Yesterday, November 30, was the Feast of St. Andrew, Jesus’s first apostle. Why did Jesus call on Andrew to become his first disciple? Matthew’s Gospel gives us a hint.

Peter and Andrew were “casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen” (Matt. 4:18). So, Jesus makes him (along with Simon Peter) a fisher of men. From catching fish, Andrew will go on to catch disciples.

There is a similarity, to be sure, and the play on words is clear. Andrew’s new fishing job is clarified. But does any of this explain: Why Andrew? Jesus isn’t really suggesting that casting your net into the Sea of Galilee is good preparation for becoming a missionary, is he? Andrew’s “natural job” hardly seems to prepare him for the “supernatural job” Jesus calls him to do. Surely, spending a few years at seminary would better prepare him for the task at hand.

Here is how, in Romans 10, St. Paul quotes Psalm 19: “Their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the ends of the world” (Ps. 19:4). Who is “their”? Their sound, their message? It is the heavens and the firmament: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork” (19:1). David is talking about “natural” speech: The sound of the heavens has gone out into all lands; the message of the firmament to the ends of the world.

Paul takes this “natural speech” of creation that calls out the glory of God and claims it is actually about the “supernatural speech” of preaching the gospel. We might almost think that the apostle would’ve been better off quoting something from the second part of Psalm 19, for that is all about the “supernatural,” about the commandments of the law. But as it is, Paul says that the “natural” speech of creation is actually about the “supernatural” speech of the gospel.

The apostle is not making a mistake. He recognizes how David has structured his psalm. And he is also familiar with God’s natural speech of the heavens and the firmament. The same is true with Jesus. He is not making a mistake. He knows the world from which he calls his first disciple. And he is also familiar with the natural job of catching fish.

Nature, God’s first book, really does speak to us. Heavens declare and firmament shows. One day tells its tale to another; one night imparts knowledge to another. What language do they speak? Paul knows: Their natural words already contain the gospel of Christ.

Why Andrew? Why did Jesus call him? Perhaps Andrew’s “natural” job was not just natural. Perhaps the Spirit guided his hands from day to day as he loaded his nets full of fish. Perhaps God meant for Andrew every day to toss his nets into the lake as his seminary training, equipping him to become a fisher of men.

Within a few years’ time, Andrew started fishing north of the Black Sea, in Romania, Ukraine, and Russia. Where his brother Simon Peter became the first bishop of Rome, Andrew became the first bishop of Byzantium—the first patriarch of Constantinople, we might say. One huge catch in one large net: East and West united in Andrew and Peter.

May the God of all grace—for whom the language of nature spreads the gospel abroad and for whom nets full of fish are a parable for the gathering of the nations—turn every word that we speak and every work that we do into a sign of supernatural grace. St. Andrew, pray for us.

First published in First Things.

How can we express thanks for an inexpressible gift? If someone brings a turkey to Thanksgiving dinner, we easily find words to describe the gift and convey our gratitude: “Thank you for bringing this large, ground-feeding bird of the Meleagris family, of which the colorful males have a prominent snood hanging from the beak.” Because the gift of a turkey is very describable, we can thank the person who brings it to our dinner party.

But an inexpressible gift, an indescribable gift, is one that, by definition, cannot be put into words. It exceeds the boundaries of our understanding. So, how would you give due and proper thanks for such a gift? Such is the thanksgiving conundrum we face in 2 Corinthians 9. “Thanks be to God,” says St. Paul, “for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15)

Lack of thanksgiving is, sadly, the norm. When the Israelites come into the promised land, they are stunned at what they see: brooks and fountains in valleys and hills, wheat and barley, vines, fig trees and pomegranates, olives and honey, bread without scarcity, stones of iron, hills with copper (Deut. 8:7–9). Moses knows the proper response: “Thanks be to God!” God is the one who brought you through the desert. God is the one who gave you these gifts. Don’t you make the mistake of pridefully boasting of gifts you received: “Take heed lest you forget the Lord your God” (8:11). “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth’” (8:17). Pride stands in the way of thanksgiving.

When Jesus heals ten lepers of their sickness, only one turns back, “praising God with a loud voice,” falling on his face at Jesus’s feet, “giving him thanks” (Luke 17:16). He was not what one might call a regular churchgoer. “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” (17:17–18) The Samaritan gives thanks, while the others’ presumption stands in the way of their thanksgiving.

Both Deuteronomy 8 and Luke 17 tell of gifts for which to give thanks: the promised land and healing from sickness. The two gifts seem quite different, but some of our thanksgiving lectionaries pair the two readings together. The promised land is the gift the Israelites received after undertaking a long, miserable journey. Health is what the ten lepers received after enduring a chronic, infectious disease.

The Church aims to show us that desert hardship and leprosy are akin to each other. Both speak to the evil and hardship that at times make our lives unbearable. The promised land’s abundance and newfound health from sickness are also akin to each other. Both picture our new life in Christ through the Spirit of God. Both Deuteronomy 8 and Luke 17 depict the same trajectory, the same story: from sin to salvation.

Moses uses many words to unpack God’s gift of the promised land. Luke, too, tells an entire story, unpacking Jesus’s gift of bodily healing. Both use a great number of words, for both of these gifts are describable. And because both are describable, the Israelites and lepers could, in principle, thank God for their gifts. If only all of them had.

The gift we receive is not just a promised land. Nor is it merely bodily health. The gift that God gives us in Christ is greater by far.

St. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, asks them to contribute to a collection for the Jerusalem church. How to convince them to part with their money? Paul knows that the only way is to remind them of who their God is. God is Generosity itself. God, Paul says, is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything. God supplies seed to the sower and bread for food; he supplies and multiplies our resources; he increases the harvest of our righteousness. He enriches us in every way (2 Cor. 9:8–11).

If the Corinthians give to the Jerusalem poor, they too will be generous. Their gift is a gift we can put into words, for we can count the money. We can put it in bags and ship it to others in need. All of that can be put into words.

God’s generosity is different. God’s generosity is not like ours. God’s generosity is greater than that of the Corinthians or ours. God’s generosity is beyond telling, beyond words. True, God’s generosity is a promised land; God’s generosity is a new body. But land and body are words that can only hint at a reality that itself is greater—the Generosity that is God’s very own self.

As Paul puts it, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (8:9). This is how generous God is. He becomes poor that we might become rich. He becomes man that we might become God.

How ought we to give thanks? With the best words we can find!

Today is Thanksgiving. Today, we obey the apostle; we join him in saying, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift.” We know that our words fall far short, for the Generosity that is God himself is far beyond words.

God’s gift is the gift that always keeps giving. We too pass on the gift that is God to others around us. When in heavenly glory we see our generous God, we’ll stop using words, for then we will know more than words ever can tell: the reality of the inexpressible gift.

First appeared in First Things

Henri de Lubac, S.J. (1896-1991)

Tradition measures changes in centuries. It is much too soon, therefore, to measure the impact that the mid-twentieth-century movement of nouvelle théologie had, either within or beyond the Catholic Church. Many will argue that the movement has been markedly successful in transforming the Catholic Church by means of the liturgical and theological developments in the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. For my part, I’d rather be cautious, and instead of focusing on nouvelle théologie’s success (or lack thereof), I think it more prudent, for now, to make a case for where and why I think the movement should be successful.

One way to explain nouvelle théologie is by describing it as a two-pronged attempt at renewal in the church. The first is that of ressourcement or retrieval, which took a variety of forms. The retrieval often focused on Thomas Aquinas, as in the work of Pierre Rousselot, Henri Bouillard, and Marie-Dominique Chenu. They all tried to rescue the Angelic Doctor from what they considered an ossified kind of Neo-Thomism that ruled the day. The church fathers were the other main source of inspiration, probably even more so than Aquinas. Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, and Hans Urs von Balthasar all delved deeply into the fathers. Despite occasional differences among each other, they all looked to the early church for a reintegration of nature and the supernatural, which they believed Neo-Thomist theology had unduly separated.

The second prong is that of aggiornamento or updating of the church. For the church to have something to say to the world, the church had to speak to “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age,” as Gaudium et spes, one of Vatican II’s key documents, puts it. This meant that liturgically, culturally, and ecumenically, it was time for the church to let go of its perceived isolation. Aggiornamento served to join the supernatural realities of the church to the natural desires and longings of the world. To be sure, it is fair to say that Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar were much more on board with the aggiornamento agenda than were the Jesuits de Lubac, Daniélou, Bouillard, and Balthasar.

In light of the post-conciliar developments in the Catholic Church, we may perhaps conclude that the ressourcement project has had less success than the attempt at aggiornamento—although both elements have shaped the Catholic Church in a variety of ways through the decades that followed the Council. From my perspective, we could do with a whole lot less aggiornamento than we have had. It is hard to read Gaudium et spes today and not be taken aback by the naïve cultural optimism that it exudes. The social teaching of the Catholic Church has increasingly emphasized human rights, has virtually banned just war, has kept advocating for a world government, and, most recently, has substantially weakened its stance on homosexuality. When aggiornamento takes the “signs of the times” as its starting point, it runs the danger of rank accommodation to the surrounding culture.

Ressourcement, on the other hand—and in particular patristic retrieval—continues to hold great promise. The underlying drive here is the patristic conviction that nature is always already geared toward a supernatural end. It is this conviction that drove de Lubac’s controversial Surnaturel of 1946. Here and in many of his other publications, de Lubac argued for a sacramental ontology, maintaining that natural or visible things serve as sacraments (sacramenta) that render present supernatural or invisible realities (res).

In line with his sacramental ontology, de Lubac insisted that human beings have a natural desire (desiderium naturale) for the beatific vision. In other words, the supernatural final end was from the outset in some way inscribed in human beings. De Lubac may or may not have been correct in arguing that he had Thomas Aquinas on his side. But it is beyond doubt that he was in line with many of the church fathers, especially those of the East. They had all considered man as naturally good, so that that the beatific vision was in line with how God had created human beings. De Lubac, therefore, insisted that when divine grace assists in the process of justification, God acts on us not in a purely extrinsic manner but in line with human capacities that are already present.

We need de Lubac’s insights on the nature-supernatural relationship also today. Modernity has long assumed a gap between the two, so that we treat nature as strictly autonomous, as having its own natural ends, and as operating according to its own immanent natural laws. The result has been a truncated view of science, which ever since Francis Bacon has explicitly operated without regard for final (supernatural) ends. Thoroughly at home in the natural world and at liberty to pursue this-worldly enjoyments as ultimate, we have ignored and often simply denied that the happiness of God ought to be our final end. Still today, we need patristic theology’s asceticism and anagogical (upward-leading) focus.

The reintegration of nature and the supernatural—desperately needed in our empty, often nihilist world—implies a return to Christian Platonism. Platonism is often accused of metaphysical dualism—separating sensible things from otherworldly forms. The response to this objection is at least twofold. First, it ignores the significant fact that at the heart of the Platonic tradition (and especially of Plotinus’s philosophy) lies the notion of methexis or participation. Sensible realities exist inasmuch as they participate in intelligible realities. The Neoplatonic notion of participation is indispensable precisely to counter metaphysical dualism.

Second, we witness such dualism primarily not in Platonism but in modernity. We have replaced metaphysical realism (which is to say, the real existence of eternal forms or ideas) with metaphysical nominalism (where our naming of things is based not on their eternal nature or form but is the result of subjective constructs). In other words, by denying the real existence of species and genera, we now inhabit a world in which sensible things are the only things to which we have access—by way of empirical observation—while we think of intelligible things as beyond our reach, and therefore probably not worth investigating in great depth. It is modernity, therefore, rather than the Platonic tradition that is truly dualistic in its metaphysic. If we mean it when we claim that we want to get rid of dualism, we should back away from our modern understanding of reality and return to Platonic metaphysics.

De Lubac’s hermeneutical insights—based on his Platonic sacramental ontology—looked to the Old Testament as a sacrament containing the mystery of the reality of Christ. Following patristic and medieval theologians as his guides, de Lubac explained that the surface of the text contains infinite depths, which the reader is meant to uncover by means of spiritual exegesis. When the fathers allegorized Scripture, therefore, they did not arbitrarily impose an ill-fitting, alien meaning upon the text. According to de Lubac, allegorizing was a practice called for by the newness of the Christ event. Now that Christ is here, we are able to recognize the sacramental depth of the divine Scriptures, so de Lubac thought.

Biblical scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, have largely failed to follow de Lubac’s lead. It is not that they have examined his sacramental hermeneutic and found it wanting. Rather, de Lubac was a man far ahead of his time. The post-conciliar Catholic Church was much more interested in catching up with Protestant historical-critical exegesis than in retrieving patristic sources. And within Protestantism, evangelicals went through a phase in which they were keen to prove their exegetical prowess and academic qualifications, which led to a decades-long focus on authorial intent and historical reconstruction. It is only with the turn of the twenty-first century that theological exegesis has taken off and that de Lubac has received the fair hearing that he always deserved.

I have only scratched the surface. Retrieving nouvelle théologie is a worthwhile endeavor for many other, related reasons. De Lubac thought of the Eucharist as a sacramental meal that makes the church into the body of Christ. Congar treated tradition as sacramental time, which enables various, chronologically distinct moments in history to become contemporaneous within the one reality of Christ. De Lubac, Daniélou, and Bouilard all held to a notion of truth as sacramental reality—a sharing in the mystery of the eternal Word of God—an approach that necessitates a humble epistemology while also acknowledging the grounding of knowledge in the mystery of divine truth itself. Finally, Chenu recovered theology as a sacramental discipline, insisting that its purpose is initiation into divinizing union with God. I cannot unpack these developments here, but I sketch each one in greater detail in my book Heavenly Participation.

The sacramental mindset of nouvelle théologie is what makes it stand out, still today, as a unique source of inspiration. Nouvelle théologie’s sacramental ontology led not only to sacramental interpretation (patristic exegesis), but also to a sacramental meal (Eucharist), sacramental time (tradition), sacramental reality (truth), and sacramental discipline (theology). Every one of these lies anchored within a sacramental ontology—an understanding of reality that reintegrates nature and the supernatural. Nature and the supernatural are not two separate orders or levels, bridged perhaps by some kind of external link. Nature always already participates in the supernatural life of God; and God’s supernatural life is always already sacramentally present in the natural world.

