful critical analyses of Mansions as an entry point into the broader discussion of the various shades of Enlightenment pluralism. 

This little booklet is just 70 pages long but astoundingly efficient and clear in its nuanced explication of the issues at hand. As such, it would provide an excellent primer for students and teachers who want to understand pluralism's various shades, strengths and pitfalls without the sort of reductionism that often plagues the topic.

After the prefaces (Dart, 2019 and Rev. Dr. Archie Pell, 2008), the book unfolds in three acts and an appendix.

Chapter 1 features Ron Dart's critique of Mansions, which he regards as both a "subtle syncretism" of the hidden agreement within mystical traditions across religions and "ideological liberalism" that in fact subverts Christian (and other religion's) truth claims.

Dart's review focused on laying out the content of Bishop Michael's book and offering ten points of rebuttal. He initially welcomes the book as a timely challenge, calling Christians to think carefully about what we believe and why. But ultimately, Dart's response boils down to three major deficiencies in Ingham's work: "it lacks a rigorous mystical theology, a radical politics and a high Christology-ecclesiology." Dart hints at a better and alternative framework for interfaith dialogue, which comes later in the book.

"Evangelicals, Donald Trump & American Political Culture" - Podcast: Molly Worthan with David Goa

Podcast - Molly Worthan

In Conversation with David Goa

 CLICK HERE TO HERE THE PODCAST 

I welcome you to our conversation on President Trump, the evangelicals and what is unfolding in American political culture.

In this podcast I have the pleasure of talking with Professor Molly Worthan. She teaches history at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill focusing on the intellectual and religious history of North America. She is also the Director of the Honors Program, an opinion writer for the New York Times, Slate and other publication. Her superb book, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism explores the intellectual history of American evangelicals and the culture wars since 1945. 

A decade and a half ago I received an enquiry for an undergraduate student at Yale University. She was learning Russia and wanted to come to northern Alberta to spend the summer doing field research work in the Old Believer community near Athabasca. I first met this community in the 1970s shortly after they arrived. A bit later I spent sometime with my colleague the anthropologist David Scheffle who also did field research and published a book on the Old Believers. This community had its origins in Siberia to which their ancestors had been exiled following the reforms introduced to the Russian Orthodox Church by Patriarch Nikon in 1666. Some made their way into a remote region of China, live a reclusive life, and occasionally hunted Siberian tigers for European zoos. In order to avoid the reach of the communist government of China in the 1960s they moved again and eventually settled in Canada. It was not the sort of community I would readily suggest a young woman (or man for that matter) endeavour to engage. 

I called the phone number on the correspondence and met Molly Worthen. She spoke easily about herself and her interests, mentioned growing up in Chicago, the city that entered my blood when I studied there in the 1960s. It was clear to me that she had the intellectual curiosity and formation, a spirit of hospitality and simple good judgment and determination suitable to her proposed work. Over the summer we got to know each other and her work in the Old Believer community flourished. That summer played a little role in Molly focusing her work on North American religious and intellectual history, particularly the ideas and culture of conservative Christianity. She is a professor of History at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Director of the Honors Program, an opinion writer for the New York Times, Slate and other publication. Her superb book, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism explores the intellectual history of American evangelicals and the culture wars since 1945.

I welcome you to our conversation on President Trump, the evangelicals and what is unfolding in America political culture. I welcome your thoughts on our conversation and may be reached at [email protected].

Religious Addiction - Vladika Lazar Puhalo

One thing that is not appreciated enough is the difference between faith and an addiction to religion. Religious addiction follows the same vector lines as any other addiction. Religious addiction is certainly not the same thing as normal faith. It is learned behaviour for the most part, and often culturally imposed, or at the least has a cultural formation. However, as with all addictions, there is a certain predisposition toward addiction itself often accompanied by, or even a manifestation of OCD.

