Athanasius on the death of death

Reading On the Incarnation has been a wonderful way for me to dip my toes into the writings of the Patristics. There's great inspirational and intellectual value in reading these saints of old. I hope to do more. I did find parts of this book a bit tedious (Athanasius tends to plow the same ground over and over) but overall it was a great read.

If you're not familiar with On the Incarnation it's written in the form of a letter from Athansius to a Macarius, described as a "true lover of Christ." Reading between the lines it seems like Macarius was a youngish convert to Christianity, perhaps converted under the teaching of the bishop. Essentially it's a treatise on apologetics, as Athanasius gives the younger man ammunition with which to defend the orthodox teaching concerning the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Though the Incarnation is the main focus Athanasius begins with the doctrines of creation and fall, moving on to the problem of sin and how a just and holy God could redeem/recreate his fallen creation.

One of the most stirring sections of the book is when Athanasius points to the example of Christian martyrs, abundant in those days, as evidence for Christ's victory over death at the cross.

A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by a present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as something dead.

. . . men who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the Saviour's resurrection from it. Even children hasten thus to die, and not men only, but women train themselves by bodily discipline to meet it. . . . Death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot as he now is, the passers-by jeer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the king who conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by the Saviour on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all who are in Christ trample it as they pass and as witnesses to Him deride it, scoffing and saying, "O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy sting?"

Quotes from pp. 57-8 of this edition

Obama the radical centrist?

Lost in all the conservative anti-Obama hysteria is the deep disillusionment felt by many progressives about his administration so far. Liberal columnist Paul Krugman wonders:

Why does the Obama administration keep looking for love in all the wrong places? Why does it go out of its way to alienate its friends, while wooing people who will never waver in their hatred?

After citing examples of Obama's ill-advised (according to Krugman) efforts at compromise and lamenting the fact that the president hasn't been the "transformational figure some envisioned" Krugman continues:

What explains Mr. Obama’s consistent snubbing of those who made him what he is? Does he fear that his enemies would use any support for progressive people or ideas as an excuse to denounce him as a left-wing extremist? Well, as you may have noticed, they don’t need such excuses: He’s been portrayed as a socialist because he enacted Mitt Romney’s health-care plan, as a virulent foe of business because he’s been known to mention that corporations sometimes behave badly.

The point is that Mr. Obama’s attempts to avoid confrontation have been counterproductive. His opponents remain filled with a passionate intensity, while his supporters, having received no respect, lack all conviction. And in a midterm election, where turnout is crucial, the “enthusiasm gap” between Republicans and Democrats could spell catastrophe for the Obama agenda.

I rather suspect it's a good thing that the president has done his best to govern as a slightly left-of-center conciliator, though Krugman is probably right that it won't stand his party in good stead at the polls come November. We may well end up with the GOP back in control of either the House and/or Senate.

This reminds me of something I wrote after the '09 off-year elections, which is that idealogically America is still fundamentally a moderately right-of-center country. Despite the polarization and extreme rhetoric (on both sides) of the last two years, I believe that's still the case. It's part of the genius of the Founders that they set up a system of government that encourages stability and compromise. Idealogues who stray too far from the center are bound to be frustrated with it, but for better or worse the center holds.

Naming power

This morning I was reading Jeremiah 46 - the oracle of ancient superpower Egypt's defeat at the hands of the rival Babylonians led by Nebuchadnezzar. In verse 17 there's a mocking reference to Pharaoh Neco: "Call the name of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, 'Noisy one who lets the hour go by.'" (ESV) In modern vernacular, God is declaring that Pharoah is "all talk and no action." In the next verse this impotent name is juxtaposed with the all powerful name of Yahweh "the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts."

This got me thinking about the power of names, and the power to give names. The Old Testament is full of examples. Names meant more back then than they do now. The people of God praised Yahweh and they praised his name. The Psalmist cries "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" The very name of God is precious because it's intrinsic to his being. His name reveals his character. God's name is eternal, but that of his enemies will be erased. "You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish; you have blotted out their name forever and ever." (Psalm 9:5)

As parents we can appreciate the power of giving a name. My wife and I are tossing around boy and girl names for child #2. He or she will have no say in the matter. Jesus asserted his authority in this realm by renaming Simon, and by naming the demons and silencing them when they named him. Yeshua was a common name in first-century Palestine, like Joe or Bob. But once Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead and ascended to the Father he was given a name "above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come." (Eph. 1:21)

Those who confess that name as Lord have their names written down in the "book of life of the Lamb who was slain" (Rev. 13:8) and they have the promise of a new name themselves. "To the one who conquers . . . I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.'" (Rev. 2:17)

That's the name I want.

