Salavation History, Part 2

I lied. This is actually going to be more about Christ's life than post Cross.

The life of Christ is the central event in human history. Gregorian monks rightly reckoned all of history to be judged whether it be Before Christ or Anno Domini (in the year of Our Lord). The common era stuff is for those who wish to deny Christ in history.

First of all, we must tackle the issue of God the Son becoming Man. God could have waved a magic wand and said, "Poof! It's all good!" Jesus' life, death and resurrection is the ultimate revelation of who God is and who Man is. It is the ultimate death-blow to those who would reject the physical world and those who would reject the spiritual world.

God made man in His Image. God then made Himself in man's image in the person of Jesus Christ. His desire for unity was so great that He became united to his Creation.

Jesus was never solely concerned with the spiritual, and never solely concerned with the physical. The two were always bound together. "Your sins are forgiven...Pick up your mat and walk." Jesus taught the crowds, and fed them. He turned water into wine at a wedding. That wine would have been enough to keep my wedding reception guests, all 250 of them, liquored up for a week straight. Literally.

Jesus makes some strange proclamations along the way, though. "You must pick up your cross and follow me." "Can you drink from the cup that I will drink?" "Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you have no life within you." He holds up bread and says, "This is my body." And likewise, the cup of wine, "This is my blood." The very next day, He is crucified. We claim, then, that this physical crucifixion has spiritual consequences. This spilling of blood of the spotless Lamb of God is the sacrifice which reconciles Man to God.

How does this sacrifice unite us to God? How are we incorporated into this shedding of blood? Those two events, the Last Supper and His death on the Cross are intimately linked. In the Jewish understanding of a day, "night came and morning followed...", these two events were at the beginning and the end of the SAME DAY. They are, in fact, the same event, mystically united. They are literally united by the Word of God. The Last Supper began with a washing. It ended with this proclamation that "This is My Body" and "This is My Blood" and he shared those with his disciples.

The blood that dropped from His side is the same blood that He gave his disciples to drink. The body that hung from the cross is the same body that He gave his disciples to eat. The Word spoke and it was (read Genesis 1 and John 1).

"Do this in memory of me."

On Salvation History, Part 1

The Cross reaches out in four directions into infinity. Its arms reach out and embrace the whole world. Its post goes from the depths of the earth to the highest of heavens. It is the signpost around which all of history, indeed, all of creation itself, revolves. All that came before it prepares the way for it. All that comes after looks back upon it. All of history revolves around the Incarnation, Life, Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Adam and Eve were made in the Image and Likeness of God. They were made with bodies and souls. Even at the fall of man, God promises a savior. At the time of Moses, God gave man the law, foreseeing the time when the law is written upon men's hearts through the Cross. The priests offered sacrifice, foreshadowing the sacrifice of the Cross. The prophets drew the people of God into relationship with Him. They admonished their sins and foretold of a savior. The kings ruled over them, foreshadowing their heavenly King.

Jesus was priest, prophet and king. He, the God made man, ruler of all, will come again to judge the living and the dead. He offered Himself in sacrifice as the new high priest, upon which all priesthood is based. This Living Word drew man into union with himself, reading men's hearts, healing their bodies, their minds and their souls.

In all of the Old Testament, and all of the New, we see this strange intermixing of body and soul, of the physical world with the spiritual. We see this in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were made "very good." They were made in "the Image and Likeness of God." Yet, we see that this very good image and likeness of God is both physical and spiritual. One of the most poignant lines before the fall is this: "They were naked without shame." After the fall, we see that they realize their nakedness and cover it. When they sin, they open their bodies to death and decay. Even at the beginning, man is this strange creature with both physical and spiritual natures. Even at the beginning, we see the created union of these natures. Even at the beginning, we see that they affect one another, and that man is incomplete without both body and soul. This understanding of man is essential for any authentic understanding of Christianity.

Salvation History makes no sense without this understanding of man. When Moses meets God in the burning bush, we see God instructing Moses to remove his sandals, because where he is standing is holy ground. We see here that this physical action is united to a spiritual reality. When Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal, he creates an altar, which God Himself consumes with fire. When Samson is born, he is told not to cut his hair, nor drink wine, nor strong drink, as an offering to the Lord. When David sins, his son dies. God takes pains to offer up precise instructions on the tent where His presence is to dwell. He specifies the robes and undergarments that the priests are to wear when offering sacrifice. If God goes through the trouble to specify undergarments, you can see that the physical worlds and spiritual worlds are intimately linked, particularly when it comes to worship.

The ultimate expression of this is in Jesus Christ, the God who became Man. This invisible God willed to become fully man, while remaining fully God. Thus, the person of Jesus ONLY makes sense if the physical world and spiritual world are intimately bound up with one another.

Part 2 will cover salvation history after the Cross.

Chesterton on Marriage and Monogamy

More GK Chesterton:

"I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion’s) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind."
~ GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Chesterton on tradition

All people should know, understand and appreciate this, particularly Catholics and Americans:

"But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record... Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross."
~ GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

GK Chesterton - the Quotesmith

Oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

~ GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Think about it.

Vocare

Vocare (to call) -> Vocation is fundamentally a call from God. It is, in essence, a lifelong mission that you are given that you never truly retire from. It fundamentally affects who you are rather than what you do. Essential to this understanding is that God equips those whom he calls. When lived out, a vocation encompasses an irrevocable gift of self. It is giving your life to this calling.

The current understanding of a vocation as a line of work is a flawed idea that your identity and dignity are rooted in what you do. (This is one of the great mistakes of modern feminism.) With it comes the devaluation of those who cannot perform, whether physically (including sexually), mentally, etc. It stems from a utilitarian understanding of the human person. If he cannot contribute to society, if he cannot support himself and/or others, then that person is useless. If you really stop and think about that, it’s a really horrific and self-centered understanding of life.

Instead, a profession should flow naturally from the identity and vocation of the person, rather than vice versa as above. Ultimately, vocation is a calling to which a man gives himself. For husbands and fathers, the income from this profession becomes part of his “gift of self” to his spouse and to his children. Sometimes that unfortunately means that a man must take employment where it is available to keep himself and his family off the street. For those in the religious life, it often means a rigorous life of prayer and preaching or service to fellow man.

It is only the single person, committed to such, that can really begin to call a profession also a vocation. An example might be a researcher who dedicates his whole life to finding a cure for a disease, or a philosopher who eschews conventional life to dedicate it all to the pursuit of wisdom.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
- Declaration of Independence

If one statement could sum up what ideals the United States of America has been founded upon, it is the statement above. This is what the American Dream is all about: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The house with the yard and the white picket fence is simply a concrete image of these in action. The house contains a family with children, made safe by the laws of the white picket fence, where the family can dwell in peace and happiness.

Mr. Jefferson was genius in penning that statement. Not only were those virtues chosen properly, but they are inherently interlinked and ordered. Life is the fundamental right. Without the right to life, there can be no liberty nor pursuit of happiness. Without a right to life, he is a slave, and liberty cannot exist. Without a right to life, man can be snuffed out by another. Without a right to life, man's life is lived in fear. Liberty safeguards life and and the pursuit of Happiness. When a man is free, he is his own master. He is not a slave to another. He is not a slave to his debts. He is not a slave to his passions. He is not a slave to an employer, and he is not a slave to the state. This freedom allows him to pursue happiness. Without life and liberty, there can be no happiness.

However, what comes along with those rights are responsibilities. In order to respect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I cannot violate those rights in others. I cannot kill another, I cannot make another my slave, I cannot will the misery of another. Furthermore, because my life is my own, I have the responsibility to work for sustaining myself. I have the responsibility to pursue happiness on my own. I can certainly work with others, but must do so in ways that respect those fundamental rights that we each possess.

Unfortunately, this is something many in our great country have forgotten. These ideals can only exist together, and when you remove one, the others shall surely fall. The most fundamental breach of these ideals is that of abortion. It masquerades as pursuing happiness, but, in doing so, violates the life and liberty and pursuit of happiness of the most innocent and defenseless among us. This is not meant to be a tirade against the horrors of abortion, so I shall go on. There are many among us who have no desire to work for themselves, and many who have enabled them to do just that. Under the guise of protecting life, these people perpetually take money from those who responsibly work for themselves and give that money to those who do not. I am not speaking here of those who are truly unable to work because of physical or mental impairment, but those who are lazy, or, worse yet, dishonest.

The worst part is that many have been intentionally twisting the law away from these ideals. Instead of seeing the law as a practical application of a set of ideals, a practical application of a philosophy of life that is represented in our founding fathers, these people see the law as a tool to further their own ends, philosophy or ideals be damned. They will sell their vote or argue untruth or rule dishonestly if it benefits themselves. Many times, it is the very people that we entrust with our liberty and our tax money that are taking these things for themselves.

What are we to do?