What Did Saint Paul Know?

Peter J. Leithart   in First Things

Paul determined to know nothing but Jesus and the cross. Was that enough? What is the cross? Is it big enough to fill the universe?

The cross is the work of the Father, who gave His Son in love for the world; the cross is the work of the Son, who did not cling to equality with God but gave Himself to shameful death; the cross is the work of the Spirit, through whom the Son offers Himself to the Father and who is poured out from the pierced side of the glorified Son. The cross displays the height and the depth and the breadth of eternal Triune love.

The cross is the light of the world; on the cross Jesus is the firmament, mediating between heaven and earth; the cross is the first of the fruit-bearing trees, and on the cross Jesus shines as the bright morning star; on the cross Jesus is sweet incense arising to heaven, and He dies on the cross as True Man to bring the Sabbath rest of God.

Adam fell at a tree, and by a tree he was saved. At a tree Eve was seduced, and through a tree the bride was restored to her husband. At a tree, Satan defeated Adam; on a tree Jesus destroyed the works of the devil. At a tree man died, but by Jesus’ death we live. At a tree God cursed, and through a tree that curse gave way to blessing. God exiled Adam from the tree of life; on a tree the Last Adam endured exile so that we might inherit the earth.

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The Great Vigil

My favorite liturgy of the year is the one that marks the Eve of Easter.  It is arguably the most ancient documented Christian liturgy, apart from the Sunday Eucharist.  We see evidence of this liturgy in the Easter Sermon of Melito, Bishop of Sardis around 160 AD.  Here is a portion of the text of that great homily, "Concerning the Passover":

There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Passover: that mystery is Christ, and to him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth, clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin’s womb, and was born a man. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself; he triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt man’s destroyer, death, a fatal blow.

He was led forth like a lamb; he was slaughtered like a sheep. He ransomed us from our servitude to the world, as he had ransomed Israel from the hand of Egypt; he freed us from our slavery to the devil, as he had freed Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. He sealed our souls with his own Spirit, and the members of our body with his own blood.

He is the One who covered death with shame and cast the devil into mourning, as Moses cast Pharaoh into mourning. He is the One who smote sin and robbed iniquity of offspring, as Moses robbed the Egyptians of their offspring. He is the One who brought us out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom; who made us a new priesthood, a people chosen to be his own for ever. He is the Passover that is our salvation.

It is he who endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.

It is he who was made man of the Virgin, he who was hung on the tree; it is he who was buried in the earth, raised from the dead, and taken up to the heights of heaven. He is the mute lamb, the slain lamb, the lamb born of Mary, the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock, dragged off to be slaughtered, sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night. On the tree no bone of his was broken; in the earth his body knew no decay He is the One who rose from the dead, and who raised man from the depths of the tomb.

  My favorite liturgy of the year is the one that marks the Eve of Easter.  It is arguably the most ancient documented Christian liturgy, apart from the Sunday Eucharist.  We see evidence of this liturgy in the Easter Sermon of Melito, Bishop of Sardis around 160 AD.  Here is a portion of the text of that great homily, "Concerning the Passover":

There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Passover: that mystery is Christ, and to him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth, clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin’s womb, and was born a man. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself; he triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt man’s destroyer, death, a fatal blow.

He was led forth like a lamb; he was slaughtered like a sheep. He ransomed us from our servitude to the world, as he had ransomed Israel from the hand of Egypt; he freed us from our slavery to the devil, as he had freed Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. He sealed our souls with his own Spirit, and the members of our body with his own blood.

He is the One who covered death with shame and cast the devil into mourning, as Moses cast Pharaoh into mourning. He is the One who smote sin and robbed iniquity of offspring, as Moses robbed the Egyptians of their offspring. He is the One who brought us out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom; who made us a new priesthood, a people chosen to be his own for ever. He is the Passover that is our salvation.

It is he who endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.

It is he who was made man of the Virgin, he who was hung on the tree; it is he who was buried in the earth, raised from the dead, and taken up to the heights of heaven. He is the mute lamb, the slain lamb, the lamb born of Mary, the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock, dragged off to be slaughtered, sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night. On the tree no bone of his was broken; in the earth his body knew no decay He is the One who rose from the dead, and who raised man from the depths of the tomb.

Spending Time in Church

In my childhood (not all that long ago!) I grew up attending Sunday School and Sunday Morning Worship, Sunday Evening Training Union (a kind of Sunday Evening Sunday School) and Sunday Evening Worship.  Then, on Wednesday nights, Bible Study and Prayer Meeting.  Youth Group met some other night, as did other church organizations.

Our family, and we were far from alone, often spent the whole of Sunday (we called it "The Lord's Day") in Church-- worship, study, sharing meals together, kids playing on the church lawn, ending the day with more study and worship.  My fondest memories are associated with church.

Even Anglicans once kept both Sunday morning and evening services.  Anglicans once attended church on Prayerbook feasts (Ascension, All Saints Day, Good Friday).

Today, it is hard to get people to spend one hour a week (if that) in Church.

One of the greatest losses, it seems to me, is the great tradition of Holy Week observance, particularly amongst Anglicans, for whom it once was a hallmark of piety and devotion.

Perhaps we can once again commit to bringing our families to worship the Lord on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday (of course, our churches would have to keep the Great Vigil of Easter on Easter Eve, but I plan to write more about that later).  These three great days, called the Holy Triduum, prepare us to have a more meaningful Easter celebration.  That would be a great step forward for us, and a restoration of something great.

A grief observed

From World Magazine:

One of the many wrenching scenes in post-tsunami Japan is unfolding in a most unlikely place: a bowling alley. Along the 25 lanes at Airport Bowl near Sendai, more than 100 white coffins replace standard white pins, and each day grieving Japanese citizens somberly peer inside the boxes, looking for lost loved ones.
For many, the search is futile. By early April, the Japanese government reported more than 10,000 people dead and nearly 16,000 missing after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami shattered—or swallowed—scores of northeastern coastal towns. (A 7.1-magnitude aftershock on April 7 rattled the quake zone and knocked out power in three northeastern prefectures, but officials didn't immediately report further damages or injuries.)

In many cases, recovering more bodies may be impossible: The tsunami that swept away towns buried others under miles of rubble. During the last weekend of March, the U.S. military joined Japanese forces in a two-day blitz to recover as many bodies as possible. The 18,000-man mission recovered 339 dead.

But even during some of the most painful moments of recovery, many Japanese have remained remarkably calm and resolute: Rescue workers bow in respect for the dead after recovering a body, and homeless Japanese quake victims bow in gratitude for sometimes meager supplies of food and water.

Some call the dynamic gaman—a word that conveys the Japanese virtue of honorably enduring hardship no matter how bad it gets. Others might call it gambatte—the Japanese virtue of doing one's best no matter how difficult the circumstances might grow.

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Evangelicals Divided

Evangelicals Divided

The battle between Meliorists and Traditionists to define evangelicalism 

 

From First Things

 

Long confused with fundamentalism by most of the academy and dismissed as intellectually inadequate, evangelical theology has in the last two decades become one of the liveliest and most creative forms of Protestant theology in America. Not long ago the Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten noted that “the initiative in the writing of dogmatics has been seized by evangelical theologians in America. . . . Most mainline Protestant and progressive Catholic theology has landed in the graveyard of dogmatics, which is that mode of thinking George Lindbeck calls ‘experiential expressivism.’ Individuals and groups vent their own religious experience and call it theology.”

Evangelicals generally believe theology is reflection on what comes from outside their experience as the Word of God. For that reason—that they talk not primarily about themselves but about a transcendent God whose self-revelation must be wrestled with—they not only have more to say than mainline Protestantism, but more interesting things to say.

Most evangelicals believe that they are bound by the Word of God understood as a transcendent, authoritative revelation. But not all are so convinced, and therein lies a problem for the future of evangelical theology and the future of evangelicalism. The rising generation of evangelicals is not as socially or theologically liberal as has been thought (See Byron Johnson, “The Good News About Evangelicalism,” FT, February), but their theological leaders are splitting in ways that threaten the future integrity of their movement and the source of its theological creativity.

Evangelical theology has long been divided between those who emphasize human freedom to choose salvation (Arminians) and those who stress God’s sovereignty in the history of salvation (the Reformed). Now this old division has been overshadowed by a larger division between new opposing camps we may call the Meliorists and the Traditionists. The former think we must improve and sometimes change substantially the tradition of historic orthodoxy. The latter think that while we might sometimes need to adjust our approaches to the tradition, generally we ought to learn from it rather than change it. Most of the Meliorists are Arminian, and most of the Traditionists are Reformed, though there are exceptions on both sides.

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