Tasting the Divine

Imagine you know someone who has never - even once - tasted honey, but whose hobby is learning all she can about it.

She has spent countless hours studying honey. She knows all about how it is produced, how to care for the bees and make sure they have access to the right kind of flowers, and how to harvest it and refine it so it is ready for the table. On top of that, she's read numerous accounts of what honey tastes like from a variety of different sources. She is completely fascinated by these descriptions.

Our hypothetical friend knows everything there is to know about honey, but she's never tasted it for herself. There's no doubting that our friend knows a great deal, but doesn't the average joe who has actually tasted the goods have the more crucial understanding of honey? Isn't her understanding of honey disastrously incomplete, even flawed? And even more importantly, though we have to admit she is genuinely passionate about honey - we could even say she loves the stuff - we'd have to also admit that something important is missing, that she can't really love honey, at least not properly.

This strange anecdote sheds light on what's going on in Jonathan Edwards' book, Religious Affections. By affections, Edwards means the "vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul" (96). He's talking about our positive emotional responses to God - especially things like love and joy.  We all experience affection for a variety of different things. If you're a Christian you must have some kind of affection for God. But our affections aren't always what they seem - they can be deceiving.

Take our honey-obsessed friend. She absolutely loves honey, and experiences great joy while learning and discussing the topic. But something crucially significant is lacking. This is a person who sincerely loves honey, but a five year old who has ever squeezed a translucent golden plastic bear has the ability to love honey in a deeper, more important way; he is able to love honey the way it is actually meant to be loved.

This is because if a person is going to love someone or something, he or she first has to have some experience of it. Moreover, a great many things are supposed to be experienced in one or more appropriate ways, and our experience of them is flawed if we try to experience them in different ways. For instance, I would recommend that you taste honey - don't just read about it. Likewise, I'd suggest you read a novel, and I would discourage you from attempting to taste it.

It's the same in religion. But if touch is the appropriate way to experience play-dough, and sight is the appropriate way to experience the Mona Lisa, what is the appropriate way to experience God so that He might raise our affections? What 'eyes' do we have with which to 'see' God, so that we might admire him in appropriate love and joy?

Edwards suggests that the Holy Spirit gives us something he calls the 'spiritual sense' that makes these proper, 'gracious' affections possible. It's a sense similar to sight or touch or taste, but instead of enabling our experience of light or texture or flavor, it enables us to experience God's grace. Grace, after all, is no ordinary thing. It's utterly unique and new, and we can't appreciate it adequately with our ordinary capacities: sensory or emotional or mental. If we are going to love God truly the way God is supposed to be loved, we need new tools, and that's what the 'new sense' provides.

You can love the idea of God, and you can receive joy when thinking upon the things of God. You can have great passion and affection while learning about God, your heart can become excited upon hearing the Christian message - the good news of God's love in Jesus. But this is quite a different thing than loving God himself. Real love and passion for God, according to Edwards, means discovering new eyes with which to see, new ears with which to hear. We need a new, spiritual sense. Edwards seems to think this can come to us only as a gift.

Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections

Earlier this Fall a friend of mine and I decided to read a book together. After some deliberation, we chose Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections. I knew it wasn't going to be anything like his famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", but I was still not expecting it to be so good. 

• I was expecting polemic, but I found careful reasoning and nuance. 
• I was expecting partisanship, but I found the Great Tradition. 
• I was expecting an opportunity for me to exercise deep, critical thinking, but I found a brother in Christ. 

It's easy for our thinking to slip into polemic - not least when it comes to religion! But Edwards was almost always fair, sober, and careful. It's easy to try to score cheap points for my 'team', but to me Edwards read like a representative of the best of the broader Christian tradition. It's easy to step back and think about a book just with one's head, but to me Edwards became a kindred spirit. Reading Edwards was like reading Irenaeus or Augustine or Athanasius - full of excitement and surprises, while nonetheless feeling always familiar. 

