The 16th century marks a turning point for Christian believers all over the world: the Church became divided between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
At the center of the doctrinal issues that led to this division we find our respective understandings of how we are put right with God, that is, how we attain “justification” or “righteousness” (dikaiosúne) (see below “It does not have to be this way”). In other words, separation occurred around the church’s doctrine concerning the undoing of whatever happened between God and us that let death in (see below “It was not meant to be this way”).
Paradoxically, this split is in direct opposition to the way that God chose to put us right with himself. “May they be brought to complete unity—asks Christ in his prayer for all believers—to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them as you have loved me” (John 17:23). Thus, because of our division, some may not get to know God’s love and will miss the opportunity to be reconciled with him.
But on October 31, 1999, nearly 10 years ago, the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification”. Although few know about this agreement, I will use its core confession to fast-forward my reflection from Abraham to Christ and to our present day.
“Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.” (Joint Declaration, § 15). Nearly five centuries of dissention are being undone with this statement, which does not mean that we are about to reach the unity that Christ prayed for, but it certainly suggests a potential for the future that an unexpected catalyst may trigger, such as persecution and hardship.
If you read my posting of March 29, 2009, you will follow the path to the conclusion that the faith that saves is total trust in God’s word. For Abraham it was trust in the promise that he would become the father of a great nation although he did not have any children. The remaining question was: what is faith for us? The Lutheran and Catholic churches suggest that we are accepted by God and receive his Spirit by a gratuitous act of God (“by grace alone”) that leads us to faith in God’s Word, that is a Person, Jesus the Christ, who nailed our sins to the cross (“in faith in Christ’s saving work”).
In the fullness of time, God sent his own Son, born of a woman (Galatians 4:4). He is the Word that was from the beginning with God (John 1:1) and he came to his own, but they did not receive him, but to those who received him he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12)
Once we are in the realm of God—literally his Kingdom—as his children and heirs of his promises, then we are capable, under the guidance and the power of his Spirit, to live in a way that is pleasant to him, producing good fruits (“equipping and calling us to good works”). These “fruits of the Spirit”, as St. Paul calls them in his letter to the Galatians (5:22), are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Let’s leave it at that for now. At another time we can explore further what the early Church wrote for us (New Testament) about our reconciliation with God. In the meantime, let’s pray that the Joint Declaration may lead to a better understanding and a greater unity among all believers as a living testimony of God’s love for humankind.
My posting of June 20 regarding how I read the Bible is too long. I apologize for it. I want to give you here a much shorter version.
I cannot read the Bible as though it had been written for American society in the 21st century because it wasn’t.
Taking the Bible literally—that is, the way it sounds today to modern Americans—is referred to as “biblical fundamentalism”. Instead, each biblical text is rooted in its historical and cultural context and it was written for an audience with specific needs and expectations and by authors with their own preferences and points of view.
Even the venerable Pontifical Biblical Commission, with Cardinal Ratzinger (today’s Pope Benedict XVI) at its head, agrees with me: not accepting the “historical” character of the Bible is the equivalent of rejecting the ultimate consequences of the “Incarnation” (the Son of God became one of us). I hadn’t thought of that initially, but it makes sense. God has truly spoken through man, in the context of our lives and history.
If we accept this principle, getting as close as possible to the original product—the initial rendition of the texts that arrived to us across the millennia—is a worthwhile endeavor. Consequently, I favor the reading of the original Greek version of the New Testament, as well as the original Hebrew version of the Old Testament with the so-called Septuagint, its Greek translation from the 2nd century BC, which is the one quoted in the New Testament.
Of course, it is not enough to read the texts in their original language. The historical character of the Bible demands that we use the scientific tools at our disposal to approximate the initial meaning and intent of each writing, as well as its possible resonance in the community to which it was addressed.
Once we have done all of this, we can ponder what we have discovered in our heart (Lk 2:19).
Let’s make a pause for a moment. If you follow this blog, you will notice that I quote biblical texts to either ground or to clarify my reflections. It is only fair to explain how I read these texts and why I often provide the original expressions in Hebrew or in Greek.
Much is said about biblical interpretation in our society and, if we are attentive observers, we often see the reflection of very personal views—and political preferences—on the part of even those who assert the literal truthfulness of the Bible in “every word”.
Since I am not an exegete (= a professional scholar who systematically uses scientific and other tools to interpret ancient and recent texts), I will refer to others who, you would agree, have some credibility in this matter.
In 1948, long time before the much-decried Second Vatican Council, Pius XII, a Pope that few would consider “liberal” or even “progressive”, wrote that “we ought to explain the original text which, having been written by the inspired author himself, has more authority and greater weight than any even the very best translation, whether ancient or modern” (Divino Aflante Spiritu, 16). He goes on to say that the biblical scholars could be accused of “levity and sloth” if they did not study the original languages of the Bible, to which they must add “a real skill in literary criticism of the same text”.
To those who revert today to the latin traditions of the church and to the authority of the Council of Trent, the Pope says: “if the Tridentine Synod wished ‘that all should use as authentic’ the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin Church and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts”. This is so, the Pope adds, because their authenticity is not “specified” by the Council primarily as “critical” but rather as “juridical”(Divino Aflante Spiritu, 21). In other words, it has to do with the discipline of the church, not with the dogma.
