Paying Attention To The Sky

ROBERT LOUIS WILKEN is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia. Wilken is interested in the history of Christianity and Christian thought, particularly the use of the Bible, how it was read, and how it shaped culture. I enjoyed one of his books, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, immensely. In the introduction Willken writes: “The intellectual tradition that began in the early Church was enriched by the philosophical breadth and exactitude of medieval thought. Each period in Christian history makes its own unique contribution to Christian life. The Church Fathers, however, set in place a foundation that has proven to be irreplaceable. Their writings are more than a stage in the development of Christian thought or an interesting chapter in the history of the interpretation of the Bible. Like an inexhaustible spring, faithful and true, they irrigate the Christian imagination with life-giving water flowing from the biblical and spiritual sources of the faith. They are still our teachers today.”

Previous (mid nineteenth century and earlier) interpreters of early Christian thought felt that it was so Hellenized by cultural osmosis that it has been the standard interpretation to view it from the standpoint of Greek thought and not the other way around. The latter, namely that it was Christianity which radically changed the secular world is what Wilken demonstrates in this gem of a book. While the book is informative and authoritative for students of theology, it is also inspiring for those of us who seek lectio divina in readings outside the Bible as well. Here are a listing of the Table of Contents: 1. Founded on the Cross of Christ 2. An Awesome and Unbloody Sacrifice  3. The Face of God for Now 4. Seek His Face Always 5. Not My Will But Thine 6. The End Given in the Beginning 7. The Reasonableness of the Faith 8. Happy the People Whose God is the Lord 9. The Glorious Deeds of Christ 10. Making This Thing Other 11. Likeness to God 12. The Knowledge of Sensible Things

Following my custom, here are reading selections from the book to give you some things I was mulling over as I read it and a taste of what is between the covers.

Christianity and Thought
Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices and a moral code: it is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about the world and history. For Christians, thinking is part of believing. Augustine wrote: “No one believes anything unless one first thought it believable…Everything that is believed is believed after being preceded by thought…Not everyone who thinks believes, since many think in order not to believe; but everyone who believes thinks, thinks in believing and believes in thinking”

How God Is Known
When speaking of how God is known, the Bible seldom speaks of insight or illumination or demonstration; rather it says that God appeared, did something, showed something, showed himself or spoke to someone, as in the beginning of the book of Hosea: “The word of God spoke to Hosea” (Hos 1:1). Accordingly, the way to God begins not with arguments or proofs but with discernment and faith, the ability to see what is disclosed in events and he readiness to trust the words of those who testify to them.
By presenting his embrace of Christianity as a conversion to a way of life that is “sure and fulfilling,” Justin let his readers know that the truth of Christ penetrates the soul by means of our moral as well as our intellectual being. The knowledge of God has to do with how one lives, with acting on convictions that are not mere premises but realities learned from other persons and tested by experience.

The Expression “Seeing God”
The expression “Seeing God” is to be understood in the sense of the words from the Gospel of John: ”Who sees me, sees the Father.” …If the logos truly became flesh, there is a sense in which whoever sees Jesus, sees the Logos, whether pure of heart or hard of heart, whether in unbelief or in faith….In the Scriptures, seeing something is never simply beholding something that passes like a parade before the eyes; it is a form of discernment and identification with what is known. What one sees reflects back on the one who sees and transforms the beholder. As Gregory the Great will put it centuries later, “We are changed into the one we see.” There can be no knowledge of God without a relation between the knower an God. To see light is to share in light and to be enlightened. In the words of Irenaeus, “just as those who see the light are illuminated by the light and share in its brilliance, so those who see God are in God and share his splendor.” In the scriptures, says Origen, the term know means “to participate in something” or to be “joined in something.”…in response to Celsus’s mocking question as to why God descended to human beings, Origen says that it was ”to implant in us the happiness which comes from knowing him.”

Christian Thinking
Christian thinking did not spring from an original idea, and it was not nourished by a seminal spiritual insight. It had its beginnings in the history of Israel and the life of a human being named Jesus of Nazareth, who was born of Mary, lived in Judea, suffered and died in Jerusalem, and was raised by God to new life,. That the history was the history of God’s self-disclosure does not make it any less historical, but it does mean that what is seen with the eyes is not the fullness of what there is to see.