The great temptation of the modern world is to live as if God did not exist—etsi Deus non daretur, in the oft-repeated Latin phrase. Henri de Lubac was convinced that the reason fascism took control of French Catholic hearts and minds in the years leading up to the Second World War was that people had become accustomed to living etsi Deus non daretur. Philip Sherrard accused the modern scientific mindset of The Rape of Man and Nature—again, the outcome of a prideful insistence on living etsi Deus non daretur. The title of his recently-published book, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, suggests that Paul Kingsnorth is animated by a similar concern. Secular modernity operates on the assumption that we are answerable only to ourselves. The urge to dismiss God upstairs is deeply engrained in the mindset of the contemporary West.

Many factors help explain why modern man lives as if God did not exist. Some are techno logical: The acceleration of mastery over nature during the modern era can create the illusion that we are the ones in charge, not God. Some factors are cultural: Many took the eighteenth-century ideal of “enlightenment” as justification to cast off religious authority. But there are theological reasons that have led, paradoxically, to the eclipse of theology. One key cause of our penchant for living etsi Deus non daretur is the simplicity of God—or the way we have come to view it. Our theological traditions in the West have made God so remote and inaccessible that belief in him and worship of him feel incongruous: We may affirm doctrine, but experiential life through fellowship with God is lacking.

Let me state upfront that I do believe that God is simple. Any Christian theology true to biblical revelation must refuse the notion of God as the sum total of many parts. A god made up of multiple parts is akin to the mythological divinities of the Greek and Roman pantheons or the idols worshiped by the nations surrounding ancient Israel. These celestial beings were devised after the image of man. Their worshipers could pin them down and make them part of their conceptions of reality because these gods had strengths, foibles, and adventures in time and in space—much like us. The many and various deities were infinitely superior beings perhaps, but beings all the same. Made up of parts, they lacked transcendence and were subject to the grasp and gaze of human comprehension.

To say that God is simple is to acknowledge that he is beyond our ken. God does not have parts that we can describe or analyze. We cannot say that God is part this and part that. He is not even the sum of all qualities, powers, and attributes that we might deem worthy of honor. True, God is every one of those qualities, but he is also utterly beyond them. The simplicity of God forces us, therefore, to turn our eyes away from him: “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” (Exod. 33:20). We must confess that God is simple, for this confession is an acknowledgement of the otherness of God.

Modernity’s problems are nonetheless tied up with the simplicity of God. Again, don’t get me wrong: We need simplicity, and we need transcendence. But in a certain understanding of God as simple, we end up with a God who is not just simple and transcendent, but also beyond all human contact: Transcendence without immanence. If God is only purely simple, how can we relate to him? How can we see and know him? Does prayer make sense with such a conception of simplicity? A purely simple God would seem forever far away. It is because God stoops down and takes on shape and form and multiplicity that transcendence and immanence go hand in hand. Simplicity, wrongly viewed, does little to promote the life of Christian piety and may tempt us, instead, to live etsi Deus non daretur.

Andrew Radde-Gallwitz pinpoints the theological problem in his book Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity. He refers to what he calls the “identity thesis”: the claim that all of God’s attributes are identical to each other and to the divine essence. From our human point of view, so the thesis goes, we may distinguish numerous characteristics or attributes in God—wisdom, justice, kindness, and so on. But that is merely our perspective; in God himself, they are one, as demanded by the notion of divine simplicity. Hence, the identity thesis claims that all of these attributes are identical both to each other and to God’s essence: God is his wisdom, justice, kindness, and so on—in his very essence. St. Augustine understood divine simplicity through the lens of the identity thesis, and most Western theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, adopted his perspective.

The upshot is a gap between the simplicity of God and the multiplicity of creation, and that gap is hard to bridge. The identity thesis separates a purely simple God from the multiplicity of created things, the one from the many. Such separation does pay dividends: We won’t be tempted to confuse the creator with the creature; we won’t lapse into idolatry or pantheism. But the cost outweighs the benefits. The modern conception of reality excludes God from everyday concerns, and we end up living etsi Deus non daretur.

Ironically, this same perspective yields a view of the eschaton, the final consummation of all things, that threatens to collapse the difference between creator and creature. This view holds that we will one day see the face of God, interpreted as his very essence. Aquinas’s insistence that, in the hereafter, we will see the essence of God—his understanding of the beatific vision—is remarkable for its boldness. Aquinas comes close to suggesting that creatures will comprehend the creator. To be sure, he tempers this claim by acknowledging that we will comprehend God only in the sense of “attaining” to him—Aquinas using the Latin term attingere (ST I, q. 12, a. 7). Whereas God seems remote, transcendent, and perhaps unreachable in this vale of tears, God in the hereafter overcomes the gap in a way that has made many question whether Aquinas still properly distinguishes the creator from the creature.

Perhaps this criticism is unduly harsh. After all, Aquinas suggested that it is by means of a created habit—the so-called light of glory—that we will see God’s essence. In his own way, Aquinas attempts to keep creator and creature distinct, even when we attain to the promised happiness of God. We may perhaps suggest, therefore, that Eastern and Western theologians have different theological toolkits for one and the same purpose: to articulate the divinizing union with God without collapsing the divine and human natures into one. An irenic reading of Aquinas is by no means without warrant.

The Angelic Doctor nonetheless runs into problems, it seems to me. To begin with, it is not clear that distinguishing attaining from comprehending really works. With the identity thesis, God’s essence and his attributes are one and the same. So, we either attain to and comprehend this simple essence, or we do neither, for God’s essence is not spatially mapped out. Traveling south from America, we may at some point say that we have arrived at or attained to Mexico without comprehending it, but we cannot say the same regarding God conceived of in terms of absolute simplicity.

There is a further problem: Aquinas’s commitment to the identity thesis renders his theology of the beatific vision insufficiently Christological, for in his view it is not Christ but the essence of God we will see in the hereafter. True, Aquinas maintained that by virtue of our union with Christ, we will, as it were, be in him as the place from which we gaze upon the essence of God. But it remains the case for Aquinas that it is the undivided essence of God—rather than the theophany of God in Jesus Christ—that will be the object of the beatific vision. This account unfortunately implies a separation between the triune persons and the divine essence. It seems that a too-rigorous monotheism, guarded by the identity thesis, threatens to overwhelm our creedal commitment to a triune God.

What is the solution? We should think of simplicity not as identity of essence and attributes but as a matter of degree. The identity thesis ends up separating a simple, transcendent God from our everyday world of multiplicity. Simplicity in degrees allows all that exists within the hierarchy of being to participate in God’s simplicity, angels much more marvelously than kingfishers or glasswing butterflies, but all to some degree, in accord with their capacity. In this view, everything has a place within the divine hierarchy and thus participates in God’s simplicity in its own unique and limited way. We need hierarchy, therefore, to make sense of divine simplicity and its graded shape.

The third-century Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus made the case for a hierarchy of being that proceeds downward from the One (to hen), by way of Intellect (nous), to Soul (psychē), and so to the sensible world of matter. His Enneads describe the One as utterly aloof from each of the levels of the hierarchy—absolutely simple—while at the same time the One reaches out to Intellect and makes itself wholly present to it. Plotinus, in this way, acknowledged divine transcendence and immanence at the same time.

Plotinus’s hierarchy was a major amplification of Plato’s philosophy of the forms. Plato’s approach had understood particular realities that win our aesthetic admiration as instances or embodiments of the eternal idea or form of beauty, and geometrical proof as an instance or embodiment of truth itself. In this way, Plato allowed that something perfect and thus simple—truth containing only itself, and never error—lends its perfection to complex and imperfect particular things, which in turn participate in a simple and perfect form.

Though Plato had spoken of the Good or the One as, say, a “super-form,” he had not yet sys tematically developed the hierarchal structuring we encounter in Plotinus. Plotinus thought of the One as “beyond being” (hyperousios), which remains forever out of reach. The second level, that of Intellect or being, is where Plato would have located his ideas or forms. For the ancients, being meant intelligibility and vice versa, and thus it is here, at the level of Intellect, that the human mind grasps the forms or essences (ousiai) of things.

The distinction between the One and Intellect—between beyond being and being—is, in one sense, absolute. Human language cannot in any way describe the One. Its simplicity and transcendence are complete and uncompromising. Neither positive (kataphatic) nor negative (apophatic) discourse can grasp or comprehend the One. Plotinus, so it would seem, was stuck with the same sharp separation between simplicity and multiplicity that bedeviled the identity thesis of the West.

Plotinus, however, relied on Plato’s notion of participation. He insisted that the One—despite being utterly simple and transcendent—nonetheless makes itself wholly present within the various levels of the hierarchy. Plotinus explained this perhaps counterintuitive proposal by means of his famous doctrine of double activity. The One’s internal activity or energy (energeia) is its very essence, completely simple, out of reach and therefore beyond being. However, the One also possesses an external energy by which the One reaches out to Intellect. This external energy of the One becomes, in turn, Intellect’s internal energy. And Intellect, too, has an external energy, with which it reaches out below itself to Soul, and so on, down the ladder. The doctrine of double activity allowed Plotinus to claim that each level of the hierarchy of being transcends that which is below, while at the same time being present or immanent within it.

Eastern theology has generally adopted Plotinus’s hierarchical scheme. In this theological tradition, the divine essence (ousia) is out of reach, radically simple, incomprehensible. Creatures can participate, however, to varying degrees, in God’s being, life, and wisdom, which are denominated as divine “energies.” Without too much difficulty, we can map this essence–energies distinction onto Plotinus’s distinction between the One and Intellect. Essence and energies do not divide God into parts, for the energies are still God himself, just as in Plotinus the One makes itself present as Intellect by way of its external energies.

Those of us trained in the theological traditions of Western Christianity are unfamiliar with the essence–energies distinction. We may find it perplexing, even suspicious. Are we to suppose that God has two parts, one characterized by essence, and the other by energies? But questions of this sort merely presuppose the identity thesis as the only way to affirm the metaphysical concept of simplicity, rather than engaging the very different metaphysical concepts that operate in the theological traditions of Eastern Christianity. And note well: If Plotinus’s double activity doctrine seems suspect, think for a moment of the Trinity. Just as God can be both one and three at the same time, so the essence–energies distinction need not contradict the oneness of God—divine simplicity.

In short, for the West, God’s essence and attributes (or, in Plotinian terms, the One and Intellect) are one and the same, so that God’s essence is his attributes, and each of his attributes is identical to every other one. The East, while not rejecting divine simplicity, views it as manifesting degrees. The multiplicity of created being participates in the simplicity of God. As a result, God makes himself wholly present to kingfishers and to glasswing butterflies—though the peculiar multiplicity of their creaturely being limits their capacity to receive the divine energies of God. They share in God’s being and life, though as non-rational beings they lack creaturely wisdom.

I have struggled with the question of how to conceive of God’s transcendence. In my 2018 book Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition, I discussed the beatific vision without recourse to the essence–energies distinction. I expressed sympathy with what the East tries to do with this distinction, but I worried (unduly perhaps) that such a distinction could not maintain the simplicity of God. Trying to steer between the Scylla of the Eastern essence–energies distinction and the Charybdis of the Western identification of essence and attributes, I advocated a theophanic understanding of the beatific vision in which Christ is the essence of God. Jesus, after all, said to Philip, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). My solution took from the East the conviction that our beatific vision will be a Christological theophany and from the West the notion that we will see the divine essence.

I am no longer convinced that my Christological interpretation of the divine essence will do. Steering between the Eastern and Western viewpoints may seem like an attractive option, but it won’t work. I have come to accept that we need the essence–energies distinction. In other words, we should pattern our theology according to the Eastern appropriation of Plotinus rather than follow the Western revision of his hierarchical scheme.

It is easy to think that I am preoccupied with technical issues, the ethereal matters of speculative theology. After all, my thinking on the matter itself has not changed all that much. I still hold that when we participate in God’s energies, we participate in God himself. And I still believe that when we see Christ, we also see the Father. (I surely should make the latter claim, since its wording is straight from John’s Gospel!) But it is less than helpful to use the language of divine essence when we speak of Jesus Christ.

Why? To begin with, talking about Christ as the essence of God overlooks the fact that the incarnate Christ is a sacrament of God (the Ursakrament, to be sure, the ground of all sacramentality). A sacrament effects that which it signifies, which is to say that it “makes real,” here and now, that toward which it points. As sacrament of God, Christ is truly God. But this is not the same as saying that once we have seen him, we have seen and know the essence of God. After all, even as we participate in Christ’s divinized humanity, paradigmatically by receiving his body and blood in the Eucharist, God remains infinitely beyond us. Maximus the Confessor reminds us, “As much as He became comprehensible through the fact of His birth, by so much more do we now know Him to be incomprehensible precisely because of that birth” ( Ambigua 5.5). When we identify Christ with the divine essence, we run the danger of reducing the nature of God to the observable facts of the historical Jesus.

Moreover, essence language is hard-edged. It does not allow for more or less. In the past, I have identified Christ with the divine essence in my theological writing, going on to say that we participate in varying degrees of intensity in the divine essence, just as we may share more or less in Christ’s humility (or some other of Christ’s virtues). But this is to use the language of essence in a highly unusual way. For Aristotle, the essence underlies (to hypokeimenon) an object’s accidental attributes; it is what remains once we have stripped away every one of its attributes. Plotinus held to a similar view: The One’s essence is precisely what distinguishes its transcendent nature from each of the hierarchical levels below it. Only by using the term essence in an idiosyncratic manner can we say that we make progress in it or learn to participate in it more deeply. Only when the transcendent God reveals himself by way of his energies can we reasonably speak of creaturely participation: Only when God manifests himself can we participate in him.

Think of it this way: Either we see God in his essence, or we don’t. There is no conceptual room for greater or lesser. But we can easily speak (and we often do) of gaining deeper insight into God’s revelation, or of growing in discipleship. What conception of the divine allows us to speak of drawing “closer” to God, of growing in holiness as God himself is holy? I have become convinced that we cannot give a satisfactory answer to this question without something akin to the Eastern concept of divine energies.

Casting one’s lot with the essence–energies distinction is a major theological step. After all, this distinction lies at the root of most other differences between East and West. It is precisely the lack of a distinction between essence and energies that made Aquinas shy away from speaking of participation in God: While acknowledging participation in creaturely common being (esse commune), Aquinas was afraid to use the language of participation in God himself (esse ipsum subsistens), because it would mean participation in the divine essence, which in turn would erase the difference between creator and creature. Aquinas rightly recognized that his adoption of the identity thesis required him to avoid the traditional language of participation in God. Aquinas’s view of divine simplicity, the standard view for much of the Western theological tradition, thus seriously attenuated the participatory link between creator and creature.