A few years ago I read Stephen Long's Saving Karl Barth, a book unlike any other I have ever read (check out a review I wrote a few years ago here). I say that because Saving Karl Barth is a biography, but it is not the biography of a person - it is the biography of a friendship. Two of the most important theologians of the 20th century were friends. Both from Switzerland, they had a great deal more than that in common, but what makes their friendship so interesting is their differences and the way the tensions in their relationship shaped their theologies. Of course I'm talking about the Reformed firebrand Karl Barth, and the younger, more contemplative Roman Catholic Hans Urs von Balthasar. The upshot of Long's book is to suggest that Christians who disagree with other Christians should pursue a relationship of friendship rather than opposition. 

Edwards is a Calvinist, while I am not. But what a gift to spend time with a Calvinist and to find not a fight, but a friend.

How appropriate that I had such a relational, even emotional, reaction to Edwards' big book about Christian affections - our experience of passionate love for God. I'll post some thoughts about the actual content of the book in this space soon. 

A Second Century Christian Creed by Irenaeus of Lyon

Irenaeus of Lyon included a version of the "rule of faith" in his late 2nd century summary of the Christian faith, On the Apostolic Preaching, I.1.6. Here it is; I added the text in brackets and removed a few phrases that Irenaeus used to introduce each 'article' so that, in the form below, it reads more like the classical creeds.

[We believe in] God, the Father, uncreated, uncontainable, invisible, one God, the Creator of all.

[We believe in] the Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord, who was revealed by the prophets according to the character of their prophecy and according to the nature of the economies of the Father, by whom all things were made, and who, in the last times, to recapitulate all things, became a man amongst men, visible and palpable, in order to abolish death, to demonstrate life, and to effect communion between God and man.

[We believe in] the Holy Spirit through whom the prophets prophesied and the patriarchs learnt the things of God and the righteous were led in the path of righteousness, and who, in the last times, was poured out in a new fashion upon the human race renewing man, throughout the world, to God.

This is remarkable for a number of reasons. Here are a few:

1. Irenaeus has a lot more to say about the Holy Spirit than either the Nicene (with the additions from 381) or the Apostles' Creed. The way a lot of people talk about the historical development of doctrine you would think no one had an articulate and distinct understanding of the Holy Spirit until the late 4th century, but this was written about two hundred years before that.

2. The major creeds make very few references to the Hebrew Scriptures. Irenaeus, on the other hand, is all about articulating how the Word and the Spirit relate to 'the prophets' (who revealed the Word and spoke through the Spirit), but he also mentions the patriarchs (who were taught by the Spirit). The fact that he goes out of his way to describe the Christian faith in terms of its relationship to the Old Testament is significant. The God-Man Jesus Christ stands in continuity with the God of the prophets; this is a crucial point for Irenaeus as it was, for instance, in the great speeches of Acts of the Apostles.

3. There's no explicit Virgin Birth. Irenaeus elsewhere talks about the Virgin Birth of Jesus, so his failure to mention it here isn't because he didn't believe it or think it was important: according to Irenaeus, Mary the obedient virgin recapitulates Eve the disobedient virgin, in a similar fashion to Christ's recapitulation of Adam. But it is interesting that it doesn't make it into his creed - instead he focusses on his understanding of incarnation, recapitulation and communion between humanity and God.

4. Christ didn't just defeat death; he demonstrated life. I love that phrase. Is this a reference to his teachings, miracles, etc.? The major creeds are silent on these things, and there is at least a chance that they might be part of what is intended here. But the main thing this phrase drives at is the bigger picture: that Christ puts on display what a real, fully actualized human life looks like. He recapitulates, or 're-heads' humanity, being the Adam that Adam could never have been. Or, as one of the teenagers at my church likes to say, Christ was "Adam 2.0".

5. There are several different articulations of the shape of salvation and one mention of righteousness, but no talk of sin. The cross is given a gloss from the point of view of the resurrection as having abolished death, but there is no mention of sin or the forgiveness of sins. The classical creeds mention the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the dead. Irenaeus is singularly occupied with an account of the latter, and he does more than just mention it - he fleshes it out.

