Leshem Shamayim: “For the sake of heaven.”

It seems to me that differing definitions of purity continue to separate believers just as they did in the first century Antioch conflict at the Jerusalem council. Writing as a new Roman Catholic who has journeyed most of my life in sincere, but non-liturgical churches, I believe we Christians continue to redefine lines of theological, if not behavioral (this does in fact remain) purity, drawing lines in the sands of life to separate ourselves… but these lines are as trivially solved by a breath of wind. At the Jerusalem council, the debate over which parts of the Mosaic law Gentile converts would be held to was hot. Schnelle presents three different positions which might have been discussed on Gentile relations to Torah: first, freedom from Torah except for ethical requirements (no circumcision); second was limited observance of Torah without circumcision, and thirdly entire Torah observance including circumcision (Schnelle 131). As Schnelle mentions earlier in this chapter, this is a debate of two gospels: that of Circumcision and that of Uncircumcision (126-8). I imagine this would sound shocking to most Christians to imagine that  there could ever have been more than one salvific gospel preached by the Church universal, but noting that denominational rifts today are still marked by considerations of theological purity, should we be surprised to find that multiple gospels are still being preached today?

Of course, when saying “gospels” I am following in Schnelle’s use of multiple gospels, for as he notes, the “two gospels” are really two different set of practices/beliefs stemming from the confession of the same, one event of Christ’s sinless death for our sins, was buried and rose from the depths of the grave three days later, to ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of the Father. The idea of having a universal faith with numerous identities creates an interesting sort of problem. The original Jewish religious identity was constructed out of two aspects of Torah we discussed in class, the halachah (law part of the Torah) and haggadah (story narratives of the Torah). Their history was constantly reinterpreting Torah to make sense and keep current this religious identity… what kind of threat was this upstart of a preacher, Paul, preaching that salvation through a Jewish Messiah, Jesus could come without a crucial part of Torah observance? Well, I see a similar distinction drawn between liturgical and non-liturgical churches. Since this is a Lutheran class, I hope there will be no offence taken if I label, for comparison’s sake, liturgical churches as the “Jewish Christians” of today and nonliturgical churches as the “Gentile Christians.” Jesus is in both equally, my heart feels quite confident proclaiming.

So there have been numerous councils within my church denomination, the Catholic Church, concerning what are termed within our walls as “ecclesial communities”… i.e., those without “the full sacramentals.” In Catholicism, the sacramental life seems to be the way of things… we have those seven sacraments which are viewed as the marks of our communion with God, supposedly instituted by Christ to dispense the grace necessary to try and live holy lives {please do not the heavy skepticism in my tone}. Baptism is like our circumcision, without it, there is no salvation? Confirmation seems necessary for the whole entrance into the Catholic Church, so perhaps both of those are our initiates, but then one reaches our third and central sacrament, the Eucharist… and I am sure many of my beloved Catholic associates would be hesitant to assure the safe place of one’s soul without regular attendance to the sacraments of Eucharist as well as Confession to prepare the soul for communion with our Beloved Jesus in the Eucharistic sacrament. I come most rootedly from a good, conservative Baptist tradition, without the slightest notion of what a sacrament was… living what some might consider an ignorant spiritual life, devoid of that fullness of life Jesus came to bring to the world. Was I? Was the second gospel of the Gentile Christians agreed upon to settle the Antiochan conflict a compromise to the message of Jesus and the rest of the Apostles? Some individuals may have felt that way, and later history shows that tides turned more against Pauline multi-gospel preaching, but I render an emphatic no to that question. There are in fact, if we are defining “gospel” as requirements of practice to maintain salvation (I cannot say obtain, I still believe faith is a gift we must receive and then act upon in faith), then today, multiple gospels exist… dictated by personal conscience and understanding of God’s requirements (Romans 14.-6, I think Schnelle and Paul would agree with me).

Paul’s act of initiating the acceptance of this “second gospel” of salvation is really quite astounding. Schnelle recounts how profoundly Paul’s Damascus road encounter with the Resurrected Jesus was in Chapter 14, “The Presence of Salvation,” inspiring this entire movement:  “Paul was set before the task of interpreting afresh, from the perspective of the Christ event, the history of the world and God’s saving plan within it—God’s acts in the past, present, and future and his own role in God’s plan.” (Schnelle 389)The Antioch conflict is a prime example of Paul putting this call into action, demonstration (in a way which must have seemed an innovation to conservative bystanders)… preaching a second gospel. Of course salvation is through Christ alone, and only by faith can one approach God through Christ (Hebrews 11.6), so it was this “gospel” of working out faith and identity in Christ that Paul introduced. Taking the Torah-centered Judiasm and reinterpreting it in light of the “new covenant” of Christ, Paul’s soteriology must have broken many Jewish toes.

Schnelle describes Pauline soteriology as a sort of negotiating between two distinct groups and many differing ideas which could not really be harmonized: “God’s first covenant continues to be valid, but only the new covenant saves.” (Schnelle 390) Perhaps the parable of Christ and the workers in the field could be appropriated to explain the salvation… the first covenant  (I don’t want to cheat the Old Testament of the validity and fullness of what God gave, but looking back with Paul’s retrospective rationalizations, I must consider the old covenant as working, but also requiring the renewal of God’s covenant with His People in Jesus’ new covenant) was necessary in order that the second covenant might come, but one the salvation of Christ rather than Torah was being preached, the first salvation was not necessary to accept, but could be reinterpreted through retrospection. Considering this, I wonder about the liturgical/non-liturgical church examples I brought up earlier. The Catholic Church has traced its origins and history farther than any other church I have yet experienced… bridging the gap between modern day Chrisianity and the time of the Apostles. J Dare I challenge with my own reinterpretive/innovative statement the idea perpetuated in my church that non-liturgical churches are missing fullness of salvation without sacraments, but that perhaps their very existence, born out of what is now a liturgical church, was necessary for a more full understanding of Jesus and our salvation through him? Though not possible without a mother, the children have grown up and assumed valid identity and relationship with the Father.

