‘For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing’.

(Luke 12:23)

by

Damien F. Mackey

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“We have had enough of ­immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty …. There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself,” the Pope writes.

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A superficial reading of pope Francis’s 2015 Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si’ (“Praise be to you” – On Care For Our Common Home), has led many to jump to the conclusion that this letter, addressed to all the people on earth, is entirely about the topical subject of climate change.

But those who have read it more closely have appreciated that Laudato Si’ is only partially about that.

Stephen P. White, for instance, a fellow in the Catholic studies program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC., has observed that it is more about something else:

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/24/8834413/pope-climate-change-encyclical

Given the media coverage since its release, and the political implications of the pope throwing his moral weight behind one side in a high-stakes debate about climate policy, one could be forgiven for thinking that Pope Francis’s new encyclical is mostly about climate change and what we need to do to combat it.

Except it is and it isn’t. In fact, mostly it isn’t.

What makes this encyclical controversial is its reading of contested questions of science, economics, and politics. What makes it radical — in the sense of going to the root — is the pope’s reading of the profound human crisis that he sees underlying our modern world. Abuse of our environment isn’t the only problem facing humanity. In fact, Pope Francis sees the ecological crisis as a symptom of a deeper crisis — a human crisis.

These two problems are related and interdependent. And the solution is not simply to eliminate fossil fuels or rethink carbon credits. The pope is calling on the world to rediscover what it means to be human — and as a result, to reject the cult of economic growth and material accumulation.

Reading the encyclical, one quickly realizes that the “pope fights climate change” narrative is far from the whole story. In fact, that line leaves out the most fundamental themes of the encyclical: the limits of technology and the need for what he calls an “integral ecology,” which “transcend[s] the language of mathematics and biology, and take[s] us to the heart of what it is to be human.”

[End of quote]

And Miranda Devine, a columnist with The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), depicts the Pope somewhat as a cagey fisherman, luring the Greens with a bait, before giving it a sharp twist. (“Thought Pope Francis was a warmist? Think again”):

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailyteleg

Firstly, the lure is presented:

CLIMATE alarmists are cock-a-whoop over Pope Francis’s much-anticipated call to action on global warming.

Yes, the leader of the world’s 1.8 billion Catholics, agrees with Kevin Rudd. The planet is in crisis, and climate change is one of the greatest moral challenges, the Pope has written in his first solo encyclical. Man is to blame and fossil fuels are bad.

It couldn’t be a more political document, designed to ­influence the upcoming UN ­climate summit in Paris later this year. Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate change head, has called it a “clarion call to guide the world”.

Looks like everyone’s a papist now.

Alarmists are revelling in what they hope is the discomfort of the climate sceptic, or agnostic faithful, especially the Prime Minister.

“Hopefully this is Tony Abbott’s come to Jesus moment on climate change,” Greens leader Richard Di Natale said.

“If Tony Abbott won’t listen to the science, I only hope he will listen to the leader of his church and see the light on climate change,” said independent MP Andrew Wilkie.

The same people who have flayed Abbott for taking orders from Rome, supposedly, when it comes to women’s ovaries or same-sex marriage are now ­demanding he obey the Pope and start spraying windmills across the landscape.

But now for that sharp twist of the lure. Devine continues:

But, as a Catholic and an ­optimist, I suspect the Pope is engaging in Jesuitical trickery.

When you read the encyclical, you see that climate change is a minor player, despite the media hype.

In 44,000 words, the word “climate” appears just 18 times. This is illustrated in a word cloud by the Catholic News Service, in which the size of a word correlates with the frequency of its use: “climate” is not visible. “Human” is the largest word, followed by “God”.

That is the cleverness of this popular, enigmatic Pope. He has used climate change as the “bait” to lure the chattering classes, the godless and the Gaia worshippers.

He gives them a bit of climate sustenance, then whacks them with a full-frontal attack on moral relativism.

“We have had enough of ­immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty … There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself,” the Pope writes.

He is down on abortion, contraception, embryonic research, sex changes and digital media, which gives “rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature”.

He is all for the family, which he calls “the heart of the culture of life”.

So now that the Pope has the ears of the world, he’s relentlessly hammering us with unabashed Catholic teaching, sugar-coated with populist ­environmentalism.

Genius bait and switch.

[End of quote]

Restoring Human Dignity

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,

because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned,

and revealed them to little children.

(Luke 10:21)

The Pope recently chose an audience of ‘little children’, and not the ‘wise and learned’, to speak of war and to reveal a dark secret (http://rt.com/news/257545-pope-francis-war-arms/): “Many powerful people don’t want peace because they live off war,” the Pontiff said as he met with pupils from Rome’s primary schools in the Nervi Audience Hall.

Talking to children during the audience organized by the Peace Factory Foundation, he explained that every war has the arms industry behind it.

“This is serious. Some powerful people make their living with the production of arms and sell them to one country for them to use against another country”. ….  

The head of the Catholic Church labeled the arms trade “the industry of death, the greed that harms us all, the desire to have more money.”

“The economic system orbits around money and not men, women,” he told 7,000 kids present at the audience.

Despite the fact that wars “lose lives, health, education,” they are being waged to defend money and make even more profit, the Pope said.

“The devil enters through greed and this is why they don’t want peace,” 78-year-old Francis said.

But why tell this to children?

And why did Our Lady of the Rosary, at Fatima (Portugal) on July 13, 1917, also speak of war and reveal a dark secret to three shepherd children (Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco), and not to adults?

After showing them the terrifying vision of Hell – {Lucia: “That vision only lasted for a moment, thanks to our good Heavenly Mother, Who at the first apparition [May 13] had promised to take us to Heaven. Without that, I think that we would have died of terror and fear”} – the Lady told them:

‘You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go.

To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The War is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father’.

Well, did not Jesus himself reply to those who had asked him: ‘Do you hear what these children are saying?’ ‘Yes’ … have you never read, ‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?’ (Matthew 21:16)?

Now, Pope Francis is a teacher who has modelled himself on Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ was one who had, directly against the customs of his time, exalted little children. This is how G. K. Chesterton told of it back in 1925, in his chapter “The Strangest Story in the World” (The Everlasting Man):

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlasting/conten

The exaltation of childhood is something which we do really understand; but it was by no means a thing that was then in that sense understood. If we wanted an example of the originality of the Gospel, we could hardly take a stronger or more startling one. Nearly two thousand years afterwards we happen to find ourselves in a mood that does really feel the mystical charm of the child; we express it in romances and regrets about childhood, in Peter Pan or The Child’s Garden of Verses. And we can say of the words of Christ with so angry an anti-Christian as Swinburne:

‘No sign that ever was given To faithful or faithless eyes

Showed ever beyond clouds riven

So clear a paradise.

Earth’s creeds may be seventy times seven

And blood have defiled each creed

But if such be the kingdom of heaven

It must be heaven indeed.’

But that paradise was not clear until Christianity had gradually cleared it. The pagan world, as such, would not have understood any such thing as a serious suggestion that a child is higher or holier than a man. It would have seemed like the suggestion that a tadpole is higher or holier than a frog. To the merely rationalistic mind, it would sound like saying that bud must be more beautiful than a flower or that an unripe apple must be better than a ripe one. In other words, this modern feeling is an entirely mystical feeling. It is quite as mystical as the cult of virginity; in fact it is the cult Of virginity. But pagan antiquity had much more idea of the holiness of the virgin than of the holiness of the child. For various reasons we have come nowadays to venerate children; perhaps partly because we envy children for still doing what men used to do; such as play simple games and enjoy fairy-tales. Over and above this, however, there is a great deal of real and subtle psychology in our appreciation of childhood; but if we turn it into a modern discovery, we must once more admit that the historical Jesus of Nazareth had already discovered it two thousand years too soon. There was certainly nothing in the world around him to help him to the discovery. Here Christ was indeed human; but more human than a human being was then likely to be. Peter Pan does not belong to the world of Pan but the world of Peter.

[End of quote]

Francis, like the popes before him – and John Paul II particularly comes to mind here – is all about restoring ‘the dignity of the human person’, in the face of global exploitation and the indifference of the rich. This is a pontificate that has put the poor again front and centre, recalling the Gospel’s mantra of preferential option for the poor.

It is a re-telling of the parable of ‘Dives and Lazarus’.

Stephen White well sums it up when he writes:   

Pope Francis sees the ecological crisis as a symptom of a deeper crisis — a human crisis. As for who is responsible for all this, he places the burden at the feet of the developed world: “Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change.”

Francis warns especially of the damage that our “culture of waste” does to the poor. He dismisses attempts at population control while leveling broadsides against financial markets, inequality, and the indifference of the rich. Moreover, he sees all these disturbing trends as interconnected. A casual attitude toward material goods leads to a casual attitude toward people. A willingness to exploit creation is deeply connected to a willingness to exploit human beings.

[End of quote]

Such is the harsh reality of the modern, industrialised world, whose protagonists do not seem to care about – or sometimes even notice – its uglification of what was formerly beautiful. “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” the Pope writes. On climate change: “A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system.” He goes on to warn: “If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us.”

Some nine decades ago, G. K. Chesterton was uttering similar sentiments, when writing of:

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlasting/content.htm

… the wage-slaves of our morbid modern industrialism, which by its hideousness and in-humanity has really forced the economic issue to the front. ….

….

The human unity with which I deal here is not to be confounded with this modern industrial monotony and herding, which is rather a congestion than a communion. …. for that is characteristic of everything belonging to that ancient land of liberty that lies before and around the servile industrial town. Industrialism actually boasts that its products are all of one pattern; that men in Jamaica or Japan can break the same seal and drink the same bad whiskey, that a man at the North Pole and another at the South might recognise the same optimistic level on the same dubious tinned salmon. But wine, the gift of gods to men, can vary with every valley and every vineyard, can turn into a hundred wines without any wine once reminding us of whiskey; and cheeses can change from county to county without forgetting the difference between chalk and cheese.

[End of quote]

For those driven by the spirit of mammon, rather than by the Spirit of Charity (Luke 16:13), financial expediency, or ‘the bottom line’, is the only thing that matters – not truth, or beauty, or goodness, or kindness, or humanity.

G. K. Chesterton, again, puts it better, telling of the alienating effect between neighbours: http://www.chesterton.org/lecture-5/

Modern commerce, says Chesterton again, is about savagery of the rich, the hunger of the satisfied, and the sudden madness of the mills of the world. You cannot serve God and Mammon because — obviously — loving Mammon keeps you from loving God, thus breaking the first Great Commandment of Christ, but you neither can you love your neighbor if you are a slave of that blind and bogus god of money and materialism. Your neighbor becomes your competitor in that system, and your enemy.

[End of quote]

Obviously, this is not a state of affairs that a kindly pope such as Francis can support. And so: “There can be no ecology,” he writes, “without an adequate anthropology.”

G. K. Chesterton, writing in less scientific and more paradoxical terms, contrasted “the flat creatures living only on a plane” with the multi-dimensional ideal of the Gospels pertaining to ‘the lilies of the field’:

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlasting/content.htm

There is perhaps nothing so perfect in all language or literature as the use of these three degrees in the parable of the lilies of the field; in which [Jesus] seems first to take one small flower in his hand and note its simplicity and even its impotence; then suddenly expands it in flamboyant colors into all the palaces and pavilions full of a great name in national legend and national glory; and then, by yet a third overturn, shrivels it to nothing once more with a gesture as if flinging it away ‘ . . . and if God so clothes the grass that today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven-how much more. . . .’ It is like the building of a good Babel tower by white magic in a moment and in the movement of a hand; a tower heaved suddenly up to heaven on the top of which can be seen afar off, higher than we had fancied possible, the figure of man; lifted by three infinities above all other things, on a starry ladder of light logic and swift imagination. Merely in a literary sense it would be more of a masterpiece than most of the masterpieces in the libraries; yet it seems to have been uttered almost at random while a man might pull a flower. But merely in a literary sense also, this use of the comparative in several degrees has about it a quality which seems to me to hint of much higher things than the modern suggestion of the simple teaching of pastoral or communal ethics. There is nothing that really indicates a subtle and in the true sense a superior mind so much as this power of comparing a lower thing with a higher and yet that higher with a higher still; of thinking on three planes at once. There is nothing that wants the rarest sort of wisdom so much as to see, let us say, that the citizen is higher than the slave and yet that the soul is infinitely higher than the citizen or the city. It is not by any means a faculty that commonly belongs to these simplifiers of the Gospel; those who insist on what they call a simple morality and others call a sentimental morality. It is not at all covered by those who are content to tell everybody to remain at peace. On the contrary, there is a very striking example of it in the apparent inconsistency between Christ’s sayings about peace and about a sword. It is precisely this power which perceives that while a good peace is better than a good war, even a good war is better than a bad peace. These far-flung comparisons are nowhere so common as in the Gospels; and to me they suggest something very vast. So a thing solitary and solid, with the added dimension of depth or height, might tower over the flat creatures living only on a plane.