Absolute divine simplicity, along the lines of the identity thesis, has encouraged the perception of a radical separation between God and the cosmos. Modernity was the inevitable corollary. I fear that we have all become very modern, even if we are baptized believers, for when we think of what creation is, we are inclined to keep any thought of God at bay. By contrast, patristic theologians—Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor—unapologetically assert that creation is not just “out of nothing” (ek tou mē) but also “out of God” (ek theou). Created things, Dionysius says, are “in a sense, projected out from him.” The Logos, suggests St. Maximus, “thickens,” “expands,” or “embodies” himself in creation. Such articulations are possible because these theologians believe that the utterly simple God paradoxically renders himself present in creation.

We may well be startled, perhaps troubled, by such language. The reason is probably that we fear pantheism. This same fear is what animated Western theologians since the High Middle Ages, when they articulated the identity thesis and began to separate nature from the supernatural ever more sharply. But fear is a poor counselor. Pantheism is by no means the inevitable result of letting go of the simplicity of God as understood by the identity thesis. None of the Eastern Fathers I have mentioned held to such a view of divine simplicity; yet none of them lapsed into pantheism. Instead, they typically distinguished between God’s essence and his energies. Creation is “out of God” only with respect to his energies. God’s essence remains completely simple and unambiguously transcendent.

The danger in the modern West is not pantheism but practical atheism. Craig Gay rightly diagnosed the trouble with modernity in the title of his 1998 book The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It Is Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist. Our impediment to a deeper and fuller faith is our disenchanted world, which has emerged in part because we have removed our utterly simple God—whose substance is identical to his attributes—from the material world of multiplicity. The everyday is merely everyday. We pursue social, political, and economic aspirations without regard for God. Is this surprising? It is hard to imagine that the purely simple God of the identity thesis could in any way be present in or concern himself with the world in which we live.

We need to retrieve the Eastern notion of participation in the divine energies. This theological concept allows us to echo the traditional Christian Platonist vision of God’s theophanic manifestation of himself in a created mode and embodiment of himself in creation—a vision, therefore, of creaturely participation in God. To counter the modern, Western creator–creature divide, we must rethink the metaphysical discourse we use in speaking about God and return to the Christian Platonist understanding in which all things are in God and God is in all things.

Christian panentheism, disciplined by a subtle appropriation of the hierarchical scheme developed by Plotinus, was common among the Eastern Fathers. It was their way of avoiding a sharp and unbridgeable separation of nature from the supernatural, of heaven from earth. When we think of creation as God’s making himself present by means of his energies, living etsi Deus non daretur begins to seem a most peculiar undertaking.

Originally published at First Things.

Please forgive me for some shameless advertising. Nashotah House is offering some stellar courses. (As you will see below, I am offering a course on preaching in January.)

Registration is now open for our winter term, and we have a fantastic lineup of courses!

🔗 nashotah.edu/winter-2026

• Introduction to Biblical Interpretation with Dr. Garwood Anderson & the Rev. Dr. Travis Bott

• Moral Theology with the Rev. Dr. Stewart Clem

• Anglican and Episcopal Church History with the Rev. Dr. Calvin Lane

• The Prayer Book Tradition with the Rev. Gavin Dunbar, the Rev. Jonathan Jameson, and Dr. Drew Keane (Hosted by St. John’s Church in Savannah)

• Sacramental Preaching with the Rev. Dr. Hans Boersma

• The Incarnational Art of Flannery O’Connor with Dr. Christina Bieber Lake

We welcome Visiting Students (individuals who are not enrolled in an academic program) to attend one-week class sessions on our campus in January. Whether you are a pastor desiring continuing education, a student from another institution interested in the unique electives Nashotah offers, or a layperson seeking deeper engagement with theological studies, you are invited to take a class at Nashotah House this winter.

Winter 2026 Courses & Registration: nashotah.edu/winter-2026

Learn about our Visiting Student program: www.nashotah.edu/visiting-student

Can non-Thomists use analogy discourse? This is the question that arises from reading to Nicholas Smith’s “Becoming God: A Response to Hans Boersma’s Participatory Metaphysics.” Smith’s article is a response to my recent webinar on “Participatory Metaphysics and Creation out of God.” For the most part, Smith is in agreement with the participatory approach that I outlined in my talk. We both have an Eastern view of deification, inspired by Maximus the Confessor. I am grateful for his kind review, delighted that, for most part, we are on the same page.

On one point, however, Smith expresses disagreement with me. I suggested in the webinar that in divinization, we participate in the divine energies “in an infinitely inferior created mode.” Smith discerns here the problematic specter of Thomistic analogy doctrine, presumably along the following lines: We will be made gods, perhaps, but we will receive this grace of divinization only in an analogous, inferior manner.

Smith elaborates on a variety of additional differences between Maximus and Aquinas, and I should make clear that these additional issues did not, in any way, feature in my webinar. I would not want Smith’s reader to think that I am Thomistic on all of the points where Smith highlights differences between these two theologians. I am not. I suppose I should take comfort from the fact that once my book Theophanizing Love will be out, no one will suspect me ever again of being Thomistic—to put the matter in a rather understated fashion. So, while Smith’s discussion on the differences between Maximus and Aquinas is interesting, most of it does not pertain to what I said in the webinar. My webinar makes clear that I am thoroughly Maximian (not Thomistic) in my thinking.

That said, my webinar did mention analogy, and the question is whether it turns me into a Thomist rather than a follower of Maximus. Now, analogy is prominent both in Dionysius and in Maximus. Vladimir Lossky makes clear that Dionysius uses the adverb ἀναλόγως (“analogously”) over seventy times, and he declares it to be the “pivot” of Dionysius’s understanding of hierarchy.[1] Lossky’s entire article is illuminating.

According to Dionysius, one’s perception of God is always dependent upon his creaturely capacity. Those higher on the hierarchical scale of being have greater capacity for the vision of God than those lower; and among human beings, purity affects one’s capacity either positively or negatively. One’s analogous or proportionate relationship to God determines his capacity for God. Dionysius explains, therefore, in The Celestial Hierarchy, that in a hierarchy, “the first passes on what he has received to the one who follows, with providence spreading the divine light to all in an analogous manner (ἀναλόγως).” (CH 3.3).[2]

The degree of one’s illumination always depends, for Dionysius, upon one’s analogous participation in God. As a result, the highest angels have the greatest capacity for God, and they are supposed to draw those below them into God’s light, in a manner that is consistent with the capacity of that lower rank of angels. “It is common,” writes Dionysius, “to all the deiform intelligibles [i.e., angels] to have, in general, a participation in wisdom and knowledge; either in an immediate and primary way or in a secondary and inferior way—this is no longer common, but it is determined for each according to its suitable proportionality (ἀναλογίας)” (12.2).[3] Dionysius here claims that a creaturely proportionality or analogy determines one’s relation to God, since it determines the degree of illumination that each is able to handle.

In The Divine Names, Dionysius offers his definition of the eternal causes or logoi of created things (a notion similar to Platonic ideas or forms), and he then states that we are meant “to be led up through analogous (ἀναλογικῆς) knowledge of these things to the Cause of all things, so far as possible (ὡς οἷοὶ)” (DN 5.9).[4] The degree of deification, for Dionysius, appears to be proportionate or analogous to one’s capacity for illumination.

Turning now to Maximus, both the concepts of “likeness” and of “analogy” are key to his theology. Smith’s blogpost speaks critically of the notions of “imitation” and “analogy.” I share his apprehension in principle, since these notions often function in unhelpful ways, separating the creator from the creature. I would agree, for instance, that in Thomas Aquinas’s use of these terms, we witness an incipient rupture between nature and the supernatural.

However, the mere use of imitation and analogy discourse does not yet imply a modern, nominalist distancing of creator and creature. Luke Steven, in his fine book Imitation, Knowledge, and the Task of Christology in Maximus the Confessor, discusses in detail what he calls the patristic “likeness epistemology,” which he explains is Platonic in origin: “Like knows like,” we might say. Or, “the pure in heart shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). Steven shows that both “likeness” (ὁμοιότης) and analogy (ἀναλογία) pervade Maximus’s writings.[5]

What is more, deification too, for Maximus, is according to likeness. He comments, for example, “The mystery transforms those who partake in a worthy manner into itself and, by grace and participation (χάριν καὶ μέθεξιν), renders them similar (ὁμοίους) to the one who is good as the cause of everything that is good” (myst. 21 [CCSG 69.48).[6] This is “likeness epistemology” applied straightforwardly to deification itself (cf. also 24 [69.58]). Likeness to God means that, through participation, those who are deified have the identically same energy that God has (qu. Thal. 59.8; [CCSG 69, 58])—though in a fitting and proportionate manner, in line with the particular creaturely nature and in line with the worth of one’s progress in virtue.[7] Likeness itself is not problematic. It is problematic only when it is removed from a participatory context. In Christian Platonism, imitation and likeness were, traditionally, participatory concepts.

I haven’t been able to find in Maximus the precise language of becoming God “in all but essence” (though I agree it expresses a Maximian sentiment). Jordan Wood uses the exact same expression in his recent book The Whole Mystery of Christ,[8] with an appeal to Ambiguum 41.5, which speaks of man “becoming everything that God is, without, however, identity in essence, and receiving the whole of God instead of himself.”[9] The “identity” (ταὐτότης) that we receive in divinization is an identity between God’s energies and ours (rather than an identity in essence).

The question is: What does Maximus mean when he speaks of an identity of human and divine energies? It is certainly a striking term, but we have to be careful not to jump to conclusions, for we do have to reconcile it somehow with Maximus’s obvious analogy discourse. Maximus states explicitly that in deification, God grants “the gift of divinization proportionately (ἀναλόγως) to created beings” (qu. Thal. 22.7).[10] Luke Steven summarizes, “When creatures achieve identity with God, it is not an unqualified meeting, but unfolds in a way that suits. It unfolds ‘in proportion’ (κατὰ τὴν ἀναλογίαν), as Maximus often puts it.”[11]

It is possible that Maximus is deliberately paradoxical, both affirming strict identity and putting limits on this identity. Or perhaps he simply means that the virtues of divinized human beings are the same ones as God’s virtues and in that sense identical. For example, our humility is a participation in Christ’s humility; our wisdom a sharing in Christ’s wisdom; and so forth. This would not preclude that, even when divinized, we will have our perfected virtues in an analogous, proportionate manner. Regardless of how we resolve the apparent tension in Maximus’s language, one need not be a Thomist to speak of divinization as taking place proportionately or by analogy.

The centrality of the notions of likeness and analogy in Maximus—and his use of them even in connection with deification—is a matter of some importance. The question concerns the uniqueness of Christ, which is to say, the question of how the divinization of his human nature relates to ours. Jordan Wood does not accept that the incarnation of Christ was unique, but I am quite sure that Maximus did. As I hope to make clear in my forthcoming book, on his understanding, Christ’s divinization is archetypal and perfect, whereas ours is (and always remains!) merely a participation in his; ours is always analogously patterned upon his.

Alexis Torrance has recently shown that the difference between Christ and other human beings was important also to Gregory Palamas.[12] Palamas appealed to John 1:16, “Of his fulness (ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος) have all we received.” The glory of God—as well as every other one of the divine energies—comes to us via the hypostatic union. Torrance then makes the following noteworthy observation:

Palamas offers a distinction between the state of the deified and the state of Christ on the basis of this text in combination with Colossians 2:9 (‘in him dwelleth all the fullness [πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα] of the Godhead bodily’). While Christ is himself the fullness of God in the flesh, even the deified remain distinct insofar as their deification is utterly and forever contingent upon the person of Christ: they receive ‘of his fullness’ and never become ‘the fullness’ itself.

The uniqueness of Christ and of his divinization is important. Without an analogous difference between Christ’s divinization and ours, we cannot have the eternal progress (epektasis) that Smith acknowledges we may look forward to. Only if Christ’s divinization remains infinitely greater than ours can we infinitely progress. More importantly, only if his divinization is eternally and infinitely greater than ours can we recognize his uniqueness and adore him forever in the new Jerusalem: “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever” (Rev. 5:12–13).

Analogy is not a Thomistic specialty; it belongs to the Great Tradition of the church.

[1] Vladimir Lossky, “La Notion des ‘analogies’ chez Denys le Pseudo-Aréopagite,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 5 (1930): 279–309, at 279, 292.

[2] My translation, HB. Cf. Lossky, “La Notion,” 298.

[3] My translation, HB. Cf. Lossky, “La Notion,” 299.

[4] My translation, HB. Cf. Lossky, “La Notion,” 303.

[5] Luke Steven, Imitation, Knowledge, and the Task of Christology in Maximus the Confessor (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2020).

[6] I quote from Maximus the Confessor, On the Ecclesiastical Mystagogy, ed. and trans. Jonathan J. Armstrong, with Shawn Fowler and Tim Wellings, SVPPS 59 (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2019).

[7] I use Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios, trans. Maximos Constas, FC 136 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018).

[8] Jordan Daniel Wood, The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022), 92.

[9] I quote from Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, trans. Nicholas Constas, 2 vols., Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28–29 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

[10] Cf. Steven, Imitation, 85.

[11] Steven, Imitation, 84.

[12] Alexis Torrance, Human Perfection in Byzantine Theology: Attaining the Fullness of Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 188

.

My friend Fr. Mark Bleakley—worldclass artist and Lead Designer for Willet Stained Glass Studios—personally designed and made it for me. He explains to me that he used Polish and German mouthblown glass. He painted, etched, and then kiln-fired the depictions, glazed each of the pieces, soldered lead strips between them, and framed the whole thing in woodstock. The process is unbelievable.

Mark gave my wife Linda and me a tour of the Willet Studios some years ago. Both the high artistic quality of the windows that he showed us and the intricacy of the technical process of making them are truly astounding. Look up his work on Facebook (Bleakley Stained Glass) or Instagram (@mystic.lamb.studio).

Believe it or not, Mark gave this window to me as a gift. I hardly need to add that the gift was entirely undeserved, which makes me all the more grateful for it.

On the picture, Mark poses with his handiwork in his home. I took the picture when Linda and I visited him and his wife Michelle in Winona, MN in October of last year.

Mark explained that the window is inspired by the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, which is currently housed in the Catholic Basilica of Our Lady of Walsingham, also known as the Slipper Chapel, in Norfolk, England.

