Relocating To Elfland

1. I have a longstanding interest in the natural law question, going back to my law school days. Here’s a worthwhile article responding to recent developments of natural law theory at Escondido.

2. First Things recently posted another essay from one of my favorite contemporary theologians, David Bentley Hart. You really must check it out.

In our distracted world the pursuit of Christian piety (beyond reading one’s Bible, praying, and attending church) tends to be a rather ill defined and haphazard affair. What is offered below is a tool for self-analysis in this regard. A word of explanation is called for.

I have found it helpful in recent years to think of Christian piety in terms of maturing as prophets, priests, and kings to the Lord our God. I will not defend that model here, but what I mean is this: God made man to function as a prophet in the world; this means (at least) that we are to be listeners, learners, knowers, and communicators. God also made man to function as a priest; this means we are to be worshippers, managers, preservers, and protectors. God also made man to function as a king; this means we are to be planners, builders, cultivators, and rulers. These three offices are very active; one does not mature in them by drifting along, letting life happen to oneself. Conscious effort and constant self-evaluation are necessary. One must be intentional about one’s growth and progress. I have suggested, then, some questions to help us know how we are doing: these may not be very well crafted, and certainly others could be proposed, but I hope they may at least point in the right direction.

Questions to aid maturing as a “prophet”:

1. What am I currently trying to learn?
2. How am I currently pursuing knowledge of God? Is my love for God growing with my knowledge? To what extent am I still ignorant about God?
3. How am I currently pursuing knowledge of other people? Is my love for them growing with my knowledge? To what extent am I still ignorant about my fellow humans?
4. How am I currently pursuing knowledge of creation? Is my love for creation (and the Creator) growing with my knowledge? To what extent am I still ignorant about the created order?
5. What have I read in the last year? What am I reading now? What is the quality of the books I read?
6. Am I currently communicating truth and affirming goodness in my speech? Am I currently communicating falsehood and affirming evil in my speech? Is my speech always “seasoned with grace”? In what ways is my speech “rotten”?

Questions to aid maturing as a “priest”:

1. What space (or place) has the Lord entrusted to me? Over what has He given me jurisdiction?
2. What is the general state of affairs in this jurisdiction? Is it well ordered? Is it pure? Is it beautiful?
3. Am I setting apart times for worship, especially those God has appointed? Does my life revolve around such times of worship? How are these times of worship influencing the rest of my life?
4. What habits am I consciously cultivating? What disciplines am I cultivating? What are the routines of my daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly life? What rituals do I (and my household) regularly observe?
5. What work has God given me to do? How am I seeking His pleasure in my work? How am I enjoying His goodness in it? How am I exhibiting in my work His beauty, goodness, grace, truth, and righteousness?
6. In what ways is my life infected with lawlessness, darkness, lies, rebellion, unbelief, and idolatry? In what ways am I currently defiling my body, my soul, or the “space” God has entrusted to me?

Questions to aid maturing as a “king”:

1. What is the “kingdom” for the coming of which our Lord taught us to pray? How am I actively contributing to the expansion of this kingdom in the world?
2. Who are my superiors, my equals, and my inferiors? How am I honoring each of these in their station? Am I currently discipling anyone?
3. How am I currently cultivating manners that befit a member of God’s royal household?
4. How am I currently cultivating fruitfulness of soul (mind, affections, motives, choices)? How am I currently cultivating fruitfulness in bodily deeds (charity, hospitality, witness, homebuilding, education, skill, creativity and innovation, etc.)? Am I simply maintaining the status quo in my life?
5. How am I currently interacting with the “stuff” of creation? How am I cultivating this “stuff” for the joy of God and to exhibit His excellence, wisdom, goodness, and beauty?
6. How am I currently wasting time? Am I working too much? Too little? Why do I work?
7. Am I currently building anything? What am I aiming to accomplish, achieve, or obtain through my work? What are my goals and objectives for the next month, the next year, the next five years, and before I die?
8. Is the atmosphere of my life one of peace? Of joy? Of gratitude and contentment? How am I enjoying my God, my family, my friends, and God’s creation? How am I paying attention to the goodness of the Lord?