Lessons of history

Bret Stephens writes in today's Wall Street Journal on the intensifying debate over when and if the U.S. should get out of Afghanistan. The voices urging immediate withdrawal have gotten louder since the release of thousands of classified documents by something called WikiLeaks. The docs don't paint a pretty picture of U.S. involvement, but why is that a surprise? Unleashing the dogs of war is always fraught with peril and unintended consequences. Even the good guys don't escape the taint of moral compromise.

However, Stephens uses the example of Southeast Asia to argue that there are times when the only thing worse than a messy war is "peace"...

The Cambodian genocide is especially worth recalling today not only for what it was, but for the public debates in the West that immediately preceded it. "The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns," said then-congressman, now senator, Chris Dodd, by way of making the case against the Ford administration's bid to extend military assistance to the pro-American government of Lon Nol.

In the New York Times, Sydney Schanberg reported from Cambodia that "it is difficult to imagine how [Cambodian] lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." Mr. Schanberg added that "it would be tendentious to forecast [genocide] as a national policy under a Communist government once the war is over."

A year later, Mr. Schanberg was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, though not for tendentiousness.

All in all, America's withdrawal from Southeast Asia resulted in the killing of an estimated 165,000 South Vietnamese in so-called re-education camps; the mass exodus of one million boat people, a quarter of whom died at sea; the mass murder, estimated at 100,000, of Laos's Hmong people; and the killing of somewhere between one million and two million Cambodians.

The possibility that something like that could happen in Afghanistan once the American soldiers leave should at least give us pause. Stephens concludes: "It is a peculiar fact of modern liberalism that its best principles have most often been betrayed by self-described liberals." What was that about being doomed to repeat history?

Mencken and Machen

Today I started reading Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America. Not the most pithy title in the world, but this is a book that's been on my "to read" list for a while. It's going to be a good read and I'll probably be blogging about it more. Author D.G. Hart introduces his subject by setting out some of the anomalies that make Machen such a fascinating and worthwhile figure to study, and that set him apart from the other fundamentalists whose cause he led in the fundamentalist/modernist controversies of the 1920s and 30s.

For instance -- Machen was an articulate defender of the historical reliability of the New Testament while not afraid to use the methods of modern biblical scholarship. He opposed the secularization of life in America yet didn't oppose the teaching of evolution. He was an advocate for private Christian schools, but he didn't join his fellow fundamentalists in pushing for Bible reading and prayer in the public schools. He also didn't share their liking for Prohibition.

In some respects, Hart argues, Machen shared much in common with ardent secularists of the 1920s such as Walter Lippmann and H.L. Mencken. Both Machen and the secularists shared a deep antipathy to the vapid Protestant liberalism that had begun to characterize the mainline churches, and I might add, continues to reach higher and higher heights of vapidity in those same churches today. Mencken and Lippmann were impressed by the intellectual rigor and cogency of Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, published in 1923. Hart writes about their reactions to that great book:

There he [Machen] argued that by denying the supernatural character of Christianity liberal Protestants had actually created an entirely new religion. It was precisely this argument that Lippmann praised in A Preface to Morals for its "acumen," "saliency," and "wit." For Lippmann, Machen had provided a "cool and stringent" defense of traditional Protestantism, "the best popular argument" produced by either fundamentalists or liberals in a decade of religious turmoil. Mencken was no less impressed. To readers of the American Mercury he introduced the person he would later dub "Doctor Fundamentalis" as "a man of great learning and dignity—a former student at European universities, the author of various valuable books, . . . and a member of several societies of savants." (p. 3)

What's surprising is that Mencken wasn't here being sarcastic or ironic. Though Mencken made a career of mocking proponents of traditional religion, in Machen he saw a formidable advocate of orthodox Christianity. Mencken judged Machen's arguments "completely impregnable."

"If he is wrong," Mencken wrote, "then the science of logic is a hollow vanity, signifying nothing." (p. 4)

When Machen died at the relatively young age of 55 Mencken penned an admiring obituary about his fellow Baltimorean (both men are buried in the city). We can only hope that the Sage of Baltimore put his trust in the crucified and risen Savior who that other son of Baltimore so faithfully and articulately defended.

Racism and redemption

It seems that just about everyone involved in the Shirley Sherrod affair have covered themselves with shame, whether they realize it or not. Certainly the fearmongering right-wing media (that includes you Fox News) that twisted two minutes of a 45-minute speech out of context to create the appearance of a government conspiracy against white people. Who the heck is Andrew Breitbart anyway? I hadn't heard of this joker until quite recently, but apparently he makes Matt Drudge look like a paragon of responsible journalism. There's also the spineless Obama administration officials who hastily fired Sherrod without investigating the facts. Amy Davidson reports that Sherrod was called on her cell phone and told to pull her car over by the side of the road and resign, now.

Peggy Noonan has a sterling column in today's Wall Street Journal on the real Shirley Sherrod, what she really said, and what me might learn from the latest tawdry episode in the story of race in America. Here's the part that resonated with me the most because it's where I'm at right now.