Res Gestae and Res Liturgicae
As Christina thinking was grounded in the events that happened in the Bible, the res gestae, the things that had taken place, so it was nourished in worship by the res liturgicae, the things enacted in the liturgy… ”present grace” [a phrase used in res liturgicae] refers not simply to the grace that f lows from Christ’s Resurrection, but to the actual liturgical celebration of the Resurrection…Nothing in the mind can ever have the solidarity and mystery of what is seen and touched. By constant immersion in the res liturgicae, early Christian Thinkers came face to face with the living Christ and could say with Thomas, the apostle, “My Lord and God.“ Here was a truth so tangible, so enduring, so compelling that it trumped every religious idea. Understanding was not achieved by stepping back and viewing things from a distance but by entering into the revealed object itself.

The Holy Scriptures
…the word that came forth from Jerusalem, the “heavenly word’ was the divine Logos who had become flesh in the person Christ and lived on this earth. Through his song men and women had been brought back to life, the eyes of the blind had been opened, the ears of he deaf unstopped, the lame had learned to walk, the rebellious been reconciled to God, and through him.. We were able to “see God.” Generation after generation this Word of God, the Divine Logos had spoken to God’s people in the words of Moses, in the oracles of the prophets, in the exhortations of the proverbs, and finally in the writings of the apostles, particularly the gospels. These writings Clement calls the “holy scriptures” or “divine scriptures” and he sees them as a guide to a holy life and a source of truth. “Free of pretensions of style and elegant diction, of useless and beguiling words, they raise up those who have been drawn down by vice and offer a firm path amidst the treacheries of life.”

Imitation of Christ
Ideas do not exist disembodied from language. When Plato’s “likeness” is paired with the biblical expression “image of God” and interpreted as “imitation of Christ” it acquires a meaning that cannot be found in Plato. Likeness to God has become concrete, visual, human, accessible. No longer is it simply a philosophical ideal; it was embodied in the life of an actual person who lived on this earth, Jesus Christ. The goal toward which human strive has already been reached by someone who shared human life an suffering, and by looking at Christ it is possible to know what likeness to God meant for human beings.

The Bible
The Bible is a book of events with consequences, not only for those who lived through them or were influence by them, but for all men and women. Its meaning turns on the history it records, whether it be God’s creation of all things at the beginning of time, the sin of Adam, the giving of the Law to Moses, Christ’s birth from a virgin, or his resurrection on the third day…”Just as through the disobedience of one man, the first made from the virgin earth, many were made sinners and lost life, so it was necessary that through the obedience of one man, the first born of a Virgin, many should be made righteous and receive salvation.” [Iraneus]

Key To Understanding the Bible
The key to understanding the Bible, then, was what had happened in Christ. In Augustine’s words, the “dispensation of divine providence in time” that is, “what God has done for the salvation of the human race to renew it and restore it.”…It is a story, in medieval theology, of a going out from God, an exitus, and a return to God, a reditus. “This then is the ordering of our faith…God the Father, uncreated, incomprehensible, invisible, one God. Creator of all. This  is the first article. The second is the Word of God, God the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord who was revealed to the prophets…At the End of Times, to sum up all things, he became man among men, visible and palpable, in order to destroy death, and bring to light life, and bring about holy communion with God. And third is the Holy Spirit, by which the prophets  prophesied and the patriarchs were taught about God and the just were led into the path of justice, and who in the end of times was poured forth in a new manner upon men all over the earth renewing man to God.” [Iraneus]

Seeing Oneself In What Is Written
Gregory took he phrase to be an interpretation of the prodigal son, who had journeyed to a far country only to squander his inheritance, When the country was ravaged by a great famine he became so hungry that he would gladly have eaten the slop fed of swine. At that point in the parable he realizes how grievously he has sinned against his father and the evangelist says, “He came to himself” (Luke 15:17). How is it, asks Gregory, that a person who is always with himself can be said to have “come to himself” The phrase, says Gregory, means search one’s soul continuously and see oneself always in the presence God and attend to one’s life and actions. Job came to himself when he heard the words of God, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 28:4)…it is right for us to be brought back to our own hearts by the things that were said to holy Job. For we understand the words of God more truly when we ‘search out ourselves in them’

Reading and Growing With The Scriptures
Gregory’s …statement of the mysterious relation between reader and text occurs in his homily on the famous allegory of the living creatures and the wheels in the first chapter of the prophet Ezekiel. The text reads “Now as I look at the living creatures, I saw as wheel upon the earth beside he living creatures…And when he living creatures went, the wheels went with them; and when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose” (Ezekiel 1:15-19). Gregory took the wheels o be the Scriptures and he living creatures to be readers of the Scriptures…the Scriptures grow with the reader. The more profoundly one understands the Scriptures the more deeply one penetrates into them. The wheels would not be lifted up if the living creatures had not been lifted up. But if the living creature moves and seeks the path that leads to a virtuous life, and through the footsteps of he heart learns to do good works, the wheels keep pace with him. You will progress in understanding the Holy Scripture only to the degree that you yourself have made progress through contact with them.

My Lord and my God!
….at the very beginning of Christianity when Jesus’s disciples were still observing Jewish  traditions yet following Christ. During Christ’s lifetime his followers did not grasp fully who he was. Even though some of his sayings imply that he had a unique relation to God, and he performed miracles and revealed his heavenly glory to his most intimate followers at his Transfiguration on the mount, his disciples did not have eyes to see who he was. They had sound theological reasons for their opacity. They knew by heart the words of the Sh’ma, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord.”…How could a faithful Jew who had recited the Sh’ma since childhood, whose prayers were addressed to God the King of the universe, address Christ as God or Son of God, as the earliest Christians did?. ..the answer is that the Resurrection of Christ transfigured everything. When Jesus came and stood among the disciples and put his finger in his side, Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!”. When confronted with the risen Christ, one does not say “How interesting.”…

God Is Not Alone: Hilary of Poitiers
Because  of the resurrection Thomas recognized that the one he knew, who had lived among them, was not just an ordinary human being but the living God, “No one except God is able to rise from death to life by its own power.” writes Hilary. But his argument runs deeper…not only that the Resurrection revealed something about Christ to his disciples, namely that he is God…but also caused them to think about God differently…Thomas understood the whole mystery of the faith, for “now” that is, in the light of the Resurrection, Thomas was able to confess Christ as God “without abandoning his devotion to the one God”. .his confession is a recognition that God was not a solitary God or a lonely God. God is one says Hilary [The Trinity] but not alone.

Wisdom
Only after the Resurrection did Thomas and others know what Jesus meant when he spoke of his unique relation to God. In the same way it wa only after the Resurrection that the followers of Jesus knew what to make of passages from the Old Testament on Wisdom. Wisdom leaped, as it were, out of the shadows into the clear light of day. Now Christians were able to identify Wisdom with an actual historical person, with events that had taken place in time and space, and give Wisdom a name, Jesus Christ  As a consequence Wisdom acquired features that were not apparent before the coming of Christ, that is before the economy (Knowledge of the Triune God: Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost in the early Church) and reflection on the nature of wisdom helped Christians to understand the mystery of God.

The New Testament and Divine Relations
Augustine wants to say more than that the gift of the Holy Spirit creates a communion between God and the believer; he insists that “relation” is also characteristic of the divine life. For the spirit is the “bond of love” and the “communion” between Father and Son, and the sending of the Holy Spirit not only reveals the Spirit’s role in bringing human beings into fellowship with God, but also displays to us the love that unites the Father and the Son in a divine communion. In some passage biblical writers speak not only of the work of the Spirit in the economy (Knowledge of the Triune God: Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost in the early Church), but also of the spirit within the life of God. A key text is Corinthians: “…but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment:  For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?  But we have the mind of Christ.”…As God is revealed in human beings, so is the life of God. .. The New Testament makes the divine relations constitutive of God…If God is Father, not only creator, and Christ is son, not only redeemer, then the relation between them  is an essential feature of the divine life. If God is not solitary and exists always in relation, there can be no talk of God that does not involve love. Love unites Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, love brings God into relation with the world, and by love human beings cleave to God.

St. Augustine on Seeking God
There can be no finding [God] without a change in the seeker. Or minds must be purified he (Saint Augustine) says and we must be made fit and capable of receiving what is sought. We can cleave to God and see the Holy Trinity only when we burn with love…”Seek as those who are going to find, and find as those who are going to go on seeking.”…“When a man has finished, then it is that he is beginning.”

Christ’s Life Is A New Way
Matthew:  Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”
He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
The acceptance of the cup of suffering was Christ’s free act. The salvation that the eternal son had willed “in union with the Father and the Holy Spirit.” …Christ now shows himself to be a new kind of human being. The human will is not less human but more human because it is in harmony with the divine will…Christ’s life was new, not only because it was strange and wondrous to those on earth, and was unfamiliar in comparison to things as they are, but also because it carried within itself a new energy of one who lived in a new way” (Maximus the Confessor)

