“What our Lord says to Judas, he says to the world today: You seemingly are very interested in social justice. Why are you not concerned about individual justice? You love your neighbor, why do you not love God? This is the attitude of the world today. We have swung away from a period in which we were concerned with individual sanctification to the neglect of the social order.Now we have gone to the extreme of being immersed with social justice, civil rights, and so forth, and we are not the least bit concerned about individual justice and the duty of paying honor and glory to God. If you march with a banner, if you protest, then your individual life may be impure, alcoholic, anything you please. That does not matter. Judas is the patron saint of those who divide that universal law of God: Love God and love neighbor.”
Dr. John Bergsma over at The Sacred Page has a great post on today's readings about how the Sermon on the Mount resembles Old Testament covenant documents, such as the book of Deuteronomy. Go check it out!
“If we need Aristotle, I think, we need Augustine more. Augustine was human enough, brilliant enough to realize that Plato’s search for a true public order, which corresponded to our inner order and to the good, was not an unworthy one. Augustine freed us, moreover, by insisting that this search that, if we be human, we discover in our restless hearts, after we have met both Ramiro de Lorqua and the pursuit of happiness in this world, has its proper and final answer as a gift from God, after the completion of our very lives among the existing cities. Augustine remains someone to whom we can turn. We are probably lucky if, in our studies, in our workings, we learned not to reject prayer and fasting, let alone Augustine.”
I hold in my hands a book whose publication I have been waiting for in anxious anticipation for some time now. That book is Clement and the Early Church of Rome: On the Dating of Clement’s First Epistle to the Corinthians by Msgr. Thomas J. Herron. Msgr. Herron, who worked in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, originally wrote this book as his doctoral dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome back in 1988. This book is truly groundbreaking as Herron persuasively argues for a pre-70 A.D. dating of First Clement. One of the key arguments is the polemic against the Jerusalem Temple, which Clement speaks against as though it were still standing. Had the Temple already been destroyed (which it would have been based on the traditional 96 A.D. dating), that would have furthered Clement’s argument for the superiority of Christianity over and against Judaism. Yet, Clement never even alludes to the destruction of the Temple. Herron’s thesis has many theological and ecclesiastical implications, most notably: the early existence of a normative presbyterate (priesthood) and Roman primacy. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Apostolic Fathers or Church History in general.
The New Year of 2011 is well on its way! For those who are still searching for a New Year’s resolution, you may consider a suggestion from the Father of the Church, Tertullian: Patience.
Why not? Patience IS indeed a virtue and an important one at that. Certainly we all could use a little bit more of it in our lives (especially those, like myself, with two children (soon to be three) at the age of three and under!) to help us grow in our spiritual life. Here’s what Tertullian has to say about the subject:
“Patience outfits faith, guides peace, assists love, equips humility, waits for penitence, seals confession, keeps the flesh in check, preserves the spirit, bridles the tongue, restrains the hands, tramples temptation underfoot, removes what causes us to stumble, brings martyrdom to perfection; it lightens the care of the poor, teaches moderation to the rich, lifts the burdens of the sick, delights the believer, welcomes the unbeliever, commends the servant to his master and his master to God, adorns the women and gives grace to men; patience is loved in children, praised in youth, admired in the elderly. It is beautiful in either sex and at every age of life…Her countenance is tranquil and peaceful, her brow serene…Patience sits on the throne of the most gentle and peaceful Spirit…For where God is there is his progeny, patience. When God’s Spirit descends patience is always at his side.”
This just goes to show that you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to. Hence the necessity for an authoritative guide in its interpretation. The irony is that the scholar advancing the theory is a Catholic (not that the Magisterium has spoken authoritatively on the gender of the Magi--who would have thought it would need to?!) The last line of the article suggests that the scholar's ex-(eis)-egesis is influenced by ecumenism. I didn't know that women were a separate denomination!
As this season of Advent draws near to a close and we eagerly await the coming of Truth Incarnate, Our Lord Jesus Christ, I give to you this beautiful quote of St. Augustine:
"Incomparably more lovely than the Grecian Helen is Christian truth. In her defense, our martyrs have fought against Sodom with more courage than the heroes of Greece displayed against Troy for Helen's sake."
Many people who like to deny the truthfulness of Sacred Scripture point to Genesis 2:7-9 as being a screaming contradiction of Scripture. For it says:
“then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”
The denier would exclaim, “See! Scripture has to be false. In Gen. 2:7, it says that man is created. THEN after that in Gen. 2:9, God causes vegetation to grow. BUT THIS CAN’T BE TRUE, for Genesis 1 says that land and vegetation was created on the THIRD day and man was created on the SIXTH day! Therefore, Scripture is false.”
On the surface, it seems that the denier is correct. Scripture contradicts itself. How are we who hold that Scripture is inspired by God, and therefore inerrant (for God is not the author of error), to answer?
By following St. Augustine, of course!
St. Augustine, following Tyconius’ sixth rule of recapitulation (from his Book of Rules), provides the solution in Book III, Chapter 36 of his De doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine):
The sixth rule Tichonius calls the recapitulation, which, with sufficient watchfulness, is discovered in difficult parts of Scripture. For certain occurrences are so related, that the narrative appears to be following the order of time, or the continuity of events, when it really goes back without mentioning it to previous occurrences, which had been passed over in their proper place. And we make mistakes if we do not understand this, from applying the rule here spoken of. For example, in the book of Genesis we read, "And the Lord God planted a garden eastwards in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food." Now here it seems to be indicated that the events last mentioned took place after God had formed man and put him in the garden; whereas the fact is, that the two events having been briefly mentioned, viz., that God planted a garden, and there put the man whom He had formed, the narrative goes back, by way of recapitulation, to tell what had before been omitted, the way in which the garden was planted: that out of the ground God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. Here there follows "The tree of life also was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." Next the river is mentioned which watered the garden, and which was parted into four heads, the sources of four streams; and all this has reference to the arrangements of the garden. And when this is finished, there is a repetition of the fact which had been already told, but which in the strict order of events came after all this: "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden." For it was after all these other things were done that man was put in the garden, as now appears from the order of the narrative itself: it was not after man was put there that the other things were done, as the previous statement might be thought to imply, did we not accurately mark and understand the recapitulation by which the narrative reverts to what had previously been passed over.
Now, the question that arises is, “Why would God make Scripture to be written in such a way as this?” The answer is so that you won’t rush through Sacred Scripture, but rather read it diligently and with extreme care, savoring every word the Sacred Author has written. Also, in order for you to dig deeper into Scripture and probe the depths of “the riches of the glory of this mystery” communicated by the Holy Spirit. Then you will “have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
“Contrary to what I have heard said, it is perfectly possible to understand a text without knowing whether it is E or whatever. If I insist on a documentary setting, or an historical setting in which the text was composed, I am often, even usually, tied to pure hypothesis: the connection with a source is dubious, the existence of the source (E) is in question. In any case the historical setting of the passage’s composition is largely a guess. And still the text itself in its most important setting, its actual place in scripture, lies before me to study as a grammatical and literary structure that I can analyze with some confidence without beginning with a chancy guess about origins.”