Entering this class, I was not entirely sure, what to expect or think. So as I muse through my  copious notes on the class and the readings, I will try and interact with the line of questioning I was engaging when entering this class: what is the church, what is it about Christianity in general that has tried to be so totalitarian… when the message of Jesus Christ was love, and the basic tenants of Christianity articulated by Paul all centered initially on inclusivity, erasing the boundaries of otherness between Jew and Gentile…and somehow now we find ourselves in current day Christianity in little fragments of Churches, most still claiming that they in some way, have more truth than the others… My questions mostly stem from my lifelong quest to really try and understand at a religious and personal level, how it is that people who have strong beliefs in differing doctrines can have such a vehement ability to impersonalize and dehumanize one another. It’s not always a hate, but the more I consider the failing interactions between even people who are technically supposed to be united in some way or another, the more I consider it dangerous to try and engage individuals through the lens of a totalitarian system which tries to universalize a religion to all sorts of people, no two of whom are alike. So I will be engaging all my thoughts and the material from class as a struggling Catholic wrestling with my own presuppositions of the world and trying to learn a more Christ-like attitude to engage with people and to apply to the larger problem of whatever it is that makes up “Church.”

One of the first questions I wrote down in my journal, the first day of class was “Can we have belief in an absolute truth and not be relationally forceful? My conversion and internal faith perspectives spur this question….” Levinas began to play in my mind and my conception of God and faith… I did not grow up in the universal sort of absolutist faith system that considers reason the likeness and image of God. Reading Levinas’ Totality and Infinity, I gleaned a lot more of the perspective of God that I have, and of others,  which I feel needs to be integrated more deeply into the Catholic faith. When approaching the Catholic Church’s overall perspective of persons, I find Levinas’ preface to be very instrumental in identifying the demon in the rough of what I have been straining against religiously, both in engaging with God and other persons: “The relation between the same and the other is not always reducible to knowledge of the other by the same, nor even to the revelation of the other to the same, which is already fundamentally different from disclosure.”[1] Levinas’ own questions about the Other, rejecting knowing as the most appreciative knowing of the Other… encouraged me that the purpose of recognizing Other in what it fully was, was not to absorb it into the totality of my thought and identity—like I have often been afraid happens in my Church… it is not a possession, it is a mysterious wonderment to relate with something wholly apart from myself, fundamentally constituted in a reality I can never fully step into.  My approach to Church has always been to try and open myself up wide enough to encompass whatever is being offered in the particular denomination or culture I am present with, worshipping with… to assimilate it into myself. And perhaps my identity allows some adoption, but I will never be fully constituted in or by the group/person/identity which is different from me. I must learn to relate with it in its difference.

Levinas’ discussion of desire and the Desired was precisely put in the most romantic terms in which I love to consider my God, my Jesus… which is never fully sated, even in its absolute state, as he recognizes in “Metaphysics and Transcendence,” for the Desired is so absolutely other, my longing will simply drive me to a perpetually deepening in the sojourning of this life. Maybe this would drive a stake of despair into some hearts, but the revelation of these words to me, and the realization that my quest after an incorporeal, yet somehow physically present Body of Christ on earth…. And maybe even a mystically knowing-by-experience with this Jesus despite the distance of heaven… gave me a sense of hope. Mine, I realized, in relationship with God and Church, is a “metaphysical desire (that) has another intention; it desires beyond everything that can simply complete it.”[2] Levinas makes a beautiful transition from the categorical and impersonal language I am used to hearing when metaphyics is discussed to draw it into his intimate redefinition of transcendence, and experience of love and desire:  “To die for the invisible, this is metaphyics.”[3]

For Levinas, God is a Stranger to me, because I can only know Him in the glimpses of relational experience I catch now and again evades me grasp so I can never pin God down into a systematic totality… but rather, Levinas reaffirms that my identity and the identity of the Other necessarily remain distinct and relate in a way that does not try to dominate the Other.[4] This I struggle with a bit applying to God. At least in the freedom I perceive in my own life, the free will with which I make decisions and act out volitionally my own morality and personal relationships, I could agree with Levinas’ suggestions that the equal relationship with Other is permitted to remain Other is only in a condition where there is no power hierarchy. Yet… what theological difficulties does this present? What about the doctrines of omnipotence, omnipresence, etc? Can God be all-powerful if the relationship I establish with Him is based on my perception of no power hierarchy between us? Rather, I think this is a more easily applied to Church relations. Why cannot different denominations simply look at one another encounter the Divine in other another however He is held differently[5]? Perhaps I have tarried too long on just a portion of my beloved Levinas and should move forward to engaging our other readings, reading from them what I can apply to my own struggle with Christianity in the rather universalizing system I am part of.