I’m no economist, but the column by Paul Krugman in the Times today may be the most extraordinarily inane piece of analysis I have ever read. He seems sincerely to believe that yet-more-excessive government spending (?!) will actually stimulate the economy, whereupon (and not before) it will become safe for the government to start saving money. The best I could gather about the details of his theory is that the government can create jobs by spending, and put money back in people’s pockets by cutting healthcare costs. Very well, let us hypothesize that this succeeds. There is no mention of the fact that jobs created by government money must also be sustained by government money, so how does this help us ever get around to government saving? No mention, either, of the fact that, while reducing healthcare costs might perhaps put some money back in the consumer’s pocket, the whole point of economic stimulus is to get that money back out of the pocket and into the market, with the result that in a few years our consumer is broke again and – mirabile dictu – eager for a government bailout. We have created an economy premised on overspending, and now people like Krugman seriously think overspending by the government will stimulate consumers to overspend and the fruit will be a flourishing economy. Dare I say: blowing up a balloon-rabbit bigger and bigger never makes it a real rabbit. What’s missing in our economy is real value – hard assets instead of paper promises. We go on spending money we don’t have so we can possess things we don’t own, our government goes on spending money it doesn’t have so we can spend money we don’t have so we can possess things we don’t own – an admirable balloon, or it was before it started sagging. Thanks to Krugman for reminding Uncle Sam to puff again, with feeling.

Two seemingly random thoughts that crossed my pastoral mind today:

1. Secularism “normalizes” death by mostly ignoring it or treating it as no big deal, and focusing almost exclusive on the present life. Religion normalizes death by embracing it as the longed-for escape from the present world. Christianity regards death as the great enemy to be vanquished by Jesus Christ, in order that we may once again live in the body the life for which we were created on the earth. (I’m following Schmemann pretty closely here.)

2. Many of us are quick to regard our anger toward other sinners as “righteous indignation.” It is worth pausing to consider whether our anger is righteous, or whether it is in fact sinful anger in a righteous cause. This is a significant difference.

“O Treasury of good things, Fountain eternal, O Father all-holy who workest wonders, all-powerful and almighty: We all adore thee and entreat thee, calling thy mercies and thy compassion to the aid and defence of our lowliness. Call to remembrance thy servants, O Lord; accept the morning prayers of us all as incense before thee; and let none of us be found reprobate, but encompass us with thy bounties. Call to remembrance, O Lord, those who watch and sing praises to thy glory, and to the glory of thine Only-begotten Son who is our God, and of thy Holy Spirit. Be thou their helper and their support. Receive thou their supplications upon thy most heavenly and spiritually discerning altar.

“For thou art our God, and unto thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“This is . . . the glory and honor of man as king of creation: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue and have dominion . . .’ (Gn. 1:25). Each family is indeed a kingdom, a little church, and therefore . . . a way to the Kingdom. Somewhere, even if it is only in a single room, every man at some point in his life has his own small kingdom. It may be hell, and a place of betrayal, or it may not. Behind each window there is a little world going on. How evident this becomes when one is riding on a train at night and passing innumerable lighted windows: behind each one of them the fullness of life is a ‘given possibility,’ a promise, a vision. This is what [marriage ceremonies] express: that here is the beginning of a small kingdom which can be something like the true Kingdom. The chance will be lost, perhaps even in one night; but at this moment it is still an open possibility. Yet even when it has been lost, and lost again a thousand times, still if two people stay together, they are in a real sense king and queen to each other. And after forty odd years, Adam can still turn and see Eve standing beside him, in a unity with himself which in some small way at least proclaims the love of God’s Kingdom. In movies and magazines the ‘icon’ of marriage is always a youthful couple. But once, in the light and warmth of an autumn afternoon, this writer saw on the bench of a public square, in a poor Parisian suburb, an old and poor couple. They were sitting hand in hand, in silence, enjoying the pale light, the last warmth of the season. In silence: all words had been said, all passion exhausted, all storms at peace. The whole life was behind – yet all of it was now present, in this silence, in this light, in this warmth, in this silent unity of hands. Present – and ready for eternity, ripe for joy. This to me remains the vision of marriage, of its heavenly beauty.” (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World)

There are six books of the Bible that I fear to preach because they are so programmatic. In order, they are Genesis (which lays the foundations for all of scripture), Deuteronomy (which sets forth the agenda for the Mosaic economy and the rest of the Old Testament), Isaiah (a syllabus of the prophets’ messianic vision), Romans (the bedrock of apostolic theology), Hebrews (the fullest exposition of the transition from Old Covenant to New), and Revelation (which tells the church how to think about everything to come). These are interpretive hubs, in my mind, around which our understanding of everything else in scripture must turn.