[End of quote]

We are still in the Gospel realm of Luke 12 that titles this article.

Human industry cannot replicate the beauty of God’s nature (v. 27): ‘Consider how the wild flowers [or ‘lilies of the field’] grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these’.

Sadly, were he to appear today, the fabulously wise and wealthy Solomon, instead of being clothed, perhaps, like his queen, “in gold of Ophir” (Psalm 45:9) and the like, would probably be wearing labels titled

and

For it seems that even the more artistic or beautiful aspects of life (e.g. fashion, clothing, architecture) have become, so to speak, ‘industrialised’.

Earlier in Luke 12, in vv. 13-21, Jesus gave a disturbing parable most relevant to all of this:

The Parable of the Rich Fool

Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’

Jesus replied, ‘Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?’ Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’

And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

Here the Gospel labels the Mammonite a ‘fool’.  

Now just as Jesus was, in this parable, urging a simpler life, one free from excess worry and anxiety, so today pope Francis seems to be calling for a return to simplicity. As White puts it: “We need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more”.”

And G. K. Chesterton was of the same mind-set, here (The Everlasting Man) echoing Luke 12:

But there is a deeper fallacy besides this obvious fact; that men need not live for food merely because they cannot live without food. The truth is that the thing most present to the mind of man is not the economic machinery necessary to his existence; but rather that existence itself; the world which he sees when he wakes every morning and the nature of his general position in it. There is something that is nearer to him than livelihood, and that is life. For once that he remembers exactly what work produces his wages and exactly what wages produce his meals, he reflects ten times that it is a fine day or it is a queer world, or wonders whether life is worth living, or wonders whether marriage is a failure, or is pleased and puzzled with his own children, or remembers his own youth, or in any such fashion vaguely reviews the mysterious lot of man. This is true of the majority even of the wage-slaves of our morbid modern industrialism, which by its hideousness and in-humanity has really forced the economic issue to the front. It is immeasurably more true of the multitude of peasants or hunters or fishers who make up the real mass of mankind.

[End of quote]

Quality Over Quantity

What appeals to me personally about the pope’s Laudato Si’ encyclical letter is the resonance I find in parts of it with my favourite book on the philosophy of science, Dr. Gavin Ardley’s Aquinas and Kant: The Foundations of the Modern Sciences (1950). The book can be read at:

http://brightmorningstar.blog.com/2008/10/21/gavin-ardleys-book-aquinas-and-kant/

Whereas the ancient sciences (scientiae) involved a study of actual reality, the more abstract modern sciences (e.g. theoretical physics), involve, as Immanuel Kant had rightly discerned, an active imposition of a priori concepts upon reality. In other words, these ‘sciences’ are largely artificial (or ‘categorial’) – their purpose being generally utilitarian.

Ardley tells of it (Ch. VI: Immanuel Kant):

Kant’s great contribution was to point out the revolution in natural science effected by Galileo and Bacon and their successors. This stands in principle even though all the rest of his philosophy wither away.

Prior to Galileo people had been concerned with reading laws in Nature. After Galileo they read laws into Nature. His clear recognition of this fact makes Kant the fundamental philosopher of the modern world. It is the greatest contribution to the philosophia perennis since St. Thomas. But this has to be dug patiently out of Kant. Kant himself so overlaid and obscured his discovery that is has ever since gone well nigh unrecognised.

We may, in fact we must, refrain from following Kant in his doctrine of metaphysics. The modelling of metaphysics on physics was his great experiment. The experiment is manifestly a failure, in pursuit of what he mistakenly believed to be the best interests of metaphysics.

But, putting the metaphysical experiment aside, the principle on which it was founded abides, the principle of our categorial activity. Later, in Ch. XVIII, we will see in more detail how this principle is essential to the modern development of the philosophia perennis.

Kant was truly the philosopher of the modern world when we look judiciously at his work. As a motto for the Kritik Kant actually quotes a passage from Francis Bacon in which is laid down the programme for the pursuit of human utility and power. [Footnote: The passage is quoted again in this work on [Ardley’s] p. 47.] As we saw in Ch. IV, it was Bacon above all who gave articulate expression to the spirit behind the new science. Now we see that it was Kant who, for the first time, divined the nature of the new science. If Bacon was the politician of the new régime, Kant was its philosopher although a vastly over-ambitious one.

It appears to be this very sort of Baconian “régime” that pope Francis is currently challenging, at least, according to Stephen White’s estimation:  

While much has been said about the pope’s embrace of the scientific evidence of climate change and the dangers it poses, the irony is that he addresses this crisis in a way that calls into question some of the oldest and most basic assumptions of the scientific paradigm.

Francis Bacon and René Descartes — two fathers of modern science in particular — would have shuddered at this encyclical. Bacon was a man of many talents — jurist, philosopher, essayist, lord chancellor of England — but he’s mostly remembered today as the father of the scientific method. He is also remembered for suggesting that nature ought to be “bound into service, hounded in her wanderings and put on the rack and tortured for her secrets.”

Descartes, for his part, hoped that the new science he and men like Bacon were developing would make us, in his words, “masters and possessors of nature.”

At the very outset of the encyclical, before any mention of climate change or global warming, Pope Francis issues a challenge to the Baconian and Cartesian view, which sees the world as so much raw material to be used as we please. Neither Descartes nor Bacon is mentioned by name, but the reference is unmistakable. Pope Francis insists that humanity’s “irresponsible use and abuse” of creation has come about because we “have come to see ourselves as [the Earth’s] lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.”

Not truth, but power lust, will be the prime motivation of these, the Earth’s “lords and masters”, or, as Ardley has put it, “not to know the world but to control it”:

What was needed was for someone to point out clearly the ‘otherness’ of post-Galilean physical science, i.e. the fact that it is, in a sense, cut off from the rest of the world, and is the creation of man himself. The new science has no metaphysical foundations and no metaphysical implications. Kant had the clue to this ‘otherness’ in the categorial theory, but he took the rest of the world with him in the course of the revolution and hence only succeeded in the end in missing the point.

Most people since then, rightly sceptical about Kant’s wholesale revolution, have been quite hostile to the Kantian system in general. Others, perhaps without realising it, have rewritten the revolution in their own terms, and thus have perpetuated Kant’s principal errors (as e.g. Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus).

A thorough sifting out of Kant has long been required in order to separate the gold from the dross.

….

Kant’s mistake was to think that the world had to be transformed to know it. The truth is that the world may be transformed, if we so dictate, and then it is not to know the world but to control it. ….

[End of quote]

From what follows, I wonder if the pope – or at least White in his comments – may have read Ardley’s book. Dr. Ardley had (on p. 5) pointed out that there are two ways of going about the process of analyzing or dissecting something, depending on one’s purpose. And he well illustrated his point by comparing the practices of the anatomist and the butcher. When an anatomist dissects an animal, he traces out the real structure of the animal; he lays bare the veins, the nerves, the muscles, the organs, and so on. “He reveals the actual structure which is there before him waiting to be made manifest”. The butcher, on the other hand, is not concerned about the natural structure of the animal as he chops it up; he wants to cut up the carcass into joints suitable for domestic purposes. In his activities the butcher ruthlessly cleaves across the real structure laid bare so patiently by the anatomist. “The anatomist finds his structure, the butcher makes his”.

Thus White: “Put another way, Pope Francis insists that the material world isn’t just mere stuff to be dissected, studied, manipulated, and then packaged off to be sold into service of human wants and needs”.

And again:

“The utilitarian mindset that treats creation as so much “raw material to be hammered into useful shape” inevitably leads us to see human beings through the same distorted lens”.

White continues:

The pope repeatedly warns against the presumption that technological advances, in themselves, constitute real human progress. In a typical passage, he writes, “There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future lies elsewhere.” The pope writes critically of “irrational confidence in progress and human abilities.” He writes hopefully of a time when “we can finally leave behind the modern myth of unlimited material progress.”

Nevertheless:

This isn’t to say that Pope Francis is anti-technology or even, as some have suggested, anti-modern, but he is deeply critical of both our technological mindset and modernity’s utilitarian propensities. While he acknowledges with gratitude the benefits humanity has derived from modern technology, which has “remedied countless evils which used to harm and limit human beings,” he also calls into question — forcefully — the idea that utility is the proper measure of our interaction with creation.

[End of quote]

There may be a better way of doing things in the pursuit of what pope Francis calls an “integral ecology [which] transcend[s] the language of mathematics and biology, and take[s] us to the heart of what it is to be human”.

A too rigid mathematics can make for a cruel master.

Stephen White well sums up the Pope’s outlook:

An integral, human ecology

“Everything is connected” is a constant refrain in this encyclical, and it serves to underscore the way Pope Francis understands the vocation — the calling — of the whole human race. We were made by God and for God. His gift of creation is also part of that vocation and comes with responsibility for its care and development. We’re part of creation, but also is custodians. Creation’s greatest beauty is in its ability to reflect the glory of its maker.

Christians believe in a God who entered into his own creation in order to redeem it Most religions understand that reality is not limited to physical existence; there are also spiritual realities. But Christians, and Catholics in particular, have always insisted that while the spiritual and physical are distinct, they aren’t so easily separated. Even material reality is more than just material.

Many Christians, and certainly Catholics, take a sacramental view of reality: a view in which mere things are never just mere things. All that exists is shot through with meaning, since it bears the fingerprints of the one who made it. Pope Francis quotes Scripture to this effect: “Through the greatness and the beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker” (Wisdom 13:5).

Moreover, Christians believe in a God who took on human flesh — entered into his own creation — in order to redeem it. “For Christians,” Pope Francis writes, “all the creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the incarnate Word, for the Son of God has incorporated in his person part of the material world, planting in it a seed of definitive transformation.”

This sacramental view of the world changes the way Catholics estimate the worth and value of things, which have their own intrinsic worth and meaning apart from any utility they might hold for us. Because creation is the gift of a loving God, entrusted to us all for its care and maintenance, we are not free to simply do with it as we please. For Pope Francis, the world is most definitely not what we make of it; it’s much more.

First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt

by

Damien F. Mackey

“The first philosopher on record is a man called Thales.

Thales lived at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., at Miletus,

a Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor”.

Tracing the Judaeo-Israelite Origins of Metaphysics

The impact of the ancient Near East (particularly Israel) upon our western civilization has been enormously underestimated, with practically all the glory – except in religion – going to the Greeks and the Romans.

It is typical for us to read in the context of our western upbringing and education, in favour of Greco-Roman philosophy, politics and literature, statements such as:

“Our European civilization rests upon two pillars: Judeo Christian revelation, its religious pillar, and Greco-Roman thought, its philosophical and political pillar”.

“The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization – an epic poem without rival in the literature of the world, and the cornerstone of Western culture“.

“Virgil’s Aeneid, inspired by Homer and inspiration for Dante and Milton, is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture”.

Nor do we, even as followers of Jesus, tend to experience any discomfort in the face of the above claims.

After all, Jesus only said ‘salvation is from the Jews’ (John 4:22); not philosophy, not literature, not politics.

But is not “salvation” also wholly civilizing?

Yes, it most certainly is. And it will be the purpose of this article and others to show that philosophy and other cultural benefits are also essentially from the Jews, and that the Greeks, Romans and others appropriated these Jewish-laid cornerstones of civilization, claiming them as their own, but generally corrupting them.

Let us start with philosophy.

Philosophy

The typical textbook introductions to philosophy begin with an explanation of the meaning of the term, “philosophy”, and introduce us to the first philosopher.

These are all purely Greek based.

The word “philosophy” first used by Pythagoras, thought to be an Ionian Greek from Samos, is a Greek word meaning “love of wisdom”; with sophia “wisdom”, originally having a broad meaning and referring to the cultivation of learning in general.

And the first philosopher?

Well, he also is said to be Greek: “The first philosopher on record is a man called Thales. Thales lived at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., at Miletus, a Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor”.

Unfortunately there is a complete “absence of primary sources” for Thales who “left no written documents”.

And this is where the problem lies.

The real existence of Thales as an Ionian Greek of the C6th BC is wide open to doubt.

To Thales is attributed a prediction in astronomy that was quite impossible for an Ionian Greek – or anyone else – to have estimated so precisely in the C6th BC. He is said to have predicted a solar eclipse that occurred on 28 May 585 BC during a battle between Cyaxares the Mede and Alyattes of Lydia. This supposed incident has an especial appeal to the modern rationalist mind because it – thought to have been achieved by a Greek, and ‘marking the birthday of western science’ – was therefore a triumph of the rational over the religious. According to Glouberman, for instance, it was “… a Hellenic Götterdämerung, the demise of an earlier mode of thought”.

Oh really? Well, it never actually happened.

O. Neugebauer, astronomer and orientalist, has completely knocked on the head any idea that Thales could possibly have foretold such an eclipse.