The discussion concerning Islamapobia interested me quite a bit… partly because out of the three “Religions of the Books,” only Islam and Christianity and “universal” in the sense of making disciples and evangelizing. Judaism seems quite content to take only those who are willing to approach it and conform to it rather than inviting others to enter. Throughout our discussion in class, I wondered about the competition of conquest between the two religions, and if it were ever possible to claim a universal truth while not becoming too particularizing (in terms of membership or exclusive beliefs) when brought to a global context? Is pluralism the answer to solving monolithic systems of monotheistic and strictly principled religion like Christianity and Islam? Farid Esack mused a bit on pluralism within Islamic tradition in Qur’an, Liberation & Pluralism: noting that liberalism has difficulty interacting with some more traditional notions of religious concepts in Islam, Esack  distinguishes between a hermeneutic of pluralism with the aim of liberation from the hermeneutic of pluralism simply for the sake of integrating liberal ideology into a patriarchal religious system.[6] This chapter sought to redefine the labels and titles used in the Qur’an to dynamically assess the behavioral expectations of the labels’ content in progressively redefined context. Esack refuses to allow personal accountability to slide under the guise of group identity, but recognizes that religious individuality is open for perpetual transformation, thus making the group identity dynamic as well.[7] This recognition that the pluralistic group identity would be an extremely useful tool to integrate into Catholic understanding of tradition.

To some degree, I recognize that Catholisicm prides itself on the pluralism caught up in the universal religion, perhaps much like Islam, but sometimes I wonder about the extent of the pluralism. I must confess this musing is a bit uniformed… I do realize the diversity of Religious orders in the Catholic Church, as well as the multiple rites which are part of the larger Catholic Churches, beyond the Roman Latin rite most popularly celebrated in the West.[8] Yet how inclusive are these seven various rites of the Church, and would the Catholic Church be willing to expand those? Well, in recent news the worldwide Anglican Communion led by Archbishop Williams has announced plans to rejoin the Catholic Church: “Under the terms of an apostolic constitution (formal decree), disaffected conservative Anglicans will be able to join the Catholic Church while retaining their distinctive liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions.”[9] Is this a move of absorbing the Other, or is the preservation of the Anglican rite a type of inclusivity, as described in Esack’s Chapter 5, “The Qur’an & The Other: Pluralism and Justice.”

Interestingly, Esack points out that while “the Qur’an does not regard all people and their ideas as equal,” it does proceed “from the premise that the idea of inclusiveness is superior to exclusiveness.”[10] Utilizing another scholar’s comparison of inclusivity to working democracy and exclusivity to fascist political parties, where inclusivity is “not merely a willingness to let every idea and practice exist” but rather is “geared towards specific objectives, such as freeing humankind from injustice and servitude to other human beings so that they might be free to worship God.”[11] These principles as well, I think, can be applied to the Catholic Church, as well as all other church denominations that see themselves as universal. So perhaps to all my Catholic counterparts, I have a very skewed ecclesiology… but if the body of Christ is truly to be composed in relationship of the parts to one another, we cannot afford to be exclusive, but rooted in the same declaration of Christ sinlessly living, unjustly crucified, and resurrected, seated at God’s right hand in glory, can we not learn to treat one another in relationship with humility? So I conclude an all-too-brief reflection with a few verses from Romans 12:

³ And through the grace that I have been given, I say this to every one of you: never pride yourself on being better than you really are, but think of yourself dispassionately, recognizing that God has given to each one his measure of faith. ⁴ Just as each of us has various parts in one body, and the parts do not all have the same function: ⁵ in the same way, all of us, though there are so many of us, make up one body in Christ, and as different parts we are all joined to one another.[12]

[2] Reader: Levinas, “Metaphysics and Transcendence,” Totality and Infinity. 34.

[3] Ibid., 35.

[4] Ibid.,39.

[5] ‘scuse me for a moment, I just realized I was using patriarchal language, or what is perceived as non-inclusive language when speaking about God. I don’t believe God has gender, in my thinking, I still am trying to resolve the patriarchal origins of the text, but I tend to think the authors had a purpose in using certain gender for God. My theology proper is rather conservative… I am very open to using female pronouns when speaking the Holy Spirit aspect of the Divine Trinity… I am just trying to clarify here that I am not attempting to be sexist, simply speaking from a conservative background, in an explorative state with my Christianity.

[6] Reader: Esack, Farid. Chapter 4, “Redefining Self & Other: Imam, Islam & Kufr,” Qur’an, Liberation & Pluralism, 116.

[7] Ibid., 144.

[8] According to a web page published by The Minnesota St. Thomas More Chapter of Catholics United for the Faith, March/April 2000, called “The Rites of the Catholic Church,” “The Catechism lists seven rites. These rites so listed: Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite, and Chaldean,² are actually families of liturgical expression.” Accessed 22 Oct 2009. <http://www.mncuf.org/rites.htm>.

[9] “Rome’s Anglican Option May Change Both Churches.” 21 October 2009. Sourced from News Website, “The Age,” through WAtoday.com.au. <http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/editorial/romes-anglican-option-may-change-both-churches-20091021-h8zc.html>.

[10] Reader: Esack, Farid. Chapter 5, “The Qur’an & The Other: Pluralism & Liberation,” Qur’an, Liberation & Pluralism, 175.

[11] Ibid.