Indignant, she set herself to save the Spooners' farm. "That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have," not white versus black. "It opened my eyes." She worked the phones, reached out to those who could help, talked to more lawyers, called officials.

And she saved that farm.

"Working with him," said Ms. Sherrod, "made me see . . . that it's really about those who have versus those who don't." It's helping the frightened and powerless. "And they could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic."

She said that 45 years ago she couldn't say what she will say tonight: "I've come a long way. I knew that I couldn't live with hate, you know. As my mother has said to so many, 'If we had tried to live with hate in my heart, we probably be dead now.'" She said it was "sad" that the room was not "full of whites and blacks." She quoted Toni Morrison: We have to get to a point where "race exists but it doesn't matter."

There is beauty in the speech, and bravery too. It was brave because her subject wasn't the nation's failures and your failures but her failures. The beauty is that it deals with the great subject of our lives: how to be better, how to make the world better. It's not a perfect speech—she's tendentious in her support for health care and takes cheap shots at Republicans. And it's not the poor versus the rich, it's the powerful helping the powerless. But it's good.

Contra Noonan I don't mind someone being "tendentious" in support of health care (whatever that means), and some times it is poor versus the rich. Moreover, the powers that be have not been above using race as a tool to divide people who should be making common cause, a point Sherrod makes in the speech. Despite those nits I'm glad to see someone on the right saying what needs to be said. Thank you, Peggy Noonan! Read the whole column, and then take her advice and listen to the full presentation that caused all the ruckus (which I've done). It's an amazing story.


UPDATED: In all fairness to FNC I should mention that Bill O'Reilly has apologized for "not doing my homework." Thanks to one of my readers for pointing that out.

Grief and Longfellow

Matt Fowler, the character played by Tom Wilkinson, is playing cards with his war buddies for the first time since burying his son. Character actor W. Clapham Murray, in a magnificent performance that moves me every time I watch it, captures the moment with some lines from the Longfellow poem "My Lost Youth".



In the Bedroom (2001, dir. Todd Field)

The wonder of the Incarnation (Athanasius)

From On the Incarnation:

You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost." (pp. 41-2)

At one and the same time—this is the wonder—as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father. Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it. For His being in everything does not mean that He shares the nature of everything, only that He gives all things their being and sustains them in it. Just as the sun is not defiled by the contact of its rays with earthly objects, but rather enlightens and purifies them, so He Who made the sun is not defiled by being made known in a body, but rather the body is cleansed and quickened by His indwelling, "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." (pp. 45-6)

I love the robust Christology of Athanasius! It's easy for us to take for granted the truths that this Egyptian Bishop gave his life to defend. He wouldn't budge an inch at a time when the full humanity and full deity of Jesus was under attack from all sides.

The cure for immodesty

Last week our family took a drive to the shiny new shopping mall in the western suburbs of our county. As we ate dinner in the food court, and I observed the comings and goings, the thought crossed my sometimes cynical mind that it must have been "dress like a slut night." I have no problem with women dressing attractively and fashionably. I even think there's a place for dressing in such a way that emphasizes feminine charms, if you know what I mean. But seriously, when did it become all the rage for teenage girls, and not-so-teenage women, to dress like the prostitutes on Broadway? Whatever happened to propriety, or that other old-fashioned word -- modesty?

Of course modesty is more than dress or keeping a set of rules, though we often try to reduce it to that. Rules have their place (can I get an amen from the parents?) but Gospel Coalition blogger Elyse Fitzpatrick reminds us that immodesty -- the kind that has to do with clothing and the more subtle kinds -- is a heart issue best addressed by the gospel.

. . . immodesty flows out of the heart of a show off. Maybe we’ve worked hard at the gym or purchased an expensive new pair of jeans. Maybe we want to prove how free we are to dress in any way we choose, no matter how scandalous. When we show-off we’re failing to love our brother (and sisters) who may be tempted to lust or covetousness or sinful imitation. Showing off is a fruit of pride and love of self. Immodesty demonstrates a cold unconcern for the church.

The beauty of the gospel, however, is that it informs us about who we are and what Jesus has already done. While it convicts us that we’re all unloving show-offs (in some way), it also assures us that we’ve been loved and that we no longer need to show off to get other people’s approval because (here’s the best news of all!) the record of our Modest Redeemer is ours! Our identity isn’t wrapped up in the approval or envy or lust of others. Our identity is found in Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Christ is our life. He loved us and refrained from showing off so that we could be His and freed from the need to prove that we’ve got a great body or wardrobe or … because we’ve been lavished with His love instead.

Of course, in this promiscuous culture women (and men) might need to be taught what modest attire looks like and there’s nothing wrong with doing so. It’s just that the transforming power that changes a show off into a servant doesn’t come from rules about blouses or skirts. It comes from remembering the gospel and seeking to show Him off instead. So, let’s spend this summer talking about modesty … mostly His.

Loneliness

Collateral (2004, dir. Michael Mann)