Book Review: "Three Treatises on the Divine Images" by St. John of Damascus

This will be the last post before the semester starts. Hopefully that doesn't mean that my blogging will drastically decrease, but it does mean that I have to assess the amount of success (or in my case failure) to actually finish the books on my reading list for break.

I'm not sure if I have reading ADD or what, but instead of finishing the three books I wanted to finish before the semester I actually started two more. Why? I'm not sure.

I did, however, finish one of the books. In case you couldn't guess from the title of the post; I ended up finishing St. John of Damascus' Three Treatises on the Divine Images. The edition that I read (here) was by St. Vladimir's Press and was translated by Andrew Louth. While I'm not a Byzantine Greek scholar, I do think that Louth's translation was very thorough. His footnotes were explanatory and he was good about highlighting vocabulary nuances as well as providing citations to referenced scripture passages and other Fathers of the Church.

St. John (died around 750AD) defended of the use of icons in the life and worship of the Church during the time in which the Emperor Leo III condemned icons as a violation of the 2nd commandment (no idols). As the debate between the iconoclasts (those destroying and condemning the icons) and the iconodules (those in support of icons) raged St. John penned his three treatises in favor of the use and practice of veneration of icons.

In general St. John's treatises might be a little heavier reading than some of the other church fathers that I have read and subsequently reviewed. The topic may also be one that causes many protestants much grief and dismay as icons are very foreign to the Western Church. However, it is probably safe to say that if it wasn't for St. John's treatises on the Divine Images there would be little-to-no room for any Church art.

As I read through St. John's work his words and phraseology made it very clear that for him this was not a dry theological debate. St. John's concern is rooted in his deep love for God and his love for the Church and the faith which it has carried down from the Apostles. John views the use of icons in worship as something which has early and even apostolic roots even if it isn't embedded in scripture. Along these lines St. John quotes from St. Basil to exhort his readers:

Of the dogmas and preachings preserved in the Church, some we have from the written teaching, others we received from the tradition of the Apostles, handed down to us in secret, both of them having the same force for piety. No one who has the least experience of the laws of the Church will object to these, for if we try to dismiss that which is unwritten among the customs as of no great authority, then without noticing it we shall damage the Gospel.

Building upon this John pleads with his adversaries and with the Church as a whole:

I entreat the people of God, the holy nation, to cling to the traditions of the Church. For just as the removal of one of the stones of a building will quickly bring ruin to that building, so will the removal, ever so little, of what has been handed down. Let us be firm, unflinching, unmoved, established upon the secure rock, which is Christ, to whom is due glory, honor and veneration, with the Father and the Spirit, now and for ever and to the unbounded ages of ages. Amen.

Cutting to the core content of the work (or works if you prefer) John argues for the allowance of the veneration of icons, both of Christ and of the "friends of God." In order to defend this stance St. John argues, following Basil, that the honor given to the image passes to the archetype. Through his work John defines and distinguishes between worship and veneration as well as different types of veneration. He also tackles the accusation that icons violate the second commandment by illustrating from scripture the multiple times where images are made and honored and yet not worshiped.

While this material and some of the language that St. John uses will likely make many protestants uncomfortable it is worth a read. St. John's treatises form a concise discussion on icons and their place in worship. In his third treatise St. John also sets forth a valuable discussion of worship and how it is to be approached by the Church and the Christian. At times the work felt redundant because of repeated arguments between the treatises and repeated citations, but it is an essential work for any student of Church history to read. This work seems to inform and provide much of the basis for the decision of the Seventh Ecumenical Council which approved of the use of icons. If nothing else is achieved by reading this work it will help protestants understand and appreciate the position of the Catholic and Orthodox Christians concerning this matter.

As I said before, I think one of the most beautiful things about this work is not that St. John is concerned with ivory tower theology, but that he is concerned with health and life of the Church. St. John views icons as essential parts of the worship of the faithful and as aids to holiness. It is obvious to even a casual reader of this book that St. John desires holiness for the people of God and views the iconoclast position as impious and destructive to the faith of the Church.