Religious addiction is generally characterized by rigidity and a need for absolutes, for black and white solutions or attitudes toward any given problem and toward morality in general. The need for absolutes impels addicts to seek to impose their own “orthodoxies” on others, even if it means by force and threats, using the law and contravening documents such as the Constitution of the United States or the Canadian Charter. Religious addicts are somewhat like florid schizophrenics. They sound very high and mighty and even convincing with what passes for a spiritual presence and position, but is, in fact, a manifestation of rigidity and a real lack of spiritual content –  a spiritual content which has been replaced by a juridical mindset. In place of spirituality, they have only some concept of law or their version of law. They tend also to see our relationship with God strictly as one of imposed legal norms rather than any kind of spiritual transformation. Religious addiction should be treated like all addictions. There needs to be a sort of 12-step program to liberate people from religious addictions.

However, since their addictions are religious, they will inevitably think they are being guided by God or a god – by whatever name they know Him. There is scant difference between Christian fundamentalists – including those in the Orthodox Christian Church – and fundamentalist Muslims or Hindus. Their addictions can be dangerous for the rest of society, and particularly so since they deprive them of any serious access to realities. In general, they have a utopian nostalgia for a time and world that never actually existed except in nationalist mythologies and fantasies. We must bear in mind that religiosity is completely inimical to democracy, and it will always try to undermine basic principles of democracy and tend toward some degree of theocracy and autocracy.

Ron Dart with Brad Jersak - Secularism, Gnosticism, Bede Griffiths and Interfaith Dialogue

Ron discusses 3 shades of secularism, political Gnosticism (a la Eric Voegelin's 4 examples), the clash between certain forms of pluralism and secularism in the public square, and the example of Bede Griffiths in interfaith dialogue that honours Christian distinctives while respecting the religious other.

This is a follow-up to Ron's lecture on "Some Dilemmas of Contemplative Interfaith Dialogue." Viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2pSJwxJ2WA

Spiritual Vocation of the Family - David Goa

Reflections on the Spiritual Vocation of the Family

With my voice unto the Lord have I cried,

with my voice unto the Lord have I made supplication.

I will pour out before Him my supplication,

mine affliction before Him will I declare.

When my spirit was fainting within me,

then Thou knewest my paths.

In this way wherein I have walked they hid for me a snare.

I looked upon my right hand, and beheld,

and there was none that did know me.

Flight hath failed me,

and there is none that watcheth out for my soul.

I have cried unto Thee, O Lord;

I said: Thou art my hope, my portion art Thou

in the land of the living.

Attend unto my supplication,

for I am brought very low.

Deliver me from them that persecute me

for they are stronger than I.

Bring my soul out of prison that I may confess Thy Name.

Psalm 141, from the Vesper Liturgy

            The Psalmist David expresses the cry of the human heart. It is a cry in young and old alike, born of longing to be known in the depth of one’s being and recognizing that “there is none that did know me…none that watcheth out for my soul.” Gregory the Great (born in Rome c. 540), said that a friend is the guardian of one’s soul, custos animi.[1] Custos animi suggests that there are three elements that characterize spiritual friendship: responsibility for another person’s well-being and ultimate salvation, a knowledge of his or her inner life and, a spiritual dimension. Spiritual friendship undergirds my reflection and I will return to it in the latter portion of the discussion endeavouring to draw out its implications for the spiritual vocation of the family.

            But first, I would like to begin this reflection on the spiritual vocation of the family at the heart of my personal formation, my mother and father, and in the life and sense of the world they sought to build together. It was in no sense an ideal. Yet I begin here because their stance towards me and my sisters, their nurture and initiation of us into the world, have come into relief and I see much more sharply how they have informed my thinking of family, the human spirit and our relationship with the stranger in our midst. They are my existential point of departure and, by implication, what I bring to this conversation.

CLICK HERE to download Full Text of "Reflections on the Spiritual Vocation of the Family"

[1]Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community, The Monastic Experience, 350-1250 (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications Inc., 1988): xv. McGuire discusses Gregory the Great’s consideration of this theme and the seminal contribution to it by the Eastern Church Fathers in the first chapter of this book.

“How do you read?” - Kenneth Tanner

“How do you read?”

I marvel at the question Jesus asks the lawyer in Luke 10 and have for about 5-6 years.

It still touches something at my core, that God in human flesh invites this man (and us) into a communal reading of Scripture with him.