[12] New Jerusalem Bible, Copyright 2009 Catholic Online. All materials contained on this site, whether written, audible or visual are the exclusive property of Catholic Online and are protected under U.S. and International copyright laws, © Copyright 2009 Catholic Online. Any unauthorized use, without prior written consent of Catholic Online is strictly forbidden and prohibited. Accessed 25 October 2009. <http://www.catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=52>.

From class discussion on the 20^th of October, we discussed “Paul’s Paradoxical Life as Apostolic Witness,” based out of chapter 10 in Schnelle. The conversation about the contradictory values/practice of the Corinthian people in comparison to Paul’s uplifting of his own life as a path of imitation of Christ nudged my own imagination towards something I have wrestled with in my own church, the Catholic church, since my confirmation in April… pretence of accepting the paradoxical salvation Jesus has laid out for us, while in reality fostering contradictory doctrine and practice. Hearing that the Corinthian people, who are widely recognized among Biblical scholars as people who loved to party, really held ascetical spiritual ideals of abstinence/celibacy and other separatist practices, I began contemplating the idea of consecration as held in the Catholic hierarchy, not the Catholic populous of lay people today. We have something like a hierarchy set up for life vocations… remaining one of the few churches, if not the only one, to uphold celibacy as a more complete imitation Christi than marriage; in my circles filled with people of the life style classified as “Religious,” I often hear that such a complete consecration is “a higher form of life.”As I explore this teaching of my church in conversation with Paul, Schnelle and our class in II Corinthians,  I will layout what I understand the paradox of Paul’s life witness from Schnelle, Paul and our class discussions, wrestle with the question of consecration as a separating out from the world, and then reflect on whether my church’s stratification of life vocations is really the paradox it is claimed to be or rather, a contradiction from my understanding of imitation Christi in Paul.

Since most of my reflection on what Paul’s life as paradoxical witness means come from section 10.3 of Schnelle (pg. 245-251), I will follow his categories of organization: (1) Power in Weakness, (2) The Apostle’s Integrity,  and (3) The Earthly and Heavenly House. The most striking aspect of the idea of a paradoxical life, to me at least, is the idea of power in weakness. Summed up in II Corinthians 4.7-12:

⁷ But we hold this treasure in pots of earthenware, so that the immensity of the power is God’s and not our own. ⁸ We are subjected to every kind of hardship, but never distressed; we see no way out but we never despair; ⁹ we are pursued but never cut off; knocked down, but still have some life in us; ¹⁰ always we carry with us in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus, too, may be visible in our body. ¹¹ Indeed, while we are still alive, we are continually being handed over to death, for the sake of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus, too, may be visible in our mortal flesh. ¹² In us, then, death is at work; in you, life.

Schnelle articulates the paradox of Paul’s Apostolic ministry being the constant presence of death which seemed to only increase his energy, fervor and urgency of his message. From Paul’s own testimony, since encountering Jesus of the Damascus road, he has been longing for that death which would allow his glorification with his Lord (Philippians 1.21). Paul understands his purpose on earth to walk in the very footsteps of Jesus, to suffer in proclamation of the gospel, and to die… that he might be resurrected… he longs for a “more real” life, the complete and full life which is not obtained until one is in the presence of Christ. In emptying himself of the prestige he could have held among the Jewish people because of his education, Paul makes himself low like Jesus, serving the world to achieve His goal of salvation, with Jesus. This reminds me of the Henri Nouwen book, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life. The very title encapsulates what Schnelle portrays as paradox in Paul’s life witness: rather than oriented to death and decimation, Paul finds liberation from his own self-confined restraints in finally being filled fully with the life of Christ when his own life has run out of him.

In the profound understanding of Paul’s persistent seeking of life through a way of death and pain as the same paradox which allowed Jesus Christ to be glorified for the salvation of all, the second title-head of “The Apostle’s Integrity” also emphasizes paradox as the way of life for the believer. Schnelle states elegantly, “Externally, the life of the apostle is worn away and exhausted by the many sufferings he must endure in the course of his mission. At the same time, within this (outer nature, 4.16) the grace of God is at work through the Spirit.” (248) Paul’s sufferings have unlocked his heart to experience “the true treasures of life: faith and hope in God” (248) which he offers to the church as well. This, Schnelle explains, demonstrates the consistency of Paul’s belief in “a particular understanding of reality” which is not natural to human beings in unredeemed states (247).  Because Paul preaches “God as the ultimate ground of reality,” the external state of existence is unimportant and can be as wretched as Paul’s own life after meeting Christ, though God continues working through it (247). This separation of corporeal reality from ultimate reality in God allows Schnelle to turn to the final element of paradox in Paul’s life ministry, “The Earthly and Heavenly House.”

This discussion of earthly and heavenly homes in II Corinthians 5 led me to wonder about Paul being Gnostic in the past… but in more recent explorations of dualism in my own Catholic journey, I think there must be a greater continuity between body and soul, though Paul does seem to emphasize the liberation of life as spiritual. While the first 2 verses of this chapter seem to want to discard the body, the third erases ideas of dualism with the presentation of the idea of heavenly bodies: “… longing to put on our heavenly home over the present one; if indeed we are to be found clothed rather than stripped bare.” While Schnelle explicates this as indeed Paul’s desire for all mortality to be swallowed up, it is not a hope for purely spiritual state of being, but his desire to be “found clothed” is in a new body. Because of this interpretation I’m bringing to II Corinthians 5.3, while I agree with Dr. Balch’s notes that Paul’s assessment the body is usually negative (Schenelle Chapter 10 Summary, pg. 3, par 2), I don’t agree that dualism characterizes this section… only the appearance of dualism, but certainly individualism and abating an anxious expectation of a soon end. I prefer Schnelle’s explanation as dualistic imagery, which Paul uses to indicate that there is no soon departure from these imperfect bodies. The fellowship he experiences in the present with Jesus, both crucified and risen, will lack fulfillment until that heavenly body is obtained.