Creationism
The account in Genesis shows that the world did not come into being “spontaneously as some have imagined” but rather was “brought about by God”. If one is to understand what is seen with the eyes, one must first have eyes to see what the eye cannot see: “Anyone who does not …enjoy fellowship and intimacy with God is unable to see the works of God.”…unless one recognizes that God is the creator of the universre, they will see noting as it truly is…”The starting point says Basil [Basil Bishop of Caeserea], “must be that an intelligent cause stands behind the birth of the world” When it is recognized that the intelligibility of he world is derived from something beyond itself, everything comes into focus. Creation displaces cosmology. When the scripture says that “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” it rules out any form of naturalism. The world is not random or disordered, it came into being not by chance or spontaneously, but by God’s wisdom and love. …But the term arche does not mean beginning in the sense that beginning implies time…beginning means that creation was a single divine act in which matter was created as well as knitted together. Matter does not exist without form. Moses does not say that “God worked” or God formed”, but “God created”…Basil sets forth the Christian teaching that the world was created ‘out of nothing” by a free and gratuitous act of God: The creator of the universe, whose creative power is not bound by one world but transcends all bounds, brought into being the vast extent of the visible world solely by the movement of his will…Creation is the work of God’s wisdom, of “artistic reason”, not a matter of arbitrary chance or power. When the text of Genesis says Spirit of God, it does not mean the movement of air…it refers to the Holy Spirit…The Holy Spirit is like a bird that covers her eggs with her body and by her body’s warmth imparts the vital force that will give them life.

The Nature of God and the Nature of the Human Mind
Let those who reflect on the nature of God ask themselves whether they “know the nature of their own mind.” The mind of man is no less a mystery than the nature of God. We do not know ourselves, said Augustine, for “there is something of the human person that is unknown even to the ‘spirit of man which is in him.’” The mystery of the human mind is evidence that human beings are created in the image of God: “because our mind is made in the likeness of the one who created us, it escapes our knowledge. That is why it is reasonable to think that the human mind accurately resembles God’s superior nature, portraying by its own unknowability that nature is beyond our comprehension.”

Freedom in Christian Thought
Gregory of Nyssa speaks of human freedom as moral freedom, the freedom to become what we were made to be. Freedom, as he puts it, is the “royal exercise of the will,” but will is much more than choice, than deciding to do one thing in preference to another. It is an affair of ordering one’s life in terms of its end, freedom oriented toward excellence (the original meaning of virtue) and human flourishing. As we grow in virtue we delight in the good that is God. Hence freedom is never set forth in its own terms but rather is always seen in relation to God. Because Human beings were made in the image of God, our lives will be fully human only as our face is turned toward God and our actions formed by his love. Freedom is as much a matter of seeing, of vision, as it is of doing. We know ourselves as we transcend ourselves and we find ourselves as we find fellowship with God. Happiness, the happiness that gives fullness to life, will be ours only as our will conforms to God’s will. And that finally is found in Christ.

Intellectual Underpinnings Of Christianity
One of the most remarkable features of the intellectual life in the Roman Empire is not only that the church attracted gifted thinkers from the society but also that the writings became the object of serious criticism of the best philosophical minds of the day…The persistence of argument and debate between Christians and pagans over the course of several centuries lays to rest the view that Christianity undermined confidence in the power of reason [Greek/Roman thought].

Origen of Alexandria On Truth
A desire to know the truth of things has been implanted in our souls and is natural to human beings…When our eye sees the work of the craftsman, especially if the object is well made, at once the mind burns with desire to know what sort of thing it is, how it was made and for what purpose, Even more, indeed incomparably more, does the mind burn with desire and ineffable longing to know the design of those things which we perceive to have been made by God. This desire, this love, we believe, has been implanted in us by God. For as the eye by nature seeks light and sight and our body instinctively craves food and drink, so our mind nurtures a desire, which is natural and proper to know the truth of God and to learn the causes of things. Moreover we have not been given this desire by God in such a way that it should not or cannot be satisfied. For if the love of truth were never able to be satisfied, it would seem to have been implanted in our mind by the creator in vain.

The Reasonableness of Belief
Psalm 19: “[Christ] was born, he grew, he taught, he suffered, he rose, he ascended.” Through these events God was made known, hence the truth of Christianity was dependent on things that took place long ago “in one particular region of the earth” and “in time.” It cannot, however, be established as certain and beyond doubt that the events on which Christian faith rests took place. As John Henry Newman once observed, “It is the same fault to demand demonstration of an historian as to be content with probabilities from a mathematician.”

St. Augustine: Religious Knowledge Acquired by Faith
Augustine wishes to say that the knowledge acquired by faith is not primarily a matter of gaining information. The acquiring of religious knowledge is akin to learning a skill. It involves practices, attitudes, and dispositions and has to do with ordering one’s loves. This kind of knowledge, the knowledge one lives by, is gained gradually over time. Just as one does not learn to play the piano in a day, one does not learn to love God in an exuberant moment of delight. If joy does not find worlds, if it does not exercise the affections and stir the ill, if it is not confirmed actions, it will be as fleeting as the last light out of the black west. The knowledge of God sinks into the mind and heart slowly and hence requires apprenticeship. That is why, says Augustine, we must become “servants of wise men.”