The lawyer starts by “testing” Jesus, seeking to justify himself, and Jesus asks:

“How do YOU read?”

It’s an invitation to read the Scriptures with God.

And later a final question for the lawyer after Jesus’ world-interpreting story: “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (It’s a conversation!)

When Deacon Andrew, standing in the center of the congregation this morning, read the lawyer’s response—“The one who showed mercy on him”—I wept.

The expert learns a different reading of the Law and speaks now as the Word speaks.

Having been invited into the conversation, he is transformed.

Perhaps I have changed, or perhaps I was always this way (emotional) and did not know myself that well, or I suppressed or hid it better, but I weep a lot more in worship these days, especially when the Gospel is read.

What’s hiding in your garden? Eden Jersak

Photo by Eden Jersak

^{MARK 4:26-28}

‘This is what God’s kingdom is like,’ said Jesus. ‘Once upon a time a man sowed seed on the ground. Every night he went to bed; every day he got up; and the seed sprouted and grew without him knowing how it did it. The ground produces crops by itself: first the stalk, then the ear, then the complete corn in the ear. But when the crop is ready, in goes the sickle at once, because harvest has arrived.’

What’s hiding in your garden?

What’s hiding in your garden? I didn’t plant this vine. I have never watered it. I haven’t even ever given it any notice. And yet here it is!

There are things in our life that we really have to work hard at, and it takes time, effort, probably counseling, and oh so much heart space. But there are other “things” that grow in our heart that just seem to spring up organically, with little or no effort. Why is that? Maybe because if everything cost us we’d be tapped out and would just despair of all the work. OR maybe because we need to remember and understand that it’s not ALL up to us. Some of our maturity and growth just comes with time. And some of it comes as gifts from others who cheer us on or deposit good seeds into our lives.

I encourage you to look around your heart’s garden today, take note of things that have been growing with little effort from you, and take it all in. Enjoy the fact that there’s something within that has risen without your efforts.

 

Some Dilemmas of Contemplative Interfaith Dialogue - Ron Dart (video)

Ron Dart (UFV) discusses various nuances of exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism, and syncretism. For more details, see his new release of "Christianity and Pluralism," originally co-written with J.I. Packer in response to Bishop Michael Ingham's work, "Mansions of the Spirit."

See the book description below this video. 

Christianity and Pluralism is a collection of concise yet thoughtful essays by J. I. Packer and Ron Dart, interacting with and responding to the four traditional models used to answer the existence of multiple faiths (exclusive, inclusive, pluralist, and syncretist), but focusing particularly that form of syncretism which claims that all faiths find commonality through their mystical traditions.

Written in response to key events in the history of the Anglican church, Packer and Dart's analysis gives us a perennially relevant model for how the church ought to respond to our own pluralistic culture with integrity and kindness - and how to uphold the distinctiveness of the gospel. Christians directly or indirectly engaging our pluralist world will find their ideas enriched by this short yet powerful book.

Endorsement

"This unapologetic yet irenic defense of creedal Christianity deserves a wide readership and is a reminder of our continued indebtedness to faithful leaders such as Dart and Packer."

- Hans Boersma, Nashotah House, WI

About the Authors

Ron Dart (PhD, McMaster University) is associate professor of political science at the University of Fraser Valley (Abbotsford, BC). He is author of numerous books, including The Marks of the Church and Renewal and The North American High Tory Tradition.

J. I. Packer (PhD, Oxford University) is Board of Governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College (Vancouver, BC). He is author of many books, including Knowing God, Affirming the Apostles' Creed, and Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility.

The Meaningless Death of a Child: the Moral Challenge to Divine Control - Kenneth Tanner

God is not in control of everything that happens.

Many persons will be murdered this evening, some of them for faith, and many will tonight die excruciating deaths from cancer and avoidable disasters, many of them children.

God does not will these things to happen, does not require any of this evil as part of some grand design to accomplish his good purposes, is not in a partnership with death, and much of history is because of the absence of God meaningless.

As David Bentley Hart says, it’s a very good thing that the death of a child is ultimately meaningless; that what God does with the death of a child, like all the children who died in the chemical showers of the Nazis, is to raise them from death in the world that does not end, wiping every tear from their face, and freeing their hearts from the terrors we imposed. What God does is resurrect. But I digress.

