A Friday diversion with infinity

I have read that the great mathematician George Cantor, developer of set theory, referred to Augustine and Augustine's reading of Holy Scripture to assist in explaining the concept of infinity.  Here is an interesting quotation from the City of God:

"The fact is that God, whose knowledge is simple in its multiplicity and one in its diversity, comprehends all incomprehensible things with an incomprehensible comprehension." De civitate dei, Book XII, Chapter 19.

Something to consider this Friday.

The Sinai Tables

Today in scripture we witness God himself writing the law - does He actually do the writing or does Moses?  What kind of question is this?  Moses is told to ascend to the top of Mount Sinai so that God may write on the stone tables:

"...and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest."  (Exodus 34:1)

And this is the Sinai Covenant from whence we have the Decalogue.  Scripture says God himself will do the writing.  What a bewildering swirl of action going on here!  The Book of Exodus states that there was a prior set of tables of stone bearing commandments, "written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18).  Moses broke these tables - on descending from Mount Horeb.  On purpose.  Why?

How does God communicate with us?  The written word in scripture is one of the principal means.

This is also an interesting text because it would appear to be some kind of evidence relating to the nature of the inspiration and validity of Holy Scripture.  Contrast these statements in which God is literally writing in the stone to the so-called "plenary inspiration" view of scripture; that is, God breathed through the very being of the human person who was writing.  Personally the labyrinths and mirrors of Borges and Escher come to mind - but these seem simplistic and one dimensional when compared to the book of Exodus.

I am left with an overwhelming sense of how complex God's interactions are with his humanity.

Exhort, comfort, and charge

Today's reading from I Thessalonians summarizes nicely what I am trying to do.

"...we exhorted and comforted and charged everyone of you, as a father doth his children." (1 Thessalonians 2:11)

Exhort, comfort, and charge.   Exhort - to give advice; to urge strongly; even to warn.  Comfort - to point the way to rest and assurance, the way to a yoke that is well fitting and easy to bear.  Charge - to assign tasks, to instruct and convey responsibility, to provide direction.

Let your light shine

A Bible passage that I have read since a very young age many, many times is Matthew 5.  This is the chapter in which the Beatitudes are found.  This chapter also contains the famous verse which begins:

"Let your light so shine..." (Matthew 5:16)

Does this mean that we should accept ourselves as we are, or glory in our uniqueness as human beings, or somehow recognize it and tell others when we have finally done something, however small, that merits attention and recognition?  Does it mean that we should not be afraid to display our own good behavior, even take credit for it - and maybe not feel so bad about ourselves?  (Or conversely, hide our so-called light if we have done something wrong?)  I don't think so.

The light that is referred to as "your light" - a light we may possess in an unmerited way- is truly the light of Christ.  We are blessed to bear it, especially if we have been obedient and walked in our chosen good works.  But the larger point is that the light is truly objective.  It is a light that is burning, not from anything we have done or could ignite, but from what our Lord has done.  So don't feel that this is something that must be "accomplished" or "achieved."  It is bigger than us, brighter than us.  How blessed we are when it shines through us!

 

 

Itching ears

The theme these past few days has been "truth," hasn't it?  Today is a day that some in the church set aside to honor Mark the Evangelist.  It seems very appropriate to me that Saint Mark is associated with scripture relating to the idea of truth.  We are directed this day in scripture to a solemn charge that Paul makes to Timothy to be vigilant against those (maybe all of us at times) who want something different, something beyond what is presented to them as truth through the Gospel.  Those people will have "itching ears" as Saint Paul puts it.

"And they will turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." (II Timothy 4:4)

The idea of itching ears is a kind of variation of curiosity.  Curiosity, while valued highly in our scientific and entrepreneurial culture, is not a classic virtue.  The classic virtues are temperance, prudence, justice, and fortitude. Curiosity is not among them. Curiosity*, though, when regulated in the service of some good, is indeed to be praised and encouraged.  "Itching ears" on the other hand implies a lack of regulation, a lack of standards.  This is the condition many young people find themselves in.  I write to you, my children, knowing that your great and healthy young minds will ask many questions and look for many answers.  You will ask and test and try.  The truth will not move.  The truth will be there.  You know, of course, that Truth is a Person.