6. Irenaeus' creed leads to a form of oneness with God. The Word effects communion between humanity and God, and the Spirit renews humanity to God. This creed is much more specific about the actual shape of the gospel than the classical creeds.

Jonah and the Patience of God

I've always loved the story of Jonah. I think this is because Jonah is a story about a man with a calling, a man who has a clear vocation, but who happens to have a complicated relationship to that calling.

I think that's where my connection to Jonah's story has always started. I too hear silent rumblings and inner twists of passion that call me to get up and go. But where I've connected with Jonah in the past is in my fear that I will misunderstand these nudgings of the Holy Spirit, and will accidentally go down to a seaport and board a boat headed in the wrong direction. In previous seasons of life this anxiety around calling, this fear of missing the calling, of accidental disobedience because of misread signals, slowed my responses to the calling in attempts to avoid what I took to be the punishment of violent storms and of having to camp out in the belly of a fish for three days.

But this is not that great of an interpretation of the story of Jonah.

Jonah is definitely a story about conflicted calling, but the way his story is told Jonah doesn't misread God's signals: we are made to understand that they were as plainly before him as they are to us in the text itself. Jonah doesn't board the boat headed to Tarshish because of a misunderstanding - Jonah boarded the boat exactly because he fully understood what he was supposed to do but was intent on not doing it.

Jonah's actions, unlike mine described in the previous paragraph, were decisive and determinative - even bold or bordering on admirable. Jonah was called to get up and go, and he got up and went with a sense of purpose, if in the exact wrong direction. Jonah's disobedience was that of a good Lutheran: he sinned boldly, he took a leap of (un)faith. And then the storm came, not exactly as an act of the punishment of God, but as an example of God's patience with his prophet, of God's invitation to the sailors to worship him, and ultimately (through the fish) of God's salvation of Jonah and, ultimately, of the "great city" of Nineveh.

This is a much more helpful and a much more interesting reading of Jonah's story, and, happily, it's also much more faithful to the story itself. The story as it is doesn't address accidental disobedience, and in whatever sense such accidents are even possible this is a book that should be read as good news over those situations too.

Instead of accidental disobedience, Jonah is primarily a book about direct and purposeful, strong-willed disobedience. Jonah is an anti-type of Abraham in that regard. Abraham displayed a profound, even disturbing obedience as he was willing to sacrifice his son to God. Thankfully that story had a happy ending: it turns out that God is more interested in this kind of crazy faithfulness than he is interested in blood.

But Jonah as an anti-type of Abraham demonstrates a kind of anti-faithfulness. The fact that God wills to save all the nations of the world through the descendants of the faithful Abraham seems to be made problematic in the person of one of Abraham's own descendants, Jonah. Jonah, who was given an opportunity to reach out to one of these nations whose salvation is his people's raison d'etre. Jonah, who was faced with such an opportunity to fulfill his people's destiny, and who ran the other way instead.

But the surprising good news in this story is that God is not so much interested in wooing-the-nations-through-human-obedience as God is interested in just wooing-the-nations. And so the disobedient chosen one descends into the belly of a ship set out to carry him away from his calling, only to discover that the ship is destined to carry him further and more deeply into his calling. Jonah's ship purportedly on its way to Tarshish is headed away from the letter of his calling, but in spite of Jonah and the ship itself, this boat is actually on its way more fully into the spirit of his calling.

The hellish storm comes, and the first chapter of Jonah ends with God's prophet descending into the depths: God's man, the one God called to preach to the nations, is hurled into the chaos for the literal salvation from the storm of the ethnically and religiously diverse panoply of sailors who remain on board, sailors who then praise God, the God of Israel, the God whose prophet sinks deeper still.

This alone would be an interesting story, full of fantastic irony - God called a person from his chosen people to preach to the nations so they wouldn't get destroyed, but God's chosen one tried as hard as he could to avoid this task only to have great success in it, just in the wrong place, and then finally in the end it is the disobedient prophet instead of the nations facing destruction and judgment. God takes his chosen people's disobedience and turns it into praise; God transforms the unfaithfulness of his people into praise on the lips of pagans; Jonah's unorthodoxy becomes the Gentile sailors' orthodoxy. All that while the unfaithful chosen one sinks to the deepest depths.