The window depicts the Virgin as sedes sapientiae (“seat of Wisdom”), with the Word or Wisdom himself holding the cosmic orb—the T-O orb representing the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Seated on her heavenly throne, our Lady holds the Lily Rod, representing purity and sovereignty. She herself is Jesse’s rod (Isa. 11:1), which issues in the blossoming white fleur-de-lis (“lily flower”) of our Lord, upon whom, as the prophet says, rests the seven-fold Spirit of wisdom and understanding (Isa. 11:2). In line with a Christological reading of the Song of Songs, we are meant to see Christ in this flower—“the lily of the valleys” (Song 2:1).

The amber back of Mary’s throne reminds us that the seat is made of wood, while the amber backdrop also reveals the glow of the Spirit’s overshadowing. The throne serves also as an altar, covered by a baldacchino that is supported by two pillars with a total of seven rings (though the bottom one on the viewer’s right is not visible in Mark’s version), representing the sevenfold spirit of Isaiah 11 and alluding, at the same time, to the seven sacraments. Mark included amber flames for the tip of the two pillars, suggestive of divine wisdom.

Traditional iconography treats Mary as the Ark of the Covenant: Just as the Ark contained the Ten Commandments, so the Mother of God holds the eternal Wisdom of God—she is sedes sapientiae. Her altar/throne, therefore, is surrounded by the Cherubim of the Ark of the Covenant—the four living creatures (Ezek. 1:4–28; Rev. 4:6–8) of eagle, man, ox, and lion, traditionally associated with the four Gospels. Atop the baldacchino, the Spirit himself descends as the giver of all salvific gifts.

This depiction of salvation through the Virgin Mary has a broader, cosmic framework: The arch of Mary’s seat represents the rainbow—a sacrament of God’s faithfulness to all creation. The starry heavens surround the seat of wisdom, while the pillars of the earth on both sides of the window give stability to the cosmos and also shape the framework of the eternal kingdom of God.

Mary decisively tramples the Dragon underfoot, in fulfilment of the protevangelium of Genesis 3:15, “She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (in the Douay-Rheims version). When the enemy is caught by a ray of sunlight, you can see its bright-yellow eye darting its furious look at you and its fiery tongue ready to inject you with its poison. But the Dragon’s defeat is unmistakable. His head is crushed, thanks be to God!

At my request, Mark placed one of the most famous sayings of the second-century bishop Saint Irenaeus in the banner at the lower end of the window: Vita hominis visio Dei (“The life of man is the vision of God”). This saying has been important to me for many years, and I am so grateful that I now get to read it every day.

I was rather nervous about driving this window all the way from Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin (where I teach) to Langley, British Columbia (where we live). But we managed, and thankfully the window arrived in one piece. As you can see here, it now hangs prominently in one of our backyard windows.

I walk past it numerous times each day, reminded every time of God’s victory over the Serpent, of God’s astounding work of redemption, and of his faithful servant Fr. Mark Bleakley.

The purpose of the blood is clear: It unites man with God. The word atonement means at-one-ment. Blood atones for sin. “I have given [the blood] to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Lev. 17:11). Blood unites the world with God.

The phrase “blood of the covenant” takes us back to Exodus. God gives the Ten Commandments. He gives, as well, a list of other laws. And then the ceremony starts (Exod. 24). The people stand around Mount Sinai, watching a devouring fire at the top. There, God’s glory dwells. They may not go up, for if they do and see the Lord, they will surely die (19:21). Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, with seventy of the elders, may go up. But they see God only from below, “under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness” (24:10). Moses and Joshua may go higher yet, “up into the mount of God” (24:13). Finally, Moses alone reaches the highest peak. He enters the midst of the cloud and stays there forty days and forty nights.

But before anyone climbs up, Moses arranges God’s covenant with Israel. Animals are piled upon the altar as burnt offerings and peace offerings. Moses tosses half their blood against the altar, to make it pure; then he throws the rest upon the people, so they too are pure. He then proclaims, “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you” (24:8). “The blood of the covenant.” Here we have it—the phrase of the Epistle (Heb. 9) and the Gospel (Luke 22). It is the phrase also of the words of consecration in the Eucharist. The blood makes the covenant. The blood unites. The blood makes atonement, at-one-ment.

“Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” (Exod. 33:20). This is what God told Moses, and this is why Mount Sinai is divided into levels. People at the bottom; Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders up a way; Joshua higher yet; and only Moses entering the cloud. Sinai’s levels are levels of purity, levels of blessedness. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). Moses must be pure in heart, for he sees God inside the glory of the cloud.

The modern mind does not conceive of reality as mountainous. All it sees is flat, horizontal, wide-open fields because it perceives only the surface level—superficies in Latin. But Scripture opens our eyes to the mountains around us, and mountains denote hierarchy. Because we do not think of hierarchy, we also do not think of purity. You need purity to get to God; you need purity to climb the mountain. Hierarchy is about purity, and purity is about hierarchy. The two go hand in hand.

Note what the blood does: It gives purity. It purifies both altar and people. The blood unites man with God. The blood lets God come down and dwell among us. But “the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: Or what is the place of my rest?” (Acts 7:48–49). The tabernacle or temple is nothing but a copy or “shadow of heavenly things” (Heb. 8:5). God showed Moses the tabernacle’s blueprint by taking him inside the glory-cloud: God’s real, transcendent dwelling place became the tabernacle’s pattern (Exod. 25:40).

The glory-cloud—the heavenly tabernacle, God’s own transcendent home—is the place we long for. We want to be where Moses was. But only the pure in heart will see God. Only the pure in heart will reach the mountaintop. So, here is the goodness of the Lord. He takes the road to Golgotha. He offers up his life as sacrifice. And then he takes his blood up to the tabernacle at the top (Heb. 9). “It was therefore necessary,” says this chapter, “that the symbols (or copies) of things in the heavens should be purified with these rites” (Heb. 9:23). That is, the earthly tabernacle here below, as a copy of the heavenly dwelling, is purified with blood. We know about this also apart from Hebrews, for Moses had done exactly this with covenant blood before he climbed the mountain. He made the symbol pure. But note how the Hebrews passage continues: “But the heavenly things themselves [are purified] with better sacrifices.”

This is a puzzling statement. It makes sense for the earthly tabernacle to have blood splashed all over it, but “heavenly things”? Are they not super-pure already? Why do they need purifying? Think back to what St. Paul writes. He asks, in Ephesians, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17). We are temples of God; the Spirit of God dwells in us (1 Cor. 3:16). Heavenly things are not only at the top of Mount Sinai, where Moses peered into the heavenly realm. Heavenly things are also in our hearts. Our life goal is for the heart to become a mountaintop, a place for God himself to dwell. Does God dwell inside my heart? Does my heart have the purity of Moses’s heart? Am I prepared to see the glory of the Most High God?

Today we celebrate Good Friday. Sacrificial blood flows. Jesus, not just victim but priest as well, will use the blood to purify “heavenly things”—the temples of our hearts. It is sometimes hard to think of our hearts as akin to the temple blueprint. We have made a mess of it; we have turned it into a den of robbers. But look at the priest and see him sprinkling his own blood upon our hearts.

So, take heed of the apostolic teaching from Hebrews: “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Heb. 10:22). Once our hearts are sprinkled with covenant blood, they become the top of Mount Sinai—a place to meet the Lord in purity.

Appears in First Things

I have a particular liking for the verbal form because it makes clear that the created world—including us human beings—exists in a dependent mode, ever relying upon God’s creative and providential activity. God’s merciful gaze brings the world into being, and should he remove his watchful eye for just a moment, creation would return to nothingness. Apart from God, nihil est—nothing exists— without God, and apart from him, we can do nothing (John 15:5).

To be sure, the metaphor of God casting his eye upon the world has its drawbacks. it may seem to imply distance between God and the world—the very thing we try to avoid by talking of God embodying himself. Vision, for us moderns, implies a gap between subject and object. But it wasn’t always so. For the ancient world, and for much of the Christian tradition, vision implied unity. it was thought that a subject unites himself with an object by means of vision. Vision allows the object’s nature or form to enter the subject. As a result, when I merely look at my wife, she already becomes part of me. The ancients recognized, better than we do, both the beauty of a relational, ocular world and the dangers of looking at the world in a haphazard or unseemly manner. To them, God gazing at the world implied that the world is part of him.

It is not without reason that, for us moderns, vision has come to imply distance. We like it that way. Insisting on a gap between two separate substances (subject and object, or God and world) is a way for us to assert control over the world around us. Back in the eighteenth century, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed a glass prison, circular in shape, so that the jailers, from the center of the building, would be able to observe each and every cell around them at all times. The prison was meant to serve as a panopticon, an all-seeing eye. The same architectural control could be exercised in other settings, mused Bentham—workplaces, hospitals, asylums, and so on. Bentham’s dystopian plan for society was grounded in the notion that vision separates and enables managerial control. He appears to have forgotten that reality is relational in its very nature and that the jailer’s all-seeing eye would end up incarcerating jailer and prisoner alike.

Thankfully, most of us get nervous when we think about the panopticon’s imperious reach and would like to avoid panoptic social structures. Still, the way we think about reality—our metaphysics—operates on the same assumption as Bentham’s prison: moderns assume a gap between God and world, between subject and object. For our day-to-day affairs, the panopticon approach yields the mastery we crave.

Things Seen & Unseen

Christian Platonists—which is to say, the large majority of Christian philosophers and theologians until the rise of modernity in the late Middle Ages—have always implacably opposed any kind of gap between God and the world. Turning to Plato, they think of invisible realities (Plato’s world of forms or ideas) as the “really real” and of visible things as the shimmering forth or mirroring of these “really real” forms in a dependent, created mode.

St. Paul insists that “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). The contrast is between visible and invisible things; the former being temporal, the latter eternal. The reason Paul suggests that we look to invisible, eternal things is, no doubt, that they are more real than visible, temporal things. The former are, in Platonic terms, the “really real.”

The same kind of Christian Platonism shines through in the Letter to the Hebrews. Moses had seen the very dwelling-place of God on top of Mount Sinai, and the Lord instructed him to make the earthly tabernacle like his own, heavenly dwelling place (Ex. 25:40). The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of the relationship between the two in markedly Platonic terms, insisting that God’s heavenly sanctuary is “the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man” (Heb. 8:2). By contrast, earthly priests serve at “the example and shadow (hypodeigmati kai skiai) of heavenly things” (8:5). Christ the High Priest came, therefore, “by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building” (9:11). God’s heavenly dwelling is the really real tabernacle, serving as the pattern for the shadowy tabernacle on earth.

Contrast, but Not Separation

The contrast may seem to imply a dualism: heaven and earth, truth and shadow, invisible and visible, eternal and temporal. And indeed, a kind of contrast is definitely in play.

In each of these pairs, the first is more real and greater than the second. This should not surprise us since—on a Christian under- standing—the really real archetypes of created things have their place within the eternal Logos of God. God is utterly transcendent. Many Christian Platonists speak of God, therefore, as beyond being (hyperousios)—indicating that God infinitely outstrips created categories, such that the human intellect cannot possibly comprehend him, whether now or in the hereafter.

But the contrast between the really real and its shadowy reflection does not imply a separation of two entities or substances. We dare not think of the Creator-creature relationship as marked by a spatial gap. Yes, God is transcendent, but because he is outside every human category whatsoever, he is also capable of becoming immanent by shimmering forth, embodying himself in a dependent, created mode.

Second Corinthians does not mean to suggest that invisible, eternal things are in a different geographical location than visible, temporal things. Likewise, though in Hebrews the earthly tabernacle is infinitely less real than God’s own heaven of heaven (Ps. 115:16), we cannot move from the one to the other by mapping the two on Google maps: God’s transcendent dwelling place is beyond whatever panopticon we may set up. The dualism that marks our panoptic world is very different from the Creator-creature contrast.

Creation is Theophany

Nowhere do we see the combination of transcendence and immanence as clearly as in the incarnation of the eternal Word in Jesus Christ. When God embodies himself in the human flesh of Jesus Christ, he does not become any less divine: he remains the beyond-being (hyperousios) God. It is, nonetheless, our human nature that the Word assumes. The Council of Chalcedon (451) famously insisted, therefore, that in Christ, the two natures are neither monistically confused or changed, nor divided or separated in dualist fashion.

Indeed, Maximus thought of this union between the two natures in Christ as the paradigmatic or archetypal embodiment of the eternal Logos. Other embodiments of the Word—such as creation, Scripture, or human virtue— are patterned upon his incarnation in Christ, and they have the fullness of Christ as their end or telos. Creation’s really real identity—and ours as human beings—is something we experience only in the eschaton, when the fullness of Christ will be revealed.

The embodiment language taken from Maximus counters any and all spatial dualism between God and the world. For Maximus, creation is God appearing in a lower, dependent mode. In other words, creation is theophany— the appearing of God. Again, I would prefer the verbal form: creation is God theophanizing, for he shimmers forth in embodied form.

We may use other terminology as well. Christian tradition often speaks of participatory metaphysics, meaning an understanding of reality (metaphysics) that views visible things (creation) as participating in invisible reality (the eternal Logos)—the language of participation (methexis) going back to Plato and Plotinus. With equal justification, we may use the language of sacramental ontology, thereby highlighting that the nature of being (ontos) is sacramental: sensible objects are sacraments (sacramenta) that make present the truth or reality (res) of God. God is really present in this world, taking the embodied form of created things.

Living as Creatures Again

To some, this may reek of pantheism, an utter confusion of God and world. And I agree that such a confusion would be deeply problematic, for we need not just divine immanence but equally divine transcendence. Creatures, so the Eastern fathers rightly teach us, participate only ever in God’s energies—not his essence. God remains transcendent.

But in my experience, the fear of pantheism often bespeaks modern dualism: a desire to keep Creator and creature separate as two distinct substances or beings. The reason for our fear is typically that we have subconsciously bought into a modern metaphysic that has rejected participation, sacramentality, theophanizing, and divine embodying. The panopticon has separated us from God, and we lust after the autonomous control we think it provides for us. We need to learn to live as creatures once again—embodying God’s life on earth.