In 1929, The Princeton Theological Review published an essay by Geerhardus Vos entitled, “The Structure of the Pauline Eschatology” (available here). One can hardly overstate the importance and influence of this essay, the central insight of which was that while Jewish and Old Testament eschatology were organized on a “scheme of successiveness” (one age of history being followed by another, the messianic age), by a “gradual transition” a new eschatological structure emerged in the apostolic writings (notably those of Paul). On one hand, the venerable scheme of two ages continued, only now the age of Messiah “unfolded itself into two successive epochs.” That is, the Old Testament expectations regarding the age of Messiah had (in light of what actually happened when Jesus came) to be understood as unfolding in two stages: one present, another still to come. In Vos’ own words:

“The scheme of successiveness had not been entirely abrogated but simply been reapplied to the latter half of the original scheme: the age to come [described in the Old Testament] was perceived to bear in its womb another age to come, so that with reference to the mother and the as yet unborn child, as it were, the category of what is and what is to be not only could, but had to be retained.”

But this apostolic revision of the ancient scheme of successiveness did not end the matter. Also a truly new element – and a deeply complicating one – emerged in Paul’s eschatological structure. For him, eschatology was not simply a matter of two ages, one following upon another. It was as well a matter of two worlds, or two states, which may (unlike successive ages) exist side by side, so that it is possible for a person to belong to both at once (though, as Vos says, “preeminently to one rather than to the other”). In Christ, it is not simply that believers have entered into the future age; perhaps even more importantly, they have entered the higher world. The focus for Paul is as much “spatial” as “temporal”: we are now in the world of heaven above, and it is around this fact that Paul’s eschatology is organized. Vos once again:

“What was logically impossible [the contemporaneous existence of two successive ages] became practically unavoidable through the shifting of the center of gravity from the lower to the higher sphere, as brought about by the removal of the Messiah to the higher world and his abiding there in permanence.”

It is in this way, says Vos, that the realities of the future age can be already present – because the new world is “above” (heavenly), it can intrude in all sorts of ways into the present age, while as a historical-chronological matter it remains future, following Messiah’s second coming. (Readers should look at page 440 in the PTR article reference above, to see how Vos diagrams this.)

Believers, then, are “in principle” in heaven; their citizenship is presently in the world above, for Christ is in heaven and they are “in Christ.” Precisely because this is the case, they yearn eagerly for the “second stage” of the age of Messiah, when He returns to consummate the new heavens and the new earth. They are fixed upon that which is historically future, because they are located presently in the world above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God.

That Vos has provided us with valuable, even brilliant, insights into the structure of the Pauline eschatology is beyond question. Every serious student of scripture should wrestle with and digest his essay. There remain however, some troubling questions, and it is clear from the way Vos ends his essay that he himself felt some of these. Two in particular stand out: (1) Is there a danger here of devaluing the “lower” world as God’s good creation, as His designed habitat for mankind, and as the theater of His redemptive work? (2) Is there a danger here of devaluing the “present stage” of Messiah’s reign, in that most of the content of the Old Testament messianic “visions” must be deferred to the “second stage,” after He returns (e.g., kings and nations paying homage to Him)?

If Vos were still alive to ask, he might well respond, “If I have correctly interpreted the apostolic writings, you will have to take up these questions with the apostles themselves”! The real issue is what the apostles said, however much it might perplex us. I would like to explore in another post whether other data in the apostolic writings might qualify Vos’ proposed structure, but it is only fair to point out, first, that he himself saw no dualism in his interpretation of Paul:

“Notwithstanding a certain formal resemblance in the two-sidedness of the Christian life [in heaven, upon earth], it stands at a far remove from Greek philosophical dualism. Its very genesis forbids identification with this even to the slightest degree. It mother-soil lies in eschatological revelation, not in metaphysical speculation.”

As to whether his interpretation leaves Paul without a very robust set of expectations regarding the present transforming effects of the gospel in nations, cultures, and institutions – i.e., whether he has Paul’s hope so rigorously fixed upon the future parousia that we are left to wonder about other, more this-worldly concerns articulated by the apostle – Vos offers this cryptic conclusion:

“What is usually charged against the age of Constantine and the rise of Protestantism would actually have its root in a Pauline Hellenizing speculation, which under the guise of directing to heaven would have in its actual effect meant a worldly recurrence from the future upon the present. There is nothing of this in the Apostle’s intent: the Christian has only his members upon earth, which are to be mortified; himself, and as a whole, he belongs to the high mountain-land above, Col. iii. 5.”

I generally despise this kind of psychologizing, but one muses whether Vos’ disparagement here of certain this-worldly projects in historical Christendom might have arisen from reaction to the rise of liberalism in North American Presbyterianism. It is worth noting that the “Presbyterian Conflict” reached a fever pitch at Princeton in the very year Vos published this essay.