Please don't try to interpret this text as an admonition against learning.  That is a most incorrect reading in my opinion.  You are to be armed with reasons for what you do and what you believe.  That requires learning.  When our interest in learning stops, we are sorry creatures.  The hard and nuanced lesson in this is that learning is not a free-for-all.  There are great and mighty distinctions between the classic virtues (mentioned above), the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and those things I will call admirable moral characteristics - such as curiosity.  Or they can be admirable - or not.  The difference is whether or not they are informed and governed by the great standards - the virtues, or the standard of standards, the Truth incarnate.




*There is a great opinion piece about curiosity by the contemporary essayist, S. Fish, in the New York Times from about a year and a a half ago.  If you're curious.  Does Curiosity Kill More than the Cat?

An old fashioned warning

Nothing from Holy Scripture today - at least not directly - but from 19th century English Literature, the great novel Silas Marner, by George Eliot (otherwise known as Mary Ann Evans Cross).  This is a novel worth reading and re-reading (which I was doing at the barber shop yesterday).  Sometimes there is stark truthfulness even in fiction.  The narrator is explaining the state of mind of one of the main characters, Godfrey Cass:

"The yoke a man creates for himself by wrongdoing will breed hate in the kindliest nature..."*

Wrongdoing is a yoke and one is not easily freed of it.  It persists in causing mischief long after the commitment of the wrong.  Such a simple statement, but one that needs to be said more than it is in our super-information age.  Our most admired citizens talk about ethics, perhaps, but rarely right and wrong.  I must admit, I heard the message of right and wrong as a child, but it did not have the same import then as it does now.  It seemed obvious to the point of being embarrassingly unnecessary.  Even though it is obvious, it is a point that must be made from generation to generation. These are words of good counsel for you while you are young.  And even for those of us who are no longer quite so young.



*From Silas Marner, by George Eliot, Signet Classics

True understanding

I admit I have not often been around a horse, and even less so a mule, close enough to observe much about their behavior in bit and bridle.  I was born in the tail end of an agricultural era and so as a child only occasionally observed such things.  It may be a little hard for most of us to hear this message, but not impossible.

"Do not be like horse or mule, which have no understanding; who must be fitted with bit and bridle, or else they will not stay near you." (Psalm 32:10)

Conditioned by the 20th century's reductionist gloss of human behavior as stimulus and response, we can imagine ourselves to be like the beasts in the Psalm.  We are fitted by unseen cultural, social, or political forces that act as our bit and bridle.  There are "social contracts" that keep us in place.  It is peer pressure or group think,  co-dependency, or even performance training and conditioning.  I choose to believe that the Psalmist is implying a more transcendent kind of human understanding here.  Furthermore, the implication is that God has given us a freedom to act with that understanding and not to always be bridled.  Not that the love of God does not sometimes put us in a bit and bridle - and we should be thankful that it does.  This is about human freedom, true freedom to understand, true freedom to comprehend the proximity of God.

Beware the love of wisdom

Philosophy means "love of wisdom" does it not?  Setting our hearts unto wisdom is the goal of this little thread of thought we are spinning is it not?  How can the love of wisdom be somehow wrong?

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after God." (Colossians 2:8)

This is what Saint Paul tells us through his letter to the Colossians.  As much as I have loved philosophy through the years, this has been an odd and challenging text.  Philosophy can provide a joy in ordering the world to principles that seem to be above the fray.  That in way is the problem, though, isn't it?  It's not that our desire to find order in God's creation is bad (this applies to Science and Mathematics as well), it's simply that our limits as humans are quite severe - relative to God.  That doesn't mean we should limit our endeavors; it's quite good to be human in that respect -and find joy in our intellectual pursuits.   We are created in God's image, after all. That does not really limit us in any way.  The scope of what we can discover philosophically is quite vast - for all intents and purposes limitless.  We cannot replace God's divine Order with our human constructs, however.  (God's limitlessness is moreso than our limitlessness.) We simply cannot do it. Attempting to do so or forgetting this very basic idea through vanity, for example, leads to real trouble as Paul reminds us so sternly.




Note: Marker1662 has been out for a few days due to travel and illness.