If the God revealed to us as Love, this Love revealed to the world at Golgotha, directly ruled over all things none of these horrors would ever occur.

There are many wills in the cosmos that oppose the will of Love and the Christian must make many prudential discernments (almost every day) and take actions (almost every day) to oppose with love what opposes Love, in ourselves, in other moral agents, and in nature.

The Christian is not given permission in this world to simply “pray and leave it to God,” though on one important hand that is indeed—in the end—all that we can do.

Contemplation of the person of Jesus Christ leads the Christian to proactive engagement with the powers of this world with weapons not known to this world, chiefly humility. Silence and listening and honest responses to what is heard from God in silence leads us to action.

As Martin Luther King Jr said: “The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.”

I would add that the more “privilege” we accumulate the further removed we *can* become from the urgency to engage fallen powers. The temptation is greater to say, in a form of disengagement disallowed to the Christian,” God has this.”

Serendipity - Sarah Van Diest

When the unexpected becomes the serendipitous we rejoice. We are glad and our hearts are grateful. When our spirits are fragile, the smallest of blessings can overrun us with their beauty and our sense of sentimentality boldly presents itself. Tears of gratitude are evidence of its effect on us. 

And we are undone.

This is the beautiful thing that happens when Life touches us. The cords of death are discarded and forgotten in the midst of this passionate display of vibrancy and vitality. Life in the face of death is equal to light in the darkness, hope in utter despair.

Three years ago I clipped a blue hydrangea from my friend’s giant plant to take home and enjoy whilst it bloomed. It rooted while in the vase, so I planted it in soil, and now I have my own hydrangea plant with its own blooms. This was unexpected, and serendipitously so.

The roots grew from a stem that looked fully dead. The flower itself had dried and all its leaves had fallen off. The roots, though, proved that life still remained. Hope was built in.

There are times in our lives when all we see looks dead. There doesn’t appear to our hearts or our eyes to be any life at all. Hope feels lost, and without hope, we feel lost. Utterly so.

The one thing my time in darkness has proven to me is that hope is never fully absent. Life is never obliterated or extinguished. Even in the face of death itself, there is still hope and there is still life.

Our Jesus made this to be true. Our Father made this to be true. The end of this life is but an end, not the end. Serendipitously following the darkness of Jesus’ death was his beautiful resurrection. All hope was not lost, though every moment prior to his return to life felt wholly void of hope.

Today we live in a time not all that dissimilar to the three days before Jesus rose. We know our Savior will return, but when? We believe hope is not lost, but it can be so very hard to see. We pray for strength to believe in that distant hope, and to walk this present darkness in faith. We long for his return. We wait, sometimes patiently, sometimes restlessly, to see his face.

I do believe we have hope built in, just like the hydrangea, but it gets buried as life is drained from us in our daily struggles and seasons of loss. We need the Spirit’s gentle whispers to remind us of the hope that lives within us.

I hear these words echo in my soul just now as I write, “But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint” Is. 40:31.

And these words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well. In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” John 14:1-2.

Our hope is not in what we see or even in what our hearts can perceive, but in the character of our Creator. Rest in the knowledge of his plan for you and his devotion to you. If hope has eluded you, and if life has felt more like death, I pray that today you will be serendipitously blessed and your hope will be restored, at least for a day. And then tomorrow, may the sun or the wind or the flowers in your view, remind you of the hope that lives in the midst of death.

May each day and each face you see remind you of his love for you. May hope grow in the fecund soil of your heart. May your life become the serendipitous blessing of hope we all long for!

Homily: Against such LOVE there is no LAW - Eden Jersak (with audio)

CLICK HERE to download audio of Eden's teaching (30 min)

Galatians 5:1,13-25 MSG

Excerpt: ¹ "Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you...

^23-24 "But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

^"Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified."

Summary of the Passage

1. We have been set free!
2. What our freedom is Not for!
3. What our freedom IS for!
4. What does living free look like?
5. The fruit is the essence of God … Holy Spirit