Friday, May 28, 2010

podcast 5: Hilarius of Poitiers on revelation

As part of our conversation about revelation, consider as fundamental the approach of someone like Hilarius, bishop of Poitiers in the mid-4th cent.



Cardinal Dulles will eventually get around to defending this view of revelation, but not until the end of the book. If we take it in order, we could seem to flounder for a while. So hold onto this solidity in the meantime. Dulles doesn't abandon it, but it does take him a little while to get back to it, while he thoroughly considers the objections according to each model he'll describe.

Models of Revelation 1

Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ. Models of Revelation (Orbis, 1992, 1983).

Dulles begins with “the problem of revelation.” Why is revelation a problem?

“Christian faith and theology… have been predicated on the conviction that God gave a permanently valid revelation concerning Himself in biblical times – a revelation that deepened progressively with the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets, until it reached its unsurpassable climax in Jesus Christ. The Christian Church down through the centuries has been committed to this revelation and has sought to propagate it, defend it, and explain its implications.” (p. 3). He goes on to state that our definition of revelation remained more or less vague until the Reformation; and that it gained precision in defending the doctrine of revelation between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th c., against the Deists in the 17th and 18th c., and against the Enlightenment (“evolutionists,” who “held that all religious truth was the fruit of human inquiry,” and “positivists,” who “denied that the human mind could have knowledge of the divine”) in the 19th c.

The nature and the quality and the content of revelation all matter very much. Dulles will talk about three ways: in the individual’s life of faith, in the mission of the Church, and in the method(s) of theology (p. 4ff).

Next, Dulles briefly lists eight challenges or objections to “the concept of revelation as a permanently valid body of truths communicated by God in biblical times, preserved and commented on by the Church” (his working definition, p. 6). Let’s look at these:

1. Philosophical agnosticism asserts that God is not knowable from the phenomena of the natural world, or is not comprehensible as transcendent other. If this is true, statements about God cannot have meaningful content, and revelation can only be mythical or metaphorical.
2. As a particular subset of the first, linguistic analysis claims that all theology is only symbolic, not “real,” language.
3. Modernist epistemologies (i.e., how we know what we know) all tend to limit the capacity to know to material observation (some form of “empiricism”), and to discount any possibility of either infused knowledge or a priori knowledge.
4. Empirical psychology “has destroyed any naïve confidence that visions and auditions… can be credited as coming from on high…” (p. 6).
5. Biblical criticism has complicated revelation by seeking naturalistic explanations for necessary miracles, by importing the model of evolution (sometimes as the only model, which is highly problematic) into biblical textual history, and by stressing human agency (sometimes to the point of denying inspiration) in the generation of biblical texts.
6. A wrong understanding of the development of doctrine is used to show that ideas once thought to be divinely inspired are in fact false (most famously, the “geocentric” solar system and the Copernican revolution). “If the dividing line between revealed and non-revealed is in flux, the category of revelation itself appears questionable.” (p. 7)
7. A certain kind of comparative religious studies tries to level all religious experience to the human, even to the individually subjective, experience. (This is related closely to 1-4, above.)
8. Sociology using a certain kind of critical method reduces all religious experience to shared ideologies and tools for social power. Revelation here can be seen only as a claim to authority or legitimacy for a particular social construct.

What all these “deconstructions” of revelation have in common is roots in the radical “rationalism” of the Enlightenment. But, all of these ideas are very common, and their popular forms are not going away any time soon. What Dulles is showing is that defending revelation is not a trivial task for the modern believer.

Discussion: Where are these ideas in our local culture today?

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Reminder of which week in ordinary time

Monday is in the eighth week in Ordinary Time. (Pity about the Octave of Pentecost...)

My homily for Pentecost

It was dark, when we stood there. It was cold and very windy. Yet we stood there, outside, unsheltered, waiting. Do you remember that night, seven weeks ago? It was the the Easter vigil, the height of the sacred Triduum, the holiest night of the year. We stood there, waiting for a new fire to shatter the darkness. We stood there, hoping to witness the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you remember, on that night, how our bishop blessed this Paschal candle? Lit and held aloft, it led us into the shelter of the Church, as we sang, "Christ our light! Thanks be to God!" From its new and holy fire, each of us lit a small taper. The flame spread, hand to hand, until this whole Church blazed with light, with the light of Christ.

What a dramatic moment! What a vision of the Risen Christ!