Numbering our days in hope

It seems the Psalmist more than once asks to know the number of his days.  In Psalm 39: "Lord, let me know my end and the number of my days..."  The Psalmist contemplates vanity and the shortness and insubstantiality of human life.

"Truly even those who stand erect are but a puff of wind." (Psalm 39:6)

The question naturally arises, where is our hope?

"O Lord, my hope is in you." (Psalm 39:8)

The insubstantiality of human life is contrasted with the hope (and weight) of glory.

Truth from the heart

There is another kind of comfort, albeit difficult, maybe impossible to truly achieve.  That is the comfort of knowing that one's thoughts and actions are right.  It is as simple as that.  We know when we behave rightly, don't we?  At least most of us get close enough to some kind of right behavior occasionally in life.  When we do, we sense the relief that is provided by this kind of alignment with truth.  The Psalmist asks "who may dwell" in the Lord's tabernacle?  Domine, qui habitabit?

"Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, who speaks truth from the heart." (Psalm 15: 2)

That leaves most of us out, of course.  But it is the right answer and we know it.  The innate sense of right is another beacon of sorts that serves to guide us, to warn us, and to comfort us as we approach it.

Reality

It has been several days since I have been able to make an entry due to schedule and travel.  We are still in the season of Eastertide, or Paschal-tide.  We are still focused on the surprise of the resurrection.  It is not something that is facilely incorporated into one's worldview.  It never has been.  It is perhaps a bias of every age that we think this "resurrection" is a primitive superstition that we have outgrown - or should outgrow.  But the gospels record substantial struggle with the reality of the resurrection in the very days in which it occurred.  As my homilist observed this morning, the New Testament is very "modern" in the sense that it is dealing with "news" and a reporting of observations and empirical evidence.  It is recording these data in a way quite objectively.  Mark writes:

"And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them." (Mark 16:13)

In our day of so-called "inconvenient truths", this is the original inconvenient truth:  Christ is risen.  As the homilist said this morning, and as many have observed over the centuries, what purpose would it serve to attempt to keep a failed and humiliated political insurgency going?  Most had given up (but not all); most had gone back to their lives.  But reality - a new reality - intervened. Alleluia.  Christ is risen.  Alleluia.

The Comforter

Returning today briefly to the theme of comfort and afflliction.  We are told in the Gospel of John that Jesus himself has said that he will not leave us "comfortless."

"...and he [the Father] shall give you another Comforter" (John 14:16)

And who is this Comforter? - even the "Spirit of Truth."

Contrast

Have you noticed how many contrasts we have discussed over these past few days?  Comfort and affliction; seen and unseen; present and absent; nature and super-nature are among those that scripture itself has brought to our attention.  Is there something fundamental about the idea of pairings?  In itself that's simply a sophomoric question.  We need to be careful about reducing all of existence to the comparison of two extremes.  Today's scripture calls a very stark comparison to mind, however.

"If we say we that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness..." (I John:6)

and

"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light..." (I John:7)

I'm not wise enough to say whether or not life can be described in simple terms of light and darkness.  From the perspective of the engineer, light is spectral electromagnetic radiation, perceived through molecular phenomena like absorption and reflection of energy.  (And of course it famously bifurcates into the wave-particle dilemma, another contrast).
Can we tell when we are walking in darkness?  Maybe not always - it may depend on how long we have been in such a condition.  (What about Plato's cave?)  Somehow, though, we know when we are walking in the light.  We are drawn to the light.  The light itself draws us to it.  Seek that light.

 

Bread of affliction

I was reminded recently that the unleavened bread of the Passover is also referred to as the "bread of affliction."  What is the meaning of unleavened bread?

"...that the Lord's law may be in thy mouth..." (Exodus 13:9)

Does it mean that we are to be reminded of the necessity of both a kind of sternness and immediacy of the law as well as the admonition to consume it so it is integral to our being?  Returning to II Corinthians again, Saint Paul declares that our affliction is "light."  Recall this?  He also says,

"...we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen..." (II Corinthian 4:18)

We have been observing and pondering how these common themes: comfort and affliction; things seen and unseen; science, nature, and the supernatural; presence and absence; and ultimately, the sovereignty of God, relate one to the other.

 

Today

I suppose this well known verse from the Psalms may sometimes be construed as a kind of Stoic philosophy.  I think it is also interpreted at times to focus on rejoicing in our daily gifts of "prosperity" in the Lord.  Even though I might be a bit inclined and even morbidly sympathetic with the Stoic point of view, I really don't believe it means either of these things.

"This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118:24)

I think it means exactly what it says: The Lord is God and we, and all his creation, are subject to the day he has caused.   That is the first clause.  The second clause may be more problematic for melancholic types, but it is more easily understood if the emphasis remains on the first segment - the declaration that the Lord made all, our very living and breathing.

Seeing is believing?

There are times when one is confronted with facts that do not seem to completely "add up."  Or so one thinks they are facts.  And we think facts should "add up," or at least be self consistent.  We think of facts as observations from reliable persons based on some kind of sensory evidence.  The more persons that concur with the interpretation of the evidence, especially if we consider those persons to be reliable and reasonable, the better our confidence in those facts.  It's even better usually if the sensory evidence is our own, direct observation.  Reading in the conclusion of the Gospel of Matthew, there is a curious dissonance of interpretation of sensory evidence - or at least it's documented that way:

"And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted." (Matthew 28:17)

Some doubted?  Didn't they see him?  But what they were seeing did not "add up" perhaps.  Yesterday's very brief discussion of 1 Corinthians 15 covers a related topic: corruptibility and incorruptibility.  The writers of the New Testament are not dodging the very fundamentals of human understanding and human reasoning.  This is a lot to process, but it is fundamental.  And today we read in the newspaper the fascinating news (to me, anyway) that another hominid has been found, Australopithecus sediba.  Stars, galaxies, an ancient creature, and the resurrection of the dead.  Does it all add up?

Stars and their glory

Saint Paul writes about a little astronomy in the reading today:

"...for one star differeth from another star in glory." (I Corinthians 15:41)

 What kinds of stars are there?  It's interesting to make a short list:

• Main sequence stars (well behaved, stable stars like our sun)
• Red giant stars
• White dwarf stars
• Red dwarf stars (most common type of star)
• Supergiant stars

And yes, all different in their "glory" - and spectral characterization.  No, I don't think Saint Paul is trying to be an astronomer.  Why is he comparing "glory"?  He is, I think, pointing to the complexity of nature and, possibly, the greater realm of nature and super-nature.  Both interesting subjects - astronomy as well as the nature of the resurrection.

The beginning of wisdom

There is usually something that jumps out at me in my daily reading - nothing remarkable about that.  Today I read in the Psalms:

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;" (Psalm 111:10)

This statement seems especially out of step with the contemporary culture in which I live and you as well, my children; nothing especially remarkable about that, either.  My observation is only that this assertion or declaration by the psalmist is simply and obviously true.  My interpretation of the term "fear" in this phrase is a continuation of yesterday's discussion about the entire other-ness of God, i.e., that God is not man.  Another obvious statement, but one which has had its challenges over the years.  This type of existential recognition leads to understanding.

So I give thanks to the Psalms today for reminding us where to begin in our search for wisdom.

God is not man, nor a projection of man; man is not God

I apologize immediately for directly jumping into a difficult subject - and giving it short treatment at that.  I listened to a remarkable (podcast) homily today which brought this subject to my attention.  According to the homilist - one of my favorites, a Benedictine from the Chicago Monastery of the Holy Cross - the notion that God is a projection of man has at least some of its origin in the 19th century pre-Marxist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach.  Feuerbach wrote Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) among other things.  That this notion, which has become as the homilist points out a "plank" in the modern atheist's platform, is false, can be be seen if one thinks of the "model" God gives us in the parable of the widow's mite (giving all) and comparing that to the theology of the cross (sacrificing all).  That God does this not out of "excess" love, but out of a true offering, "out of His Poverty so to speak" the homilist says, is not a human projection.  Why is that so?  Something for us to think about as we continue to number our days.

Note this is is also a corollary to an idea from one of my other favorite, unnamed homilists, who has said that one of the basics of his exegetical approach is that the "Bible doesn't mean what he (the homilist) wants it to mean."  (So - what does it mean?)

By the way, the Benedictine homily* was from Good Friday.

Happy Easter Monday.


*Monastery of the Holy Cross

Another kind of emptiness

Today is the day in the liturgical cycle for which many reserve as a day to mark the resurrection of Jesus.  (Note that this year, 2010, there is a coinciding of Western, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish Passover dates - and this is something of a slight difficulty for the Orthodox who prefer to observe Pascha after the Passover.  I choose to interpret this as an inevitable imperfection in man's attempt to reflect God's actions into his daily life.  But if you like puzzles that include astronomy, history, and theology, this is a good day for you.)  The Christian tradition in which I was raised, did not observe Easter as a day that occurred once a year, but marked it every Sunday (as in fact do many other Christians as well).

Yesterday I wrote about the "nothingness" of Holy Saturday.  Today we read about three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome who became early witnesses to another kind of emptiness.  The gospel writer Mark writes:

"...he is not here..." (Mark 16:6)

Blunt, factual and frightening.   Something has happened that is completely unexpected.  To three women already traumatized and frightened, perhaps also humiliated, this must have been a sharp and visceral shock.  The oldest versions of this gospel end with just this kind of fear.

My thought is this: this account is a model of hope, or maybe the prerequisites of hope.  Unless the emptiness of the tomb is confronted as real, and if real, so out of the realm of ordinary nature, a true hope cannot be obtained.

Happy Easter.

Rest and nothingness

Today, Holy Saturday, has long seemed to me one of the strangest days from a theological point of view.  It is a true transition, an in-between time.  To the awaiting earth (especially to those not comprehending or truly believing God's promise - maybe all of us), it was (is) like a point in an abstract space with no known direction, no vector, no trajectory, no way to extrapolate from the past and project into the future.  It is a time of nihilism.  It is nothing.  Absence.  Yet it is also the Sabbath, a day of rest.  Out of nothing, ex nihilo, something emerges.  How can this be?  I do not want to infer a direct interpretation of this day from the world of physics, because, as beautiful and remarkable as this science is, it cannot comprehend God and does not intend to do so.  However, maybe there is something of an analogy with dark matter, and the so-far elusive Higgs boson.  But even the Higgs boson is "predicted" by physicists.  It's not detectable or observable, but it must be there.  One day it will be found, or something similar will be found.  But Holy Saturday is more blank, more vacuum like than even this.  God is resting, the universe has drawn into itself, into God Himself.  Not "Being and Nothingness" - but (God's) Rest and Nothingness.

The pslamist today says:

"My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me: and hid mine acquaintance out of my sight." (Psalm 88:18 from 1662 BCP)

Another translation puts it a different way - "and darkness is my only companion" (Psalm 88:19 in 1978 BCP).  The point is this: we are left, for this day, looking at the true and deep emptiness of meaning without God willing meaning into being.

Another word: Triduum

Another word for today, Good Friday.  Today is the second day of the Easter (more properly, Paschal) Triduum.  Triduum is a set of three days, and I would guess three consecutive days.  There are other triduums, notably one at Christmastide.  Although the practice of assigning specific features and attributes to days of the calendar may seem to some inappropriate (as mentioned in yesterday's entry), it is to me quite consistent with the admonition of the psalmist to "number our days."

There are other words to consider this day.  "Good" in "Good Friday."  What does that mean?  This may be an example of an etymology so complex or so elusive that it doesn't matter; perhaps the phrase has simply captured its own meaning, no longer needing the help of history.  I doubt that, though.  Its history is one that some day we may explore.  One more complication or maybe clue to the meaning.  This day is also known as the Day of Preparation.

Several words to consider today:  Good, Paschal, and Triduum.

Is there wisdom in this word, Triduum?

Maundy

Today and maybe tomorrow I'll just make a note or two about words - words that describe days.  Today is referred to as Maundy Thursday.  It is a curious thing to consider that for some this term is automatic and natural.  For some it may even have unpleasant or musty childhood memories associated with it.  For others it may sound alien, maybe vaguely idolatrous, especially if considered from an anabaptist perspective - assigning a specific meaning to a particular day (besides the Lord's day) would be considered suspect.  For most people on the planet it probably means absolutely nothing.  The phrase seems to have originated from the Latin: Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos.   

"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." (John 13:34)

After that it probably made its way through various derivatives on the European continent and British Isles until it became "Maundy."
A "new" commandment: mandatum novum.   Maundy - truly a rich and beautiful word.