Other, lesser known Greek thinkers, include:

(1) Anaximander (ca. 611-547 BC) and apparently known only from the writings of Diodorus (late 1st cent. BC). Anax. is said to have held the view that man derived from aquatic, fish-like mermen,; (2) Empedocles (ca. 490-430) according to Aristotle’s writings (??), is said to have believed in the spontaneous generation of life, an idea also held by the Roman Lucretius (96?-55 BC). We see how far back such incredulous ideas reach. That is why the historian Herbert Butterfield said, that the science of the Middle Ages and Renaissance had as its basis the `knowledge’ and ideas of the ancient Greeks who were steeped in superstitions. That is also why we discover that, if the Greeks did not mention a particular subject or discuss a specific problem, the Renaissance as a rule did not think about it.

Going back to Thales, we need to reconsider who this Thales really was, presuming that he ever existed at all.

(a) Thales as the Patriarch Joseph (c. C17th BC)

Ironically, the clue to Thales’ identity lies in Glouberman’s own title “Jacob’s Ladder …”, and in his contrast of Thales’ scientific method with Joseph’s supposedly ‘magical’ one: “… Thales forecast the bumper crop by observing climatic regularities, not by interpreting dreams of lean kine and fat…”. Here we have Thales, not in Ionia, but in Egypt, doing, in Egypt, what Joseph is said to have done there, predicting the rise of the Nile – at least that is what would have been necessary in Egypt for the exceptionally good crop that Joseph had predicted (Genesis 41:29).

To one familiar with the ancient Egyptian language, the name Thales immediately calls to mind the Egyptian theophoric (god-name) Ptah.

Thus, I think:

• Thales is simply a Greek retrospection back more than a millennium to the patriarch Joseph of Israel, not Ionia.
• The tiny little snippets of information that we have about Thales, vague Greek reminiscences of the biblical Joseph, can be matched with episodes in the life of Joseph.
• Apart from the incidents pertaining to Egypt (see also below), there is the classical episode of the young Thales, as the archetypal absent-minded professor, falling into a well whilst observing the stars.
• This is simply a corrupted account of the young Joseph whose brothers confined him in a well because of his annoying habit of dreaming, astronomically, to their humiliation – in this case dreaming that these brothers were “stars” bowing down in homage to him (Genesis 37:9,10).
• The biblical original probably became corrupted firstly by the local Canaanites – examples of this sort of corruption of the Bible are prolific at the site of Ugarit, for example, on the Levantine coast – and were later shipped to the Greeks by the Levantines (including sea-faring Israelites), or picked up by Aegean sailors.

One can see how the Greeks distorted Joseph in their character, Thales, though the original Genesis thread can still be picked up: thus,

– a young man – a dreamer – in a well – stars, and: forecasting in Egypt – the Nile – bumper crops.

Old Testament leads to and prefigures New Testament

“The Suffering Servant, who has the guilt of all laid upon him (53:6),

giving up his life as a sin-offering (53:10) and bearing the sins of many (53:12), thereby carries out the ministry of the high priest, fulfilling the figure of the priesthood from deep within. He is both priest and victim, and in this way

he achieves reconciliation”.

Pope Benedict XVI

“Suffering Servant” prefigures Jesus Christ

Richard B. Hays, writing a review of Pope Benedict XVI’s book, Jesus of Nazareth Holy Week From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection (2011), acknowledges an outstanding feature of Benedict’s book: how the Old Testament prefigures and leads to the New Testament:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/08/001-benedict-and-the-biblical-jesus

Benedict and the Biblical Jesus

….

From beginning to end, Benedict grounds his interpretation of Jesus in the Old as well as the New Testament. The significance of the gospel stories is consistently explicated in relation to the Old Testament’s typological prefiguration of Jesus, and Jesus is shown to be the flowering or consummation of all that God had promised Israel in many and various ways. The resulting intercanonical conversation offers many arresting insights into Jesus’ identity and significance. Many of the connections that Benedict discerns are traditional in patristic exegesis, but his explication of them is artful and effective. ….

[End of quote]

On p. 81, Pope Benedict credits French priest André Feuillet with pointing out how well Isaiah’s Suffering Servant Songs throw light upon the high-priestly prayer of Jesus (John 17):  

….

Before we consider the individual themes contained in Jesus’ high-priestly prayer, one further Old Testament allusion should be mentioned, one that has again been studied by André Feuillet. He shows that the renewed and deepened spiritual understanding of the priesthood found in John 17 is already prefigured in Isaiah’s Suffering Servant Songs, especially in Isaiah 53. The Suffering Servant, who has the guilt of all laid upon him (53:6), giving up his life as a sin-offering (53:10) and bearing the sins of many (53:12), thereby carries out the ministry of the high priest, fulfilling the figure of the priesthood from deep within. He is both priest and victim, and in this way he achieves reconciliation. Thus the Suffering Servant Songs continue along the whole path of exploring the deeper meaning of the priesthood and worship, in harmony with the prophetic tradition ….

On p. 136, Benedict returns to this theme:

For we have yet to consider Jesus’ fundamental interpretation of his mission in Mark 10:45, which likewise features the word “many”; “For the Son of [Man] also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. Here he is clearly speaking of the sacrifice of his life, and so it is obvious that Jesus is taking up the Suffering Servant prophecy from Isaiah 53 and linking it to the mission of the Son of Man, giving it a new interpretation.

And then, on pp. 173 and 199, he broadens it:

This idea of vicarious atonement is fully developed in the figure of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, who takes the guilt of many upon himself and thereby makes them just (53:11). In Isaiah, this figure remains mysterious: the Song of the Suffering Servant is like a gaze into the future in search of the one who is to come.

…. The history of religions knows the figure of the mock king — related to the figure of the “scapegoat”. Whatever may be afflicting the people is offloaded onto him: in this way it is to be driven out of the world. Without realizing it, the soldiers were actually accomplishing what those rites and ceremonies were unable to achieve: “Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed” (Is 53:5). Thus caricatured, Jesus is led to Pilate, and Pilate presents him to the crowd — to all mankind: “Ecce homo”, “Here is the man!” (Jn 19:5).

Before concluding his treatment of the subject on pp. 252-253:

A pointer towards a deeper understanding of the fundamental relationship with the word is given by the earlier qualification: Christ died “for our sins”. Because his death has to do with the word of God, it has to do with us, it is a dying “for”. In the chapter of Jesus’ death on the Cross, we saw what an enormous wealth of tradition in the form of scriptural allusions feeds into the background here, chief among them the fourth Song of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53). Insofar as Jesus’ death can be located within this context of God’s word and God’s love, it is differentiated from the kind of death resulting from Man’s original sin as a consequence of his presumption in seeking to be like God, a presumption that could only lead to man’s plunge into wretchedness, into the destiny of death. ….

Bearing witness to Truth, the basis of the Kingdom of Jesus

by

Damien F. Mackey

Reading through, on a previous Lent,

by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI,

I was particularly struck by his wonderfully philosophical discussion of Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate regarding ‘What is Truth?’

The basis of the unique kingdom of Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the very Messiah – and indeed equal to God – was, not earthly power like the kingdom in which Pilate served, but Truth.

This was all, of course, completely mystifying to Pontius Pilate, who could not initially regard Jesus as any sort of threat to Roman law and order. So Benedict writes:

…. At this point we must pass from considerations about the person of Pilate to the trial itself. In John 18:34–35 it is clearly stated that, on the basis of the information in his possession, Pilate had nothing that would incriminate Jesus. Nothing had come to the knowledge of the Roman authority that could in any way have posed a risk to law and order. The charge came from Jesus’ own people, from the Temple authority. It must have astonished Pilate that Jesus’ own people presented themselves to him as defenders of Rome, when the information at his disposal did not suggest the need for any action on his part.

Yet during the interrogation we suddenly arrive at a dramatic moment: Jesus’ confession. To Pilate’s question: “So you are a king?” he answers: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice” (Jn 18:37). Previously Jesus had said: “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world” (18:36).

That God the Almighty is utterly contemptuous of our much-vaunted human power, the ‘might-is-right’ mentality, is attested by Psalm 2:1-6:

Why do the nations conspire
    and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth rise up
    and the rulers band together
    against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
“Let us break their chains
    and throw off their shackles.”

The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
    the Lord scoffs at them.
He rebukes them in his anger
    and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
“I have installed my king
    on Zion, my holy mountain.”

Obviously Pilate, though, had never embraced this deeper wisdom of Divine perspective. Benedict continues:

This “confession” of Jesus places Pilate in an extraordinary situation: the accused claims kingship and a kingdom (basileía). Yet he underlines the complete otherness of his kingship, and he even makes the particular point that must have been decisive for the Roman judge: No one is fighting for this kingship. If power, indeed military power, is characteristic of kingship and kingdoms, there is no sign of it in Jesus’ case. And neither is there any threat to Roman order. This kingdom is powerless. It has “no legions”.

Jesus is operating on a plane completely different from the world of Pilate – a level of being with which this superstitious pagan Roman cannot come to grips. But can we?

So, Benedict:

With these words Jesus created a thoroughly new concept of kingship and kingdom, and he held it up to Pilate, the representative of classical worldly power. What is Pilate to make of it, and what are we to make of it, this concept of kingdom and kingship? Is it unreal, is it sheer fantasy that can be safely ignored? Or does it somehow affect us?

It is Truth, not power or dominion, that actually typifies the kingdom of Jesus Christ:

In addition to the clear delimitation of his concept of kingdom (no fighting, earthly powerlessness), Jesus had introduced a positive idea, in order to explain the nature and particular character of the power of this kingship: namely, truth. Pilate brought another idea into play as the dialogue proceeded, one that came from his own world and was normally connected with “kingdom”: namely, power — authority (exousía). Dominion demands power; it even defines it. Jesus, however, defines as the essence of his kingship witness to the truth. Is truth a political category? Or has Jesus’ “kingdom” nothing to do with politics? To which order does it belong? If Jesus bases his concept of kingship and kingdom on truth as the fundamental category, then it is entirely understandable that the pragmatic Pilate asks him: “What is truth?” (18:38).

But Pilate’s question continues to have relevance as it is still, today, being asked in political discussions. And human freedom and “the fate of mankind” may be dependent upon the right answer given to this question:

It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power?

By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?

And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all — criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom?

What is truth? The pragmatist’s question, tossed off with a degree of scepticism, is a very serious question, bound up with the fate of mankind. What, then, is truth? Are we able to recognize it? Can it serve as a criterion for our intellect and will, both in individual choices and in the life of the community?

Benedict now moves on to a philosophical discussion of truth, beginning with the scholastic definitions of it by Saint Thomas Aquinas, so highly regarded in the Catholic world:

The classic definition from scholastic philosophy designates truth as “adaequatio intellectus et rei” (conformity between the intellect and reality; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 21, a. 2c). If a man’s intellect reflects a thing as it is in itself, then he has found truth: but only a small fragment of reality — not truth in its grandeur and integrity.

We come closer to what Jesus meant with another of Saint Thomas’ teachings: “Truth is in God’s intellect properly and firstly (proprie et primo); in human intellect it is present properly and derivatively (proprie quidem et secundario)” (De Verit., q. 1, a. 4c). And in conclusion we arrive at the succinct formula: God is “ipsa summa et prima veritas” (truth itself, the sovereign and first truth; Summa Theologiae I, q. 16, a. 5c).

This formula brings us close to what Jesus means when he speaks of the truth, when he says that his purpose in coming into the world was to “bear witness to the truth”.

Pope John Paul II had, in his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (1998), observed that a modern distrust of human reasoning has led to thinkers of today greatly limiting the range of their philosophical endeavour:  

….

55. Surveying the situation today, we see that the problems of other times have returned, but in a new key. It is no longer a matter of questions of interest only to certain individuals and groups, but convictions so widespread that they have become to some extent the common mind. An example of this is the deep-seated distrust of reason which has surfaced in the most recent developments of much of philosophical research, to the point where there is talk at times of “the end of metaphysics”. Philosophy is expected to rest content with more modest tasks such as the simple interpretation of facts or an enquiry into restricted fields of human knowing or its structures.

Benedict will, along very similar lines, lament that now: “The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear”.   

Again and again in the world, truth and error, truth and untruth, are almost inseparably mixed together. The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear. The world is “true” to the extent that it reflects God: the creative logic, the eternal reason that brought it to birth.

And it becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God’s likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility.

“Bearing witness to the truth” means giving priority to God and to his will over against the interests of the world and its powers. God is the criterion of being. In this sense, truth is the real “king” that confers light and greatness upon all things. We may also say that bearing witness to the truth means making creation intelligible and its truth accessible from God’s perspective — the perspective of creative reason — in such a way that it can serve as a criterion and a signpost in this world of ours, in such a way that the great and the mighty are exposed to the power of truth, the common law, the law of truth.

We, like Pilate, lacking a Divine perspective – such as Jesus was attempting to proclaim – end up by falling hopelessly short of the ideal, worshipping power, not truth:

Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world.

And, with power, science, since we consider it to supply many of the answers – some would even go so far as to say it encapsulates ‘the theory of everything’.

