St. Augustine on Science & Scripture

Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim) provided excellent advice for all Christians who are faced with the task of interpreting Scripture in the light of scientific knowledge. This translation is by J. H. Taylor inAncient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]

Source

Pope Ben on Agnosticism

In addition to the two phenomena of religion and anti-religion, a further basic orientation is found in the growing world of agnosticism: people to whom the gift of faith has not been given, but who are nevertheless on the lookout for truth, searching for God. Such people do not simply assert: “There is no God”. They suffer from his absence and yet are inwardly making their way towards him, inasmuch as they seek truth and goodness. They are “pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace”. They ask questions of both sides. They take away from militant atheists the false certainty by which these claim to know that there is no God and they invite them to leave polemics aside and to become seekers who do not give up hope in the existence of truth and in the possibility and necessity of living by it. But they also challenge the followers of religions not to consider God as their own property, as if he belonged to them, in such a way that they feel vindicated in using force against others. These people are seeking the truth, they are seeking the true God, whose image is frequently concealed in the religions because of the ways in which they are often practised. Their inability to find God is partly the responsibility of believers with a limited or even falsified image of God. So all their struggling and questioning is in part an appeal to believers to purify their faith, so that God, the true God, becomes accessible. Therefore I have consciously invited delegates of this third group to our meeting in Assisi, which does not simply bring together representatives of religious institutions. Rather it is a case of being together on a journey towards truth, a case of taking a decisive stand for human dignity and a case of common engagement for peace against every form of destructive force. Finally I would like to assure you that the Catholic Church will not let up in her fight against violence, in her commitment for peace in the world. We are animated by the common desire to be “pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace”.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/popes-address-in-assisi-full-text/#ixzz1cGvTwMU8

hear, hear!

living sacrifice

We have the idea that we can dedicate our gifts to God. However, you cannot dedicate what is not yours. There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself. - Oswald Chambers, Utmost For His Highest

social justice & the meaning of love to a servant of the loving God

I got an email today from my good friend, Sarah, with a link to a wonderful essay printed in the New York Times by Jonathan Franzen. Her subject line read “This is why social justice should be based on love.” Franzen did not write about social justice specifically but ruminates on significance of love & technology in a consumerist culture. However, his definitions & insights into love were definitely pertinent to the Christian who wants to serve because our greatest calling is to love God & to love one another.

Franzen says –

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

Also relevant is this excerpt from The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen –

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. Our lives are filled with examples which tell us that leadership asks for understanding and that understanding requires sharing. So long as we define leadership in terms of preventing or establishing precedents, or in terms of being responsible for some kind of abstract “general good,” we have forgotten that no God can save us except a suffering God, and that no man can lead his people except the man who is crushed by its sins. Personal concern means making Mr. Harrison the only one who counts, the one for whom I am willing to forget my many other obligations, my scheduled appointments and long-prepared meetings, not because they are not important but because they lose their urgency in the face of Mr. Harrison’s agony. Personal concern makes it possible to experience that going after the “lost sheep” is really a service to those who were left alone…

All this suggests that when one has the courage to enter where life is experienced as most unique and most private, one touches the soul of the community. The man who has spent many hours trying to understand, feel, and clarify the alienation and confusion of one of his fellow men might well be the best equipped to speak to the needs of the many, because all men are one at the well-spring of pain and joy.

This is what Carl Rogers pointed out when he wrote: “…I have–found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets who have dared to express the unique in themselves.” It indeed seems that the Christian leader is first of all the artist who can bind together many people by his courage in giving expression to his most personal concern.

Which reminds me of the popular saying, “to save a life is to save the world entire” derived from the Talmud: For this reason man was created alone, to teach thee that whosoever destroys a single soul… scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had destroyed a complete world; and whosoever preserves a single soul…, scripture ascribes [merit] to him as though he had preserved a complete world. 

I serve a God that suffered & died for all of humanity but He also would have done it for a single one of my friends. In my mind He died for everyone I know but He also died just for Sarah. His infinite nature allows him to love the world yet love my friend so deeply that for an eternity He listened to each thought & prayer she would ever utter in this life with sweet, loving anticipation before making her out of clay in the unknown depths of the earth. He saw her unformed body & counted every hair on her head, and in the core of her being lie compassion, empathy and a capacity to love & these are His fingerprint. I am reminded that this is how much He loves my friend. It is also how much He loves me and that is why she & I love each other. It is from this place we carry out His justice serving the poor, defending the fatherless, caring for the widow & loving those who are foreign to this land.

Love is such a beautiful thing. -EP

tenderness

“Tenderness does not mean sentimentality and a show of emotion. It is unthreatening gentleness and kindness which shows another person that we consider them important and precious. It communicates life and freedom.” Jean Vanier

on osama

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

-William J. H. Boetcker

For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. – Ezekiel 18:32

Sometimes I forget this — my God is merciful. -EP

UPDATE, 5/13/2011:

Stephen Prothero, author of American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, says in a CNN blog entry

“Poll on bin Laden’s death reveals a disposable Jesus“

Only 53% of those surveyed say the United States should follow the golden rule and not use any methods on our enemies that we would not want used on our soldiers. Oddly, support for the golden rule in this case was actually lower (47%) among white evangelicals.

In other words, when Jesus said, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12), he didn’t really mean “everything.” He thought there should be an exception in the case of waterboarding your enemies.

One thing that struck me hard while researching my 2003 “American Jesus” book was how malleable Jesus is in the American imagination. Instead of lording over American life, telling us what to do, he seems to be taking orders from us, carrying our water.

Something about our culture has to change… -EP

silence

cross-posted from Anne Jackson Writes

For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing – not healing, not curing – that is a friend who cares.

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

-Henri Nouwen

activism lead by pietism

[A] Christianity in which men know how to picket, but not how to pray, is bound to wither … because we can already observe the logic of events. The fact is that emphasis upon the life of outer service, without a corresponding emphasis upon the life of devotion, has already led to obviously damaging results, one of which is calculated arrogance. How different it might be if the angry activists were to heed the words found in The Imitation of Christ, “Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”

The essence of pietism, by contrast, is the limitation of primary interest to personal salvation.

-From The New Man for Our Time, Elton Trueblood

where my faith meets personal politics

 

Man living under certain economic conditions is no longer in possession of the fruits of his life; his life is not his. His life is lived according to conditions determined by somebody else. And, I would say that on this particular point (which is very important indeed in the early Marx) you have a basically Christian idea. Christianity is against alienation. Christianity revolts against an alienated life.

-Thomas Merton, Final Lecture (Bangkok 1968)