So there is a short review for the only fun book that I managed to finish this January break. Hopefully I'll get back to posting some more of my random thoughts soon.


Blessings to you all,

Ben

The one where I write about a lot of different things

This one might be a long one as I've been intending to post on some of these topics since before Christmas. I'll try to section off the topics so you can easily scroll ahead if you find one of the topics to be boring, but then again chances are you might find all of these topics, if not the whole blog in general, to be rather boring. Nevertheless here it goes.


********Happy Birthday Jesus***********

I think I alluded to this in my last post. While I was home the kids in my parent's church gave a little Christmas program during the Sunday service. The program focused on the fact that Jesus was celebrating a birthday and thus they should give him appropriate gifts (the eventual conclusion being that we must give him our hearts). As I sat there I began to think about how insufficient the commonplace "happy birthday Jesus" emphasis that we give our children is.

Maybe we think that we're helping our kids understand Christmas by telling them that it is Jesus' birthday, for it is, in fact, the day that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. But I'm wondering if this isn't yet another example of the protestant problem. Meaning that in an effort to contextualize and to make the message of the faith easy to understand we end up settling for a lesser faith and selling short ourselves and the eventual converts into the faith.

Granted young children can't understand phrases like incarnation, hypostasis, and perichoresis, but do we still not have a duty to teach our children the true faith even if it means they ask questions and don't understand it all at first? Maybe the issue now is that this cycle of "settling" has gone on so long that most Protestant Christians don't know what the faith is anyways? But I digress. How much do we need to dumb down the faith for kids? I would argue that while we may not use the same terminology we still need to teach the essential concepts and, as I see it, "happy birthday Jesus" falls short on so many levels.

So why is "happy birthday Jesus" insufficient? It seems to me that it downplays the significance of the birth of Christ. While it is, and always will be, important to emphasize that Jesus was born in the same way as we were born the sole emphasis of his birth downplays his divinity. The reason that Christ's birth is so important is not merely because he was born, but because God himself chose to take on flesh through the womb of a virgin and to be born and live among us. I've not heard "happy birthday Jesus" teaching to children that emphasizes the fact that God came down and dwelt among us. I've also not heard this teaching mention that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit as well as the Virgin Mary. How great is this opportunity to make a Trinitarian teaching point to children and yet we sell out in favor of birthday cake and parties for our kids.

This emphasis also seem problematic in that we fail to appropriately distinguish between the celebration of Jesus' birthday and our birthday. Thus we teach a low Christology that implicitly places Jesus on our level. This means, as mentioned above, that we deemphasize the divinity and thus we celebrate Jesus' birth because he is a good man whom we strive to be like. If he is merely a good man then nothing distinguishes him from the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and the rest of the social advocates around the world. This is nothing more than old-fashioned liberal theology and should be eradicated from our places of worship.

Time also seems to play an important part in this discussion. If we focus on using the "happy birthday Jesus" paradigm for teaching our kids while Christmas is important we also neglect to teach them about the eternality of Christ. Yes he was born in time about 2,000 years ago. However, he is eternally begotten of the Father. It would be disastrous for us to leave our kids thinking that Jesus came to be 2,000 years ago and that's it. We must teach our kids that while Christ was born in time on earth there was never a moment that he did not exist. This is something that I didn't learn until college and we are perpetuating these low Christologies in part by teaching our kids that we celebrate Christmas because it's Jesus' birthday and then we stop.

We may indeed be able to use birthday language to help our kids grasp the concept of Christmas, but we must only do so if we can use it to discuss the context of the Holy Incarnation. Yes, we likely will not use the word incarnation as kids don't understand it, but we have to convey the concept. Wait, why should we not use the word incarnation? Kids learn vocabulary by hearing it and asking questions concerning the meaning of words. Why should the building blocks of our Children's vocabulary not be words and concepts like incarnation? What could be more important? Granted this may turn them into nerds, but not necessarily and who cares. Too dumb down the faith for kids and to merely talk about Christmas in terms of birthday is insufficient and is embedding in our kids a weak Christology that has hurt the Church and will undoubtedly hurt the Church in the long run.



