Tomorrow Night: Martin Luther

This Tuesday, we’ll be moving along from the mysticism of Evelyn Underhill to the theology & exegesis of Martin Luther.  However, this is most appropriate in my opinion because we need to have a firm underpinning of doctrine & theology in our minds before we embark on the journey of contemplation and mysticism — else we end up heterodox like Origen, Evagrius, Meister Eckhart, Madame Guyon.  The life of prayer as we looked at it in Underhill is to be intrinsically connected to the life of the intellect and the reading of Scripture.

Our reading shall be his “Preface of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans.”  It’s about 14 pages long and crammed full of ideas and teachings; I heartily recommend you read it more than once.  It is online here.

If you have time, also check out the Christian History article and his 95 Theses.

Christian Fiction

Ever since Joseph and Aseneth was a runaway second-century bestseller, Christians have been writing fiction.  Some of it has been among the world’s great literature, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Evelyn Waugh’s Helena, and many more.

My recent discussion of The Shack by Wm. Paul Young and its lack of certain heresies (read it here) has set me thinking about Christian novels worth recommending.  While The Shack was entertaining and thought-provoking, it won’t be in the following list.  The books I’m going to recommend have the following benefits: not only are they good novels but they express deep truths about the universe, God, humanity, and people who aren’t professing Christians could enjoy and read them as well.  Here are five, in alphabetical order by title:

Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead.  This is a novelisation of the adventures of St. Aidan, an Irish monk who, in the Early Middle Ages sets off from Kells to Byzantium with a complaint about the behaviour of Western clerics on the Continent.  There are Vikings, Muslims, Byzantines, loss of faith and its recovery.  Aidan is very . . . real.  And the Vikings are fantastic (“Heya!”).

The Cosmic Trilogy by C.S. Lewis.  Many people find The Chronicles of Narnia their favourites; others applaud Till We Have Faces as a work of genius.  I’m not sure what my favourite work of Lewis’ fiction is.  The Cosmic Trilogy, however, is well worth a read.  These books centre on the adventures of Ransom, who in the first (Out of the Silent Planet) travels to Mars (Malacandra), the second (Perelandra) to Venus (Perelandra), and in the final volume (That Hideous Strength), the battle takes itself to Earth.  The stories are excellent, the characters compelling, and a whole gamut of “issues” is run throughout this trilogy.

Godric by Frederick Buechner.  This is a novelisation of the life of St. Godric, an Anglo-Saxon hermit in the Middle Ages.  This well-written novel tells Godric’s life, including Godric’s struggles and doubts, his own humility and questioning of his vocation.  It is beautiful and wonderful.

Helena by Evelyn Waugh.  This is a novelisation of the life of St. Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine.  I believe that this book captures the spirit of the Late Antique world, especially in terms of philosophy and religion.  Waugh is not trying to make a historical reconstruction but simply telling the legend of St. Helena’s life.  I believe this is a masterpiece; it was Waugh’s favourite of his works.  Loyola Classics has a snazzy edition out.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.  This, along with its companion novels, is among my favourite books.  It is a type of science fantasy, if such a genre exists.  It is about four children who set out across the universe to fight the Dark and to find their missing father; the Dark is taking over planets, extinguishing stars.  Their greatest weapon in the fight against the Dark?  Love.

Christian fiction I want to read:

All Hallows Eve by Charles Williams

Brenden by Frederick Buechner

The Pendragon Cycle by Stephen R. Lawhead (I’ve only read Taliesin)

The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

The Psychomachia by Prudentius

What Christian novels do you recommend?

Happy Reformation Day!

“Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times.  This knowledge of and confidence in God’s grace makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and with all creatures.  And this is the work which the Holy Spirit performs in faith.  Because of it, without compulsion, a person is ready and glad to good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, out of love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace.  Thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire.  Beware, therefore, of your own false notions and of the idle talkers who imagine themselves wise enough to make decisions about faith and good works, and yet are the greatest fools.  Pray God that He may work faith in you.  Otherwise you will surely remain forever without faith, regardless of what you may think or do.”

-Martin Luther, from “Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans,” in Faith and Freedom: An Invitation to the Writings of Martin Luther, John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne, eds.