But, as Benedict goes on to explain, science does not of itself have the capacity to penetrate to the deeper metaphysical truths:

At this point, modern man is tempted to say: Creation has become intelligible to us through science. Indeed, Francis S. Collins, for example, who led the Human Genome Project, says with joyful astonishment: “The language of God was revealed” (The Language of God, p. 122). Indeed, in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognize the language of God. But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has been discovered.

But the truth about man himself — who he is, where he comes from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong — this unfortunately cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness toward “truth” itself — toward the question of our real identity and purpose.

Truth is indeed most powerful because God’s seeming powerlessness far outweighs any human power:

What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger. “Redemption” in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable. And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable. He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history. Truth is outwardly powerless in the world, just as Christ is powerless by the world’s standards: he has no legions; he is crucified. Yet in his very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power.

The kingdom offered by Jesus Christ is liberating for man, because in truth man finds his true liberation:

In the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate, the subject matter is Jesus’ kingship and, hence, the kingship, the “kingdom”, of God. In the course of this same conversation it becomes abundantly clear that there is no discontinuity between Jesus’ Galilean teaching — the proclamation of the kingdom of God — and his Jerusalem teaching. The center of the message, all the way to the Cross — all the way to the inscription above the Cross — is the kingdom of God, the new kingship represented by Jesus. And this kingship is centered on truth.

The kingship proclaimed by Jesus, at first in parables and then at the end quite openly before the earthly judge, is none other than the kingship of truth. The inauguration of this kingship is man’s true liberation.

Jesus Christ is Truth incarnate:

At the same time it becomes clear that between the pre-Resurrection focus on the kingdom of God and the post-Resurrection focus on faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God there is no contradiction. In Christ, God — the Truth — entered the world. Christology is the concrete form acquired by the proclamation of God’s kingdom.

The Devil’s Anti-Kingdom, based on lies

“He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies. Jesus says of Satan: ‘He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies’ [John 8, 44]”.

Carlo Cardinal Caffarra

Carlo Cardinal Caffarra gave this talk at the Rome Life Forum on May 19, 2017.

It is a perfect illustration of Satan as the ‘ape of God’:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/how-satan-destroys-gods-creation-through-abortion-and-homosexuality

ROME, May 19, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” [John 12, 32]. “The whole world is under the power of the Evil One” [1 John, 5, 19].

Reading these divine words gives us perfect awareness of what is really happening in the world, within the human story, considered in its depths. The human story is a confrontation between two forces: the force of attraction, whose source is in the wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One, and the power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom.

The area in which the confrontation takes place is the human heart, it is human liberty. And the confrontation has two dimensions: an interior dimension and an exterior dimension. We will briefly consider the one and the other.

1. At the trial before Pilate, the Governor asks Jesus whether he is a king; whether – which is the meaning of Pilate’s question – he has true and sovereign political power over a given territory. 

Jesus responds: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” [John 18, 37]. 

“Jesus wants us to understand that his kingship is not that of the kings of this world, but consists of the obedience of his subjects to his word, to his truth. Although He reigns over his subjects, it is not through force or power, but through the truth of which he is witness, which “all who are from the truth” receive with faith” [I. De La Potterie]. 

Thomas Aquinas puts the following words into the mouth of the Saviour: “As I myself manifest truth, so I am preparing a kingdom for myself”. Jesus on the Cross attracts everyone to Himself, because it is on the Cross that the Truth of which he is witness is resplendent.

Yet this force of attraction can only take effect on those who “are from the truth”. That is, on those who are profoundly available to the Truth, who love truth, who live in familiarity with it. Pascal writes:

“You would not seek me if you had not already found me”.

He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies. Jesus says of Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies [John 8, 44].

The wording is dramatic. The first proposition – “He was a murderer from the beginning” – is explained by the second: “and he does not stand in the truth”. The murder which the devil performs consists in his not standing in the truth, not dwelling in the truth. 

It is murder, because he is seeking to extinguish, to kill in the heart of man truth, the desire for truth. By inducing man to unbelief, he wants man to close himself to the light of the Divine Revelation, which is the Word incarnate. Therefore, these words of Jesus on Satan – as today the majority of exegetes believe – do not speak of the fall of the angels. They speak of something far more profound, something frightful: Satan constantly refuses the truth, and his action within human society consists in opposition to the truth. Satan is this refusal; he is this opposition.

The text continues: “because there is no truth in him”. 

The words of Jesus go to the deepest root of Satan’s work. He is in himself a lie. From his person truth is completely absent, and hence he is by definition the one who opposes truth. Jesus adds immediately afterwards: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. When the Lord says “speaks according to his own nature”, he introduces us to the interiority of Satan, to his heart. A heart which lives in darkness, in shadows: a house without doors and without windows.

To summarise, this therefore is what is happening in the heart of man: Jesus, the Revelation of the Father, exerts a strong attraction to Himself. Satan works against this, to neutralise the attractive force of the Crucified-Risen One. The force of truth which makes us free acts on the heart of man. It is the Satanic force of the lie which makes slaves of us.

Yet, not being pure spirit, the human person is not solely interiority. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in construction of the society in which he or she lives. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in culture, as an essential dimension of human life as such. Culture is the mode of living which is specifically human.

Given that man is positioned between two opposing forces, the condition in which he finds himself must necessarily give rise to two cultures: the culture of the truth and the culture of the lie.

There is a book in Holy Scripture, the last, the Apocalypse, which describes the final confrontation between the two kingdoms. In this book, the attraction of Christ takes the form of triumph over enemy powers commanded by Satan. It is a triumph which comes after lengthy combat. The first fruits of the victory are the martyrs. “The great Dragon, serpent of the primal age, he whom we call the devil, or Satan, seducer of the whole world, was flung down to earth… But they [= the martyrs] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of the testimony of their martyrdom” [cfr. Ap. 12, 9.11].

2. In this second section, I would like to respond to the following question: in our Western culture, are there developments which reveal with particular clarity the confrontation between the attraction exerted over man by the Crucified-Risen One, and the culture of the lie constructed by Satan? My response is affirmative, and there are two developments in particular.

The first development is the transformation of a crime [termed by Vatican Council II nefandum crimen], abortion, into a right. Note well: I am not speaking of abortion as an act perpetrated by one person. I am speaking of the broader legitimation which can be perpetrated by a judicial system in a single act: to subsume it into the category of the subjective right, which is an ethical category. This signifies calling what is good, evil, what is light, shadow. “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. This is an attempt to produce an “anti-Revelation”.

What in fact is the logic which presides over the ennoblement of abortion? 

Firstly, it is the profoundest negation of the truth of man. As soon as Noah left the floodwaters, God said: “Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall that person’s blood be shed, for in his own image God made man” [Gen. 9, 6]. 

The reason why man should not shed the blood of man is that man is the image of God. Through man, God dwells in His creation. This creation is the temple of the Lord, because man inhabits it. To violate the intangibility of the human person is a sacrilegious act against the Sanctity of God. It is the Satanic attempt to generate an “anti-creation”. 

By ennobling the killing of humans, Satan has laid the foundations for his “creation”: to remove from creation the image of God, to obscure his presence therein.

St Ambrose writes: “The creation of the world was completed with formation of the masterpiece which is man, which… is in fact the culmination of creation, the supreme beauty of every created being” [Exam., Sixth day, Disc 9, 10.75; BA I, page 417]. At the moment at which the right of man to order the life and the death of another man is affirmed, God is expelled from his creation, because his original presence is denied, and his original dwelling-place within creation – the human person – is desecrated.

The second development is the ennoblement of homosexuality. This in fact denies entirely the truth of marriage, the mind of God the Creator with regard to marriage.

The Divine Revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage: the lawful union of a man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent structure, based on the duality of the human mode of being: femininity and masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one with and for the other. Only thus does man escape his original solitude.

One of the fundamental laws through which God governs the universe is that He does not act alone. This is the law of human cooperation with the divine governance. The union between a man and woman, who become one flesh, is human cooperation in the creative act of God: every human person is created by God and begotten by its parents. God celebrates the liturgy of his creative act in the holy temple of conjugal love.

In summary. There are two pillars of creation: the human person in its irreducibility to the material universe, and the conjugal union between a man and woman, the place in which God creates new human persons “in His image and likeness”. The axiological elevation of abortion to a subjective right is the demolition of the first pillar. The ennoblement of a homosexual relationship, when equated to marriage, is the destruction of the second pillar.

At the root of this is the work of Satan, who wants to build an actual anti-creation.

This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan is hurling at God. “I am demonstrating to you that I am capable of constructing an alternative to your creation. And man will say: it is better in the alternative creation than in your creation”.

This is the frightful strategy of the lie, constructed around a profound contempt for man. Man is not capable of elevating himself to the splendour of the Truth. He is not capable of living within the paradox of an infinite desire for happiness. He is not able to find himself in the sincere gift of himself. And therefore – continues the Satanic discourse – we tell him banalities about man. We convince him that the Truth does not exist and that his search is therefore a sad and futile passion. We persuade him to shorten the measure of his desire in line with the measure of the transient moment. We place in his heart the suspicion that love is merely a mask of pleasure.

The Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky speaks thus to Jesus: “You judge of men too highly, for though rebels they be, they are born slaves …. I swear to you that man is weaker and lower than You have ever imagined him to be! Man is weak and cowardly.”

How should we dwell in this situation? In the third and final section of my reflection, I will seek to answer this question.

The reply is simple: within the confrontation between creation and anti-creation, we are called upon to TESTIFY. This testimony is our mode of being in the world.

The New Testament has an abundantly rich doctrine on this matter.

I must confine myself to an indication of the three fundamental meanings which constitute testimony.

Testimony means to say, to speak, to announce openly and publicly. Someone who does not testify in this way is like a soldier who flees at the decisive moment in a battle. We are no longer witnesses, but deserters, if we do not speak openly and publicly. The March for Life is therefore a great testimony.

Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the divine Revelation, which involves the original evidence, discoverable only by reason, rightfully used. And to speak in particular of the Gospel of Life and Marriage.

Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the Gospel of Life and Marriage as if in a trial [cfr. John 16, 8-11]. I will explain myself. I have spoken frequently of a confrontation. This confrontation is increasingly assuming the appearance of a trial, of a legal proceeding, in which the defendant is Jesus and his Gospel. As in every legal proceeding, there are also witnesses in favour: in favour of Jesus and his Gospel. 

Announcement of the Gospel of Marriage and of Life today takes place in a context of hostility, of challenge, of unbelief. The alternative is one of two options: either one remains silent on the Gospel, or one says something else. Obviously, what I have said should not be interpreted as meaning that Christians should render themselves… antipathetic to everyone.

St Thomas writes: “It is the same thing, when faced with two contraries, to pursue the one and reject the other. Medicine, for example, proposes the cure while excluding the illness. Hence, it belongs to the wise man to meditate on the truth, in particular with regard to the First Principle …and to refute the opposing falsehood.” [CG Book I, Chapter I, no. 6]. 

In the context of testimony to the Gospel, irenics and concordism must be excluded. On this Jesus has been explicit. It would be a terrible doctor who adopted an irenical attitude towards the disease. 

Augustine writes: “Love the sinner, but persecute the sin”. Note this well. The Latin word per-sequor is an intensifying verb. The meaning therefore is: “Hunt down the sin. Track it down in the hidden places of its lies, and condemn it, bringing to light its insubstantiality”.

I CONCLUDE with a quotation from a great confessor of the faith, the Russian Pavel A. Florenskij. “Christ is witness, in the extreme sense of the word, THE WITNESS.

At His crucifixion, the Jews and Romans believed they were only witnessing a historical event, but the event revealed itself as the Truth”. [The philosophy of religion, San Paolo ed., Milan 2017, page 512].

Years ago, from her convent, Sr. Lucia wrote a letter to Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, saying: “Do not be afraid … Our Lady has already crushed his head.”

Love over political power

Pope Francis noted that the feast of Christ the King “reminds us that the life

of creation does not advance by chance, but proceeds towards a final goal:

the definitive manifestation of Christ, the Lord of history and of all creation.”

He said the end goal of history will be fulfilled in Christ’s eternal kingdom.

 

 

Pope Francis’s Angelus address for the feast of ‘Christ the King’ (2018) can be read at, for instance:

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-11/pope-francis-angelus-christ-the-king-love.html

Pope at Angelus: ‘Jesus’ eternal kingdom founded on love’

Ahead of the Sunday Angelus prayer on the Solemnity of Christ the King, Pope Francis says Jesus came to establish an eternal kingdom which is founded on love and gives peace, freedom, and fullness of life.

By Devin Watkins

Pope Francis prayed the Angelus on Sunday with thousands of pilgrims huddled under umbrellas in a rainy St. Peter’s Square. He even complemented their courage. “You’re brave to have come with this rain!” he said.

In his address ahead of the Angelus prayer, the Holy Father reflected on the day’s Gospel passage (Jn 18:33b-37) and the Solemnity of Christ the King. He said Jesus’ kingdom rests on the power of love, since God is love.

