Unflaggingly, let us love the Lord our God and let us love his Church. Let us love Him as the Lord and the Church as his handmaid.
No one can offend the one and still be pleasing to the other. What does it avail you if you do not directly offend the Father but do offend the mother?
-- Commentary on Psalm 88, 14
Love your father, but not more than you love your God. Love your mother, but not more than the mother that gave you birth to eternal life.
Furthermore, from this same love of your parents see how much you ought to love God and the Church. For if so much love is owed to those who begot you to a life that must end with your death, how much more grateful love is owed to those who begot you for an eternal destiny!
-- Sermon 344.2
No one can offend the one and still be pleasing to the other. What does it avail you if you do not directly offend the Father but do offend the mother?
-- Commentary on Psalm 88, 14
Love your father, but not more than you love your God. Love your mother, but not more than the mother that gave you birth to eternal life.
Furthermore, from this same love of your parents see how much you ought to love God and the Church. For if so much love is owed to those who begot you to a life that must end with your death, how much more grateful love is owed to those who begot you for an eternal destiny!
-- Sermon 344.2
(From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Augustine Day by Day: Minute Meditations for Every Day Taken from the Writings of Saint Augustine. Catholic Book Publishing Co. New York, 1986.)
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/augustine/days/0706.html
Augustine was definitely not Protestant, and definitely not Postmodern.
Augustine was definitely not Protestant, and definitely not Postmodern.
I recently put the phrase "Hostile to the church, friendly to Jesus" up for discussion on our youth blogsite, and every last kid who responded agreed that there was nothing wrong with the idea. Most thought it indicated genuine faith. Even some adults responding had no reservations.
Sigh. Such are the fruits of modernism, which has gotten me to wondering: if the church must always and only be understood in terms of process and progress--"reformed and always reforming"-- what does this mean for the church ultimately? Can we never hope for a day when the Bride appears spotless before her Bridegroom?
No wonder we don't sing this hymn anymore:
"Mid toil and tribulation,and tumult of her war
she waits the consummation of peace for evermore;
till with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blessed,
and the great Church victorious shall be the Church at rest."
We hold an incommensurable view and lifestyle:
When we can reproduce without begetting, we cannot expect mothers and fathers to be honored.
When we think that we cannot be friendly to Jesus without being hostile to the church, we cannot understand Augustine. But that is a minor matter compared to the risk of not being able to enjoy heaven.
4 comments:
Wow, Beth. You seem to have a totally different take on what the youth were saying than I did. "... every last kid who responded agreed that there was nothing wrong with the idea." You took the post down (why?) so I can't go back and look at the responses again, but I can't recall a single one that took the extreme position that you imply. What I did observe was a number of young people who cared enough about their church (and the church in the catholic sense) to take the time to think and respond and express some concerns. If they didn't at least want to love the church I doubt they would bother. They would (as you put it) be out seeking "amusement and novelty" instead. It is precisely because they still care about the church that they want to make it better. (Better from their own perspective, which may differ from yours or mine.)
What I find frustrating is your apparent conviction that disagreement with particular church practices or the direction a particular church is going == hostility to the church as a whole. As was pointed out in the discussion, if that was the case one would have to consider Martin Luther and Martin Luther King to have been "hostile to the church". On the contrary, if one loves the church one will seek to reform it if it is going in a wrong direction. You may not agree with their perception and concerns, but it is just flat out wrong to interpret that as accepting of hostility to the church.
This isn't the medieval church. Lord knows there is enough real, overt hostility to the church out there in this postmodern culture (that the kids are exposed to constantly) that we don't need to be pushing them away by a dogmatic resistance to their aspirations for her.
In Christ,
Ted
Thanks for your comment Ted. I must have struck a nerve! You speak with the passion of someone deeply invested in these questions. Just the sort of conversation I welcome--nay, crave!
1)If you'd like I can send you the entire transcript of that thread. (Just send me your current e-mail address, please.) No one had posted for days, so early the first week of July, I wrote, "Unless there is an objection, I will be closing it Saturday, July 7. Again, many thanks for your honesty and love."