Blogging has taught me afresh the difficulty of carrying deep water in a shallow vessel. So many subjects I want to write on simply resist being treated in such a forum. In their profundity, with their long history and various ramifications and implications, they defy the impertinence of a few paragraphs’ disposal. I have to resist the urge to start nearly every post with a caveat, “Now, I’m fumbling my way along the edges of something again. . . .”

Take aesthetics, for example. I’ve heard it argued, even by Christians, that there can be no such thing as objective beauty. I don’t accept this denial of objectivity, because it seems to leave the verdict regarding what is beautiful entirely in human hands; and while that might be appropriate in the sphere of human things (which I’m not quite ready to concede), it is surely wrong when it comes to our beholding the divine glory. God says to us, “Behold My glory,” and we have no right to tell Him we don’t happen to regard His beauty as . . . well, beautiful. If it’s all in the eye of the beholder, then God can’t tell us His beauty is objectively beautiful – which is about like saying He can’t tell us His truth is objectively true, or His righteousness objectively right.

But if there must (in my view) be some place for objective beauty, there’s a ditch across the road as well: the objectifying of beauty. As a father of two daughters, living beside the fashion capitol of the universe, this is of more than academic interest to me. What’s a fellow to do if his daughter asks him, “Daddy, am I pretty?” One can’t just respond, “Well, dear, it’s all relative,” or, “I think you’re beautiful, so you are.” If she’s sharp, she will probably respond, “Okay, then I’m going to stop cutting my fingernails, brushing my hair, and using makeup. Oh, and forget the braces.” We know there are certain things one can do to make oneself more beautiful, more aesthetically and visually pleasing, and this assumes some rough standard beyond oneself. It’s not wrong, strictly speaking, to say one person is rather plain and another person strikingly lovely. There are noses that are a bit comical, and eyes that can make one swoon; and some guys (not me, for example) have enviable hair. But then you trace this out a bit, and you land where our culture has arrived today: teaching its girls that real beauty is airbrushed, with a certain bra size and a blemish-free complexion. If you aren’t hot like all that, you’d better find some other way to get attention.

Set aside, if possible, how this kind of objectification has led to the commodifying of “beauty”; ignore the horrible fact that, having objectified “beauty,” we can now buy it and sell it like any other object on the market. I want to question the objectifying itself: Who says that “that” over there is the standard of beauty (male, female, or otherwise)? Who speaks with such authority?

As people of God, must we not say at some level that a thing is good and beautiful just because it is created? And does this not, in turn, require us to affirm a fantastic diversity within the field of beauty? I happen to like certain physical features, and I think they’re objectively beautiful on the ground that God put them there. Someone else may think other features equally beautiful; and he or she is on no less solid, objective ground, because God made those features, too! But we must go further. Cultural images of beauty are dominated by the physical; the biblical image of beauty is fundamentally personal – which is to say, there is a whole lot more depth and variety to beauty than can be exhausted in the human body. A person is truly beautiful as a person: the radiance of his or her soul (the character, the heart, the animus within) is joined to a particular body in which that inner life finds adornment and expression. This is why we have all looked at an old man and thought him exquisitely handsome; why we have all looked at a pretty young face and thought it hard, even ugly; and why no amount of makeup can ever make a corpse a thing of beauty. (It is also why no amount of pornographic images has ever satisfied a heart’s yearning for beauty.)

There’s truth in the old line, “God made you, and He don’t make no trash.” Perhaps we need our imaginations broadened to delight in more of His creativity. We certainly need our definition of beauty expanded beyond the soulless images of our culture. So, little girl, God made only one of you; and in all that you are – in all that He made you – you are truly beautiful.

“O Lord God, holy and unsearchable, who didst command the light to shine forth from the darkness; who hast refreshed us by the slumber of the night, and hast raised us up to glorify and supplicate thy goodness: Being implored of thine own tender loving-kindness, accept us also now who bow down in adoration before thee, and render thanks unto thee according to the measure of our strength; and grant us all our petitions which are unto salvation. Make us children of the light, and of the day, and heirs of thine everlasting good things. Call to remembrance, O Lord, in the multitude of thy bounties, all thy people here present with us who make their supplications unto thee, and all our brethren on land, on the sea, and in every place of thy dominion, who are in need of thy loving-kindness and of thy succour, and vouchsafe unto them all thy great mercy, that being always preserved in safety of soul and body, we may with boldness magnify thy wondrous and blessed Name, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

“For thou art the God of bounties and of loving-kindness, and unto thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)