This movement from dark to light, from outside into the shelter of the Church, is the movement of the Holy Spirit within us. Each of us is touched by the Holy Spirit, with the gift of faith. He wants to set us on fire with faith, so that we can make the whole world blaze with the light of Christ.

At that first Pentecost, God the Holy Spirit set the hearts of all the disciples on fire. But at first, they were hiding in the dark. We hear in the Gospel about their fear. They have locked themselves away in a hidden room, because they fear dying, like Christ. But He, the merciful Lord, comes to find them, and He gives them the gift of peace. "Peace be with you." And how do they respond? "At the sight of the Lord the disciples rejoiced."

Just like they were at first, we too are often afraid to live our faith. We fear being rejected by our co-workers if we don't join them in foul language or gossip. We fear our lives will be more unhappy if we give up false worldly pleasures. We fear to make the sacrifices necessary for the true good of our family, or our neighbor. We fear being ridiculed by family and friends if we pray too much. We fear where the Holy Spirit will lead us, if we give ourselves too much to God. And so we lock our faith away -- behind closed lips, when we should speak out clearly; behind a closed heart, when we should love boldly.

There is some basis for these fears. If we try to live our faith fully, we will face rejection and scorn, and we may be lead where we do not want to go. But just as in our readings today, fear is not the whole story. There is also the unexpected discovery of Christ's peace and joy. Just as He sought out the disciples in their hiding place, He also seeks us out, passing through the locked doors of our closed lips and closed heart. He calls us to meet Him with joy here, in this Holy Mass, so that we can stand up boldly for Him out there, in our daily lives.

Because we do have His mission to fulfill. "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." We too have been called to preach the Gospel without fear. We proclaim the Good News in words when people ask about our faith. We proclaim the Good News with actions to our families and neighbors, our co-workers and friends. We too possess the gift of the Holy Spirit, just like the disciples at that first Pentecost. Our Pentecost is our baptism into Christ's Body, when the fire of the Holy Spirit first set us ablaze.

As we end the Easter season, we will move the Paschal candle from its place of honor at the front of the sanctuary, to the entrance of the Church. There it will both greet us with divine light, and send us forth to be the light of the world. Christ is our light – thanks be to God! Do not be afraid, but trust in Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, who fills our hearts with the bright fire of His love. The flame will spread, hand to hand, until the whole world blazes with the light of Christ.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Liceity of Orthodox sacraments

I've been scanning the series of joint statements of the Catholic-Orthodox "Joint Theological Commission" since 1980. So far I haven't found a clear statement from Rome that Orthodox sacraments are licit as well as valid. It seems to be implied, however, in the treatment of apostolic succession. Meanwhile, I'll keep digging.

More on the priesthood

Thomistic philosopher Ed Feser has a post on some philosophical and theological reasons for the Tradition (yes, capital T) of male-only priesthood. In one of the comments, the point I was trying to make about distinguishing corporeal male-ness from spiritual, ontological paternity in God also comes up.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

podcast 4



The conclusion of the class on the Trinity, with more comparison of the Greek hypostatic method and Latin relational method of Trinitarian theology. The Council of Florence puts in a cameo.

podcast 3



Here we're getting into some pretty detailed discussion of the Trinity, and the generation of the Son, and the spiration of the Spirit.

podcast 2



Continuing the class on the Trinity. Some advice on how to read Aquinas, and discussion of one article.

podcast 1



This recording is from a third-year formation class in March 2010, on the Trinity and the Holy Spirit. Three more parts are coming. Clicking on the link will open the MP3 in a new tag, and begin playing it there.

Thanks to Dan Burns for his quick lesson in html commands to make this work more or less like I was imagining it should. I'll get several more of the classes and lectures I've already recorded up soon.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Podcasting difficulties

I spent five hours yesterday trying to figure out how to make a podcast play instead of just linking to the download site. So far, no luck. In the meantime, I will continue to upload some mp3s to the site linked to, on the right sidebar. If you download any of them, they should be playable. Hopefully I'll solve the streaming problem soon.

St. Isidore, pray for us!

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Let's try this for a while

I'm starting this blog with two goals in mind. First, I hope this can extend our formation program into the days and weeks between our Saturday formation classes, and maintain a greater sense of continuity for the formation community as a whole. I also hope this can serve our post-formation needs, at least as far as sharing resources and ideas.

Second, I hope this blog will help to enliven further our community identity, by giving us an additional forum for "meeting" and discussing our diaconal ministry.

St. Isidore of Seville, patron of the Internet, pray for us!