It would seem that no matter how much Paul seems to accept the current situation, he still demonstrates a discontent and longing for a future fullness. For all my attempts to not read dualism into II Corinthians, Paul strains towards this idea of separation with current situations…at least a future separation. In the present, the only thing besides godly behavior setting believers apart from their fellow Corinthians in the hope of this future separation… at base, this acceptance of an alternate reality according to which they are patterning their lives now. So, I am going to try and integrate this conversation back to my original issue of consecration in an ascetical sense… and how I wonder whether my church is creating more of a contradiction, perhaps a dualism in the life ideas we heirarchicize on earth. In II Corinthians, Paul doesn’t speak about a separate way of living, rather a hope and belief reality, which would affect behavior, but not as much as celibate ideal voiced in 1 Corinthians 7. So the only form of consecration I really see communicated in II Corinthians 4 and 5 is really the alternate reality to what is apparent to unredeemed peoples, the absolute reality.

This then leads me to wrestle with my own church’s ideal of consecration as a separation, ascetical existence…the Catholic sense of “highest form of life…”; is that more Jewish than Christian? Didn’t Jesus come to make up pure and different, in world, and where do we fit the other-worldly ideals. Are we in Catholicism preaching too much of a non-paradoxical gospel, and more of a human contradiction, by saying that; so how do we read 1 Cor 7 in light of the passion narrative? Jesus took flesh and touched women. The paradox of Paul was the acceptance of another reality, and willingness to suffer now in order to someday be admitted well into that heavenly reality… which is what the Catholic ascetical ideal seems to try and live out as a sign of a coming heaven on earth. My church interprets the Matthew 19 dialog about no giving in marriage in heaven to signify that heaven is celibate, a speculation which may be true, but definitely causes some confusion when one is choosing what sort of priorities to set on earth here and now for eternity.

We Catholics have in the heart of our theology retained an idea of imitating Jesus through asceticism, rather than integrated living which doesn’t contradict natural ends of life, but embracing suffering as a way of drawing closer to Christ, we seem to prefer elevating the contradiction of human nature. I love the idea of celibacy as a state of life consecrated to life, and it is special, rare, unusual, but how can it be a more complete consecration? Where do we find the beauty of something so abnormal and not make it the most perfect imitation of Christ… are we as people capable of living after Jesus without making comparison and judgment between degrees and values of holy living. How much paradox do we invite into our lives and are we willing to let go of reason and be fools in the living out. I hardly think so often times if our imago dei is reason (human reason?). Maybe paradise is a cloister, a monastery, a hermits hut. But heaven starts on earth, in that sense of hope looking forward, yes? If, according to 2 Cor 5.16-17… “we know according to the flesh Christ”; in suffering that we know Christ or that we no longer know the fleshly Jesus? As Dr. Balch said, the whole range of human feelings, including, but not at its peak in mystical experiences, is the expression of our gospel. But ok, that’s my perception.

So trying to think about Paul, this developer of the expanded Christianity we have today… Gentiles and Jews, and that the distinctions didn’t matter for authentic and full practice of the faith. I think Paul too from his own declaration of personal revelation by the resurrected Jesus was also largely responsible for the formation of the Christian religion. I did distinguish between the faith and what’s generally called the religion… church memberships, etc.  I think what I have witnessed in my own experiences of Christianity, the faith and the religion, I’ve noticed rather a disconnect from how we live our salvation, and how at least in my mind and some churches I’ve been in, the ideal is capsulated in an idea of “other” which is beyond grasp now. Its beautiful… and sometimes maybe a living too literally in line of that ideal has caused not the paradox, which is Christianity, but a contradiction.

I was sitting in my Paul Class at the Lutheran Seminary this morning, musing over Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7, discussion of a cultural ideal of stoicism and asceticism that may have existed in the mentality of the Corinthian people, whether or not they lived partying lives or not. So I got to thinking about the idea of consecration as a separation, ascetical existence…the Catholic sense of “highest form of life…” is that more Jewish than Christian? Didnt Jesus come to make up pure and different, in world, and were do we fit the other-worldly ideals. Are we in Catholicism preaching too much of a non-paradoxical gospel, and more of a human contradiction, by saying that; so how do we read 1 Cor 7 in light of the passion narrative? Jesus took flesh and touched women (;)). Maybe asceticism isn’t a problem, but ascetical life without the complementary acknowledgement of the beauty of the other vocation. But I really do wonder about what is it to be consecrated and not be apart from the world. Obviously we see that as something impossible… but somewhere in at least some of us… Ok, I’ll just talk for myself, ‘cause I can’t claim to understand any sort of generic Christianity apart from a confession of the rule of faith… I have some strange longing in me that seems to want to go beyond… a restless soul, one that even if filled up to a place I’ve never imagined, I still want to go farther/deeper. I don’t understand it. I love C.S. Lewis’ language of longing for Deep Heaven, though I have no idea what heaven is… and for Jesus, as some of the saints speak… though I am sure I fashion Him too much after my own wants, unconfessed needs, etc.

So take the idea of set apart and place it in context for Christianity… covenant. I kinda liked something pointed out from Paul’s perspective of Moses’ veiling his face story in Exodus (because it shone too brightly for the people to look upon… He’s spent a while in the presence of God’s glory…) 2 Corinthians 3.6-8, “6 He has given us the competence to be ministers of a new covenant, a covenant which is not of written letters, but of the Spirit; for the written letters kill, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the administering of death, engraved in letters on stone, occurred in such glory that the Israelites could not look Moses steadily in the face, because of its glory, transitory though this glory was, 8 how much more will the ministry of the Spirit occur in glory!” Our professor read this as Paul reinterpreting the events of Exodus… Moses covering his face to hide the fading of the old covenant. Jesus is a new Moses, similar to Philo’s. …but more this-worldly. (2 Cor. 12.2… Paul’s trip up the mountain was important to him, but was not his imitation of Christ). Paul’s imitation of Christ was both suffering and glory. You don’t have the gospel without the paradox of the cross and the resurrection. So where do we find community in Jesus and all, because the Markian presentation of him a lot was pretty ascetical… that transfiguration ideal. We realize asceticism is unnatural to human people… what makes it soo fascinating? That beyond sense?

So where do we find the beauty of something so abnormal and not make it the most perfect imitation of Christ… are we as people capable of living after Jesus without making comparison and judgement between degrees and values of holy living. How much paradox do we invite into our lives and are we willing to let go of reason and be fools in the living out. I hardly think so often times if our imago dei is reason (human reason?). Maybe paradise is a cloister, a monastery, a hermits hut. But heaven starts on earth.

According to my author Schnelle in 2 Cor 5.16-17, Paul is saying that … “we know according to the flesh Christ”; in suffering that we know Christ or that we no longer know the fleshly Jesus? Whole range of human feelings, including, but not at its  peak in mystical experiences, is the expression of our gospel. Vs. 18 and 19… we are not trying to appease an angry God (Schnelle argues against the theory of atonement, that something else has to appease God); for God is reconciling us to Himself and we continue that; “18 It is all God’s work; he reconciled us to himself through Christ and he gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 I mean, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not holding anyone’s faults against them, but entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” This was really interesting, considering what the homily on Sunday addressed… suffering as something receptive, we receive it. That hit a curiosity in me, maybe my interest in woman studies … but to receive suffering and not have it created in our own action. And the priest at St, Alberts said our reception of suffering was part of our action in atonement. Curious. I hadn’t thought of atonement coming anywhere but Jesus…. Hm, does some of that suffering-for-atonement come to play in separatist consecration?

Again, I wonder  how purely we can consider this life in relation to a belief/hope for the next… I cannot only treat life-in-matter in light of life-in-soul… what about these bodies; how on earth could I ever dare look at relationship as something for the sake of eternal soul, of course they are, relationships deeply affect us, even effect us, but my consideration of those I love cannot intentionally be where they might benefit my soul.

My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine… and yet this insipid secrecy keeps defining my life,

the prowling, the stealth behind absence hiding. Its amazing relationship continues to exist at all, for the

more I’m finding my own self, the less I like to expose… remaining poised and recoiled, constrained in

a corset of life-woes which well-up and cement in a heart thick-lined, in-laid with blood… welling up and

designed to be filled, but withholding because of the cost of freedom which bleeding out would entail…

a giving up of a self which is fragilely held together by frosty particles of frozen belief… tendrils

of old memories and forsaken shells… the placentas of where we were formed and the nutrients

that used to infuse us… separated and born into ourselves as infants in a world as infantile as

the processing of each successive generation… the questions we birth in our continued quest of life

on earth. Is it always a quest or just what we make it?

Brought to term in a womb incubating many brothers and sisters, we wonder about matter

and meaning in future and purposes as we walk into each new day unalone though we isolate ourselves.

the patterns of our very masking reveal the cagedness inside us… a trapped soul, a chained animal,

a pinned ghost inside, we wonder if there’s something inside, when we feel,

when the brain-organs think… when all of us becomes engaged in something outside ourselves.

As much as ideas open doors to worlds beyond and imagination creates shape and color,

to be and be without at once seems encapsulated in the giving away of the only thing

we are ever really left with, even as we are always discovering it, ourself.

In our faith we have developed some myth that maybe You would save us from too,

Jesus in Heaven, through some Spirit You sent to earth, indwelling us as abodes at our invitation

propelled by Your calling…we dont understand the extend we are to shed

these fleshy minds to give and expand, to stretch into a place we can’t full hold,

to a person we cant grasp with our minds, but must come undone to be one with;

Still we puzzle over the movement of our selves and the longing of something else,

maybe soul, maybe not… and in relationship we wonder if a settlement can be found,

considering compromise, what is lost if there is no goal, no end, can we reach it

or touch it or imagine it if we believe in it? wherein lies the desired belief for a unity

that could be touched, but that gets a cold shoulder at each interaction, because

we throw on those invisible cloaks and wonder how much protection each interaction will take.

Look at us, intimacy with separation, what an oxymoron: guarding conversations

with second-thoughts, hiding our tears by turning our heads, half-heartedly embracing…

refusing to ask when what might revive the spark we each want, the interaction that will

draw us forward, the companionship that will boost the confidence of our strides into the future.

Where is the breaking point between that fragile ice of lonesomeness in solitude and

the burning lostness of treading our own ideals and personhoods underfoot in a herding stampede…

where do the extremes mingle and break free of their constraints in compliment of honesty

without empty exposure… where value needs no definition, experience needs no qualification,

but creates an event or personality of its own. Where can we find a place in the meaning

of submission and sacrifice… can we remove the stigmas of those to find a fullness of love…

something in-world that ties us together and wonders beyond. Let us at least create

in community, of two or more, a trust that will be itself in spite of appearance, and will know

itself between the reflections of others… and internal beliefs.

Jesus, we’ve been talking for short concentrated periods in real seriousness… and sometimes all then time conversation which sounds like idle gossip and pleasantries in the Church foyers… so what is our prayer, Jesus? Is our openness to You and closedness to the rest of Your body symptomatic of a dualistic way of being? Jesus, we split ourselves up enough in what we do and what we think about.. sometimes, Jesus, I try and step out of my own polarized world… that of a lay person in religion… having imbibed the beliefs and values of the history of my people with our God through a written tradition that is interpretted by life in the Church as we’ve continued it… all different manners of life traditions. I think a general trend we can draw of the Christian church universal is this idea of consecration, as has been discussed in other threads of conversation… from our history with the Jewish nation, we obtain the idea of people called and dedicated to our God. Set apart for Himself, a people called to be Holy. For a working definition of Christian, I am considering all people who name the historical man Jesus of Nazareth with the same person as the Son of God who came as Christ to redeem the souls of His people and teach us a new way of living, which is love (a concept we’ll leave undefined for the moment). Yet while I see Christianity embracing this concept of a distinctive identity and separateness in terms of identity.

We dont understand ourselves… we have two concepts colliding with one another in our minds and lives.. that we are human living in-world and with others in a corporeal existence, and then that we dont belong here, we have a draw to something more. Maybe that comes from all my Protestant upbringing of the ways we consider life, the body, etc. Maybe in this catholic  world since we seem to be concerned with a continuation of the body of Christ in a very connected, physical reality as well as this relationship we call spiritual too. Its confusing, but it retains that concept of the Kingdom of God here already but now yet… so many profound things that affect the future and life of the universe and people as we know them… and so how do we move and make decisions in a world where our sense of relationality is so extremely odd. Christians equate a lot to/with God… a sort of verticle relationship we try and establish with more than God, but also this idea we hold of the communion of the saints… the dead in Christ among us in relationship if not physical presence, angels, etc.  I guess if I think about Christianity, there is something special about a connection we have believed in with Jesus that allows us to have a hope which is so strong it allows us to at least imagine the presence and existence of those relationships.

Maybe its the girl of me, but I see life as a web of reltaionship that in world, is limited to the connections we have between people we meet. I dont know if true care ever ends, but its very difficult to maintain an active care between people. The amazing hope that Christianity gives me is that there someday will not be tears because of such care. That someday if there can be a way for the care in relationships can always continue actively, not be interrupted by temporal and spatial interruptions like death and leaving… if actions will someday always be in line with the continuation and strenthening of relationships… then that’s heaven.  I’m young, but I see differences of understandings and don’t comprehend what it is that divides us. I guess i should talk about my own family first… my church family… or the immediate Church family I have just joined. My Catholic family. How we take relationships and in some perspective, exchange them… how we leave one for another, like in marriage… we had one way of relating to the world… to our families, but if we marry, we start a new family… we related differently with the world. I look at this Catholic Church and think… O, I have married into a new family. In terms of relationship, I can ‘t remember a time I didnt know Jesus… at least, know Him in as much as I disclosed myself to Him, because He works in that for deeper knowing. At least, I think so. He and I used to have quite a starved relatonship, because I guard so closely. now.. I am finding Him greater sharing with others who compose His body. I am only on 5 years of that way of relating… growing up from a young child in wanting to know Him with others, to a very young bride discovering her new family.

So this family… entering was the strangest thing, and a kind of wedding. I found a distance I still dont understand, that I didnt even feel immediately put between me and all the families I have ever been part of,except the ones where the relationship was created in Jesus. I didnt start feeling different regarding confirmation except when I came back from a long run, after a day of work… I came back to my room and touched the white veil I was going to cover my head with again (in theory) from that day on in church. Something inside me started shaking. And shook harder so I thought I might fall over through the whole service. And looking out over the congregation of Mary Magdalene Parish in Berkeley, gathered there in candellight on easter eve…something about the way I saw them had changed. Looking at them was so different. Something had changed, that all the gradual leading to this path had not. I was part of them in a different way. I could barely sleep that night… the next morning, I walked all the way to the priory, for prayer, Mass, and fellowship… I felt my soul confused by glowing… I was folded up into an embrace I didnt understand and found a oneness that was so different than what had been before. What changed… what was before, and what was this now? Something inside me the entire time felt guilty for relishing this oneness because it didn’t make sense… what had changed. Why did the other people I loved feel so aliented. I didn’t have to choose between, did I?

The oneness amazes me the more its revealed. But I find this same kind of connection with those people I have met Jesus with… so here is a family, and the family in which I am to understand the relationship which expands from here to Jesus… it seems to strange, that we have to learn to be alone with Him, in a sense, before we can learn to be connected with Him through a uniting love in our world all around us. Jesus is intricately woven throughout the tapestry of our relationships here. I have to believe that. So Jesus, show me what it is that I am constantly evading from giving You, my will. Maybe in the context of an improper submission I have so steeled up my heart in my will that I have forgotten how to let it go, and have dethroned You, manipulating my own life, unwilling to let faith or anything come in the way of the right I think I concieve in my mind. But Jesus, each time, I learn my own perceptions are so imperfectly formed, and mostly by my own fault of unwillingness to ask… so Jesus, change my heart and really make it willing to open. You walked such a low road… never had shame of your own to accept, but bore mine… and should I not learn to open my arms to my cross so that the mutual weight that falls into care is lighter with others? Infuse more grace, Jesus, more grace.