St. Augustine: Authority is Part of Knowledge
By making authority a necessary part of knowing, Augustine shifts the question away from What Should I Believe? that is, What teachings should I accept? to the question Whom Should I believe? That is, Which persons should I trust…There are two ways the soul is led to God, by authority and by reason. Authority invites belief and prepares man for reason…The place to begin is not with the truth or falsity of certain teachings, but with the persons whose lives are formed by the teachings…he is speaking about placing one’s confidence in men and women whose examples invite us to love what they love.

Integrity of Christian Authority
One of the most distinctive features of Christian intellectual life is a kind of quiet confidence in the faithfulness and integrity of those who have gone before…We are sustained by the saints an  trail our thoughts behind the truths of others.

The Nature of Christian Knowledge is Based on More Than What The Eyes See
Historical knowledge is not the primary object of faith…First Epistle of John: THAT which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;  (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;)  That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.  And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.  This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.  If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. …The unusual wording of passage: For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us John saw Jesus with the eyes but he testifies to seeing the eternal word of God, so what he saw with the eyes was not all there was to see.

The Veracity of the Resurrection
Saint Paul’s list of witnesses to the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 only mentions the followers of Christ. Indeed, he begins with those who knew him best. Celsus [Greek Philosopher who questioned Christianity] challenged the veracity of the Resurrection of Jesus on the grounds that all the witnesses were disciples. ….Origen’s answer is that Jesus appeared only those who wee capable of knowing what they were seeing. .When Christ came into the world he did not simply display himself to men and women as an actor on a stage, “He also concealed himself.” God’s voice is not audible to all. Someone who is hard of hearing in the soul will not hear God speaking. Christ said, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear” (Matt 11:15). It is an interior knowing that transforms the knower. As Origen of Alexandria explains, it is not enough to say “Christ was crucified.” ; one must say with Saint Paul, “I am crucified with Christ.” Likewise it is not enough to say “Christ was raised.” One who knows Christ, says, “We shall also live with him” (Romans 6:10).The witnesses to Christ’s resurrection are not reporters who tell of the interesting things that happened one morning in Jerusalem. Without persons who see and believe, God’s mighty deeds are only ancient prodigies and wondrous tales….The text must pass through the life of the lector so that it becomes a living word to the present not a recitation of what someone said long ago. Only then can the congregation hear the lesson as the Word of God.

St. Augustine on Believing in Christ
It makes a great deal of difference whether someone believes that Jesus is the Christ, or whether he believes in Christ. After all, that he is Christ even the demons believed, but all the same the demons didn’t believe in Christ. You believe in Christ, you see, when you both hope in Christ and love Christ. If you have faith without hope and without love, you believe that he is the Christ but you don’t believe in Christ. So when you believe in Christ, Christ comes into you, and you are somehow or other united to him and made into a member of his body. And this cannot happen unless hope and love come along, too.

Imitation And The Virtuous Life
The elementary activities of fashioning a clay pot or constructing a cabinet, of learning to speak or sculpting a statue have their beginnings in imitation. The truth is as old as humankind, but in the West it was the Greeks who helped us understand its place in the moral life, and in the Roman  period it is nowhere displayed with greater art than in Plutarch’s Lives. “Virtuous deeds,” he wrote, “implant in those who search them out a zeal and yearning that leads to imitation…The good creates a stir of activity towards itself and implants at once in the spectator an impulse toward action.”

Redemption And The Incarnation
At one point in the Paradiso Dante asks Beatrice why God willed “precisely this pathway for our redemption,” namely, the Incarnation. Beatrice begins her response by reminding Dante that what she is about to explain to him “is buried from the eyes of everyone whose intellect has not matured within the flame of love.” Unless we invest ourselves in the object of our love, we remain voyeurs and spectators, curiosity seekers, incapable of receiving because we are unwilling to give. With God irony is blasphemy. Only when we turn our deepest self to God can we enter the mystery of God’s life and penetrate the truth of things. If love is absent, our minds remain childish and immature, trying out one thing and another, unable to hold fast to the truth,. Human beings said Dante, are those creatures who “have intelligence and love.”

Christian Life As a “Holy Desire”
Augustine had described the Christian life as a “holy desire”:  “That which you desire you do not yet see; but by desiring you become capable of being filled by that which you will see when it comes. For you as in filling a leather bag…one stretches the skin…and by stretching it becomes capable of holding more; so as desire increases it stretches the mind, and by stretching, makes it more capable of being filled.”