Saint of the Week: Saint Antony the Great

St. Antony and St. Paul

St. Antony the Great (251-356) is traditionally considered the “founder” of Christian monasticism, although this is a difficult thing to be sure of.  One of the stories about him, in fact, tells of his pride about how he was the first-ever monk, and then an angel told him about this guy Abba Paul who’d been a hermit way longer than he had, so he went off to visit St. Paul the Hermit on St. Paul’s deathbed.

Whether or not he was the first or not, he was part of a movement to the desert that was beginning at the time.  There had already been the occasional Egyptian person or village that would disappear into the desert whenever socio-economic times got hard.  At the time went St. Antony started out for the tombs and the mountains of the Egyptian wilderness, people were first getting the idea of this retreat (anachoresis) as an act of Christian piety and part of the path self-renunciation as a replacement of martyrdom.

St. Antony’s anachoresis was inspired by the command of Jesus to the Rich Young Ruler to sell all he had and give to the poor, then to follow Jesus.  St. Antony figured this was a good principle for all serious Christians, so he sold off his inheritance, leaving behind enough for his sister to live on.  Then he went visiting Christian ascetics in the town where he lived and learning from them about how to live.

Soon, he heard the verse about not worrying about tomorrow, so then he got rid of the stuff that was supporting his sister and put her in a house of virgins (inchoate nunneries).  Then he went off into the desert to live alone.  Of course, living alone is hard to achieve for spiritual masters, because somehow word always get round that you’re out living in a cave or a tomb or an abandoned temple somewhere, so you start to get a bit of a following.  Over the years, Antony lived in tombs, on a mountain, and on a second mountain, each time moving farther and farther from society and receiving fewer and fewer guests — or at least hoping to receive fewer and fewer guests.

In these days of incipient monasticism, the concept of the hermit as a man who was complete and utterly cut off from the rest of the world was an ideal but never achieved (I’m not sure any hermit ever achieved it).  We see that St. Antony had disciples, such as his successor Ammonas, as well as those to whom he gives his discourse in The Life of St. Antony by St. Athanasius.

In the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apopthegmata Patrum), Antony is frequently quoted as providing a pithy saying or two, demonstrating that he was part of the new monastic movement wherein a newer monk would approach a more experienced monk and say, “Abba, give me a word.”  The more experienced monk, the Abba, would then give a brief saying or discourse to the less experienced.  Antony is also quoted in John Cassian’s Conferences concerning discretion, saying that discretion is the most important tool of the monk.

St. Antony did more than give advice to his disciples, however.  As we saw in my last post, he was engaged in the battle with demons.  In this battle, according to St. Athanasius, he received literal blows from demons and found himself almost physically defeated, but he continued on nonetheless.  The idea is that the desert is the property of the demons, their last retreat and lair.  By going there, St. Antony and the other monks are encroaching on their turf; turf wars ensued, with the monks victorious through many battles.  Eventually, St. Antony was left alone by the Devil and his minions.

Although called “unlettered” in St. Athanasius’ biography, this does not mean St. Antony was illiterate.  It likely means he was not literate in Greek or Latin, that he was not schooled in the classics of the Hellenistic world.  Modern philology has determined that seven Coptic letters attributed to St. Antony are most likely by this monk himself.  Whether he wrote them with his own hand or dictated them is impossible to say.  In these letters, we get a picture of a man who was concerned for the care of souls, deeply orthodox in theology, but not uninfluenced by Valentinian Gnosticism in aspects of his spirituality.

This does not, however, mean that Egyptian monasticism was Gnostic by any means.  There are similarities between Celtic Christianity and Buddhism, for example; yet there are also similarities between the Celts and St. Maximus the Confessor.  The Coptic monks tended to be orthodox in their theology, as evidenced by their harbouring of St. Athanasius when he was on the run.  They ran into theological difficulties with Anthropomorphism (imagining God to have a body like a man) and Origenism (the antithesis, all-too-often accompanied by Origen’s heterodox teachings on Christology and souls). However, St. Antony shows no influence of the heterodox aspects of Origenism or Gnosticism in these letters.