********Virtual Eucharist***********

I read the following announcement on our Asbury email forum thingy before Christmas and am just getting to posting about it:

On January 2, 2008 we will gather at 11am in the Distance Learning Room (BC 157) and in Florida in Room FL208 for a celebration of the the classic Wesley Covenant Renewal Service. Dr. Kalas will be leading the Covenant Renewal and a leader from the Florida campus will be celebrating the Lord's Supper. The service should take no longer than 45 minutes. Please mark your calendars and plan to be present if you are on campus.

Just so you all know the context of the email I have left the content intact, minus the greeting and salutation, though I have bolded the section that I would like to address.

As soon as I read this email I started wondering exactly how this co-celebration of the Eucharist would work. If it is being celebrated by a leader from the Florida Campus while in the telelink room I can only assume that this leader will be in Florida. This new age of technology surely raises some interesting pragmatic questions.

As my friend Chuck pointed out when I emailed him and a few others about this issue if one holds a memorialist view of the Eucharist there really is no issue at hand. He's right, if one holds this view of the Eucharist then of course one could remember Christ through telelink and everyone should be fine with this. Though I don't want this to become a post defending my Eucharistic views I think this view of the Eucharist is the least biblical, historical, and thus desirable of all the views. Theoretically the seminary should not be endorsing this view as it is a seminary in the broader Wesleyan tradition and it is evident that John Wesley and early Methodists did not hold nor teach this view.

I suppose that one probably wouldn't have that much of a problem with this practice of telelink Eucharist if they held to a consubstantiatory view either (I think this was also suggested by Chuck, but maybe Tony). I guess the logic here would be that the Holy Spirit surrounds the elements and the Holy Spirit can move upon the elements and the communicants through video conferencing just as well as if the person praying over the elements and saying the words of institution is present.

I personally hold to a more transubstantiatory view and logically object to this practice. The issue I want to raise though is that this practice should be raising questions amongst the seminary community and is an undesirable practice even if one holds a consubstantiatory view.

This practice raises many questions. If this is a valid way to take the Eucharist then what is the need for ordination. I may be mistaken but it seems to me that one of the main purposes of ordination is to assure that the person celebrating the sacraments, liturgy, and preaching to the people is inline with the faith of the Church. If one can preach, celebrate the sacraments and liturgy over video conference then why ordain anyone? For that matter, why let anyone preach other than major denominational figures? For Catholics, why wouldn't the Pope just video tape his liturgy and then show it to all the Catholic churches in the world? This seems like it would work given the underlying presuppositions that allow this virtual Eucharist to take place. We have to admit that there is something important about the physical presence of a minister representing Christ to the people. We have to recognize the importance of the physical.

It seems to me that this practice is building upon and helping to foster the ever-present dualistic tendencies that exists all over western Christendom. I won't go so far as to call this practice gnostic (though I really want to) but I do think it is highly dualistic and implicitly asserting that the physical does not matter. If it doesn't then why do we take Eucharist anyways? Oh wait, I know!!

If we assert that the physical doesn't matter, as this practice seems to imply, then we take the Eucharist because it helps us to feel like a "community." This service is merely using (and I would argue abusing the Eucharist) to generate some generic sense of community between the campuses. Yes, the Eucharist is a unifying act, but it unifies us to God and thus as a result unifies us to others.

We are unified to Christians around the world not because we have the exact same person say the words of institution over the bread and wine and not because someone says the words via a video conference over everyone's bread and wine, no we are united with other believers because God unites us. We worship the same God and we celebrate the same supper, even if miles, oceans, or languages separate us. We don't need someone to institute the Lord's supper over a video-link in order to be unified.