 

Christ the King

Pope Francis noted that the feast of Christ the King “reminds us that the life of creation does not advance by chance, but proceeds towards a final goal: the definitive manifestation of Christ, the Lord of history and of all creation.” He said the end goal of history will be fulfilled in Christ’s eternal kingdom.

In the day’s Gospel, Jesus has been dragged – bound and humiliated – before Pontius Pilate to be tried. The Pope said the religious authorities of Jerusalem present Jesus to the Roman governor of Judea as one who is seeking to supplant the political authority of Rome. They say he wants to become king.

So Pilate interrogates him, twice asking Jesus if he is the king of the Jews.

Jesus replies that his kingdom “is not of this world”.

“It was evident all his life that Jesus had no political ambitions,” the Pope said. He noted that, after the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus’ followers had wanted to proclaim him king and to overthrow the power of Rome, in order to restore the kingdom of Israel. Jesus responded, the Pope said, by retreating to the mountain alone to pray.

Founded on love

He contrasted this eternal kingdom with short-lived, earthly kingdoms. “History teaches that kingdoms founded on the power of arms and lies are fragile and collapse sooner or later.”

The kingdom of God, Pope Francis said, “is founded on his love and is rooted in the heart, granting peace, freedom, and fullness of life to those who accept it.”

Finally, the Holy Father said Jesus is asking us to let Him become our king. “A king who by his word, example, and life sacrificed on the cross has saved us from death and points the way to people who are lost, and gives new light to our existence that is marked by doubt, fear, and daily trials.”

But, said Pope Francis, we must not forget that Jesus’ kingdom “is not of this world.”

“He can give new meaning to our life, which is at times put to the test even by our mistakes and sins, only on the condition that we do not follow the logic of the world and its ‘kings’

 

Revolution of Jesus not politically-based

by

Damien F. Mackey

“Love of one’s enemy constitutes the nucleus of the “Christian revolution”,

a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power:

the revolution of love, a love that does not rely ultimately on human resources

but is a gift of God which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly

in his merciful goodness”.

Pope Benedict XVI

Anyone who reads the late pope Benedict XVI”s series on Jesus of Nazareth will appreciate just how pitifully weak is any argument attempting to make of Jesus Christ some sort of political revolutionary bent upon overthrowing the Romans.

According to a 2011 review of his book:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/8374056/Pope-Jesus-was-not-a-political-revolutionary.html

In a new book, ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, Benedict XVI said Jesus comes to the world “with the gift of healing” and to reveal God’s power as “the power of love”.

He wrote that Jesus “does not come as a destroyer. He does not come bearing the sword of a revolutionary.”

In the biography, Benedict also says that Jesus separated religion and politics “thereby changing the world: this is what truly marks the essence of his new path.

“This separation … of politics from faith, of God’s people from politics, was ultimately possible only through the cross,” he said.

The 83-year old pontiff also speaks out against religious violence, following a wave of attacks on Christians in several parts of the Muslim world. ….

[End of quote]

How can one who promotes his “kingdom” as being one of “truth”, and of service – exemplified by the washing of his disciples’ feet – and who commands us to love even our enemies, be, at the same time, a sword-bearing militant?

In 2007 (18^th February), pope Benedict XVI had considered this matter in an Angelus address:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/angelus/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_ang_20070218.html

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday’s Gospel contains some of the most typical and forceful words of Jesus’ preaching: “Love your enemies“(Lk 6: 27). It is taken from Luke’s Gospel but is also found in Matthew’s (5: 44), in the context of the programmatic discourse that opens with the famous “Beatitudes”.

Jesus delivered it in Galilee at the beginning of his public life: it is, as it were, a “manifesto” presented to all, in which he asks for his disciples’ adherence, proposing his model of life to them in radical terms.

But what do his words mean? Why does Jesus ask us to love precisely our enemies, that is, a love which exceeds human capacities?

Actually, Christ’s proposal is realistic because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and therefore that this situation cannot be overcome except by countering it with more love, with more goodness. This “more” comes from God: it is his mercy which was made flesh in Jesus and which alone can “tip the balance” of the world from evil to good, starting with that small and decisive “world” which is the human heart.

This Gospel passage is rightly considered the magna carta of Christian non-violence. It does not consist in succumbing to evil, as a false interpretation of “turning the other cheek” (cf. Lk 6: 29) claims, but in responding to evil with good (cf. Rom 12: 17-21) and thereby breaking the chain of injustice.

One then understands that for Christians, non-violence is not merely tactical behaviour but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is so convinced of God’s love and power that he is not afraid to tackle evil with the weapons of love and truth alone.

Love of one’s enemy constitutes the nucleus of the “Christian revolution”, a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power: the revolution of love, a love that does not rely ultimately on human resources but is a gift of God which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Here is the newness of the Gospel which silently changes the world! Here is the heroism of the “lowly” who believe in God’s love and spread it, even at the cost of their lives.

Dear brothers and sisters, Lent, which will begin this Wednesday with the Rite of Ashes, is the favourable season in which all Christians are asked to convert ever more deeply to Christ’s love.

Let us ask the Virgin Mary, docile disciple of the Redeemer who helps us to allow ourselves to be won over without reserve by that love, to learn to love as he loved us, to be merciful as Our Father in Heaven is merciful (cf. Lk 6: 36).

With this in mind, I must have serious reservations about writer/director Lena Einhorn’s suggestion, in her admittedly intriguing article “Jesus and the Egyptian Prophet”:

http://lenaeinhorn.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Jesus-and-the-Egyptian-Prophet-12.11.25.pdf

that Jesus may have been involved in a battle on Mount Olivet just prior to his arrest, enabling for Lena to make an association of Jesus with Josephus’s Egyptian prophet.

This is how Lena introduces her article:

ABSTRACT

Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John 18:3 and 18:12 state that Jesus on the Mount of Olives was confronted by a speira – a Roman cohort of 500 to 1,000 soldiers. This suggestion of a battle preceding Jesus’ arrest is reminiscent of an event described by Josephus in the 50s (A.J. 20.169-172; B.J. 2.261-263), involving the so called ‘Egyptian Prophet’ (or simply ‘the Egyptian’). This messianic leader – who had previously spent time “in the wilderness” – had “advised the multitude … to go along with him to the Mount of Olives”, where he “would show them from hence how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down”. Procurator Felix, however, sent a cohort of soldiers to the Mount of Olives, where they defeated ‘the Egyptian’.

Although the twenty-year time difference would seem to make all comparisons futile, there are other coinciding aspects: The preceding messianic leader named by Josephus, Theudas (A.J. 20.97-99), shares distinct characteristics with John the Baptist: Like John, Theudas gathered his followers by the river Jordan, and, like John, he was arrested by the authorities, and they “cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem”.

Curiously, although the names of dignitaries may differ, comparing the New Testament accounts with Josephus’ accounts of the mid-40s to early 50s in several respects appears to be more productive than a comparison with his accounts of the 30s: It is in this later period, not the 30s, that Josephus describes the activity and crucifixion of robbers (absent between 6 and 44 C.E.), a conflict between Samaritans and Jews, two co-reigning high priests, a procurator killing Galileans, an attack on someone named Stephanos outside Jerusalem, and at least ten more seemingly parallel events. Importantly, these are parallels that, judging by Josephus, appear to be absent in the 30s. The significance of this will be discussed.  

[End of quote]

In a reply to Lena Einhorn, I wrote in part:

…. As I suspected, there is much of interest to be found in your intriguing article, “Jesus and the Egyptian Prophet”.

One point that jumped to mind when reading of your discussion of the arrest of Jesus involving a battle, and a ‘speira’ of some 500-1000 soldiers, is that poor old Razis of 2 Maccabees, who wasn’t then part of a battle, had 500 soldiers sent to arrest him by Nicanor (14:39-40): “Wanting to show clearly how much he disliked the Jews, Nicanor sent more than 500 soldiers to arrest Razis, because he thought his arrest would be a crippling blow to the Jews”.

A show of force rather than a battle. 

Razis is, in my historical reconstruction, the great Ezra (Ezras = Razes), a ‘Father of the Jews’, the same approximate appellation given to Razis. ….

[End of exchange]

For more on Ezra as Razis, see e.g. my four-part series:

Ezra ‘Father of the Jews’ dying the death of Razis

beginning with:

(4) Ezra ‘Father of the Jews’ dying the death of Razis. Part One: Introductory section | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu

The Shocking Culture of God

“When the culture of God reaches us, the inevitable result is that it shakes our world; sometimes it is like a hurricane or an earthquake”.

Fr. Nadim Nassar

Fr. Nadim Nassar describes it as “shocking”, when “the culture of God” comes into contact with the “culture of the people”. He, the Church of England’s only Syrian priest, urges a theme in his recent book, The Culture of God (Hodder and Stoughton, 2018), that is also central to my own point of view:

Fr. Nassar is “an outspoken advocate for Western Christians to recognise the Middle-Eastern roots of their faith”.

Actually, this is nothing new.

Eighty years before Fr. Nassar wrote his book, pope Pius XI, addressing a group of Belgian pilgrims (1938), asserted that: “Anti-Semitism is unacceptable. Spiritually, we are all Semites”.

“When the culture of God reaches us, the inevitable result is that it shakes our world; sometimes it is like a hurricane or an earthquake”. (Nassar, p. 180)

Jesus Christ, who had come to set all things right, was wont to say (e.g. Matthew 5:21, 22): ‘You have heard that it was said to the people long ago …. But I tell you …’.

The first part of this statement refers to the received cultural view of long-standing.

Fr. Nassar describes this as follows (p. 180): “For all of us, we organise our world around ourselves according to what we have been taught, with ‘in’ and ‘out’, friends and enemies, right and wrong, values and vices and so on”. He then goes on to describe the second part of Jesus’s statement: “What a shock when God breaks into our lives and sweeps our ordering of the world aside like a house of cards, and says to us, ‘This is not what I want from you’.”

Whilst there is a meek and mild side to Jesus, he can also be, according to Fr. Nassar’s description, “a volcanic Jesus” (p. 10):

In Matthew 23 Jesus launches a series of fierce attacks on [the Pharisees and scribes]:

‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them’. (23:13)

Along with “volcanic” fury, Fr. Nassar also discerns a humour (“funny”) and irony (“ironic”) in this remark that he thinks Levantine people at least would pick up.

He continues (pp. 10-11):

This saying of Jesus belongs to the essence of the culture of God; here, Jesus is being both ironic and funny, and his audience would have laughed when they heard this. Jesus wanted to speak the truth that touches the people’s hearts on the one hand, and on the other, to really strike the leaders. This is how Jesus handled his earthly culture and the culture of God. Nobody now listens to this sentence and smiles – but in the Levant, you would immediately laugh at Jesus’ irony.

Jesus then attacks the religious leaders for their flawed understanding of what is sacred: ‘Woe, to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred?’ (23:16-17). Here, Jesus is not only using harsh words – this is also an exceptional way of speaking that Jesus used exclusively when he spoke to or about the religious leaders. He did it on purpose, to show without any doubt that the leadership they modelled does not belong in any way to the culture of God.

Jesus is furious with the religious leaders because they place great weight on minor matters while ignoring what really counts; he calls them hypocrites, ‘For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith’ (23:23). Hypocrisy is especially loathed in the Levant, and an accusation of hypocrisy would stain someone’s character.

On p. 183, Fr. Nassar contrasts the West and the Levant:

The dilemma of the early Church is still in the Levant today. In the West, the secular world has also permeated Christian beliefs, especially the Enlightenment and its focus on reason, which pushed Christianity into becoming an intellectual exercise, losing the warmth of the heart. Spirituality is now left to those on the verges of faith. ….

Zephaniah may afford a link between Babel and Pentecost

by

Damien F. Mackey

“Pentecost as a reversal of Babel has been widely seen by exegetes since

the early days of the Church. However, these two stories are by no means simple “bookends” with empty narrative space between them. Rather, it shall be shown that an extremely significant instance of textual connection

comes from the often overlooked text of Zephaniah”.

Paul J. Pastor

To begin with, the poorly known prophet Zephaniah, traditionally a Simeonite, needs to be more adequately identified.

This becomes easier in the context of my revision, which recognises King Josiah of Judah as being the same individual as King Hezekiah of Judah.

The Simeonite prophet, Micah, who was still active early in the reign of Hezekiah (Jeremiah 26:18-19), then becomes identifiable with the Simeonite prophet Zephaniah of whom we read (Zephaniah 1:1): “The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah … during the reign of Josiah …”.

For an even more fully expanded Micah-Zephaniah, see e.g. my article:

God can raise up prophets at will – even from a shepherd of Simeon

(6) God can raise up prophets at will – even from a shepherd of Simeon | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu

A long-held Christian tradition

“On the Vigil of Pentecost, the Old Testament reading is of Babel, the mythical tale of humanity’s hubris and the aetiology of the myriad of languages —

and resulting confusion — existing throughout the world. Anyone who has ever fumblingly studied foreign languages can aim his or her frustration at those arrogant ancient citizens clamoring, “Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower (or a wall?) with its top in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the earth”.”