Here is some wisdom of St. Antony:

Advice given to those troubled by demons: Have faith in Jesus; keep your mind pure from wicked thoughts and your body free from all sordidness.  In accordance with the divine sayings, do not be seduced by the fullness of the stomach.  Detest pride, pray frequently, recite the psalms in the evening and in the morning and at noon, and meditate on the commands of the Scriptures.  Remember the deeds done by each of the saints so that the memory of their example will inspire your virtue and restrain it from vices. (Life of Antony 55, trans. White)

Wherever you go, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, have [before you] the testimony of the holy Scriptures. (The Sayings, Latin systematic collection [I think], trans. Ward)

I beseech you, beloved, by the name of Jesus Christ, do not neglect your own salvation, but let each one of you rend his heart and not his garment (Joel 2:13), for fear lest we should be wearing this monastic habit in vain, and preparing for ourselves judgment. (Letter 2, trans. Chitty)

Whoever has not experienced temptation cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. . . .  Without temptations no-one can be saved.  (The Sayings, Greek alphabetical collection [#5], trans. Ward)

I no longer fear God but love him, for love casts out fear. (The Sayings, Greek alphabetical collection [#32], trans. Ward)

If you are interested in learning more about St. Antony, I recommend the translation of St. Athanasius’ Life of St. Antony in Carolinne White, Early Christian Lives, published by Penguin Classics.

I read Derwas J. Chitty’s translation of the Letters of St. Antony, published by SLG Press.

Sister Benedicta Ward, SLG, has a Penguin Classics translation of the Latin systematic Sayings called The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks as well as of the Greek alphabetical (by author) sayings called The Sayings of the Desert Fathers published by Cistercian.

Ancient Demonology: The Temptations of St. Antony

My first introduction to ancient demonology was the painting to the left, The Temptations of St. Antony, presumed to be by the Dutch painter Hieronymus (Jerome) Bosch (1450-1516).  As you can see, all sorts of the denizens of Hades are surrounding St. Antony, the hunched hermit by the shrub in the middle.  There is a naked woman in a pond, a variety of bizarre monstrosities on the roof of his abode as well as those scaling its walls with ladders.  The bottom left contains an example of the mediaeval imagination it is hard to explain, whereas in the right, above the egg, is a demon clearly designed to frighten.

However, front and centre, is Funnel Butt.  A person with his tunic pulled up over his head, his left foot in a jar, and a funnel coming out of his butt.  Flying from this funnel are birds.  And to the right we see a guy shooting arrows into the funnel from his perch in an egg.  Here’s a closer view of Funnel Butt:

This demonological wonder can be seen in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, where Emily first showed me it.  The picture here is scanned from my postcard of the same.

In this late mediaeval painting, we have an example of the primary role demons play in human life: Temptation.

Wait.  Temptation?  What exactly is Funnel Butt tempting St. Antony to do?  What are any of these things tempting him to do?  I mean, the naked woman in the pond seems fairly obvious, but all these others?  What is going on?

To answer those questions, answer these:  What is the role of the monk?  What is the role, indeed, of every Christian?  What does the Devil fear most of all?

Bosch’s painting is inspired by the Life of St. Antony by St. Athanasius, one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages.  In this book, we read:

… there was a sudden noise which caused the place the shake violently: holes appeared in the walls and a horde of different kinds of demons poured out.  They took on the shapes of wild animals and snakes and instantly filled the whole place with spectres in the form of lions, bulls, wolves, vipers, serpents, scorpions and even leopards and bears, too.  They all made noises according to their individual nature:  the lion roared, eager for the kill; the bull bellowed and made menacing movements with his horns; the serpent hissed; the wolves leaped forward to attack; the spotted leopard demonstrated all the different wiles of the one who controlled him.  The face of each of them bore a savage expression and the sound of their fierce voices was terrifying.  Antony, beaten and mauled, experienced even more atrocious pains in his body but he remained unafraid, his mind alert.  And though the wounds of his flesh made him groan, he maintained the same attitude and spoke as if mocking his enemies.  ‘If you had any power, one of you would be enough for the fight; but since the Lord has robbed you of your strength, you are broken and so you attempt to use large numbers to terrify me, although the fact that you have taken on the shapes of unreasoning beasts is itself proof of your weakness.’  And he went on confidently, ‘If you have any influence, if the Lord has granted you power of me, look, here I am: devour me.  But if you cannot, why do you expend so much useless effort?  For the sign of the cross and faith in the Lord is for us a wall that no assault of yours can break down.’  They made numerous threats against the holy Antony but gnashed their teeth because none of their attempts were successful — on the contrary they made fools of themselves rather than of him. (Ch. 9, Carolinne White, trans. in Early Christian Lives, pub. by Penguin; another translation is online here.)