The problems with this practice are many. It promotes a hyper-dualism that shouldn't be present in Christianity. It also operates on a faulty view of how exactly the Eucharist is a unifying act. It also is problematic because it raises the all-pervasive view of community above correct Eucharistic celebration. I still think there may be more at stake with this practice, but I'm not completely sure how to articulate it.



********Book Review: Whose Bible is it? by Jaroslav Pelikan***********

I've been finished with Jaroslav Pelikan's book; Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages, for some time now. I think I finished it mid-semester in the fall but haven't got around to posting about it until now.

In true Pelikan fashion Dr. Pelikan does a wonderfully thorough job of presenting exactly what the subtitle suggests "a history of the scriptures through the ages." Pelikan's style is very accessible since he uses very little jargon and he articulates clearly and concisely his ideas.

This book is a wonderful book and would serve well for any class that focuses on the introduction to scriptures. It would also be perfect for any person who wants to learn how we have the scriptures as we know them. Pelikan begins his discussion with the oral tradition of the Hebrew scriptures and then progresses linearly through history discussing the development of the Septuagint, the Talmud, the formation of the New Testament, the development of the canon, the scribal tradition, the development of the printed scriptures, the rise of textual criticism, and then concludes with a brief discussion of the far-reachingness of the scriptures and then worldview therein.

While this sounds like a lot of material Pelikan's book is a short 274 pages (including endnotes and appendices) and tackles these discussions without getting bogged down by needless rabbit trails.

I think Pelikan's book is a must-read for any beginning religious studies student and would be a helpful read for the inquisitive lay person. Though I thought the book seemed to drag a little bit after Pelikan began discussing the era of the printing press, I think this is largely due to the fact that I'm not as interested in the latter development of editions, translations, and textual variants of the Scriptures as I am in how the canon came to be and how we have received the text from our spiritual forefathers and mothers.

Though my copy of this book is filled with underlined text, circled phrases, and comments in the margins, I'm not sure if I can find a great quote to place in this blog. The book is filled with great insight, scholarly precision, and wonderful references to ad quotes from the Fathers of the faith.

One thing you may want to know before you read the book is something that I didn't find out until I was almost finished. Though Pelikan doesn't place a notation after quotes they are still referenced in back. I find this a little archaic and frustrating but it really is the only complaint I can lay against this book.



********Book Review: On Pascha by Melito of Sardis***********

I finished this book near the beginning of the summer and since I am writing the mother of all blog posts I thought I would write a short review in this post. In case you haven't noticed this post is the catch all for all that's fallen by the wayside over the past year or so.

Melito of Sardis' (ca. 190AD even though the wikipedia page says 180AD) treatise On Pascha is very short (about 30 pages of text in this edition) but it packed with rich theology but is easy enough to read that it can be used devotionally as a meditative aid. The introduction by Alistair Stewart-Sykes is a bit heavier and while it helps one to understand the occasion for and the issues surrounding Melito's writing it isn't as necessary as some introductions given the accessibility of Melito. The footnotes are also very explanatory for those who may not be familiar with some of the phrasing that Melito uses.

For those of you who don't know what Pascha is, it is, in brief, what the earlier fathers and the Eastern Church refers to as Easter. The term comes from the Greek word for suffering and is more consistent with the Jewish feast of Passover. This treatise by Melito is basically a wonderful recounting of Easter. Melito's treatise constantly links Christ as the Lamb back to the Old Testament sacrificial lamb of Passover. Melito beautifully draws out the Old Testament images as the type of which Christ was the fulfillment. I would suggest this as a wonderful Easter meditation for anyone. Here are a few of my favorite sections:

And today those things of value (the OT sacrifices) are worthless, since the things of true worth have been revealed.