Dr Michael M. Canaris

It has long been recognised amongst the Christian faithful that the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit effectively reversed the human tragedy – the wilful rebellion against the Divine – that was the Tower of Babel incident.

Dr. Michael M. Canaris has written about it most perceptively for the Catholic Star Herald:

http://catholicstarherald.org/on-pentecost-the-reversal-of-babel-takes-place/

On Pentecost, the ‘reversal’ of Babel takes place

The feast of Pentecost was not originally a Christian feast, but rather a Jewish one marking 50 days since Passover and the first-fruits of the wheat harvest. Yet, in the fullness of time, Christians came to remember the Lord’s sending of the Spirit on that day, and so it is sometimes referred to as the “birthday” of the church (though other sources, like Saint John Chrysostom, identify the piercing of Christ’s side as the moment in which the church formally came to exist).

On the Vigil of Pentecost, the Old Testament reading is of Babel, the mythical tale of humanity’s hubris and the aetiology of the myriad of languages — and resulting confusion — existing throughout the world. Anyone who has ever fumblingly studied foreign languages can aim his or her frustration at those arrogant ancient citizens clamoring, “Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower (or a wall?) with its top in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the earth.”

But in its wisdom, the church points out through the connection of the readings that the havoc wrought by human selfishness can be rectified by the always-greater power of God. For on Pentecost, the “reversal” of Babel takes place. Instead of humanity remaining confounded by the din of voices seeking to talk over one another in pride, the Spirit’s arrival as tongues (lingua) of fire at Pentecost enables each to hear the Word of God proclaimed in his or her native vernacular.

Language is then closely associated with Pentecost.

Scholars since Wittgenstein and Heidegger have been quick to point out that thoughts do not occur in some “chemically pure” form and then subsequently come to be articulated in language. Rather, language forms and makes possible conscious thought. “Language is not just an instrument by which we express what we already know, but is the very medium in which knowledge occurs. Language is the voice of Being, and [humanity], in whom language takes its rise, is the loudspeaker for the silent tolling of Being…It permits Being to show itself” (Avery Dulles, “Hermeneutical Theology”).

Christians of various types, especially charismatics and Pentecostals, believe the Spirit can endow them with a gift regarding “speaking in tongues,” or glossolalia. The second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is often cited as evidence that this mysterious and effusive verbal outpouring is an authentic fruit of the Spirit. Catholics have historically been cautiously open toward this phenomenon, though it is, to be sure, not a very usual occurrence in suburban parishes on Sundays. While the charismatic wing of the church has fostered a greater willingness to explore the genuine spiritual riches of this reality, and the pope himself has prayerfully engaged in groups where it is practiced, Catholic teaching makes clear that it is not necessary for salvation, somehow evidence of greater holiness than in those who do not experience it, or an integral part of formalized liturgical prayer life for most believers.

Images of fire and wind and breath remind us that the Spirit “blows where it will.” Sometimes this is in entirely unexpected places. Popes John XXIII, John Paul II and Benedict XVI all employed language of a “new Pentecost” when describing the Second Vatican Council. The spiritual common ground being sought both within the Catholic Church and across denominational boundaries reminded the participants (which all three popes were in various capacities) of that day when the Spirit enables the Apostles to proclaim anew what they had witnessed, experienced, touched with their hands and accepted in their hearts: the Author of Life, the Rock of Ages, the All-Consuming Fire, the Alpha and the Omega. The victorious Word of God spoken finally, definitively, and irrevocably to human hearers. ….

Zephaniah ‘intertextual link between Babel and Pentecost’

“… Zephaniah’s prophecy provides an indispensable link between the

two texts of Genesis and Acts; simultaneously looking back into the

seminal history of the covenant community and forward to the radical

in-breaking of the Spirit at the harvest feast of Pentecost.

Paul J. Pastor

Marc Cortez has summarised the work and original insight of Paul Pastor in this review:

http://marccortez.com/2011/04/01/zephaniah-as-the-link-between-babel-and-pentecost/

Zephaniah as the link between Babel and Pentecost

Exegetes and theologians have long argued that Pentecost should be seen as a reversal of Babel – the scattering of the human race through the proliferation of languages healed through the unifying power of the outpoured Spirit. But, if these are two events are key bookends in redemptive history, doesn’t it seem odd that relatively little is said about this in the intervening narrative? Does the OT have any concept of Babel as a problem in need of resolution, or is this a brand new theme suddenly tossed into the mix at Acts 2?

These are the questions that Paul Pastor raised in the paper he presented at the NW meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Paul is an MA student at Western Seminary, and the paper was a summary of his MA thesis, “Echoes of ‘Pure Speech’: An Intertextual Reading of Gen. 11:1-9; Zeph. 3:8-20; and Acts 1-2.” Paul has graciously allowed me to upload the complete thesis here.

The basic thrust of Paul’s argument is that Zephaniah 3:8-20 provides the intertextual link between Babel and Pentecost. As he summarizes:

Pentecost as a reversal of Babel has been widely seen by exegetes since the early days of the Church. However, these two stories are by no means simple “bookends” with empty narrative space between them. Rather, it shall be shown that an extremely significant instance of textual connection comes from the often overlooked text of Zephaniah.

It will be argued that the Babel narrative of Genesis 11:1-9 is accessed and developed by Zephaniah 3:8-20; and that that text in turn provides a guiding paradigm of Babel-reversal that is utilized by Luke in the Pentecost account of Acts 2. Seen in this way, Zephaniah’s prophecy provides an indispensable link between the two texts of Genesis and Acts; simultaneously looking back into the seminal history of the covenant community and forward to the radical in-breaking of the Spirit at the harvest feast of Pentecost.

Intertextual “echoes” of themes and motifs will be traced at length through the three texts, noting linguistic parallel, narrative similarity, and intertextual dependence for the developing trans-biblical narrative.

The thesis that follows is a fascinating example of intertextuality in biblical exegesis. After a brief summary of his intertextual method, Paul argues that the Babel narrative itself is “incomplete,” leaving the reader in suspense as the story never comes to satisfactory resolution. Paul then argues Genesis forms the clear backdrop for much of Zephaniah, setting the stage for identifying further intertextual connections between the two books.

The heart of Paul’s argument comes in the third part of the thesis, where he identifies a number of textual connections between Gen. 11 and Zeph. 3. In my opinion, intertextual linkages like this always bear the burden of proof as they need to establish real textual connections rather than mere linguistic or thematic similarities. And, Paul does a remarkable job of identifying and defending the connections at work, though you’ll have to read the thesis for yourself to follow all the different lines of argument that he offers.

Finally, Paul turns his attention to Acts 2, arguing that Acts 2 bears many of the same textual markers as the first two passages. Given the strong thematic and linguistic connections, Paul concludes that Luke intends for his readers to see Acts two as the conclusion of a narrative arc that begins in Gen. 11 and runs through Zeph. 3.

And, to wrap everything up, Paul offers a few closing words on how a study like this can impact the life and praxis of faith communities:

It is my sincere hope that this study may also impact the thinking and practice of our local churches and communities of faith.

I believe that when scripture is seen with the literary intricacy and vitality that a study of this type highlights, it is compelling and powerful for those who cling to the scriptures as the word of God. The narrative excellence in view here, the thorough intentionality, and the development of a single coherent narrative across the span of centuries and as the product of three very different communities of faith should capture the attention and imagination of modern believers.

Here are a few brief ideas for what the practical and responsive outworkings of this study could look like: Our thoughts about national and international unity should be profoundly influenced by the paradigm offered in these texts. True unity is only possible across ethnic, social, lingual bounds by the power of the Spirit and for the purpose of a shared service and worship of God.

This study is a reminder that truly, “All scripture is profitable” (2 Tim. 3:16, ESV).

The Hebrew Bible is frequently under read by Christian readers, and the Latter Prophets even more so. This section of our Bibles is rich with powerful imagery, concept, and nuance, coloring our theology and worldview. It ought to be increasingly read.

In addition to this, it ought to be increasingly taught and preached. Our pastors and teachers ought to carefully interact with this literature both for its compelling content, as well as the dramatic role that it plays in the over arching scriptural meta-narrative. ….

Here is Paul Pastor’s Abstract:

Click to access echoes-of-pure-speech-paul-pastor.pdf

Pentecost as a reversal of Babel has been widely seen by exegetes since the early days of the Church. However, these two stories are by no means simple “bookends” with empty narrative space between them. Rather, it shall be shown that an extremely significant instance of textual connection comes from the often overlooked text of Zephaniah.

It will be argued that the Babel narrative of Genesis 11:1-9 is accessed and developed by Zephaniah 3:8-20; and that that text in turn provides a guiding paradigm of Babel-reversal that is utilized by Luke in the Pentecost account of Acts 2. Seen in this way, Zephaniah’s prophecy provides an indispensable link between the two texts of Genesis and Acts; simultaneously looking back into the seminal history of the covenant community and forward to the radical in-breaking of the Spirit at the harvest feast of Pentecost.

Intertextual “echoes” of themes and motifs will be traced at length through the three texts, noting linguistic parallel, narrative similarity, and intertextual dependence for the developing trans-biblical narrative. ….

Greco-Roman Glimmers of Jesus’s Death/Rising

Part One: Eponymous founder Romulus

by

Damien F. Mackey

“The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when the people

gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the senators

suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the matter,

but commanded them to honour and worship Romulus as one taken up

to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince,

now a propitious god”.

Plutarch: Parallel Lives.

Hugh J. Schonfield (d. 1988) is well known for his controversial book about Jesus, entitled The Passover Plot, which he wrote in 1965.

According to the author, Jesus, desirous of saving his people, actually – and one must think, somewhat incredibly – orchestrated, as far as he could, his own manner of death, so as to accord with the ancient Messianic prophecies. “… the Crucifixion was part of a larger, conscious attempt by Jesus to fulfill the Messianic expectations rampant in his time, and that the plan went unexpectedly wrong”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_J._Schonfield

I recently read Schonfield’s follow-up book to The Passover Plot, which, written in 1981, he had entitled After the Cross. On pp. 115-117 of this book the author introduced the Greek historian Plutarch’s piece about King Romulus, supposed first king of Rome, beginning with:

Very few Christians would seem to be aware, however, of the strong similarity that exists between the image of the death and resurrection of Jesus and that of Romulus, the eponymous founder of Rome. The latter is set down in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. Plutarch was born in the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.) and was a contemporary of the authors of the Gospels. The relevant passage is quoted in full from an old English translation, which gives the flavor of the Authorized Version of the Bible. ….      

Before quoting this passage (and I shall be using instead John Dryden’s translation), I should like to preface it by recalling, once again, that Greco-Roman mythology and pseudo-history is replete with appropriations and distortions of the original Hebrew biblical tales. I have written articles on this subject, including the Greek appropriation of King Solomon as Solon. 

Solomon and Sheba

http://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba

And again, before becoming too absorbed with the conventional dating of Plutarch, one might like to pause to consider my article:

Plutarch and Petrarch

(3) Plutarch and Petrarch | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu

Anyway, here is the passage by Plutarch:

http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/romulus.html

… whereas Romulus, when he vanished, left neither the least part of his body, nor any remnant of his clothes to be seen. So that some fancied the senators, having fallen upon him in the temple of Vulcan, cut his body into pieces, and took each a part away in his bosom; others think his disappearance was neither in the temple of Vulcan, nor with the senators only by, but that it came to pass that, as he was haranguing the people without the city, near a place called the Goat’s Marsh,

[Comment: “… without the city” is appropriate, as is Goat. Recall the goat for sin offering]

on a sudden strange and unaccountable disorders and alterations took place in the air; the face of the sun was darkened, and the day turned into night, and that, too, no quiet, peaceable night, but with terrible thunderings, and boisterous winds from all quarters; during which the common people dispersed and fled, but the senators [read Sanhedrin?] kept close together. The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when the people gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the senators suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the matter, but commanded them to honour and worship Romulus as one taken up to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince, now a propitious god.

The multitude, hearing this, went away believing and rejoicing in hopes of good things from him; but there were some, who, canvassing the matter in a hostile temper, accused and aspersed the patricians, as men that persuaded the people to believe ridiculous tales, when they themselves were the murderers of the king.

Things being in this disorder, one, they say, of the patricians, of noble family and approved good character, and a faithful and familiar friend of Romulus himself, having come with him from Alba, Julius Proculus

[Comment: The wife of Pontius Pilate was Claudia Procula]

by name, presented himself in the forum; and, taking a most sacred oath, protested before them all, that, as he was travelling on the road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, looking taller and comelier than ever, dressed in shining and flaming armour; and he, being affrighted at the apparition, said, “Why, O king, or for what purpose have you abandoned us to unjust and wicked surmises, and the whole city to bereavement and endless sorrow?” and that he made answer, “It pleased the gods, O Proculus, that we, who came from them, should remain so long a time amongst men as we did; and, having built a city to be the greatest in the world for empire and glory, should again return to heaven. But farewell; and tell the Romans, that, by the exercise of temperance and fortitude, they shall attain the height of human power; we will be to you the propitious god Quirinus.” This seemed credible to the Romans, upon the honesty and oath of the relater, and indeed, too, there mingled with it a certain divine passion, some preternatural influence similar to possession by a divinity; nobody contradicted it, but, laying aside all jealousies and detractions, they prayed to Quirinus and saluted him as a god.