O what a tangled web we weave… no fate to blame our protective deception on. Clear each confused situation as the moments need answers. If your grace is more than enough, teach us to submit maybe our stubborn prides and freedoms to being closer with each other, slow honest steps.

So the more I read and reflect on theological analyses of social politics… the more people and thoughts I am exposed to, the more I find the condition of my life to separate into the binaries of belief and experience… I believe inessences, in natures, in spirit beyond sense, etc… but in the experience of life, knowledge only comes by senses, by the tangible, by feeling “real” things in a three dimensional substanital existence. So where is the spiritual in an existential world. If I’m just looking around and being present in each situation (ie, not distracted, not mind-wandering through agenda, abstractions, etc…), I find spirit experienced in relationship. In my 3 hour class today, framed off of Emmanuel Levinas’ phenomonological wondering about “otherness” difference, sameness and the interactions between individual people, I was reflecting on this very thing with a classmate towards the end of class. Reflecting on the presentation of Barth’s theology, and the experience and situation out of which his theology describing God as wholly other to man and not being comprehensible or even comparable to (by any analogy) human experience. Some part of me reaches out to embrace that, running. And then here’s Jesus, part of the wholly other, but here too. God with us. That historical presence, and then by revelation, a continued spiritual reality. To me, in an existential world in a church that comprehends God through the tangible stuff by natural theology (our use of reason) and analogy. So where does the amphibious God-Son (love that spiritual/physical word of Lewis) come into the massive problem we have in Christian theology, and thus, my life-thinking…Church?

So supposedly, and hopefully, by any Christian’s reckoning, I don’t care what denomination you are, as long as you’re Christian claiming and living by whatever that little rule of faith we have is..HOPEFULLY you believe the idea of Christian church includes all who claim Jesus. Its supposed to be universal, I think, in a very few things: (1) Jesus, that historical guy who came to earth, is God in body; (2) this Jesus perfected/completed the means to relate with God, which before Him, we weren’t able to do… by living a perfect life, dying an unjust death, and doing something called resurrection and not remaining dead in that body. (3) that somehow all people are meant to be wrapped up in relation with one another, and with God in something unique called unity.. something where all differences unapologetically are, and are beautiful, refracting and reflecting all the glory God made. I know some of my friends think its cheaper to look for the God bits in things… I dont know. I want to love people for them, not for finding God inside them. If God is love, and God enables me to open up all the way to love with whatever is in me,  then maybe relationship with God can only be thought of as a sort of invisible spouse who works to erode the barriers of selfishness and self-protectingness I erect to remain unmoved and untouched by all that human passion that washes over me all the time. Yet, we run into an issue I mentioned earlier this week, or at the end of last week in a blog… that of abstraction from circumstances to relate with God.

See, I guess we call that consecration, when one is set apart to be devoted to God. Fits into this idea of relating with a Wholly Other person… we have to remove from what we are in nature to conform in our part of the relation. It seems that abstraction, though, in theology, can be both sides… we can abstract ourself to community (as we talked about in class today with Barth’s frustration… how his mentors and fellow theologians became so focused on being the German church, that they surrendered their ideas to those of nationalism and nazism), to a position where we are no longer critical (:) shouldn’t we always be when looking at ourselves next to Jesus)… or the problem of being so removed from community that we lose touch. Can we relate if we’ve abstracted ourselves to God. So I used to think that was the way to enter the world… (and this will require more reflection and a re-reading of Henry Nouwen’s “Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life”… from moving out to God, others, and then finding oneself)… and now I wonder. To abstract myself from the context I find myself thrown in is a kind of giving up of life. Jesus talked about how we must lose our lives to save them. Hm. But is that the kind of giving up that’s removal? ‘Cause it seems like the connected fabric, currents, whatever connected, fluid metaphor makes most sense to you… to abstract one life from the many that make up whatever fact of human universal there is for the moment, seems a robbery to the others it was connected to.

So how do we bring a wholly Other into the everyday. Funny to ask, cause we do it with each other in that spirituality of relationship all the time.We open ourselves up and let the masks fall of, let the guards down and share, or we probe with our curious wondering. Ever get that itch just to know someone, and accepting whatever they give to you, in whatever moments at part of that generous conitinuum they are? I kinda love that feeling. To sit near someone, and know that regardless of how afraid you are to voice your thoughts, and no matter how choppily they will come out, that other person likes to hear them, likes you best when you’ll be scared for a few moments to give out those thoughts, and is secure enough in knowing your thoughts will always be changing to just listen, engage, move on too? If we experience God, if we experience anything naturally of God, of divine bliss, love, happiness, just contentedness… just being who we are without convincing ourselves we need more excuses for that. Its beautiful, practically the most beautiful thing, ever. And it has everything to do with our situations and all the particularities person-to-person. So where do all our wonderings come from, if not sitting in that place of relationship with God, with each other, if not our fears?

Do we begin with reflection on concrete relationship to create a theology? Should we? seems appropriate to me.