Luke followed that with this post, which I took as his agreement that the thread had worked itself out, and that it was time to delete it, as is the practice with other discussions on the Happening: "Beth and others, thank you for all your thoughts and feelings. It may be time to close out this question and move on to another one. Beth any new questions?"
There were no more responses, so I removed it late Saturday night, June 7.
2) One of the things I take Augustine to be expressing in these quotes is a commitment to metaphysical realism, rather than nominalism. For Augustine, as a realist, the relation between (C-c)hurch and Christ is one of participation, so that it is impossible to separate Christ from His (B-b)ody. (1 Cor. 12:12; Col. 1:18; Eph. 5:22-32). Do you think I've misread him on this? Do you have another way to understand those verses? Perhaps you disagree with that image of participation?
If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll note that I've been struggling with the problem of nominalism for years now, and ever since teaching that "Metaphysics and Epistemology" class at Northwest Christian, I have concluded that it is a dangerous way to go. We can talk about my reasons for this, but I would be more interested in hearing any reasons you can think of to show that it isn't.
I'm sorry if you have found my conclusions offensive. I don't really have any better way to explore this stuff and, again, I would love to continue a discussion with you, or anyone else who might stumble across this blog and want to join in.
For example, do you think that Early and Medieval Christians have anything to say to a Postmodern church? What role should history have in Christian life? Are history and experience able to be balanced? Are you sympathetic to nominalism? If not, why not? If so, why? The answers we give to questions like these will help clarify how we read scripture, how we understand our own culture, how (C-c)hurch and culture might best relate, and how we "be (C-c)hurch."
3)Your observation that the kids do care enough about their church/the Church to respond is fair, and I agree with you that that is cause for rejoicing.
However, as I re-read the transcript, I see comments about how it is possible, and perhaps even necessary, to separate Christ from His church for the sake of reforming the church. Isn't that what it means to be "hostile to the church," but "friendly to Jesus?" And doesn't all hostility involve some kind of active separation, or a passive lack of participation? (Not as sufficient, but certainly as necessary causes?)
Again, I struggle with this because I cannot assume the nominalist position, not the least because the spirit of nominalism seems so different from what I read in John 17.
I wonder if our kids understand that change can be possible without having to pit Christ against His Body, the (C-c)urch? In that, I think Martin Luther King did a much better job of it than his namesake. So did St. Benedict, St. Odo of Cluny, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis, and St. Dominic, all "reformers" before the Reformation.
4) So what exactly are our kids's aspirations for the (C-c)hurch? Which generation of kids' voices should we be listening to? Should other generations have a voice as well? If so, which ones? Only those who are presently alive? Or should we also consider the voices of the "communion of saints?"
And how do we balance our aspirations with the Lord's aspirations? Here again is where our metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions poke through.
Like you, I too am concerned that postmodern culture poses real, overt hostility to the church. As Rodney Clapp has written, we would be better off to call postmodernism "hyper-modernism." Modernism is all about nominalism. Nominalism is all about separation. That is why I can't see how aligning ourselves with it, theologically and philosophically, can help our kids grow in their faith in Jesus Christ. But maybe you see something I don't.
Ah, Ted, my brother in Christ! This blog is born of wonder, and I have a lot I am wondering about. Will you wonder with me? I hope so!
Your post has a whole lot to "chew on", Beth and I'd be glad to engage in a lot of the specifics at some point. For now, all I have time to say is that I am most emphatically not sympathetic to a strictly nominalist philosophy. On the contrary, if you read postings on my blog you will see that I put a great deal of thought into countering the reductionist materialism that holds sway in much of the secular academy these days and is the "scientific" evil twin of nominalism. (I put even more energy into pondering the more profound subject of whether the New York Yankees are a major source of evil in the world, but that's another topic!) :-)
I'm not sure, however, that I draw the same connection you do between nominalism and a willingness to examine and question specific church practices and traditions.
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