Until.

Until out of those depths comes salvation. Out of those same depths that would swallow the unfaithful one up as a sign of his unfaithfulness there comes a fish who swallows the prophet and keeps him safe as a sign of God's grace. The fish keeps him safe in the bowels of death and, after a time, places him back on track, nudges him back toward his calling.

We suspect that God could easily find another preacher for the city of Nineveh. Jonah has objectively been a huge jerk and obviously doesn't want the job. Jonah has done everything in his power to disqualify himself from keeping the job. And God can do anything he wants - clearly there must be some better, more efficient, less messy way, some way that leaves Jonah out of it. Surely God can save Nineveh some other way.

But God chooses not to. He chooses the disobedient one to preach his word to the people. He is patient with his people in their mission to invite the nations to worship him, the patient God. God through this patience wants to save the world, and save he surely shall do. But this God doesn't just want to save the world: he wants to do so through, with, in and in spite of our obedience and our disobedience, our understanding and our misunderstanding. And, beneath the Sign of Jonah, he wants to use even me.

Ignatius and the Hebrew Bible

Ignatius of Antioch is a fascinating figure from the early 2nd century. Famous for encouraging Christian unity through obedience to bishops and for getting eaten by lions, he also had a helpful and balanced, if not much elaborated, view on what it means for Christians to read the Hebrew Bible on this side of the Christ event. In his Letter to the Philadelphians, Ignatius confronts 'Judiazing' Christians, probably not too dissimilar from those Paul confronted, though Ignatius does so with noticeably more gentleness than Paul does in his letter to the Galatians.

After offering his trademark prescribed cure for disunity - stand by your bishop - Ignatius proceeds to attack what appears to be the greatest risk to brotherly love within the church in Philadelphia.

He explains that although he is in chains and on his way to his death, he nonetheless has hope because of the gospel message proclaimed by the Apostles. But this message was also proclaimed proleptically by the Hebrew prophets, who themselves "have obtained salvation within the unity of Jesus Christ" and "are included as participants in the universal Gospel hope" (IPhil 5).

But this doesn't mean, for Ignatius, that Christians should practice Judaism. Without Christ we're dead (cue tombstone metaphor), so avoid these kinds of teachings so they don't "weaken your love" (IPhil 6). Instead, cling to the unity of the church.

Ignatius works for unity in the church, because, he tells us, that's the kind of church that God lives in and where forgiveness reigns. So the Philadelphians need to avoid the teaching of factions and instead cling to the teachings of Christ. Ignatius seems to have come across some people when he was in town who told him they couldn't believe any teaching unless it was explicitly written in the "ancient records", the Hebrew Scriptures. They were using the prophets as the measure of the apostolic teaching, and where they didn't find clear precedent for a doctrine in the scriptures they refused to believe it. Ignatius counters:

But for my part, my records are Jesus Christ; for me the sacrosanct records are his cross and death and resurrection, and the faith that comes through him. (IPhil 8)

For Ignatius, that is his justification, that is his proof text, that is his Scripture: the narrative of Jesus, especially his death and resurrection, and the faith - the life of the ecclesia, the church - that springs forth from that Christ event.

Early Christians slowly and organically developed what was called the regula fidei, or rule of faith, which they used as the guideline for interpretation and the development of doctrine. Think of it as an early edition of the Apostles' Creed. But for Ignatius, Christ is the rule of faith. The narrative of Christ is the essential condition of Christian faith and teaching. While Judiazing Christians insist that all belief and practice pass through the litmus test of the Law and the Prophets and the Writings, for Ignatius Christ takes priority as the only litmus test needed. This represents not just a high understanding of the person of Christ, but a profound Christocentrism. The good bishop understood the story of Jesus to be the story through which all other stories are illuminated.