But there is more to it than returning to the original languages. In 1994, the current Pope, Benedict XVI, when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed the instruction issued by the Pontifical Biblical Commission regarding the Interpretation of the Bible in the Church. In that document, Cardinal Ratzinger addresses the ills of biblical fundamentalism and defines it as the belief that the Bible “should be read and interpreted literally in all its details”, denouncing this approach as “not biblical” because it rejects “any type of critical research”.
The Pontifical Commission and Cardinal Ratzinger bring this reasoning to its final conclusion: fundamentalism makes itself incapable of accepting “the full truth of the incarnation itself” by refusing to take into account the “historical character” of the biblical revelation.
There you have it. You will forgive me if I don’t rely on the way the biblical texts “sound” in English in the 21st century. Using the efforts of many, and my own, I will always try to understand what the sacred writers had in mind when they wrote what they wrote. And, to the best of my ability, I will try to put myself in the position of the audience that these writers were addressing. Frankly, you would be well advised to do the same. It might even be a good idea to take the same precautions with everything that we read and hear, be it from CNN or from FOX, or from this blog.
This said, I don’t read the Bible as any other book either. If it is historically conditioned and linguistically tied to the expressions of its time, as any book is, I take the Bible also as “inspired”, which is to say that beyond what the writers had in mind, I can ask what God wanted to say when these texts were written. At this point, we go from philology, history and critical analysis to that other dimension of ours by which we relate to our Creator.
I will not pretend to be a theologian any more than I am an exegete. Therefore, I will borrow the words of a more credible source, the Second Vatican Council: “In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will” (Dei Verbum, Ch 1, § 2).
This “revelation” takes various forms along history but it finally comes to us through someone known as Jesus of Nazareth, who, being the Eternal Word, was sent to us so that “He might dwell among men and tell them of the innermost being of God” (Dei Verbum, Ch 1, § 4).
But this final revelation also happens in history and we know of him because we have received the testimony of his Apostles (those that he sent) who handed down to us what they had received so that this tradition may develop in the Church “for there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down” (Dei Verbum, Ch 2, § 8). And quoting the Gospel of St. Luke, the Council asserts that this happens “through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts” (Lk 2, 19).
So, let’s treasure these things in our hearts.
The authors of the Genesis don’t stop at the realization that something truly terrible must have happened between God and mankind, something so awful as to earn us death. In fact, the same book of Genesis opens a new chapter in our relationship with God: God himself is willing to restore his friendship with humanity, graciously and freely.
All we have to do, it seems, is to accept his gracious gift.
According to the biblical tradition about the patriarch Abraham, after he is invited to leave his land in today’s Iraq and to relocate to an unknown country, he is made a promise: "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be." To this promise, Abraham responds with what in the Bible becomes the model of faith: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” You may want to check Genesis 15:1-6.
Righteousness is a key word here. It is the English translation of the Hebrew word Zedaqah, that is also used in the New Testament (the writings of the early Christian church) in its Greek equivalent Dikaiosune. It means: “to be put right with God”, and it refers to the condition of someone who is acceptable to God.
In Genesis, Abraham is put right with God because he “believed the Lord”. Many centuries later, in his letter to the Romans, St. Paul would state that this was not said only for Abraham’s sake but also for our sake to whom faith will also be credited as righteousness (Romans 4:23-24).
So, the act of believing in the Lord—faith, that is—is crucial for all of us after we broke off with him. Believing, having faith in God, is, therefore, a key word too. It is the English translation of the Hebrew Haamin from Genesis and of the Greek Pisteuo, which recurs countless times in the New Testament, particularly in the same letter to the Romans (4:3). It means: “to think to be true” and “to place confidence in”, primarily when used with the preposition “in”.
What the book of Genesis and the letter to the Romans are saying is that we are put right with God when we place our confidence in what he says. For Abraham, it was God’s promise that he would become the father of a great nation, although Abraham, at the time, had no children and his wife was sterile. Do you know what it is for us?
In February of 1976, I met Therese. We were both working in a mental health center serving a culturally mixed, low-income population in Chicago. After some skirmishes and a few episodes of friendly rivalry, we discovered each other and started a relationship that would lead to 29 years of loving, learning and building as husband and wife.
Never did we doubt that we were meant for each other. Ours was really a match made in heaven. So was its undoing. Therese died during heart surgery in September of 2008, after having announced for over a year that she would not survive the surgery, no matter what assurances her doctors gave us.
She tried to prepare me for it, but there is no preparation for such an event. Even for a Christian, death is intolerable. I had to surrender to the same conclusion reached by the authors of the book of Genesis: it was not meant to be this way.
Something happened between God and mankind, something truly awful. I will leave it to the theologians to decide whether there was a time when we were not mortal. The fact is, we are mortal and this condition is intolerable. It could not have been initially intended.
I spent the last six months pealing off the onion of my faith to try to reach a solid core on which I can rely. Surprisingly, I found one. This is an onion with a core. And it is shared. That is why I started this blog. I want to share that core with you and I hope that others out there will want to share theirs with all of us, a little at a time.