Appears in Touchstone March/April 2025 issue found here: https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/issue.php?id=249

My interlocutors’ apprehensions are not entirely misguided. Some readings of the biblical text are plain wrong; to impose our own meanings upon the text would be an egregious misuse of the divine Scriptures. The subjective factor in interpretation is a tricky matter, requiring careful negotiation. Postmodern reader-response criticism all too easily takes identity politics as its starting point, insisting that our location—socio-economic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, and so on—does and must shape how we read the Scriptures. Recent titles such as Reading while Black, Women and the Gender of God, and Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations all illustrate the tendency to let one’s background and context shape one’s interpretation of the biblical text. Those who question my advocacy of patristic hermeneutics make, therefore, valid observations. We are not to take control of the biblical text; it is meant to master us.

All too often, however, my interlocutors assume that the only way to counter such contextual readings of the Scriptures is by doubling down on historical exegesis: We must read what the text objectively states. For decades, many evangelical biblical scholars have identified primarily as historians rather than theologians. Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart’s standard textbook on biblical interpretation, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, states unambiguously: “The aim of good interpretation is simple; to get at the ‘plain meaning of the text,’ the author’s intended meaning.” Iain Provan aims to arrive at the right reading of the text—witness the title of The Reformation and the Right Reading of the Scripture. Tremper Longman III rejects the traditional christological reading of the Song of Songs with the observation, “There is absolutely nothing in the Song of Songs itself that hints of a meaning different from the sexual meaning.” Each of these authors, in his own way, borrows from Benjamin Jowett’s infamous maxim of 1860, that we must interpret the Bible like any other book—seeking the one true meaning of the text according to authorial intent.

I often begin my defense of patristic exegesis by asking how we read a poem. The point is not to dissect the grammar and syntax so as to arrive at the stable, objective meaning of the poem. Poems aim at the heart, not just the head. They engage us most existentially not at the level of the verbal DNA but on a deeper or higher plane, which words cannot quite reach. Think of the poet who, when asked to explain the meaning of a poem he had just recited, responded by reciting it again. Poems would be pointless if discursive prose could adequately recapitulate them.

What, then, does patristic exegesis do? How did the Church Fathers read Scripture? We must be careful with these questions, for the Fathers did not have a method which they applied to the text so as to arrive at a proper interpretation. As Andrew Louth makes clear in his book Discerning the Mystery, the application of a method to biblical interpretation presumes a mindset that was alien to the Fathers: We assume that, much as the natural sciences have a method, so too does biblical exegesis. That may be true for modern, historical approaches to the biblical text, but it is not how any of the Fathers would have gone about their reading.

If what we want is a method (perhaps a patristic one) so as to arrive at authorial intent or avoid misinterpretation, premodern interpretation will massively disappoint. For one, the Fathers differ widely in their approaches. Moreover, many of them, in their homilies and commentaries, will proceed to offer two, three, or even more possible readings of the same text, by no means always ranking them. St. Augustine sometimes solicits his congregation’s help when he cannot find a meaning that satisfies him. The Fathers did not shy away from the subjective element. They seemed to have had proleptic insight into Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion that meaning is not an objective datum but an event that occurs in a meeting between the two horizons of text and reader.

It is often at this point in the discussion that eyebrows are lowered. My interlocutor ask how, then, the Fathers went about their exegesis. I explain that, above all, the Fathers assumed that both Scripture and the history behind it were objects of divine providence. God was the ultimate author of both. The Fathers assumed that we could read the Scriptures canonically as one book. Just as we expect regular (sometimes predictable) patterns of speech and action from people we know, we may expect God’s character to show up in the similarities of types and words.

For instance, whenever God theophanizes (unveils himself), he nonetheless remains the hidden God; immanence does not undo transcendence. When the disciples are struggling with the wind and waves on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus, walking on the sea, “would have passed by them” (Mark 6:48), the typological and verbal clues are unmistakable. A similar “passing by” occurred when God appeared to Moses by the cleft in the rock (Exod. 33:19, 22; 34:6) and to Elijah on the mountain (1 Kings 19:11). Job, too, recognizes this interplay between divine veiling and unveiling: “Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not: He passeth on also, but I perceive him not” (Job 9:11). The same verb, “passing by” (parerchomai), is used each time. And, of course, we know what the psalmist knew: “Thy way is in the sea, And thy path in the great waters, And thy footsteps are not known” (Ps. 77:19). Jesus passing by his disciples on the waters is God rescuing them and us from the chaos of the deep. Verbal clues, similarity in action, and theological overlap combine to make for a typological reading of the text: In “passing by” his disciples, Jesus does not ignore them, but rather comes to them as the very appearance of God.

We can make the same point in linking the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22) to the crucifixion of Christ: Both Isaac and Jesus are beloved sons of their fathers, and both carry the wood for their own offerings and voluntarily give themselves up to death. Again, similarities in actions, objects, and words, as well as similarities in theological meaning, combine to make for a typological web. And those who attend weekly Mass would naturally see the Eucharist as typologically linked to both the cross and the binding of Isaac. Those of us who are exposed to Sunday morning lectionary readings will recognize that this is how the lectionary functions. The Old Testament reading, the Psalm, and the Gospel reading are for the most part carefully chosen: The similarities in words, concepts, people, actions, objects, and theology allow us to map the passages onto each other, and so to open up the riches of the biblical text.

Twentieth-century scholars, notably Jean Daniélou and R. P. C. Hanson, often distinguished sharply between typology and allegory. They saw the former as the historical correspondences among objects, events, or persons. Type and antitype, so they thought, were linked chronologically, or horizontally. The historical anchoring of both gave typology its objectivity and justification. St. Paul’s interpretation of Christ as the Second Adam (Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:22) was warranted, given that both type and antitype were historical figures. By contrast, these scholars thought of allegorizing as the imposition of another (allos) meaning onto the words of the biblical text. Those practicing allegory allegedly tried to escape the historical or literal level by moving upward to the realm of the spirit: Scholars thought of the two levels as vertically stacked atop each other. As such, allegorizing was an inherently arbitrary mode of interpretation. For example, when Church Fathers allegorized Rahab’s scarlet cord (Josh. 2:18) as a reference to the blood of Christ, this was thought to be an arbitrary imposition of an alien meaning.

The truth is that the readings of Adam and of the scarlet cord are quite similar. Neither Paul’s nor the Church Fathers’ use of the Old Testament is strictly exegetical—if by that term we mean the uncovering of the original intent of the human author. Both Paul’s linking of Adam with Christ and the Church Fathers’ linking of the scarlet cord with Christ’s blood have a subjective element. That is to say, in both cases, theological presuppositions (Vorverständnis) inform the search for a deeper meaning in the biblical text or in its historical reference. Faith convictions compelled both Paul and the Fathers to recognize a spiritual element in the text that they would otherwise have missed. I am assuming here, of course, that this element was present all along, and that it is the Spirit who intended Paul and the Fathers to discover a christological meaning in the text.

The most obvious similarity between Paul’s understanding of Adam and the Fathers’ interpretation of the scarlet cord is that both are christological. In neither case does a scientific method guide the exegesis. But the subjective element is not therefore arbitrary. Both Paul and the Fathers were constantly looking for Christ in the Scriptures.

Most patristic scholars today do not distinguish sharply between typology and allegory. Indeed, I think the distinction is largely useless—particularly because most definitions of the term “allegory” are themselves arbitrary, boiling down to “If an interpretation strikes us (arbitrarily) as arbitrary, we’ll call it an allegory.” In actual fact, all good allegorizing is typo- logical; it always seeks Christ as the deeper meaning of the Scriptures. Both the antitype in typology and the spiritual meaning in allegory open up for us the new covenant reality (res) of Christ and his Church. Patristic exegesis, like Pauline exegesis, is a search for Christ. As a patristic trope going back to Irenaeus in the second century put it: Christ is the treasure hid in the field (cf. Matt. 13:44). The task of the exegete is to find him there and dig him up. Since he is already present there, the search is anything but arbitrary. Sacramental reading discovers Christ; it does not impose him on the text—though, of course, some exegetes are more skilled than others in their search for the treasure.

One of the most striking elements in patristic exegesis is that it sees in typology more than just similarities of chronologically separate words, people, or events—say, between Adam as the head of man- kind and Christ as the head of the Church, or between the scarlet cord that saves and Christ’s saving blood. It recognizes sacramental identity. To understand this point, we must take note of one of St. Irenaeus’s key insights, namely, that God’s primary intention with the world was the perfection of humanity in Christ. Christ was not an afterthought, a reaction to Adam’s sin, but God’s initial plan: God created Adam so that Christ would have someone to redeem. We might also say that for Irenaeus, Christ was the archetype (the original) and Adam the type patterned upon him. Adam was chronologically first, but Christ was ontologically and theologically first.

Because Christ was God’s first intention with creation, everything before and after Christ is typologically patterned on him. We are, therefore, meant to see Christ as really present in Adam, Isaac, Joseph, and so on. And we are meant to display the real presence of Christ in everything we ourselves do. Again, it is God’s providence that warrants this seeing and displaying of Christ, for both those prior to and those after the coming of Christ are patterned on him and disclose his sacramental, real presence. If any commonality characterizes patristic exegesis, it is the notion of sacramental presence.

Let me conclude with a beautiful example of sacramental interpretation, taken from Melito of Sardis’s homily On Pascha (ca. 160–170): “This is the Pascha of our salvation: this is the one who in many people endured many things. This is the one who was murdered in Abel, tied in Isaac, exiled in Jacob, sold in Joseph, exposed in Moses, slaughtered in the lamb, hunted down in David, dishonored in the prophets.” Melito leaves no doubt: Christ as the archetype was really present already within Old Testament types, and in their suffering he already suffered.

The Church Fathers may not provide us with a scientific method. And theological presuppositions (not identity politics) do shape their reading of the text. The presuppositions are those of the tradition of the Church—its liturgy, its creeds, its practices. At the heart of all these is our incarnate Lord. He, therefore—the archetypal theophany of God—is the one who we know will come to us in our faithful reading of the Scriptures.

Appears in First Things February 2025 issue.

No Method But Christ

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Memory and Attention: Hans Boersma's Pierced by Love

It is difficult to find books that help ordinary Christians read Holy Scripture in a way that is both theologically rich and yet spiritually edifying. Most efforts fall somewhere in either the realm of undigestible historical-critical exegesis or light and fluffy “devotional” reading. The former weighs you down; the latter can’t get you off the ground. Neither has enough lift.

Pierced by Love, the latest offering from Fr. Hans Boersma is — like its subject matter — a feast of substance and spirit. Like an Augustinian weight (“my weight is my love”), this book offers rich fare that both satisfies and propels the reader towards life with God. It is a weighty feast that lifts you to new heights.

The metaphors of food and flight are at the heart of the Lectio Divina tradition. Drawing on the rich spiritual legacy of the patristic and medieval eras, and building on his own prior work on sacramental theology and biblical reading, Boersma articulates here a theological and spiritual exploration of reading Sacred Scripture.

Boersma holds an endowed chair at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, a visiting professorship at Regent College, and he is a Distinguished Senior Fellows here at the Catechesis Institute.

Lectio Divina is fairly well known, I think, in contemporary church life. It’s typically identified with four steps, or stages.

• reading (lectio)

• meditation (meditatio)

• prayer (oratio)

• contemplation (contemplatio)

The model owes largely to the medieval theologian, Guigo II, whose book The Ladder of Monks was written to help his fellow monks encounter Christ in Scripture. In that book, Guigo writes:

One day when I was busy working with my hands I began to think about our spiritual work, and all at once four stages in spiritual exercise came into my mind: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. These make a ladder for monks (Scala Claustralium) by which they are lifted up from earth to heaven. It has few rungs (gradibus), yet its length is immense and wonderful, for its lower end rests upon the earth, but its top pierces the clouds and touches heavenly secrets.

The ladder idea is an ancient, as Boersma explains, having roots in the Scriptures and early Christian theology.

For many believers, these steps provide a valuable spiritual practice, which helps them connect with God in rich ways. For others, however, it’s a dubious—if not dangerous—practice. As one critic has lamented, “The approach is extremely individualistic and subjective, which is why it thrives among ascetics and mystics who prefer isolation and independence.” For Christians of a certain temperment, the propensity toward moralism and subjectivism is simply too much.

Boersma’s book is (mostly) not polemical. It’s meant instead to provide the Christian faithful with a sound structure for engaging spiritual reading well. At the same time, he also makes some key moves that help alleviate some of these worries.

Most interestingly, Boersma connects the fourfold movement of lectio divina with that other great medieval exegetical motif—the fourfold sense of Scripture, which one of Boersma’s heroes, Henri de Lubac, helped recover in the 20th century. Now, it’s becoming more well known not only among Catholics and Orthodox but also among evangelicals.

The fourfold sense of Scripture can be mapped onto the four movements of lectio like this:

• reading = literal sense

• meditation = allegorical/christological sense

• prayer = moral/tropological sense

• contemplation = anagogical/eschatological sense

Very quietly, and unpretentiously, Boersma has detected a profound connection between the way in which Scripture unveils Christ and draws us into participation with God. The key move happens (I think) in the second step/sense. In meditating on Scripture, which Boersma closely identifies with memory, Christian readers do not simply ask “What does this passage mean to me?” but “What does this passage say about Christ (or Christ and the church)?”

This movement changes everything. It moves the reading process from an objectivist-subjectivist paradigm to a Christological-ecclesial paradigm. It roots spiritual reading in Christ and the church, yet it does not leave the praying Christian behind. Unlike reading grounded in a historical-critical paradigm, the “real” meaning of Scripture isn’t simply grounded in what the original human meant, it’s grounded rather in divine authorship of the Holy Spirit and the communal reading of the church throughout the ages. There’s nothing “merely” subjectivist about it. This is what Boersma would call participatory reading—a kind of reading that involves our whole person, as part of the body of Christ, into communion with God. I’ll conclude with a quote from Boersma:

It is important, therefore, to appreciate that lectio divina is nothing out of the ordinary. When we do lectio divina, we read Scripture in line with its divine character—as we always should. To be sure, this claim has a polemical edge. It implies that we do not find the meaning of Scripture simply by asking what the human author intended with the text. We do not find the meaning of Scripture simply by sticking with a proper method, whether of a grammatical or a historicalcritical nature. In short, we do not find the meaning of Scripture when we think of ourselves first and foremost as historians. We find meanings—note the plural!—of Scripture primarily by looking forward (to its divine purpose) rather than by looking backward (to its human origins).

There’s much more to chew and feast upon in this book. I encourage you to pick up a copy (or five).

Take up and read, and be taken up yourself.

The other day, I read a lovely book by Stephen Meawad, who teaches theology at Caldwell University. Titled Beyond Virtue Ethics (2023), this book argues that all too often, we treat ethics in isolation, as if it were either just a bunch of rules imposed on us, or else a matter of developing patterns of virtuous behavior. We disagree so sharply among ourselves about what the legal rules are or what makes for virtuous behavior that, for the most part, neither command ethics nor virtue ethics make for a proper moral framework.

Meawad makes the case that we need to treat ethics as a subset of spirituality. His book is all about the spiritual struggle of Christians and about eternal progress (epektasis) of the human person into the divine life—hence the subtitle of his book, A Contemporary Ethic of Ancient Spiritual Struggle. The virtue that Christians are concerned to bolster, therefore, is nothing less than God’s own character.

One of the spiritual struggles in the development of virtue is that of reading Scripture. Meawad devotes an entire chapter to sacred reading—lectio divina as it is often called. I much appreciate Meawad’s insistence that sacred reading is a spiritual struggle, one that aims to mature our moral life and, in the process, to unite us more deeply with God. I titled my book on the fourth-century mystical theologian Gregory of Nyssa Embodiment and Virtue, since Gregory thought of embodied human virtues (small-v) as participating in divine Virtue (capital-V). For Gregory, as for Meawad, the moral life is not anything different from the spiritual life, for the process of embodying virtue is at one and the same time the process of being deified.

The purpose of reading Scripture is to change or transfigure us. Many in the Christian tradition have distinguished four steps in this transfiguring sacred reading: reading (lectio), meditation (meditatio), prayer (oratio), and contemplation (contemplatio). Guigo II, in what is probably the best little book ever written on lectio divina, The Ladder of Monks, treats the four steps as distinct stages in the Christian life of anagogy—moving upward onto the ladder so as to participate in the divine life through spiritual reading. I typically recommend Guigo’s twelfth-century booklet to anyone wanting to familiarize himself with sacred reading. It is a short, readable explanation of what lectio divina is and how it functions.

Meawad maps the steps of sacred reading differently than Guigo, speaking of three steps: willingness, embodiment, and immersion. The first step is a willing and vulnerable submission to the Christ of Scripture and to its communal reading in the church. In the second step, that of embodiment, the words of Scripture begin to shape our character as we prayerfully aim to be transformed and assimilated to God. The final step, that of immersion, provides us with the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16), such that we are united with him and our entire being—body and soul—exudes his peace and love.

I came to lectio divina in a rather roundabout fashion. I had long been interested in patristic exegesis. I saw in the fathers a reading of Scripture that focuses on Christ as the sacramental reality (res) that the external words of the biblical text (sacramentum) make present. Saint Irenaeus famously used the little parable of the treasure hidden in the field (Matt. 13:44) to make this same point. Christ, the second-century bishop of Lyons insisted, is the treasure that we ought to dig up from the field (or the Scriptures). Irenaeus maintained, therefore, that “when [the Law] is read by the Christians, it is a treasure, hid indeed in a field, but brought to light by the cross of Christ” (Against Heresies 4.26.1).

When I encountered the practice of lectio divina—much too late in my career—I realized that this practice, embraced in both East and West from the time of Origen, was basically a way of digging up the treasure. By moving through the process all the way from reading (Guigo’s first step) to contemplation upon God (Guigo’s last step), we are simply digging up the treasure. We look for Christ and encounter in him the joyful happiness of God.

The link between sacred reading and the spiritual life is clear from the way that Guigo maps the four steps of sacred reading onto the four levels of meaning commonly distinguished in the Middle Ages: reading has to do with the literal or historical meaning of the text. Meditation takes us to its allegorical meaning, where we encounter Christ and the church. Prayer confronts us with the need for transformation and hence offers us the tropological or moral meaning. And in contemplation, we arrive at the heavenly presence of God’s own glory, which is reflected in the anagogical or eschatological meaning of the text. The four levels of biblical meaning are like the four steps of spiritual ascent, which we climb through the process of lectio divina.

My book on lectio divina, Pierced by Love, takes the reader to the writings of spiritual writers throughout the Great Tradition. But I focus especially on twelfth-century monastic writers, since they intently and methodically read Scripture as a liber experientiae (book of experience). This Latin expression, coined by Bernard of Clairvaux, highlighted these spiritual writers’ focus on one’s personal appropriation of the biblical text, with a view to encountering Christ. Bernard puts it this way in one of his sermons: “Today we read the book of experience (libro experientiae). Let us turn to ourselves and let each of us search his own conscience about what is said. I want to investigate whether it has been given to any of you to say, ‘Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth’ (Sg 1:1).” Practitioners of lectio divina simply don’t let us get away with keeping the Bible at a distance by applying a hermeneutical historical method borrowed from the hard sciences.

Come to think of it, if sacred reading takes us through each of the four medieval levels of meaning (historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical), and if these four levels make for a wholesome interpretation of the text, then sacred reading is what we naturally or typically do, whenever we read the Bible. Practising lectio divina is simply reading the Bible in line with its divinely given telos or purpose.

God has given us the Scriptures primarily to help us embark upon our spiritual struggle to become divine. Surely, then, it cannot be right for biblical scholars to keep reading the Bible as if they were historians rather than theologians. True biblical scholars (and true theologians!) are mystagogues—people who have been caught up in paradise, who have heard there unspeakable words (2 Cor. 12:5), and who now, like Moses and Paul, come down the mountain and share with others something of the divine glory that they have encountered. True biblical exegesis interprets the text with a view to our ultimate end, the contemplation of God.

Originally published at the North American Anglican.

More from Fr. Boersma on Lectio Divina:

In the Parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1–8), a poor widow seeks justice. Day after day she goes to the judge, who “feared not God, neither regarded man,” and asks him to avenge her. Afraid of getting worn out (or getting a black eye), the judge finally relents; he does what he should have done the first time she sought his aid.

It is clear in Jesus’s telling of the parable that we should in no way confuse God with the unjust judge. “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?” (18:7) And yet, God can often seem like that judge: He doesn’t respond when we call; situations don’t change; misery endures. The night remains dark, and the sky closed. Indeed, isn’t the reason why we “cry day and night unto” God precisely because he is like the unjust judge?

Let’s recall Anna the Prophetess, the eighty-four-year-old widow who was at Christ’s presentation at the temple. St. Luke tells us how night and day, she “departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers” (2:37). Like Simeon, she was no doubt “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (2:25). Anna’s advent lasted years rather than weeks. But she was a woman of wisdom and knew where to be (the temple), what to do (fastings and prayers), and how persistent she had to be (night and day) as she waited for her reward.

Anna was among the most pious of saints ever to live. We know this because of her persistent devotion, but also because God did, in the end, make her worthy of the immeasurable gift of consolation—and not just her and Israel’s consolation, but the consolation of the whole world. She was among the first to see the Savior of the universe. I think Anna was possibly one of the very few saints who, so very unlike you and me, never thought of God as an unjust judge. Nor did she reproach him for what might seem like needless delay. Rather, pious Anna constantly meditated upon God’s gracious character.

In many translations of 18:7, Jesus asks: “Will he delay long over them?” The implication is that unlike the judge, God will not delay. But this reading fits neither with our experience—which tells us that God often delays—nor with Jesus’s encouragement to keep on praying, despite the long, drawn-out advent of our lives. Perhaps, therefore, we might read with the King James Version: “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?” God is marko-thymos—long-bearing, long-suffering, patient with us. Advent takes long because he is a long-suffering God.

Following Anna and the persistent widow, we keep pounding on heaven’s door. God does, in fact, delay—contrary to the intuition of many Bible translations. But the delay is due to his mercy.

Note the very first and last words of the parable: “He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (18:1). And then: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (18:8) God knows we are hardly like Anna—fasting and praying, night and day, in the temple precincts. He knows we are hardly persistent-widow material. And so he waits, prolonging the waiting of advent—that we might learn always to pray and not to faint; that we might yet put our faith in our long-suffering God.

This is not a theodicy parable. It is not God in the dock, with us questioning him as to why he delays our rescue. The truth is: You and I are the ones in the dock. Even when our needs are immense or our grief unbearable, and we cry out to God, we are still not like Anna. O holy Anna, that our piety might be like yours! O prayerful Anna, that our persistence might be like yours! O sweet Anna, that our faith and trust might be like yours!

Originally published at First Things.

The sea is a terrifying place. Way down, at the bottom, is where the seven-headed dragon Leviathan lurks. When the winds begin to blow and the waves start pounding, the beast of the bottomless pit is wagging its tail, ready to pounce on all within its reach.

In our everyday lives, we may try to avoid the chaos of the sea, but no matter where we turn, the ancient dragon’s terrifying tentacles are at our heels, ever ready to trip us up and drag us down to Sheol’s innermost depths. When like Jonah we pass hell’s gate, we descend into hell and get stuck in the belly of the whale.

This is the horrifying situation in Mark’s account of Jesus walking on the water (6:45–52). Along with the disciples, for many dark hours we have rowed so as to reach the other side. But our headway is painful. We are getting tortured, literally. The wind is howling; Leviathan is on the prowl. 

Where does one turn when the devil’s mouth gapes open, and the shady world of evil is ready to claim us for its own? Our human strength obviously falls short. Faced with Satan’s frightful presence, we are reminded of God’s words to Job in chapter 41: 

Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook 

           or press down his tongue with a cord? 

Can you put a rope in his nose 

           or pierce his jaw with a hook? (Job 41:1–2)

Clearly not.

Who can open the doors of his face? 

           Around his teeth is terror. (41:14)

When devilish winds are torturous and the monster tosses up the waves, the powers of hell below seem in control; we cannot reach the other side. But Jesus reminds us: the world is comprised of more than just the sea.

Look elsewhere; look up upon the mountain. There, in darkness, someone is kneeling, praying, all alone. The crowds are gone. They are filled with loaves and fishes (Mark 6:42), and they have disappeared. The disciples too, have left, for Jesus made them get into the boat. The Lord is in his holy temple; all the earth keeps silence before him (Hab. 2:20).

Note the contrast. The disciples down below fighting wind and waves, dreading jaws of hell, demonic powers dragging them down. Jesus our God, high in his holy dwelling atop the mountain, serene and peaceful, in his Father’s house.

Does he not know? Does he not care? Why did he make us get into this boat? Why has he left us rowing all alone? It is nearly morning, and we have been fighting all night long. Does he not realize that we have reached the very end of our rope?

The disciples’ questions are yours and mine. The very last words of Mark’s passage tell us plainly: “Their hearts were hardened” (Mark 6:52). Hard hearts prevent us from knowing what is really going on.

The reality check is Genesis 1—“The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” That is true in Mark 6, and still today. The creator God is hovering over the face of the waters that threaten to upend us.

The reality check is Exodus 14—“Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.” The redeemer God controls the chaos and drowns the enemy—Pharaoh, the monster of the sea.

The reality check is Deuteronomy 33—

The Lord came from Sinai 

           and dawned from Seir upon us; 

he shone forth from Mount Paran; 

           he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, 

           with flaming fire at his right hand. 

The creator and redeemer God is coming down the mountain. And, our text says, he sees that we are making headway painfully—torturously. God sees us, he comes to us, he is walking on the sea. That is the reality check of Psalm 77—“Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.”

Jesus our God is coming down the mountain to stand upon the land, alone (Mark 6:47). Mountain, land, sea—all are his; he makes them all his home.

The disciples are scared out of their wits. Demonic waves and wind are all around. Who is that shadowy figure walking on these waves?

Jesus means to pass them by (Mark 6:49). This is our ultimate reality check. Recall when Moses is in the cleft of the rock, as the Lord comes down in the cloud: “The Lord passed by him” and proclaimed his name (Exod. 34:6). And remember Job—“Behold he passes by me, and I see him not; he moves on, but I do not perceive him” (Job  9:11). When God passes by, it means he has come down from his heavenly mountain temple—like he came to Moses, like he came to Job.

But like Job, we “see him not; he moves on, but I do not perceive him.” Like the disciples, our hearts are hard; we cannot see. We are beside ourselves with fear. “It is a ghost,” we cry. Well, no, it is not a ghost; it is God himself. God has descended from on high. “Take heart,” he says, “it is I—egō eimi—I am.” “Do not be afraid.”

God steps into our boat. It is like he speaks the words of Isaiah 51 to us:

Was it not I who cut Rahab in pieces, 

           who pierced the dragon? 

Was it not I who dried up the sea, 

           the waters of the great deep, 

who made the depths of the sea a way 

           for the redeemed to pass over? 

I, I am he (egō eimi) who comforts you; 

           who are you that you are afraid of man who dies?

“He got into the boat with them.” When did God get into the boat with us? When he made the world and his Spirit hovered over the face of the waters. When he made a path through the waters while his footprints were unseen. When he came down from heaven to take on the form of a slave. When he hung upon the cross, forcing Hellmouth open one last time, like Jonah, to free those tied down in death’s domain.

Our God is a God whose character it is to get into the boat with us.

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep;

O hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the sea.

Originally published at First Things.
Image: Eugène Delacroix - Christ on the Sea of Galilee - Walters.

It is meet and right that Lent should start with Matthew 4. Its first sentence sums up not just Lent but the entire Christian life. “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matt. 4:1). We may apply this to ourselves: “Then was I led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Our brief span of life is the wilderness. The Spirit himself has led us here. His purpose is that we be tempted by the devil.

This sentence contains a great mystery: Why would God himself—the Holy Spirit—lead us into this world so that we might be tempted by the devil? I cannot solve this mystery, for God's mysteries are not like puzzles. They cannot be solved; they are meant to be lived instead.

When Jesus comes into the wilderness and the devil tempts him, he does not ask, “Why does the Spirit lead me here? What rational sense can I make of this?” What he does instead is fight the devil, with the Scriptures as his weapon.

Satan tempts Christ with three things: provision, protection, and power. What Jesus fights as he battles these temptations is the same thing we constantly fight ourselves: self-love (philautia). “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). It is love for others—love for you and me—that made him come into this wilderness world. The incarnation, Maximus the Confessor reminds us time and again, is the result of Christ’s great love for man—his philanthrōpia. Giving in to temptation would mean a betrayal of this true love and a lapse into self-love: My bread, my safety, my status. Jesus, so he gloriously shows us in his wilderness battle, is driven not by self-love but by love for us.

The Spirit led him up into the wilderness because only by refusing the devil’s temptation, only by radically denying self-love, can Jesus be the savior of the world. It is his faithfulness despite temptation, his utter repudiation of self-love, that makes him the savior of the world.

To be sure, this still does not explain why God saves us in this way. Again, this is a question to which we do not have an answer. It is like asking why the devil tempted our first parents to eat from the tree of knowledge, or why the Israelites had to travel forty years in the desert with the devil always nipping at their heels. I do not know. Beyond doubt, however, self-love was Adam’s great undoing; and self-love continuously bedeviled the Israelites in the wilderness. Jesus is the second Adam; he is the new Israel, as well. Self-love did not spoil his forty days of fasting; self-love did not surface in his battle with the devil.

Saint Paul, in that other famous Lenten passage (2 Corinthians 6), paraphrases what it means to say “I was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Recall the setting of this letter. People in Corinth are challenging Paul’s authority as an apostle. The entire epistle, therefore, is a lengthy defense of his apostleship. In chapter 6, Saint Paul proves himself as a minister of God. The proof he has in mind is patience, afflictions, necessities, distresses, stripes, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watchings, fastings.

These may hardly seem apostolic qualifications. But for Paul, they are: How do the Corinthians know that Paul is a trustworthy apostle? How do we judge ourselves as faithful servants of God? By checking how we respond to hardship and temptation.

We are all, invariably, led into the wilderness. We know how Jesus responded: Not with self-love, but with love for us. We know how Paul responded: pureness, knowledge, long-suffering, kindness, the Holy Spirit, love unfeigned, the word of truth, the power of God.

Often we plead with God to just take us out of the wilderness, take the hardships away. But such is not Jesus’s prayer. Neither is it Paul’s. In fact, such prayers may well betray our self-love. It is, according to Saint Maximus in his epistle On Love, the most original of original sins: “Since the deceitful devil at the beginning contrived by guile to attack humankind through his self-love (philautias), deceiving him through pleasure, he has separated us in our inclinations from God and from one another, and turned us away from rectitude.”

Jesus, and Saint Paul along with him, are under no illusion as to why they are in the wilderness: The Spirit has led them up there to be tempted by the devil, for only fire removes dross from the gold; only temptation removes self-love from our human nature. 

The misery of the wilderness is going to be ours till the last day of our lives. These forty days of Lent we face the question: When the devil comes to tempt me, how do I respond—with self-love or with true love? The virtue of philanthrōpia is the overcoming of philautia.

Letup comes only after the forty days are over—at the end of our worldly wilderness. This is the last verse of the temptation narrative: “Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him” (Matt. 4:11). Yes, temptation will give way to consolation, the wilderness will make room for paradise, and the devil will shrink back when angels come to minister. This is the great promise that the story holds out to us: Temptations will certainly end.

Lent reminds us that we are not there yet. For now, the devil and his minions ceaselessly harass and attack us. For now, we incessantly need to say no to self-love, to say no to the devil. The purpose of our lives is to counter self-love with true love—love for others.

And there is a second, crucial reminder in this Gospel passage: We see Jesus with us in the wilderness. We see him love us in the wilderness. The presence of his true love— philanthrōpia—gives us the strength to join him in his love.

(Originally published at First Things.)

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? The lyrics of Mahalia Jackson’s famous gospel blues song echoed through many churches during Holy Week. We sing it as a song of remembrance, which takes us back to the suffering of our Lord. We were there with joy at his triumphal entry into the city. We were there throughout this week in pain with him as the Gospel took us to the night of Jesus’s arrest in the garden and his interrogation in the high priest’s palace. Today, again we will be there, with him at Calvary, grieving at his suffering upon the cross. That is the power of the song and the power of remembering. It takes us back to what Isaiah calls “the days of old.” We are there when they crucify the Lord. In all his affliction we are afflicted.

All of this is as it should be. We must go back, we must remember, we must recall, we must sing, for these are the things that shape us, that make us who we are. Remembering his triumphal entry, his arrest, his death—these acts of remembrance conform us to our Lord; they make us into gospel-shaped people. The remembrances of Holy Week literally make us cruciform. And only a cruciform life is a Christian life. So, we must remember. All of this is as it should be.

Remembering, therefore, is what the great prophet Isaiah does in chapter 63. “I will mention the loving-kindnesses of the Lord,” he begins. “Mention them”—we might translate this also as “remember them,” “think upon them,” “meditate upon them.”

We all know that what the prophet proposes is not really possible. How could we remember all of the Lord’s innumerable loving-kindnesses? Isaiah, therefore, hardly even tries. The passage does not mention any of the particulars of what God has done. Isaiah talks of the Lord’s praises, all that the Lord has bestowed, his great goodness, his mercies, his saving, his love, his pity, his redeeming, the Lord lifting up and carrying his people.

What do they do, all these words? For the most part, they describe who God is; they speak of his character—steadfast kindness, mercy, pity, redemption. The prophet cannot remember each and every one of God’s loving-kindnesses for the simple reason that everything God does bespeaks his character. And God’s character is beyond remembering.

Actually, it is not just the sheer plethora of God’s acts that makes proper, full remembrance an impossibility. Even if we take just one of them—the exodus from Egypt—we cannot adequately remember. I suspect Isaiah does think of exodus at least in part, for there—more than anywhere else—the Israelites witnessed God’s steadfast kindness and his redemption. Even just that one act of steadfast kindness, we cannot properly remember—because when you begin remembering or meditating on what it is that God did on that first Passover night, you soon realize his steadfast love is infinite—far beyond what human thoughts can think or human words can tell. 

Yet in Holy Week we do remember. We do go back and meditate on what our Lord has done; for our remembering—though inadequate in praise and deficient in its worth—does conform us to our Lord and make us cruciform. Holy Week’s remembrance allows us to say that in all his afflictions we are afflicted.

And yet, none of this is the main thing. Our remembrance—important, indispensable—is not the hinge of our salvation. The hinge on which salvation turns is never what we do; it is what God does. Scripture does not say, “In his affliction we are afflicted”—even though it is true. Scripture puts it the other way around, “In our affliction he was afflicted” (63:9).

That one line offers the greatest possible comfort. Our afflictions, of whatever kind, are far too numerous, far too powerful for us. So, we lament, we grieve, we call upon God. That is what Isaiah does in this chapter.

We remember God only because he first remembered us. A few verses further down in Isaiah 63, it says, “He remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people” (63:11). He, the Lord, remembered. Just like we remember the days of old, so God remembers the days of old. And just as our remembrance makes us say, “In his affliction, we are afflicted,” so God’s remembrance makes him say, “In their affliction, I was afflicted.”

It is not like God’s remembrance cancels out our remembrance. Quite the opposite—in our remembrance, we remember God’s remembrance. And God, in his remembrance, remembers our remembrance.

Recall the burning bush. It is where God called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. How does that story start? “The children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exod. 2:23–24). When God remembered, he was about to redeem, to liberate his people.

The same in Isaiah 63: “I will mention—or, I will remember—the loving-kindnesses of the Lord.” What is it that anchors this remembrance? Our thoughts and words cannot possibly sustain themselves, for they cannot reach the depth of the infinity of God’s love. Our remembrance, therefore, must go back to what God has done. All we remember, really, is that God remembered us.

God’s saving will for us—in Moses’s days, Isaiah’s days, and Jesus’s days—is beyond our comprehension. “In all their affliction he was afflicted.” How can this possibly be? This is the great miracle of God’s remembrance. When God remembers, the divine Word assumes our human nature; the impassible takes on our human passion; the one beyond affliction assumes our own afflictions.

With Isaiah, we remember the loving-kindnesses of the Lord throughout Holy Week. But a week is hardly long enough. A lifetime is not long enough. Even eternity itself is not long enough. God is beyond all human thoughts and words, for when we remember the miracle of a God who in our afflictions was afflicted, all we can do is remember his remembrance of us.

On this climactic day of Holy Week, therefore, remember Jesus’s suffering for us, for it is when we remember God, that God remembers us. And when God remembers us, yet again he will pity and redeem us.

(Originally published at First Things.)

Lent reminds us that food counts in our lives. We are hardly spiritual giants: Abstaining from our favorite foods; cutting out meat on Wednesdays and Fridays; skipping entire meals, perhaps—we find such fasting a difficult challenge. Few desires are as strong as the craving for food.

John 6 may seem to rub salt in the wounds—Jesus feeding the five thousand. Do we really need to hear this story of Jesus filling the crowds to the gills when our stomachs protest with hunger?

A large crowd is coming to Jesus. “Philip,” says Jesus, “whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” Philip knows they don’t have the money to fill all of these hungry people. Andrew comes to his defense: “There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” Philip and Andrew are realists. They both know these people will be fasting tonight.

“Make the men sit down,” says Jesus. Then, giving thanks, he takes the five loaves and two fishes and hands out the food. Note the abundance John describes: “As much as they would,” “When they were filled,” “Filled twelve baskets with the fragments.”

The Lord has done this before. “Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow, and ye shall eat flesh . . . not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days; But even a whole month!” (Num. 11:18–19). Here comes Moses, a realist like Philip and Andrew: “The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand footmen; and thou hast said, I will give them flesh, that they may eat a whole month. Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them, to suffice them? or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to suffice them?” Then comes the Lord’s challenge to Moses: “Is the Lord’s hand waxed short?” A wind brings in quail to the camp, well over a foot high. God gives food in abundance.

Then remember that famine with the prophets in Gilgal (2 Kings 4). A man comes up to Elisha—much like the lad coming to Jesus, except this man comes with twenty barley loaves and full ears of corn. “Give it to the prophets,” Elisha tells him. This time, Gehazi is the realist taking the role of Philip and Andrew: “What, should I set this before an hundred men?” But Elisha persists. “And they did eat, and had left over, according to the word of the Lord.” 

There is no mistaking it: The Lord is into feeding his people. He does it time and again. Each time, he tests them with an impossible situation. Each time, there is a realist failing the test in unbelief—Moses, Gehazi, Philip, and Andrew. And each time, the Lord performs a feeding miracle, so that people end up being stuffed.

These stories may hardly seem appropriate for Lent. When we are in the middle of fasting, we do not need stories of sumptuous meals. Fair enough, except John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand itself reminds us that it is Lent: “And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.” This is a puzzling comment, seemingly unrelated to the feeding miracle. Why does John add it? 

We do well to pay careful attention to the time of the year. Think back to the start of the narrative of Jesus cleansing the temple, back in John chapter 2: “And the Jews’ passover was at hand . . .” (2:13). When we go to chapter 11, as we move toward Jesus’s passion and death, we find the same phrase once again: “And the Jews’ passover was nigh at hand . . .” (11:55). Three times the same comment; this is no coincidence. God may just have something to tell us.

Indeed, he does. Feeding 600,000 Israelites in the desert, a hundred prophets in Gilgal, five thousand on the mountain side—each time, God is giving his people a sign. A sign of what?

In each story, the realists—Moses, Gehazi, Philip, and Andrew—object that they cannot feed all these people. But each time, God has power to save. “Is the Lord’s hand waxed short?” is his rebuke against Moses. The great fifth-century patriarch of Alexandria, Saint Cyril, writes, “One might reasonably respond to the words of Philip and Andrew similarly: Is the Lord’s hand waxed short?”

The Lord’s hand is never waxed short. Not in the desert, not in Gilgal, not on the mountainside. No matter the time or the place, his hand has the power to feed innumerable crowds. Feeding his people is a sign of God’s power to save.

 “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.” It is Lenten time; we have cut back on our eating. And so we think about food all the time—just like the Israelites that complained in the desert; just like the prophets, hungry during that famine; just like the five thousand, eagerly eating their fill from the loaves and the fishes.

You know why we fast: It makes us aware of our hunger—not just physical hunger, but spiritual hunger, our hunger for God. Fasting makes us focus on Jesus.

“And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.” Soon, the Lamb will be slaughtered. This is the day we have been waiting for ever since, in the very first chapter of the Gospel, we heard John the Baptist’s desert announcement: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Soon the Lamb will be slaughtered, for soon it is Passover, the feast of the Jews.

Everyone in the household gets to eat from this Lamb. Is one Lamb enough for us all? Is one Lamb enough for the world? Could I, too, get to eat from this Lamb? We are like Moses, Gehazi, Philip, and Andrew. We are realists; no, more like skeptics. We have a hard time trusting that the entire world gets to eat from this Lamb.

“Is the Lord’s hand waxed short?” he says to us. Three feeding miracles, each one a sign—a sign that Lent will come to an end, that at Passover time he will feed us.

Our skepticism must be painful for the Lord to behold. How many more times will they question the reach of my hand? How many more times do I have to show I have food galore?

I know what I’ll do, says the Lord. Not only will I give food, I will be food. Instead of a sign, I will give them the truth. I will become the Lamb they can eat—for when they see the Lamb on the Altar, and when they eat there the Passover Lamb, surely they will be filled and never go hungry again.

(Originally published at First Things.)

The Pharisees defend the sabbath, while Jesus puts an end to it—or so we often think. Mark 3 seems to fit this picture: The Pharisees watch in judgment as, on the sabbath, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand. The truth is, we have it exactly backward. The Pharisees revile the sabbath, while Jesus instead restores it. “Stretch forth thine hand,” he tells us in Mark 3, “and join with me in the eternal sabbath day.”

A withered hand is a terrible thing. It makes it hard to earn a living; for this man, it surely must have meant a life of hardship and of destitution. The Gospel passage tells us only of a withered hand; but in biblical terms, a withered hand implies a withered life.

A withered hand, in Scripture, is the embodiment of evil. Evil, according to Christian tradition, is privatio boni, absence of the good. Evil is the withering of life. According to the Law, you cannot be a priest and have a withered hand (Lev. 21:19). The logic is obvious: Evil may not come face to face with God.

A withered hand, then, means poverty, absence of God, paralysis of evil. One thing, however, is worse than a withered hand. “In the synagogue of the Jews,” Athanasius reminds us, “was a man who had a withered hand. If he was withered in his hand, the ones who stood by were withered in their minds.” The man stretches forth his withered hand, and Jesus heals him. The Pharisees close up their withered minds, keeping them out of reach of Jesus’s psychotherapy.

Jesus is Lord of the sabbath. That is what the verse immediately preceding this healing narrative tells us (Mark 2:28). It would be a strange thing for the Lord of the sabbath to abolish it. “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?” The answer should be obvious. A withered hand is evil, and it kills me. A hand restored is good, and it saves my life. A withered hand is a withered life; a hand restored is sabbath life.

It is the Pharisees that hate the sabbath, because they hate the sabbath’s Lord. Their minds are more withered than the man's hand, in need of sabbath healing. But in response to Jesus’s question, they are silent. The sickness of their evil minds has diminished them. Instead of opening their minds to the restoration of life, they determine to destroy the author of life himself, nailing his holy and venerable hands to the wood of the cross.

Kingdom is another word for sabbath. Jesus, Mark tells us, brings the kingdom. Just as he is Lord of the sabbath, so too he is King of the kingdom. And just as he heals our withered hands to make us fit for priestly sabbath service, so too he brings us back to his eternal kingdom.

We mess up our theology of sabbath with the type of questions that we ask: Does the sabbath law still hold for Christians? Did Jesus end the sabbath labor prohibitions? Is working on Sunday allowed or not?

Let me be clear: Pharisees abolish the sabbath; Jesus restores it. Pharisees are content with withered lives and collude with evil; Jesus heals, and by healing brings about the restoration of eternal sabbath.

The sabbath healing in Mark 3 presents the last of five sharp clashes between Jesus and the Pharisees at the beginning of this Gospel. Jesus’s martyr death is foreshadowed in these early conflicts.

We often follow the Pharisees in refusing to open up our withered minds to Jesus; we shrink our evil lives to nothingness while driving nails into his hands. Jesus returns us to his kingdom and heals our withered hands through restoration—apokatastasis (3:5). We long for all things to be restored—apokatastasis pantōn. Such healing is not hard to get. It is a matter of stretching forth our withered hands and minds to Jesus, looking for him to give us sabbath healing. He who has come to restore all things will give sabbath restoration to our withered lives.

(Originally published at First Things.)

Originally published at Touchstone Magazine, on behalf of the editors.

December 18, 2023, will go down in history as the date on which the die was cast: the date on which the church renounced the gospel’s right to call us to repentance; the date that, more than any other, signals the church’s implosion in the West.

Of course, long before this fateful date on which Pope Francis signaled his approval to the “blessing of same-sex couples,” indications abounded that not all was well in the state of Denmark. The pope’s mercurial behavior, including his tendency to sow confusion with off-the-cuff one-liners on controversial topics, had long been an area of concern to faithful churchgoers.

Added to this were recent developments, such as the pope’s odd fixation upon stamping out Tridentine Latin Masses, which draw thousands upon thousands of faithful young Catholics to church every Sunday; counterintuitive appointments, such as that of Victor Manuel Cardinal Fernández as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; vindictive censures of conservative Catholics such as Bishop Joseph Strickland and Raymond Cardinal Burke; as well as the deployment of the Synod on Synodality in directing the church to take her cue from groups such as “remarried divorcees, people in polygamous marriages, LGBTQ+ people, etc.”

Though each of these issues is troubling, the history books will give them mostly just a passing glance. By sharp contrast, Fiducia supplicans, issued on December 18 and approved by Pope Francis, is absolutely earth-shattering. It is hard to imagine anyone doing more damage more effectively to the Catholic Church and to Christianity as a whole than Pope Francis has done with this declaration. Unless radically critiqued and reversed, its guidelines will signal the demise of Western Christianity.

Ratzinger's Rule

The reason for this dire outlook is close at hand: it is the refusal to heed Joseph Ratzinger’s simple, golden rule about pastoral guidance, namely, that it must be theologically faithful and true. Here is what the then-prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote in a 1986 episcopal letter about “pastoral care of homosexual persons”:

We wish to make it clear that departure from the Church’s teaching, or silence about it, in an effort to provide pastoral care is neither caring nor pastoral. Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral. The neglect of the Church’s position prevents homosexual men and women from receiving the care they need and deserve.

For Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the theological and the pastoral always go together: “Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral.” Fiducia supplicans, while claiming to be a declaration “on the pastoral meaning of blessings,” is anything but pastoral for the simple reason that it radically undermines the faith which was once delivered unto the saints, rather than contends for it, as Jude exhorts us to do (Jude 3). Only by being true to the Scriptures as faithfully interpreted and lived through the centuries can we find our pastoral footing on the sexual issues of the day.

Cowardly Confusions

Of course, every attempt will be made to explain that Fiducia supplicans merely offers a blessing to people in need of God’s love and mercy. We will be assured that blessings of same-sex couples will not take place within a liturgical setting. And we will be reminded that these blessings in no way offer “moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.” In short, if only you read carefully, you’ll recognize that in Fiducia supplicans, the church’s actual teaching on marriage has once again been affirmed.

At the very least, people may bring out these arguments to make the point that things are not as bad as they could possibly be—that Fiducia supplicans contains statements that limit the damage. Such a reading is grounded, I think, in a naïve view of how this declaration will function in practice and, presumably, of how it is intended to function. Think of it: had the pope simply said that the traditional teaching on marriage is outdated, that gay sex is okay, and that from now on we will bless same-sex unions, every single faithful Catholic would have recognized the heretical teaching and would have condemned Fiducia supplicans tout court.

As it is, the declaration instead sows confusion by asking that we bless same-sex couples while at the same time maintaining that we’re not “officially validating” such unions or changing the church’s teaching on marriage. One may find such a balancing act an insult to people’s intelligence—which indeed it is—but it allows people to say that Fiducia supplicans is not as bad as it could have been and that we can (and perhaps should) interpret it in line with the tradition of the church. The truth is: everyone knows that as a result of this new development, within Catholicism—and beyond it—gay sex is now okay, homosexual unions will be blessed, and heresy rather than orthodoxy in matters of sexual morality will be the default position.

It is, therefore, precisely the ambiguity of Fiducia supplicans that makes it a greater threat than a straightforward denial of traditional marriage would have been. The mitigating, orthodox-sounding statements in Fiducia supplicans invite people to at least tolerate the brave new ecclesial world with its authorized same-sex blessings—while they may still hold to the fiction that the teaching on marriage hasn’t changed. We will be like proverbial frogs being cooked to death unawares by people slowly but deliberately turning up the heat. It truly is hard to think of an approach that would do more damage more effectively than Fiducia supplicans.

Pastoral Cruelty

We must reflect upon the pastoral cruelty involved. To someone trying to remain faithful in his struggles with same-sex attractions, the pope’s statement must be like a punch in the gut. How futile his moral struggle has been, his effort to resist sexual temptation day in and day out, when he could instead have found himself a partner and gone off to his priest for a blessing.

This so-called “pastoral” declaration utterly fails such people, for it refuses to hold out to them the way of love and truth, which is the age-old, ascetical path that we take by saying no to our sinful desires. When the church refuses to teach the truth, when she fails to call sinners to repentance, and when she blesses homosexual unions, it is the prince of darkness she follows, not the God of the Scriptures.

Ships Foundered

Within days of the declaration’s publication, senior church officials across the globe were eagerly expressing their elation at the church’s capitulation to the culture, some suggesting that from now on, individual priests would have no choice but to conform and bless same-sex couples. Needless to say, if the pope approves and senior prelates fail to respect the conscience of individual priests, we know what will come next: we will see priests targeted like bakers have been—“Give us a blessing, or else! After all, your own pope tells you it’s a good thing that you give us your blessing.”

The Church of England sanctioned blessings of same-sex couples only weeks before the pope took the same leap. I will not go into detail here on the minutiae of the differences between the approaches of the two ecclesial communities. They are trivial. The main point is the same in both: from now on, we will bless same-sex couples; we won’t quite call it marriage—no sense needlessly upending the apple cart—but no one will be able to miss the intent: as church, we both welcome and celebrate same-sex unions, and we will make sure that God gives the nod to the path on which we have set out.

We cannot overstate the significance of the near-simultaneous breakdown of the Catholic and Anglican communions, for it means that the two key Western institutions that have nurtured Christian civilization since the time of the Reformation will do so no more. After all, churches that lose their transcendent calling also lose their members. The two are indissolubly linked. People go to church because they know their lives are out of order. They come to hear the preacher say that they must repent and take the merciful yoke of Christ upon themselves (Matt. 11:29-30). When we tie Christian identity to the anchor of prevailing cultural mores, what we end up with is a flotsam of planks and poles, which tell the tale of a great ship that once sailed choppy cultural waters and didn’t manage to stay afloat.

We are a journal of mere Christianity. We are not in the business of gloating over other churches’ downfall. The Apostle warns us, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). Who would have thought a mere decade ago that we would ever witness the publication of a horrendous declaration such as Fiducia supplicans? Without the Lord’s protection and guidance, our culture’s sexual nihilism will overtake us all. Indeed, the moral collapse of Catholic sexual ethics concerns every one of our ecclesial communities, for the entire Christian world has for many years been inspired by the moral teaching of the Catholic Church. It is the loss of the Catholic Church as a moral compass for Western civilization that gives December 18, 2023, its historic significance.

Only one thing can prevent this date from going into history as one of the most tragic dates in the church’s history: it is the conscious and deliberate reconnection of the pastoral and the theological. This means revoking Fiducia supplicans and prohibiting the blessing of same-sex couples, while unambiguously insisting on the pastoral counsel that same-sex activity is sinful and, as such, requires repentance. We should pray for a new Pope Benedict, one who will revoke as illicit the false pastoral sense of his predecessor and who will once again insist that “only what is true can ultimately be pastoral.”

The days are short, the shadows long. I can hardly wait for the light of Christmas to arrive. The darkness of our lives awakens deep within us the longing for God’s coming in the flesh.

It’s interesting how the length of Advent varies from year to year. Some years it starts on November 27, and takes forever before you get to Christmas. This year, we have the shortest Advent possible—a mere twenty-two days. Nothing you and I can do will shorten the Advent period. The liturgical calendar just is what it is, and this year, thankfully, the waiting period isn’t very long at all.

The liturgical calendar is an image of the cosmic calendar. But the cosmic calendar is one we can speed up. The apostle Peter tells us explicitly that we can speed up the coming—the Advent—of the day of God. After giving a dramatic description of that coming, he tells us, “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:11–12).

The opening lines of Mark’s Gospel teach much the same. And the mechanism for shortening the Christmas wait is the same in both Scriptures: It is a life of holiness and godliness that speeds up the coming of our Lord.

Holiness and godliness is Peter’s language. Mark’s Gospel instead simply talks about “the way.” Quoting the Old Testament—Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40—Mark repeatedly talks about the way: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way” (Mal. 3:1); “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Isa. 40:3).

Ways or paths are for traveling. Mark 1 is full of travel-talk. Mainly, it is God who is traveling on these paths. The messenger, John the Baptist, prepares the Lord’s path. First and foremost, Advent is about the coming of God, about God traveling down to end the misery of our exile and to care for us: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned” (40:1–2). John the messenger prepares the way of the Lord, a journey reaching from the highest heaven to the deepest hell.

But the Lord is not the only one doing the traveling. Most startling, perhaps, is John’s own travel. He is just suddenly there, in the Judean desert, by the Jordan. “John appeared,” the text says (Mark 1:4). Where did he come from? How did he get to this wilderness place? How did he appear? We have no idea.

And look at all the people flocking to the desert: “All the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him” (1:5). This is Isaiah 40 in action: “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Isa. 40:5). John is the obvious desert saint, preparing the way of the Lord, his holiness shortening the time between now and Christmas. But saints never want to be alone. The people coming to John are wannabe desert saints. They want to be John the Baptists themselves, messengers of the Lord, preparing the way of the Lord.

Not merely Jesus is traveling—everyone is traveling. John appears in the wilderness. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem are traveling too. The key point is this: The way or the path that God takes is the very same one that John takes, the very same that the people from Judea and Jerusalem take, the very same that you and I take, as well.

When I became an Anglican six years ago, I started doing Morning Prayer. One thing it includes every day is the Benedictus, the Song of Zechariah. Once he names the baby John, Zechariah is able to talk again, and the first thing he does is sing the Benedictus: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people.”

I had to get used to reciting the Benedictus every day. My life clearly links up with Jesus, but does it connect also with John? Why should I recite a song about John the Baptist every day? I think the answer is this: You and I, we are John the Baptist. Zechariah sings about you and me: “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.” Our job description is that of John the Baptist: Preparing the way of the Lord.

It is easy to misread the preparation part, to think that John's job and ours is totally different from what Jesus came to do—as if we were simply construction workers paving the road, so that Jesus would have it ready to travel on. But the “way of the Lord” in the Bible is the way of God’s law. It is the life of repentance and forgiveness that the people of Judea and Jerusalem are looking for. It is the life of holiness and godliness that Saint Peter talks about.

John travels through the desert and arrives at the Jordan River; all the people, too, are traveling through the desert to cross the Jordan River. The road they are on is none other than the exodus journey of long ago.

John, the people he baptizes, you and I, we are all traveling the exodus journey. The “way of the Lord” is the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The way of the Lord is a picture of the Christian pilgrimage—the road of holiness and godliness, of repentance and forgiveness.

This road shortens our distance from God, for soon all God’s messengers—John the Baptist, all of Judea and all Jerusalem, and all God’s holy church—will see God appear in Zion. That is where the desert journey and baptism take us: “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Isa. 40:5). Soon our traveling days will end, for we shall see God’s glory in the Promised Land.

The road of holiness and godliness shortens our distance from God. God’s Advent—whether his coming in Bethlehem, his coming in our hearts, or his coming on the clouds—will not happen without our holiness. As Scripture says, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2). Only holy people can see a holy God (Heb. 12:14).

True, we prepare the way of the Lord—but not in the sense that we do the preaching while Jesus does the traveling. No, we prepare the way of the Lord by traveling the very same road that he travels—through the wilderness, through the Jordan, and on to the Promised Land. We hasten the coming of Jesus by sharing in the purity, the kindness, and the mercy of Jesus.

The idea that we might speed up the cosmic calendar might seem to question the transcendence of God. This would indeed be so if God’s path were a different path than ours, for then we would have to do our traveling on our own, tasked with speeding up God’s coming on our own. Similarly, if with John the Baptist we did the road construction while leaving Jesus to do the traveling alone, it would be our construction skills by themselves that made God’s hurry possible.

The divine economy knows no such mutual exclusion between God’s actions and ours. His journey can be ours, and ours can be his, working in perfect synergy, hastening the cosmic calendar.

You remember the name that people used for the church in the book of Acts: They called it “the Way.” Saul, we read, persecuted people belonging to “the Way” (Acts 9:2). The reason for that name is obvious: We are on a trek—not just any trek, but a trek defined by holiness—holy in the desert, holier in the river, and holiest in the New Jerusalem.

(Originally published at First Things.)