For then the (the OT) the slaughter of the sheep was of value,
now it is worthless because of the Lord's life.
The death of the sheep was of value,
now it is worthless because of the Lord's salvation.
The blood of the sheep was of value,
now it is worthless because of the Lord's Spirit...
The Jerusalem below was of value,
now it is worthless because of the heavenly Jerusalem.
One the narrow inheritance was of value,
now it is worthless because of the breadth of grace.
For it is not on one place, nor in a narrow plot, that the glory of God is established,
but on all the ends of the earth.
For his grace has been poured out
and the almighty God has made his dwelling there.
Through Christ Our Lord,
to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. (44-45)


O mystifying murder! O mystifying injustice!
The master is obscured by his body exposed,
and is not held worthy of a veil to shield him from view.
For this reason the great lights turned away,
and the day was turned to darkness;
to hid the one denuded on the tree,
obscuring not the body of the Lord but human eyes.

For when the people did not tremble, the earth shook.
When the people did not fear, the heavens were afraid.
When the people did not rend their garments, the angel rent his own.
When the people did not lament, the Lord thundered from heaven,
and the most high gave voice. (97-98)


This (Jesus) 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 up in Isaac,
exiled in Jacob,
sold in Joseph,
exposed in Moses,
slaughtered in the lamb,
hunted down in David,
dishonored in the prophets.

This is the one made flesh in a virgin,
who was hanged on a tree,
who was buried in the earth,
who was raised from the dad,
who was exalted to the heights of heaven.

This is the lamb slain,
this is the speechless lamb,
this is the one born of Mary the fair ewe,
this is the one taken from the flock,
and led to slaughter.
Who was sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night;
who was not broken on the tree,
who was not undone in the earth,
who rose form the dead and resurrected humankind from the grave below.

This is the one who has been murdered.
And where murdered?
In the middle of Jerusalem.
By Whom? By Israel.
Why? Because he healed their lame,
and cleansed their lepers,
and enlightened their blind,
and raised up their dead;
and therefore he died...

What a strange injustice have you done, O Israel?
You have dishonored the one who honored you,
you have disgraced the one who glorified you,
you have denied the one who owned you,
you have ignored the one who made you known,
you have murdered the one who gave you life. (69-73)


He it is who made the heaven and the earth,
and formed humanity in the beginning,
who was proclaimed through the law and the prophets,
who took flesh from a virgin,
who was hung on a tree,
who was buried in earth,
who was raised from the dead,
and ascended to the heights of heaven,
who sits at the right hand of the father,
who has the power to save all things,
through whom the father acted from the beginning and for ever.

This is the alpha and omega,
this is the beginning and the end,
the ineffable beginning and the incomprehensible end.
This is the Christ,
this is the King,
this is Jesus,
this is the commander,
this is the Lord,
this is he who rose from the dead,
this is he who sits at the right hand of the Father,
he bears the Father and is borne by him.
To him be the glory and the might for ever.
Amen. (104-105)

********************************

So there you have it. I know it's long and it probably bores most, if not all of you, but I think that catches up on most of what I've been thinking/reading as of late.

I start my last semester at Asbury in February and am stoked about being done. Although I am a little unsure of what I will do when I graduate. I'm taking three classes and am particularly excited about one of them. I am taking:

John Wesley's Theology for Today
Old Testament Theology

and the one that still has to be approved but that I'm really excited about is

Independent Study in historical and theological development of Eastern Christian thought.


I am currently working on finishing three books:

St. John of Damascus: Three Treatises On the Divine Images
St. Symeon the New Theologian: On the Mystical Life: Vol 1. The Church and the Last Things
St. Symeon the New Theologian: On the Mystical Life: Vol 2. On Virtue and the Christian Life

I'm also reading: Rob Bell: Velvet Elvis, but I must confess that I'm only reading Bell because I'm not a big fan and think that I should read more of his works in order to help refute the Rob Bell personality cult that exists at Asbury.

I'm hoping to finish the main three books before February, and while it should be doable I also am lazy and am watching way more movies than I should during this break.



Blessings to you all,

- Ben