Romulus, Remus and Old Testament

“The modern [sic] connection of Romulus and Remus would be

the story of Cain and Abel. Remus is like Cain because they are

the jealous brothers, and Abel is like Romulus because they are

the good brothers. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed [Abel] because he was jealous that God favored Abel’s offering more than Cain’s. But with Romulus and Remus, Remus was jealous of Romulus’s wall around the hill, so they argued and Romulus killed Remus.

Both stories have a sibling rivalry and in the end, both stories have

one brother killing the other. Also in both stories, jealousy is involved,

but both for different reasons”.

Like so many of the Greco-Roman myths – even the so-called history of ancient philosophy – the well-known characters were distorted, garbled versions of originally Egyptian, Hebrew and Near Eastern persons. These being cultures and civilisations far older than those of the Greeks and the Romans. Thus, for instance, in typical Greek fashion, a Hebrew prophet will be re-presented as a philosopher. 

We read earlier in this article that the absolutely unique accounts in the Gospels of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ were picked up (albeit messily) in the writings of the approximately contemporary (as is thought) Greek biographer and essayist, Plutarch, and applied to the legendary first king of Rome, Romulus.

‘Socrates’, the renowned, so-called Greek philosopher, I have argued, had no actual historical reality qua Socrates, but, rather, was a biblical composite.

To consider just one of his biblical ‘manifestations’, Socrates, who is so often likened to Jesus Christ, will be found in Plato’s Meno doing what Jesus in fact did: writing on the ground (John 8:6, 8).

But what will Socrates write? Not something ethical.

In typically Greek fashion he will draw geometric figures in the ground.

The mythological Romulus and Remus, too, are biblical composites.

They are commonly compared with Cain and Abel, and also with Moses.

And one could no doubt find other biblical manifestations of them as well (see e.g. previous comparisons with Jesus Christ and Romulus). 

Like Cain and Abel

Romulus and Remus were twin brothers and their mother was princess Rhea Silvia.

So, apparently, were Eve’s sons, Cain and Abel, twins:

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/articles_cainandabel.html

Their Births

It is a well-known fact that Jacob and Esau were twins, but what is not commonly known is that Cain and Abel were also twins. In the normal Hebraic accounting of multiple births the conception then birth of each child is mentioned such as we can see in Genesis 29:32-33 where it states that Leah conceived and bore a son, and then she conceived again and bore a son. Note that there are two conceptions and two births. But notice how it is worded in Genesis 4:1-2.

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain; And again, she bore his brother Abel. (RSV)

Notice that there is only one conception, but two births.

The Hebrew word for “again” is asaph, meaning to add something, in this case the birthing of Abel was added to the birthing of Cain. Cain and Abel were twins.

And, further:

https://sites.google.com/site/creationmythofromulsuandremus

The modern [sic] connection of Romulus and Remus would be the story of Cain and Abel. Remus is like Cain because they are the jealous brothers, and Abel is like Romulus because they are the good brothers. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed [Abel] because he was jealous that God favored Abel’s offering more than Cain’s. But with Romulus and Remus, Remus was jealous of Romulus’s wall around the hill, so they argued and Romulus killed Remus. Both stories have a sibling rivalry and in the end, both stories have one brother killing the other. Also in both stories, jealousy is involved, but both for different reasons. Both stories are involved with marks. Cain is marked so everyone knows he killed his brother, Abel. But in the Roman myth, Romulus marks Rome by naming it after himself.

Similarly, at:

http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/cain-and-abel-were-twins.html

The tradition of twins as the progenitors of tribal units or city builders is very well documented in Semitic and Indo-European cultures. When birth order is specified, the younger twin always receives the blessing over the first born brother. In the account of the sons of Adam, the first born twin is envious of the second and commits fratricide. There are many variations on this theme in other twin genesis accounts. Jacob is fearful that Esau will kill him, Romulus killed Remus and Gwyn and Gwythurin in Celtic tradition duel every May.

The Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, shared a mortal and an immortal existence. Castor was killed on a cattle raid but Pollux persuaded Zeus to allow the brothers to switch places periodically. The word Gemini comes from the PIE root *ym which means ‘to pair’. This word is very similar to the Hebrew im mimation suffix but, of course, linguists say they are unrelated (sigh). ….

Parallels to Moses

Romulus and Remus, abandoned on the bank of the Tiber river, were famously suckled by a she-wolf.

From whence did this pagan myth arise?

We well know the Exodus (2:1-10) account of the birth of Moses and the forced abandonment of him due to the decree of the cruel Pharaoh – how the baby Moses was placed in a papyrus basket and set adrift on the river Nile (which the Romans inevitably replaced with their Tiber). Long before the Romans, I suggest, the ancient Egyptians had corrupted the legend of the baby Moses in the bulrushes so that now it became the goddess Isis who drew the baby Horus from the Nile and had him suckled by Hathor (the goddess in the form of a cow – the Egyptian personification of wisdom).

In the original story, of course, baby Moses was drawn from the water by an Egyptian princess, not a goddess, and was weaned by Moses’s own mother (Exodus 2:5-9).

The story evolved from the original Hebrew account, suckled by the mother, to the Egyptian version, suckled by the goddess in the form of a cow, to an entirely bestial suckler in the Roman account, a she-wolf.

Part Two: Apollonius of Tyana

“Presenting further evidence that Philostratus’s biography of Apollonius is in many ways a replica of the life of Jesus, Cardinal Newman writes: The favour in which Apollonius from a child was held by gods and men; his conversations when a youth in the Temple of Aesculapius;

his determination, in spite of danger to go up to Rome;

the cowardice of his disciples in deserting him …”.

The supposed C1st AD character, Apollonius of Tyana, is such a Jesus-like figure in many ways that some commentators would insist that the Gospels were based on the life of this Apollonius. Whereas, as I am arguing in this article, the precedence ought to be given to the Gospel version over the pagan one. And there are very good reasons, again, for claiming this to be correct, given the vagueness surrounding the author of the “Life of Apollonius”, the Greek sophist Philostratus, and that he wrote about Apollonius much later than the Gospels, in the C3rd AD.

I favour Fr. Jean Carmignac’s compelling argument, as set out in his Birth of the Synoptics (1987), that the Synoptic Gospelswere written by eyewitnesses at a very earlydate.

Philostratus

As I have often remarked, one of the most common phrases used by the conventional historians of ancient history is this one, “… little is known about …”.

And that fully applies to Philostratus, who himself, I suspect, may not have been an actual historical character, but a ‘ghost’ based upon some previous person – perhaps upon one of the Evangelists. Thus we read of Philostratus:

http://www.theodora.com/encyclopedia/p/philostratus.html

Very little is known of his career. Even his name is doubtful. The Lives of the Sophists gives the praenomen Flavius, which, however, is found elsewhere only in Tzetzes. Eunapius and Synesius call him a Lemnian; Photius a Tyrian; his letters refer to him as an Athenian. It is probable that he was born in Lemnos, studied and taught at Athens, and then settled in Rome ….

I rest my case.

But furthermore:

The Lives are not in the true sense biographical, but rather picturesque impressions of leading representatives of an attitude of mind full of curiosity, alert and versatile, but lacking scientific method, preferring the external excellence of style and manner to the solid achievements of serious writing. The philosopher, as he says, investigates truth; the sophist embellishes it, and takes it for granted. ….

That appears to be a very shaky historical foundation, indeed, upon which to raise a life story of one who is considered by some to have been the exemplar for Jesus Christ himself.

Apollonius of Tyana

Most commentators simply presume the historicity of Philostratus when considering the Apollonius of Tyana of whom he wrote. Two such, who would regard Apollonius as being modelled upon Jesus Christ, were F. Bauer and Cardinal Newman:

http://www.mountainman.com.au/Apollonius_the_Nazarene_3.htm

Even as late as 1832, [F.] Bauer attempted to show that not only were there resemblances between the “Life of Apollonius of Tyana” and the Gospels, but that Philostratus deliberately modeled his hero on the type set forth by the Evangelists. He was followed in this view by Zeller, the celebrated Greek historian.

Typical of latter nineteenth century views on the subject is that of Cardinal Newman, a Catholic apologist, who, admitting the identity of Apollonius and the Gospel messiah, considers the former an imitation of the latter, in spite of the fact that he preceded him by three centuries (For the Jesus of the Gospels was evidently born in the year 325 A.D., at the Council of Nicea, rather than when the star appeared over Bethlehem).

To support his view, Newman mentions certain typical examples, such as Apollonius’s bringing to life a dead girl in Rome, which he considers as “an attempt, and an elaborate, pretentious attempt, to outdo certain narratives in the Gospels (Mark v. 29, Luke vii. John xi: 41-43, Acts iii: 4-6). This incident, is described by Philostratus.

Presenting further evidence that Philostratus’s biography of Apollonius is in many ways a replica of the life of Jesus, Cardinal Newman writes: The favour in which Apollonius from a child was held by gods and men; his conversations when a youth in the Temple of Aesculapius; his determination, in spite of danger to go up to Rome; the cowardice of his disciples in deserting him; the charge brought against him of disaffection to Caesar; the Minister’s acknowledging, on his private examination, that he was more than man; the ignominious treatment of him by Domitian on his second appearance at Rome; his imprisonment with criminals; his vanishing from Court and sudden reappearance to his mourning disciples at Puteoli–these, with other particulars of a similar cast, evidence a history modelled after the narrative of the Evangelists. Expressions, moreover, and descriptions occur, clearly imitated “from the sacred volume.”

Reville, another Catholic apologist, thinks as does Newman that “the biography of Apollonius is in great measure an imitation of the Gospel narrative.’* (*Reville bases his argument on the similarity of the characters of Apollonius and Pythagoras (which is natural in view of Apollonius following Pythagoras as his example); and he seeks to prove that Apollonius, rather than Jesus, is a fictitious creation, rather than an historical character. Reville writes: “It is hard to say whether the Pythagoras of the Alexandrians is not an Apollonius of an earlier date by some centuries, or whether the Apollonius of Julia Domna, besides his resemblance to Christ, is not a Pythagoras endowed with a second youth. The real truth of the matter will probably be found to lie between the two suggestions.”

[End of quotes]

Philostratus’s account of the life of Apollonius of Tyana is thought to have been written as late as the 220’s/230’s AD, which is obviously later than the Gospels.

Wikipedia gives these:

Similarities shared by the stories about Apollonius and the life of Jesus ….

• Birth miraculously announced by God
• Religiously precocious as a child
• Asserted to be a native speaker of Aramaic
• Influenced by Plato/ reflected Platonism (Jesus)
• [Renounced/ denounced (Jesus)] wealth
• Followed abstinence and asceticism
• Wore long hair and robes
• Was unmarried and childless
• Was anointed with oil
• Went to Jerusalem
• Spoke in [metaphors/ parables] (Jesus)
• Saw and predicted the future
• Performed miracles
• Healed the sick
• Cast out evil spirits/ Drove out demons (Jesus)
• Raised the daughter of a [Roman official/ Jewish official (Jesus)] from the dead
• Spoke as a “law-giver”

• Was on a mission to bring [Greek culture/ Jewish culture (Jesus)] to [the “barbarians”/ the ” nations” (Jesus)]
• Believed to be “saviors” from heaven
• Were accused of being a magician
• Were accused of killing a boy
• Condemned [by Roman emperor/ by Roman authorities (Jesus)]
• Imprisoned [at Rome/ at Jerusalem (Jesus)]
• Was assumed into heaven/ Ascended into heaven (Jesus)
• Appeared posthumously to a detractor as a brilliant light
• Had his image revered [in temples/ in churches (Jesus)]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Tyana#Comparisons_with_Jesus

Jesus Christ gives meaning to ancient history and geography

by

Damien F. Mackey

“After three days they found him in the Temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him

was amazed at his understanding and his answers”.

Luke 2:46-47

Jesus, who even as a child of twelve was skilfully able to teach Jerusalem’s teachers, would later, as an adult, correct many misconceptions and false traditions on a whole range of issues. ‘You have heard that it was said … but I tell you …’ (e.g. Matthew 5:38).

This was the voice of One who spoke words of unerring authority (Mark 1:21-22): “They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes”.

Just as when he had been a boy of twelve, when his listeners were “amazed” (ἐξίσταντο) by his knowledge, so now, again, at Capernaum, were those who heard him “astounded” (ἐξεπλήσσοντο) by his authoritative speech.

And Jesus continues today to teach us, through the Scriptures, and in prayer.