Demonology comes up throughout the Life of St. Antony; it is one of the foundational texts for much Christian demonological thought.  The demons are here attempting to draw St. Antony out of his cell, to drive him back into society, to stop him from praying.  David Brakke (Demons and the Making of the Monk) has said that it is more appropriately considered the trials of St. Antony than the temptations (both are the same in Latin).

The lesson for the Christian demon-fighter?  They will try to distract you from prayer.  They probably won’t make it seem as though your house is full of holes; they probably won’t appear like a horde of wild animals pretending to prepare to devour you; they probably won’t physically harm you in any way; unlike here or in Frank Peretti, they probably won’t make your presence known.

But prayer is one of the weapons we have in the fight.  So they will do their best to distract us, to tempt us to do anything else, to draw us into other things, even things that seem noble.  Many of the stories about the Desert Fathers tell of men who were drawn away from prayer and into excessive works of charity to the peril of their souls.  We need prayer to satisfy our souls, keep connected with God, and wage war on the front lines of the battle.  Let us remember the power of Christ within us, the power of His cross, to keep us safe and enable us to fight the fight and pray the prayers.

The Trinity, the Shack, and Mark Driscoll

First, I would like to point out: The Shack is not a brilliant piece of theology.  It’s not really theological at all.  It is a novel, a story, an idea, an image.  Its Trinitarian theology is weak and clearly the product of someone who sat at a few typical Protestant sermons but never actually spent time reading up on the Trinity.

Because once you’ve read up on the Trinity, you are never so bold as to attempt something like The Shack.

However, The Shack does not commit all of the sins that Mark Driscoll claims it does.  Perhaps this is because Mark Driscoll can’t read.  I should qualify that:  Perhaps this is because Mark Driscoll can’t read literary endeavours (not that The Shack is a shining example of that, either).  Unsurprising amongst the New Calvinists is this idea that we can read a work of fiction as though it were theology.  Everyone already did this with The Da Vinci Code.  I’d hoped we’d become a bit more nuanced in our reading than that.

Nevertheless, Driscoll first says that The Shack commits idolatry, that in representing the unseen, invisible Members of the Trinity, Young has made a graven image.  Wm. Paul Young has not, in fact, made a graven image, and not only because you don’t engrave novels.  Young is not saying in The Shack that God the Father is a black woman named Papa, nor that the Holy Spirit is a small Asian woman named Sarayu.

These characters are merely representations of the characters* of the First and Third Persons of the Trinity.  They are meant to help show Mack and the reader what the inner heart of these Persons is.  No one has seen God; neither did Mack in the book.  The possibility of God showing Himself as a vision is, however, real.  Isaiah had a vision, Ezekiel had a vision, John the Divine had a vision.  These visions were not actually sightings of the invisible God but representations of Himself that he chose to give to His children so that they could understand better a certain aspect of His character.

Then Driscoll argues that The Shack is guilty of modalism (or Sabellianism).  This heresy is the same thing as what Oneness Pentecostals believe — God is One, and the Son and the Holy Spirit are different modes by which He has chosen to operate in the world.  The heresy denies any difference of person amongst the members of the Trinity.  Driscoll’s argument for that is when Papa says that she has already been human through Jesus.

This is further evidence that Driscoll is not a subtle reader but out for the kill.  Yes, when God the Son was incarnate, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit were not.  However, since we believe in one God, not three, the remarkable thing is that they have an intimate sharing of each other’s experiences.  God the Father, being in a state of perfect, unbreakable communion with God the Son, knows exactly what God the Son went through during His days on earth.  Therefore, God the Father, in a very true sense, was, in fact, human through Jesus.  He was never incarnate.  He did not die or rise from the dead.  Yet He has shared intimately those things that Jesus went through while on earth.

St. Athanasius teaches that while God the Son was incarnate, His divine nature never ceased ordering the cosmos and keeping the stars in place (De Incarnatione).  If He could engage in that work of the Godhead whilst confined to a human body, no doubt the Father knows exactly what it is to be human as a result of the Son’s incarnation.

Driscoll proceeds to argue that The Shack promotes Goddess worship.  This is because God the Father is portrayed as a black woman.  Of course, Papa admits that He is not always female, as we see at the end of the book, when He portrays Himself as a man to Mack.  God the Father reveals Himself to us in a myriad of ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes not, but always in the way that we need at that time.  There are times He gives us the tenderness of a mother, times He gives us the sternness of a father.  He is the perfect Father, and so, for the purposes of this fiction, Mack saw Him more as a mother, an image that is used to demonstrate the warm, nurturing heart of the Father.

The final argument made by Driscoll is about hierarchy.  I broadly agree with him.  In The Shack, the Trinity has no hierarchy of any sort, no Person of the Trinity being above the others.  They are simply in an endless, loving communion with one another.  Driscoll points out that, while all the Persons of the Trinity are equal, they still have deference, for Jesus says that He only does what the Father tells Him to do, and that He does the will of the Father, and that the Father sent Him into the world.

The Shack is a novel, not a work of theology.  We cannot take its images of the Trinity as being theological, because then we would be on the start of a road to the modern heresy of vagueness.  I believe that both its supporters and its opponents have completely missed the boat, however.  Regardless of its merit as a novel, it is art.  We should treat it as art, not as theology, which both sides of the argument miss.

But where do we go for Trinitarian theology in a world that has lost its focus on the true nature of God?  People are turning to The Shack as theology (both for a lovefest as well as for the attack) because not a lot of people draw nigh to this question.  “Theology” today is usually actually, “A Christian/biblical approach to issue x, y, or z.”

Start over on the right on the main page with The Creed of Saint Athanasius.  I have a friend whom it once saved from Arianism.

“Beyond Personality” in C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.  I read it on Trinity Sunday a couple of years ago and benefitted greatly.  There is a reason Mere Christianity is a classic.

Intimacy and Ecstasy: When the Holy Spirit Meets the Human Spirit by Edith M. Humphrey.  This book is principally a book about Christian spirituality, but it takes its starting point as the Holy Trinity and deals with various aspects of Trinitarian theology, asking along the way, “How now then shall we live?”  Humphrey is a real, live theologian, unlike certain other writers out there.  Plus, she’s an orthodox Anglican.

Understanding the Trinity by Alister McGrath.

The best guides are likely the ancients, however.  Here are two:

Boethius On the Trinity and St. Augustine On the Trinity.  Boethius is shorter; both are online.

*I would have said personae, but that word has been co-opted for theological purposes at this time.

Plato again…

If you were interested in the things I said here and here re Platonism, check out the second one and John’s comment, because he seems to know what he’s talking about and brings a good perspective to the issue.  I think Elliot especially should check it out.

If the question of Christianity and Greek thought intrigues you, here are 2 places to go that are better than I (and if you know any others, link to them via the comments, please):

The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity by Edwin Hatch

John Uebersax’s website

Can we still believe in demons?

I have heard some people say that since we live in a world on the other side of the Enlightenment, in a world where science has found natural explanations for so many things, we can no longer believe in certain elements of the supernatural, e.g., demons.

I do not think this is necessarily so and that such a view misunderstands the entire discussion.  If belief in demons were mere superstition, by which I mean a belief that exists for merely aitiological reasons to fill gaps in our knowledge, then yes, we have explained away many things about demons.

For the weather does not come from demons, it comes from pressure systems and out of whims directed against umbrella-carriers.  Mental illness is caused by all sorts of factors, both physiological and environmental.  I am the one who sins, not some spiritual being inhabiting my body.

However, such findings do not negate the possibility of there being malevolent beings of a spiritual nature who are seeking our destruction and ruin, seeking to lure us into sin and harm.  We may scoff at the plani of Cassian who wait at crossroads to mislead travellers and their companions who actually attempt murder (Conf. 7.32).  However, Screwtape, on the other hand, is nothing to scoff at.

What we need to realise is where the boundaries of scientific enquiry stop.  Science, modern empirical investigation into the nature and order of the cosmos, cannot actually see and observe everything.  It deals, essentially, with only the physical.  It deals with energy, matter, time, and so forth.

Science has no means of measuring the spiritual.  The spiritual is on a plane of being different from ours.  When we look at another human being, we see but the outer appearance; the spiritual is invisible.  No scientific instrument can actually observe the human spirit.  They have seen things going on in brains that point to spiritual experiences, but these are not hard evidence for spirit; they could easily be interpreted by atheists as proof that the spiritual does not exist but is merely certain actions occurring within the human brain.

If we as Christians believe that all human beings are persons with spirits, and if science cannot even see a spirit where we know one exists, why should we decide that since science has no evidence for the demonic, and certain alternative explanations for traditional demonic spheres of activity, that the demonic is no longer at work?  That the demonic was never at work?

I believe that a demon can produce a physical disease, for example.  Simply because it has its origins in the demonic does not mean that it will not have the same physical symptoms as another manifestation of the same disease caused by purely physical means.  A demon could cause mental illness as well, perhaps by stirring up the juices of some poor soul’s brain.  Drugs could heal the physical or mental illness at hand, but that is merely treating the disease as it stands, regardless of its origins.

This is to say: The physical and spiritual can act in concert.  Science and medicine will only show us the physical.

The Lord will sometimes give a person an insight into such a situation.  For example, I know of a doctor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who treated a young man for tetanus.  Within the year, the young man was again demonstrating all the symptoms of tetanus.  This should not be; a tetanus shot, as we all know very well, lasts for 10 years.  Through discernment, he came to the decision that this illness was one with a strong spiritual element.  The tetanus was healed in this case through prayer, not drugs, since the drugs had failed.

What that story shows us is that we should not neglect the physical, but should at all times be attuned to the spiritual and pray to God to heal people with diseases.  We will almost never know whether a disease has its origins in nature or supernature.  Nevertheless, we can pray that God, who knows all things, heal through the wisdom of doctors and his own touch as the Great Physician.

What we should never do is assume that people with mental illness have demons.  Or that everything that goes wrong is the result of a demonic attack.  We can rarely see into the spiritual.  It is beyond our place as mere mortals to assume that someone else has a demon every time something goes wrong.  This sort of behaviour can result in abuse.

However, the most important role of demons in Christian demonology proper, as seen in the Desert Fathers, Cassian, Evagrius, Augustine, the mediaeval writers, is not to possess people in dramatic ways, not to cause illness, not to confuse people, not to waylay travellers.  Rather, the demon’s role is that of Screwtape, of C.S. Lewis’ masterwork The Screwtape Letters.

Demons are tempters.  They entice us to sin.  Now, our own flesh and the world can do the same.  Nevertheless, by Cassian’s reckoning, demons will observe us and see where we are weak and make tiny, little suggestions to us.  They will try to draw us into sin, to draw us away from virtue, to draw us away from seeking God and His ways.

This is a role that a person of a modern mindset can easily acknowledge.  It does not touch upon any of the core doctrines of science.  All it says is that sometimes, when we are tempted, it’s because someone else is tempting us, someone unseen, someone unmeasurable in any physical sense.

Finally, we should not avoid belief in demons, for Christ casts them out, St. Paul assumes them among the “principalities and powers”, and they are a part of the tradition throughout the ages.  I hope that the above has demonstrated the reasonableness of belief in the demonic.  All that remains of the stool is experience.  Some of us have had the unfortunate experience of direct, knowing encounters with the demonic.  The strongest testimonies are Scripture and Tradition, both of which are interpreted and bolstered in this case by Reason and Experience.

Therefore, let us take up the fight and proclaim the power of Christ over our own lives, receiving His grace and His love to enable us to endure forever and stand firm in the fight.

Saint of the Week: St. Jean de Brebeuf

First: Apologies for last week being saintless.

St. Jean de Brebeuf (1593-1649) was a Jesuit missionary and martyr.  I chose him because of St. Juvenaly (saint of Sept 17) and his claim to be “first Martyr of America.”  He is the first Eastern Orthodox martyr, no doubt.  However, the first actual martyr was probably a Jesuit in the Spanish possessions during the 16th century.  And St. Jean de Brebeuf precedes St. Juvenaly by over a century.  Plus, he did his missionary service in Canada.

Brebeuf was born in Normandy and joined the Jesuit order in 1617.  In 1625 he went to the French colony of Quebec and managed to be tolerated by the (unsurprisingly) Jesuit-wary inhabitants (some of whom were Protestant Huguenots, including his ship’s captain).  In Spring, he and another Jesuit set out to establish a mission among the Huron on Georgian Bay.  His companion was recalled and Brebeuf spent two years amongst the native inhabitants of Canada meeting little success.

Eventually, European needs prevailed for a bit and he returned to the struggling colony which was briefly surrendered by Champlain to the English in 1629.  All of the missionaries were deported back to France.  In 1633 he returned to Canada and Lake Huron, but the local people had no desire to hear the Gospel from this Jesuit.  He moved on with Fr. Daniel to his old mission and spent the next sixteen years trying evangelise the native people of Canada in that place.*

In 1642, after much physical hardship and little fruit, he returned to Quebec and began ministering to the people of the Reservation at Sillery.  In 1647, the Iroquois who had been at war with the French made peace with them but not with Huron.  This meant that the French missionaries were living in a war zone.

On March 16, 1649, the Iroquois captured Jean de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lallemant.  The Iroquois transported their captives to St. Ignace, a village they had already captured.  At St. Ignace, they were greeted with hurled stones and blows from clubs.  The two Jesuits were tied to stakes and burned to death.  Apparently, Brebeuf had scalding water poured over his head in a mock-baptism, was adorned by a necklace of red-hot tomahawk heads, and a red-hot iron was shoved down his throat.  When he finally died, apparently the Iroquois tore his heart from his breast and ate it.  Apparently he never uttered a groan throughout the ordeal.

He was canonised in 1930; his feast day was Monday, October 19.

My reflections on Brebeuf must begin with this: We should never make light of the sufferings endured by early settlers and missionaries in Canada.  Canada is very cold, and most of these people were French or English, both of which have milder winters than Canada.  When you consider as well the fact that they would have had much more primitive living conditions in Canada than back in the Old World, they no doubt suffered.  When we consider that Jesuits like Brebeuf and Lallemant were seeking to bring the Gospel to people who did not know it, then we can count these sufferings as suffering for the Gospel.

However, I wonder about the hostility of the indigenous peoples they encountered.  Was this truly hostility to the Gospel of the God of Love Who became man that men might become like God?  Or was this hostility to Europeans trying to enforce their ways of thinking and believing?  Was this hostility to the God of the Bible or to the God of European expansion?

Chief Thomas Fiddler writes the following in Killing the Shamen:

Did you ever see the big Bible, the first part?  I read of Genesis, about what Manitou did to create this world; what He did to make this earth and how he made light.  That’s what it says in the Bible.

The very first thing I said after reading this was: I believe that Manitou made the light.  I also believe that Manitou made every human being, birds, plants, animals and the fish.  I also believe he made the White man and the Indians.

Manitou gave ways of life to these humans, Indians and White men.

…

The very first time a minister came to see the Indians and all the things the Manitou gave the Indians for their way of life — as soon as the minister saw how the Indians lived, he told them to throw it all away. (pp. 60-61)

Cunningham . . . assaulted Robert Fiddler and the clan folk with the use of Timothy 1-15.  The powerful and insulting suggestion used on Robert Fiddler was that the law existed for the ungodly … for murderers of mothers … for manslayers .. for liars … for whoremongers … for sinners but ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  The effect of these verses was:  ‘Robert amongst others was greatly shaken up, came near a crash but got away.’  (125)

… the cruel words of Christianity directed through this missionary from an alien force somewhere beyond forests. (125)

The first Roman Catholic priest in New France once declared, “First these savages must be civilised, then they will be fit to receive the Gospel.”

I believe that St. Jean de Brebeuf, although his ministry no doubt suffered from a degree of cultural blindness (all ministry does) still died in service of the Gospel.  I do not think he was killed because of the Gospel.  I say this because the story sounds too much like an attempt to show how evil and savage these Indians were and that it would have to have been conveyed by the Huron, enemies of the Iroquois, who no doubt had every reason to vilify their opponents.

Nevertheless, as we try to open our eyes and be cured from cultural blindness, let us remember that we will all suffer for the Gospel in some way or another, and in that suffering we will be sharing in the sufferings of Christ, the apostles, the martyrs, missionaries like Brebeuf, and other Christians all around the world.

*However, if the Catholic Encyclopedia reflects his opinions on these “savages”, it is no surprise that they were repelled by a Gospel that did not celebrate who they were as people made in God’s image and who were beautiful and precious in His sight…

Platonism and Christianity

Why am I so wary of Platonism, as expressed in this post?

I am not actually wary of Platonism specifically.  Plato is a very skilled writer.  He writes with style.  In many of the dialogues, if you read with an attentive mind, then Socrates moves beyond asking questions of, say, Euthyphro, to asking questions of me.  What do you, mjjhoskin, think of holiness?  What is the basis for holiness?  What is the basis for this belief of yours? Foundational questions, all of them.  Questions that strike at the root of things.

Plato also has some interesting ideas.  There’s the ever-popular Cave in The Republic, for example.  Timaeus gives us a cosmology not entirely incompatible with reality.  Crito gives us the endlessly-speculated myth of Atlantis.

Plato also teaches transmigration of souls.  He teaches that this world is not the real world.  We have an idea of justice here, an idea of what a table is, an idea of what eros is, but these ideas are not the real things in themselves but shadows of the truth.  The true reality, according to Plato, is in the world of forms, where our souls dwell between transmigrations.  Platonism also teaches a dualism between body and spirit, between physical and metaphysical.  The spirit and the metaphysical are good, the body and the physical are bad.  This stems from the theory of forms.

This last paragraph is there to help show why traditional Christianity, “classic” Christianity, ought to be wary of Platonism.  Many Christians of the Patristic era liked Platonism too much and created bits of speculative theology that were not in line with Scripture, tradition, or the reasoned account of salvation.

Souls are immortal, according to Platonism — this means that they have a pre-existence in the spiritual realm before becoming incarnate in our bodies.  Such is the case in Origenism as well.  In fact, from what I’ve seen of Origen and his anathematised beliefs, a great many of them stem from an outworking of Platonist ideas.

One of the most pernicious and persistent Platonic ideas within Christianity is the dualism between body and spirit, between the physical and metaphysical.  I think this is in Origen, but it is definitely in the Gnostics and sometimes in the ascetics (but their pagan model was more frequently Stoicism).

The body is not bad.

This is part of true Christian doctrine.  In Genesis we are taught that when God created us, He said that His creation was “Very good.”  God Himself took on flesh in the Incarnation.  He became a man.  At the end of time, we shall all be resurrected in a new heaven and a new earth, and we shall have bodies.

The Platonist idea as it manifests itself in Christianty says that our bodies are “fleshly,” and anything that has to do with the body is to be rejected save those things that keep us alive.  Modern Christians who have maintained this dichotomy between flesh and spirit sometimes argue things such as, “Dancing is bad because it is all about your body.”  Ascetics, on the other hand, argue that you should ignore your body and discipline it.  What really matters, however, is mystical experience and seeking God through contemplation.  Neglect the body, therefore.  Some Gnostics, on the other hand, would argue that since flesh doesn’t matter, do as you please!

Classic Christianity argues that flesh does matter, so treat your body with respect, live morally, and enjoy yourself.  Dance.  Eat.  Drink.  Discipline the body, yes, but do so to discipline your whole self, do so to keep it healthy, not to ruin it.

The most pernicious Platonist idea to persist to today is this idea that we are all going to go to heaven when we die, we shall be disembodied and this will be great and this is what we were made for and this world will be destroyed by fire.

FAIL!

Patristic writers (I forget at the moment where I saw this, but it was one of them) lament death because when we die, our bodies and souls are separated, and this is not what we were created for.  We were created to have bodies, to walk on earth, to breathe air.  This is what the hope of Resurrection is.  We will have bodies, but they will be incorruptible.  The souls and bodies of the dead will be re-knit together for Judgement Day, and the saved will spend eternity living with those bodies and enjoying the world.

Thus, while there is much in Platonism to commend it, there is also much to be cautious of.  The same is true of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Hinduism, Islam, or Buddhism.  Let us not forget that our first commitment is to Christ who was revealed in the Scriptures and has shown Himself through His people throughout history.  All pagan ideas, good or ill, are secondary.