For, in a mere two verses filled with meaning, Jesus will succinctly span BC history, from Creation down to his own approximate era, and will, in so doing, identify for us the location of the Garden of Eden (Luke 11:50-51): ‘Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all’.

Eden was the holy place to which Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, had brought their sacrifices, and in whose vicinity Cain slew Abel (by cutting his throat like a sacrifice?) (cf. I John 3:12).

Jesus is telling us that the Jerusalemites who persecuted the prophets, and who even slew some of them (e.g., Zechariah son of Jehoiada and Urijah son of Shemaiah), including the last one, Zechariah son of Berechiah (cf. Matthew 23:35), were geographically of the same region as Cain and Abel had been, and were as well of the spirit of Cain, but not of the holy Abel.  

In other words, the long sought for location of Eden was the site of Jerusalem – obviously much altered topographically and greatly impoverished since the halçyon days prior to the Fall of Adam and Eve.

This has many ramifications, including for the proper identification of the four rivers – generated by the one Edenic river (Genesis 2:10).

Those four rivers, Pishon (פִּישׁוֹן), Gihon (גִּיחוֹן), Hiddekel (חִדֶּקֶל) and Perath (פְרָת), must have geographically en-framed Eden.

Jesus, the Lord of History (and Geography), easily encompasses history from the beginning (Abel) until modern times (Zechariah) in two telling verses.

In so doing, he helps us to know that this Zechariah was not the martyred Zechariah son of the High Priest, Jehoiada, since this Zechariah was not the most recent martyr. Urijah son of Shemaiah, for instance, had come after Zechariah son of Jehoiada.

But even that was not so recent.

Hence, Matthew 23:35 is not contradictory about Zechariah as many like to suggest.

Jesus Christ is the Key to Knowledge and he is not about to contradict the Truth.

That is done, instead, by the likes of the “experts”, the blind know-alls, the types who resisted Jesus and had him crucified (Luke 11:52): ‘Woe to you experts in the Law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering’.

We lose all fine meaning, then, when we shift Eden, the central point of Genesis 2, from the region of Jerusalem to east of the Tigris (חִדֶּקֶל) and Euphrates (פְרָת) rivers, which easterly re-orientation seems to be the preferred location today for the ancient Garden of Eden.

But:

Ezekiel 5:5: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the centre of the nations, with countries all around her’.”

Editor Moses would have had only one place meaning in mind for “Cush”, when he wrote of the Gihon river that “it winds through the entire land of Cush” (Genesis 2:13).

Moses is traditionally said to have led Egyptian armies into Nubia, or Cush (Ethiopia).

That fixes the Gihon river as the Blue Nile.

And the Tigris and Euphrates are well known.

Those like Dr. David Rohl, who want to turn Moses’s “Cush” into the Kusheh Dagh in Iranian Azerbaijan:

and search in vain for the vestiges of the Garden of Eden in that NE region of the ancient world, succeed only in emptying the Scriptures of their meaning and import.

Some of the unhappy consequences of this are:

• The authoritative words of Jesus Christ about Abel and Zechariah then become meaningless, and even unjust for his Jerusalemite “generation”.

• The whole wonderful cosmic symmetry of the Fall of Man, and then the Redemption of Man, occurring in the same geographical location, is totally lost.

“O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen”.

• All the Garden of Eden symbolism at the Fall, of the tree and thorns and pain and sweat, ceases to be reflected by the same Garden symbolism at the Passion and Redemption:

It now becomes a case of poet John Donne’s And new philosophy calls all in doubt:

“Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.”

And it is interesting that John Donne aimed this famous statement at the new philosophies, which were mathematically and science-based and anti-metaphysical, reflecting a world largely of a priori theory, rather than one of studied reality.

The culmination of all of this would be a cosmography of models and numbers that has as much bearing upon reality as does the Kusheh Dagh location have for the Garden of Eden.

Our models of Astronomy today are cosmographies lacking an inherent meaning, lacking what pope Benedict XVI called “a cosmology discerning the visible inner logic of the cosmos”.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Our Lady of Fatima’s Historian

“Without Solzhenitsyn, the everyday reality and details of what

Our Lady at Fatima warned would be our personal imaginings.

His talent as a story-teller engaged readers worldwide”.

Mary O’Regan

Taken from:

http://thepathlesstaken7.blogspot.com/2010/02/solzhenitsyn-our-ladys-historian_23.html

SOLZHENITSYN: OUR LADY OF FATIMA’S HISTORIAN

What Our Lady Foretold: Solzhenitsyn Chronicled

When Solzhenitsyn’s died, the worldwide press were in a competition to out-do themselves in admiration of the literary giant. Solzhenitsyn was lauded as one of the greatest writers to have ever lived. He was accredited with having played a crucial intellectual role in the fall of Communism. And contrary to the usual candy-floss schmaltzy eulogizing the Western press doles out when a celebrity dies, the praise given Solzhenitsyn is deserved. Incredible. Yet since Solzhenitsyn’s death, there has been very little discussion of his real vocation in national newspapers and even on the blogosphere. No corner of the press – religious or secular has yet given Solzhenitsyn what is rightly his greatest honour. It is this: Solzhenitsyn was the artist who dramatized what Our Lady at Fatima foretold about Russia and the world. No comparison exists between Solzhenitsyn and the Queen of Heaven, there remains only an alliance. Solzhenitsyn (perhaps totally unwittingly) was Our Lady’s servant. 

….

Stalinism, Communism, the Gulags and societal Soviet persecution were the stuff of Solzhenitsyn’s writings, but they were also what Our Lady of Fatima termed Russia’s “errors”. Yes, the media correctly identified Solzhenitsyn’s writings as brave exposés of the horrors of Communist Russia.

But the media confined Solzhenitsyn’s apocalyptic analysis to Communist Russia. There is a continuing prevailing sense that the media is trying to establish a sense of superiority over the Russian chumps who made all the mistakes. A sort of “well if the Russians had done Lefty-liberalism-socialism our way, they wouldn’t have got themselves in the pickle Solzhenitsyn described!” In essence, the liberal media’s analysis of Solzhenitsyn has been insufferably, school-prefect-like patronizing. No attempt is made to see that what Solzhenitsyn described was of significance to everyone worldwide. As I will detail, we have not learned from the “errors”. 

Solzhenitsyn was informed by his own personal, first hand experience of eight years in the Gulag and had the integrity never to deviate from the truth. It was Solzhenitsyn’s credibility that made the Soviet Russian authorities flinch.

….

And the fact that he was a best-selling author who would eventually sell thirty million books worldwide. Without Solzhenitsyn, the everyday reality and details of what Our Lady at Fatima warned would be our personal imaginings. His talent as a story-teller engaged readers worldwide.

Solzhenitsyn’s meticulous attention to detail captivates attention, we are there with Ivan Denisovich prisoner of the Gulag when he must [choose] either socks or hard boots to scuttle around in the snow; he cannot have both.

Let us first explore Our Lady of Fatima’s urgent message. Before Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children. ….

The children were taught to pray by the Guardian Angel of Portugal. The Angel told them, “to pray a great deal”. Our Lady appeared to them for the first time on the 13th of May 1917. On the 13th of July 1917, Our Lady showed the three seers a vision of Hell. St. Lucia depicted the vision as thus: “Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers”. The vision lasted an instant, but Our Lady told the children that poor sinners go there because they have no one to pray for them. Our Lady continued to notify the children that if people did not stop offending God, He would reprimand the world “by means of war, hunger and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father,” using Russia as His chosen implement of punishment. In other words, Russia would be the means, but the consequences were for everyone. However, it was a precise consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart that Our Lady requested. Our Lady offered very specific instructions, that if not granted, “Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations will be annihilated.”

The “errors” of Russia were never clarified for the three seers. By “errors” Our Lady inferred that which is objectively wrong from a Catholic point of view. We can establish that, in Russia, the root “error” was the abrogation of Christianity, the denial of religious formation and the denunciation of religion as ever having played an important role. What Solzhenitsyn would describe as “the total surrender of the soul.” 

Firstly in Russian society, it was the concept of God as creator and judge that was utterly abolished.

Hence, the dominant ‘error’ of Soviet education.

The very first thing a Soviet child learned at school was the theory of evolution and where, as “animals”, they were on the evolutionary scale. There is much debate in Catholic circles about the validity of Evolutionary theories, but Catholics have never been taught by Mother Church to teach children that they are primarily animals. Under Stalin, the Soviet officials thought of the Russian people as animals with speech, and were content to treat them as such. In Solzhenitsyn’s novel A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the Gulag prisoners are like sub-humans in an abattoir. They scrounge for scraps of food, stand naked in a frozen field during a body search and every minute their survival is threatened. Solzhenitsyn peppers his prose with lots of ironies; how the Gulag guards are in defiance of the Communist ideology of equality for all men. How Communism was meant to eliminate social divides; when in fact total societal breakdown ensues because only the ordained alpha male authority figures are able to protect themselves. The weak are to be used, it’s their fault they are weak. The Gulag guards are atheists, believing in no higher Judge, nor do they have any concept of grace or even kindness for its own sake.

The Communist system has ensured the guards are aware of absolutely no biblical/Christian teaching that would lead them to think of themselves as other than vicious animals. Similarly, Solzhenitsyn’s novel Cancer Ward, ends with a zoo scene, representing the Soviet culture that has reduced [human] society to a jungle.

Whilst not a Catholic, Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a true depiction of the accumulative effect of Russia’s errors on Russia herself. It is Stalin’s Russia in microcosm and portrays Stalin’s Russia as one huge prison camp. The character of Ivan Denisovich embodies the Soviet view of religion. He can only see what religion may do for him in material terms. The ‘Our Father’ is incomprehensible to him, because he does not see how it will give him daily bread. Prayers for Ivan are like the complaints one makes to the Soviet authorities, pieces of raggy paper put in a box that will never get the establishment’s attention and is merely a Pyrrhic exercise. A devout Baptist in the Gulag attempts evangelising Ivan. But for Ivan, talk of God’s love is meaningless babble.

Ivan’s only religious contact is a Russian Orthodox priest who Ivan resented, and thus he distrusts anyone religious, because for Ivan religion and the personality of his cruel and indifferent authority figures are the same.

Ivan’s rejection of religion signifies he is a product of the system he abhors. The challenge of bringing Ivan to the Christian faith is a taste of the challenge of bringing the entirety of Russia back to organised religion.

 

Solzhenitsyn not only revealed the deplorable conditions of Soviet Russia, he bared the souls of select Russian characters. As the spiritual nucleus of Solzhenitsyn’s works became more obvious, more and more did he stand alone. Solzhenitsyn was the “traitor” of the “nomenklatura”, upsetting Russia’s reputation, but simultaneously ‘\”progressive” politicians and writers found his traditionally religious outlook embarrassing. His devotion to orthodox Christianity and simultaneous rejection of westernization of Russian culture brooked no compromise. Throughout his writing career, Solzhenitsyn increasingly emphasized that the only antidote to Communism was a spiritual resurgence. This assaulted the West’s politically correct smarmy talk of democracy as the only solution. Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Our present system is terrible not because it is undemocratic and based on force but because it demands total surrender of the soul.”

Whilst Solzhenitsyn knew what medicine the world needed, Our Lady held the prescription pad. Part of the prescriptions given the whole world was to pray the Rosary everyday; indeed six times did Our Lady call for the daily recitation of five decades of the Rosary. Our Lady also advised “the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays”.

How C.S. Lewis made me a Christian – Barney Zwartz

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen,

not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else”.

C.S. Lewis

My son has just finished reading the seven Narnia books to my grandchildren, aged six and five. I am delighted by this because as a child I was addicted to these books, reading them over and over (and again as an adult).

Every good communicator knows the power of a story, and Narnia author C.S. Lewis – a great literary critic and explainer of Christianity whose influence is as strong today 60 years after his death – certainly did.

The first published, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is the most perfect allegory of Christianity but, growing up in a household in which religion was utterly irrelevant, I did not understand this. The power of the story worked on its own terms.

Only after I became a Christian in my mid-20s did I understand how important an influence Lewis was on my journey. He showed me that we live in an ineluctably moral universe, in which personal responsibility really matters. He helped shape my understanding of good and bad as real rather than constructs – without in any way being “preachy”.

Lewis wrote of his Narnia books that such stories could bypass the inhibitions wrought on so many by the religiosity of much Christianity.

“Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings.

“But suppose that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their true potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”

I have always had my share of watchful dragons, but Lewis’ priorities and values resonated and silently took root.

Speaking of Lewis, theologian Alister McGrath noted: “Stories are not simply things to entertain us, they are things that are there to convey meaning, to open up newer imaginative possibilities. Here is a new way of seeing things, and if you enter into this way of seeing things the world is a very different place.

“This rediscovery of the imagination in human truth-seeking and truth-telling is really very important. Lewis played a very important role in doing that.”

What Lewis showed me in the Narnia books, though I understood this only much later, is well summarised in another of his famous lines: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”

Barney Zwartz is a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity.