March Colloquium: Andrew Ferguson's "Lincoln and the Will of God"

The Center for Theology at Lenoir-Rhyne College regularly convenes colloquia on “first Thursdays” during the academic year to discuss issues of faith and life, theology and ethics. I am writing to invite you to the March Colloquium for academic year 2008-09, set for 4:00 p.m., on Thursday the 5th, in the Bears’ Lair of the Cromer College Center.

It will feature an article from First Things in March of last year, entitled “Lincoln and the Will of God.” It was written by Andrew Ferguson, who is senior editor of The Weekly Standard and author of Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America .

As this year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of President Lincoln it is appropriate to explore this dimension of his life. A quote from the Mr. Ferguson’s paper:

“Nowhere has the appropriation (of the President) been as relentless as in the matters of religion and Lincoln’s spiritual life. … Few figures in American history are so tantalizing as Lincoln—so approachable on the one hand and so unreachable on the other; demanding to be understood and impossible to comprehend. The people who knew him best saw it too. Like most great politicians, he had a personal magnetism that drew people to him, invited them into his confidence, entertained them with his humor and charm, all the while leaving his interior life unexposed and his intimate thoughts unexpressed to anyone. ‘He was the most shut-mouthed man I ever met,’ said one of his closest political allies, in a typical comment.”

Political science professor Dr. Lowell Ashman will join us to converse in the discussion.

January 6 Colloqium: "Divine Infinity in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s To Ablabius"

Divine Infinity in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s To Ablabius

by Sean Fagan

Divine infinity is a mysterious subject. Properly speaking, much ink has been spilled trying to define what it is, and exactly what it does. Unfortunately, this paper, as with others, will bring us no closer to solving that problem. Despite this inability, this paper will attempt to portray two things: What divine infinity, in terms of ontology, means for Gregory of Nyssa, and the relative importance for his thought. We will examine the arguments set forth by Nyssa in his work To Ablabius, and through the use of pertinent secondary sources, attempt to draw out the implications of divine infinity for Nyssa. Before going into the particulars of Nyssa’s thought, a short history and definition of “infinity” will be presented first.

What is meant by the word “infinity,” especially in relation to the subject of divinity? Catholic theologian Leo Sweeney, in his work Divine Infinity in Greek and Medieval Thought, charts the history of infinity through a number of successive and influential thinkers. For our purposes, the concentration will be on Aristotle and Neo-Platonism.¹

For Aristotle, infinity is a negative quality. It is such because of its unintelligibility. In Aristotle’s mind, it is imperative that a form possess qualities that allow it to be intelligible and perceived by the mind. Forms and matter must have measureable quantities attached or applicable to it that allows it to be known and measured. These qualities constitute finitude. Therefore, forms that do not possess these qualities are unintelligible to the mind, and thus have a quality of infinity. In other words, “infinity is linked with a state of unintelligibility, mere potentiality, and imperfection.”² Furthermore, for Aristotle, since infinity means immeasurability and imperfection, any use of the term in reference to God is impossible.³

Aristotle’s understanding of infinity is the standard definition until the developments instituted under Plotinus and Neo-Platonism in the third century. The major innovation of Plotinus is to specifically attribute infinity to God himself. In opposition to Aristotle, Plotinus regards the divine substance to be infinite in itself, and not limited to descriptions of God’s power.⁴

More specifically, in Plotinus’ understanding, unintelligibility, while usually considered a detriment (similar to Aristotle and the relationship between infinity and unintelligibility), is not necessarily so in regards to divine substance. For Plotinus, the premise that divine being is transcendent and unintelligible allows him to say that God is “other” in comparison, and therefore, infinite. As Sweeney puts it: “By this transcendence, [God] is infinite, and such infinity is aligned with absolute perfection and actual excellence.”⁵

Thus having gone over the antecedents of divine infinity, what does this mean for Nyssa’s teaching on the matter? First, it establishes the philosophical heritage from which both Eunomius and Gregory draw. As Orthodox theologian David Hart notes, “What Gregory understands ‘infinity’ to mean when predicated of God…is very much…what Plotinus understood it to mean in regard to the One: incomprehensibility, absolute power, simplicity, eternity.”⁶

Second, although Nyssa draws heavily from the Greek philosophical tradition, it does not mean that he is bound to it strictly as others. For Nyssa, the Christian revelation of “Father, Son and Spirit” is not only the basis of his metaphysics, but also the reconstitution of prior metaphysics.⁷ In Nyssa, the fact of God as “Father, Son, and Spirit” and the notion of divine infinity that is predicated of it, is the distinguishing marker between the system of Eunomius and himself.⁸ Therefore, it is on this point that Gregory’s metaphysics takes a different track than the path of Plotinus, Ablabius, and Eunomius. To that effect, Nyssa’s engagement with Ablabius.

In this work, Nyssa is addressing the argument that, just as there is a one to one relationship of individuation and nature in human beings, there is a proper parallel in Christianity; for every instantiation of divinity, there is to be regarded one singular unit of divinity. In short, this comes to mean three instantiations of divinity (“Father, Son, and Spirit”) as equaling three Gods. Nyssa answers in the negative to this premise.⁹

His first response is to argue that there is a misusage and misunderstanding of terms. Nyssa agrees that terms help avoid confusion, for “when we call someone something, we do not name him after his nature because we do not want the commonality of the name to produce any confusion.”¹⁰ Therefore, there is the proper distinction through the use of names. However, while there is distinction made between individuals, there is only one nature common to all the members. Nyssa explains that human nature “is single, since this is self-unified and a completely undivided monad, and is not increased by addition nor decreased by subtraction.” Even more so, “just as we speak of a people, a public, an army, and a senate, all singularly, but conceive of each in the plural, so too in a more precise form of speech one would properly speak of a single man, even if those make known in the same nature are a plurality.”¹¹ For Nyssa, this premise allows a theoretical correspondence between human nature and divine nature; just as one is, so is the other. Therefore, having established the premise, Gregory moves into an explanation of divinity per se.

For Nyssa, the divine nature is unknowable; at best, he can only offers words of description, and not the thing in itself: “And every name, whether is has been discovered by human convention or has been handed down by the Scriptures, we say expresses our thoughts about the divine nature, but does not include the signification of the nature itself.”¹² What this means for Gregory’s argument is that while the nature of God is unknowable, his effects are, and it is through the effects (the activities) of God that the equality of Father, Son, and Spirit in the arena of divinity can be established.¹³

Nyssa is addressing the contention that each divine person performs a singular action; just as he earlier argued in reference to human person as one unit according to nature, he must again answer against a conceptualization that the divine persons, in their activity, mirror human activity: one person, one act.¹⁴ For Nyssa, the issue is two-fold. On the one hand, he seeks to maintain the unity of the persons and the unity of the acts; without one or the other, his argument fails. On the other hand, by stressing that divinity is a mutual act of the Trinity, he can also argue for the infinity of Father, Son, and Spirit

As regards infinity, a number of points will be drawn out. The first is that Nyssa spends a great deal of this piece dealing with the interplay between the divine persons and the mutual, singular activity by which all three interact with creation. Why is that? One reason is that divinity constitutes an activity of God, rather than a description of nature. .

You see this on page six, where after having once again defended the mutuality of activity, he launches into an assertion of the incomprehensibility and infinity of the divine nature.

For we, believing that the divine nature is limitless and incomprehensible, conceive no comprehension of it, but stipulate that the nature be contemplated as infinite in every sense. What is completely infinite is not defined in one respect and in another not; infinity escapes definition by any reasoning. Thus, what is beyond definition is no defined by name at all. In order to maintain the concept of the unlimited in the case of the divine nature, we say that the divine is above every name. “Divinity” is one of the names. But it is not possible to reckon the same thing to be a name and above every name.¹⁵

Divine infinity is the high point of his argument, as he notes in the next paragraph the possible objection of using the appellation of “divinity” to nature against his previous argument of activity, then launching forth into a similar argument from the beginning, describing how multiplicity and plurality do not add or subtract from the nature of a thing.¹⁶ He has already discussed that divine nature is simple and one substantially, as well simple and one in the Trinity’s activity towards creation and humankind. Nyssa’s argument would an endless series of circularities and repetitions if it did not return to its foundation: that God---Father, Son, and Holy Spirit---is ultimately a mystery towards us and our understanding.

What does this ultimately mean for Nyssa? Divine infinity establishes the crucial distinction between God and creation. As Catholic theologian Robert Sokolowski has argued in his work, the ontological difference between God and creation is what distinguishes Christian metaphysics and traditional Greek ontology. ¹⁷ And as theologian Hans von Balthasar has pointed out, this is Nyssa’s starting point: “Every time he undertakes a development of the fundamentals of his metaphysics, Gregory begins from the irreducible opposition between God and creature.”¹⁸

The ontological distinction maintains the balance between the God and creation in that it does not allow for confusion between the two, and for Nyssa, it is necessary for the contemplation of God.¹⁹ As writer Robert Brightman argues, in his battle with Eunomius, Nyssa must argue against Eunomius’ claim that man is able to know God in his essence, which in result “brings God down to manageable portions so that [God] can be totally defined by man.”²⁰ Therefore, to maintain both his doctrine against Eunomius et al and a sense of mystery about God, Nyssa must have recourse to divine infinity, since it allows him an ontological basis in conceptualizing God.²¹

Finally, for Nyssa, the infinity of God is necessary because the contemplation of God is without end. As alluded to by Brightman, the controversy with Eunomius hinges in part on the subject of the human person’s intelligibility in regards to God. A finite God is ultimately knowable by a lesser, finite human being—an implication that runs counter to Nyssa’s premises. Therefore, God must be infinite in order to properly contemplate him.²²

For Nyssa, divine infinity performs a number of functions. First, it allows for a true distinction to be made between Greek and Christian metaphysics. Whereas in Greek metaphysics infinity takes on the characteristics of (essentially) non-being, divine infinity, as articulated by Nyssa, is given shape; in other words, the Trinity and the relations therein, constitute infinity and nothing else.²³ Divine infinity, newly re-defined, allows for the possibility of new avenues of approach to the Trinitarian mystery.

Second, divine infinity for Nyssa allows God to be God. In To Ablabius, Nyssa’s consistent use of the Scriptures is not only for rigorous argumentation, but also as an appeal to witness. The infinity of God allows the Trinitarian members to function as one in act, and one in purpose. Therefore, divine infinity “protects” God’s freedom to act and to be.

November 6 Colloquium: "The Anonymous God Tradition in the Pre-Nicene Writers"

The Anonymous God Tradition in the Pre-Nicene Writers

Dr. Edgar G. Foster

Lactantius was an early church writer who lived from 250-325 CE. Christian, Jewish and pagan literature probably shaped Lactantian apophaticism (i.e. negative theology). Philo Judaeus (50 BCE-20 CE) affirmed God’s namelessness, thereby setting the stage for post-apostolic Christians who espoused analogous beliefs. This study proposes that the pre-Nicene writers articulated a number of distinct reasons for denying that God has a proper name or even needs one. This investigation will now enumerate some of their stated motivations below which may not exhaust their rationale for adopting the stance that God is nameless but still contributes to our historical understanding of this matter:

(1) The pre-Nicenes (ecclesiastical thinkers who wrote prior to the Council of Nicea) were acquainted with the Gnostic conscription of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH or Iao) in the context of magic ceremonies. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr all show awareness of this Gnostic practice in their polemico-apologetical treatises that are designed to confute heresy.¹ Cyril Richardson suggests that Justin refuses to ascribe a name to God for this very reason.² Discussing baptismal procedures in his day, the Martyr avers: “For no one can utter the name of the ineffable God; and if any one dares to say that there is a name, he raves with a hopeless madness.”³ Adherents of Judaism evidently no longer pronounced the divine name by the third century BCE.⁴ In a manner akin to Philo, they universally believed the Name (Ha-shem) is unspeakable or incomprehensible.⁵ Furthermore, Jewish worshipers of YHWH generally thought that vocalizing God’s name was a sign of irreverence (Sanh. 7.5; 10.1). Tradition appears to state that during the Second Temple period only Jewish priests were permitted to utter the quadrilateral name of God at certain places or during ordained times (Mishnah Sotah 7:6; Tamid 7:2; Ecclesiasticus 50:20) although devout adherents of Judaism certainly employed some form of the divine name in casual greetings elsewhere.⁶ In this regard, Josephus apparently called the Tetragrammaton that “hair-raising name.”⁷ On the other hand, the pre-Nicenes not only chose to avoid pronouncing God’s covenantal designation (YHWH) but they customarily affirmed the divine innominability or namelessness concept, thereby excluding a proper name for God the Father (Dialogus cum Tryphone 127). What were then contemporary Gnostic practices may have shaped early Christian view of attributing a proper name to God the Father.

(2) Early Christian writers considered it less problematic to say what God is not than to say what God is.⁸ Hence, they reasoned that it is impossible to predicate literal attributes of God the Father such that any predicating term (F) discloses God’s quiddity (i.e. whatness) or F-ness.⁹ Apophaticism largely infiltrated Christianity by means of Platonic thought.¹⁰ Both pre and post-Nicene thinkers commonly quote Timaeus 28C to substantiate the belief that one cannot declare what God is in Himself.¹¹ McClelland rigorously traces the historical connections between Platonic thought and Christian apophaticism as well as the divine innominability doctrine. He notes that the Supreme Being in Middle Platonism “transcends the whole polarity of A and not-A.”¹² It is not just that one is able to conclude that God is A because God is not-A; the Platonists contended that God is beyond naming or that he is ineffable (Didaskalikos 10). And it was in this cultural environment that Christians formulated their own type of negative theology. It must be conceded, however, that Origen of Alexandria (in opposition to Celsus) maintained that humans are able to comprehend and describe God in the sense that familiarity with divine attributes may conceivably guide one who heeds God’s truth toward a partial knowledge and understanding of the deity. More specifically, Origen explains that it is factually possible for the Word of God (understood as Christ in this context) to bring about understanding of the divine insofar as human nature permits.¹³ Origen thus circumspectly qualifies in what sense he believes that one can know or comprehend God:

But if you take the phrase to mean that it is possible to represent by words something of God’s attributes, in order to lead the hearer by the hand, as it were, and so enable him to comprehend something of God, so far as attainable by human nature, then there is no absurdity in saying that “He can be described by name.”¹⁴

Origen affirms that there is a sense in which creatures are able to describe or comprehend God. Such comprehension is not exhaustive but relative (i.e. to a degree). Therefore, the often heard maxim “God may be apprehended, but not comprehended”¹⁵ probably needs to be qualified.¹⁶ Origen indicates that rational creatures are able to describe or comprehend God—to an extent.

(3) Certain pre-Nicenes argue that divine appellations are only human vehicles for addressing God.¹⁷ Terms of address for God do not say anything significative concerning the Father’s quiddity; spatio-temporal bound language is not capable of unfolding the Christian object of worship with respect to his essence. Strictly speaking, the ancient ecclesiastical writers conceive divine names as manifestations of God’s benevolence.¹⁸ Because of his unbounded or infinite compassion, the Father permits humans to use divine “forms of address” (prosrh,seij) rather than “names” (o;nomata).¹⁹ The grace afforded rational creatures to call God “Father” obtains in view of our creaturely weaknesses.

4. Justin Martyr reasons that God does not have a proper name since bearing a self-marking designation seems to imply that a name-giver preceded the one so designated.²⁰ Yet there is no individual substance or entity temporally prior to God the Father: he is from eternity to eternity (Revelation 15:3).²¹ Therefore, the Father is nameless. Justin might fail to consider the logical possibility that God’s proper name could be coextensive with his nature. That would obviate the need for the Father to have a name-giver. But Justin possibly believes that atemporal existence logically necessitates or entails deific innominability (= divine namelessness). However, the name of God the Father is probably not accidental but essential to God’s being (Exodus 3:12-15).²² The divine name and the God who bears it cannot be ontologically separated.
5. Another pre-Nicene line of reasoning is that only created entities have names: “He has no name, for everything which has a name is kindred to things created.”²³ Some early church writers openly reason that uncreated entities like the Father do not require designations: (a) All individual uncreated (primary) substances do not require designations; (b) God the Father is an individual uncreated (primary) substance; (c) therefore, God the Father does not need a self-designation. Clement of Alexandria thinks that the categories of genus or species do not apply to deity (Stromata 5.81-82). Consequently, one does not need to differentiate God from other divine beings since there is no divine genus or species. Moreover, the pre-Nicenes generally contend that names circumscribe the substances which they designate. To define an entity or substance implies that it has both genus and species (e.g. “Socrates is a man”).²⁴ It is fittingly circumscribable. But the Father is infinite (= without genus or species); hence, the Father is anonymous (Cohortatio ad Graecos 20-21). The pre-Nicenes also believed that God’s essence is unknowable since God is unique (sui generis). They ultimately argued that it is impossible to circumscribe God by means of terms or concepts since one cannot essentially apply concepts to a being that does not possess genus, species or differentiae. There is only one authentic inestimable Creator and Father of all.²⁵ Other objects of reverence are merely purported gods (Adversus Marcionem 5.7, 5.11; Adversus Hermogenem 4). If there is only one God, then (Cyprian and Justin reason) it is unnecessary to name this deity:

Neither must you ask the name of God. God is His name. Among those there is need of names where a multitude is to be distinguished by the appropriate characteristics of appellations. To God who alone is, belongs the whole name of God; therefore He is one, and He in His entirety is everywhere diffused.²⁶

6. The Father has not published his proper name.²⁷ Tertullian maintains that humans only know God as “Father” because Christ explained his Father (John 1:18) and taught his disciples how to pray (Luke 11:2).²⁸ God the Father has not revealed his proper name: it is not even possible for the Father to disclose a name that delineates his essence since human language does not have the capability to define or express that which is perpetually infinite (semper immensus).²⁹ For this reason, knowledge of the Father’s proper name is unattainable. Early Latin and Greek Christian thinkers insist that God has not deigned to reveal his consecrated self-designation. These six factors do not exhaust their reasons for affirming God’s anonymity; however, they do seem to epitomize the primary stated motivations undergirding the pre-Nicene adherence to the divine innominability concept.

November 4th Colloquium - Introduction

The Center for Theology at Lenoir-Rhyne College regularly convenes colloquia on “first Thursdays” during the academic year to discuss issues of faith and life, theology and ethics. I am writing to invite you to the November Colloquium, set for 4:00 p.m., November 6, 2008, in the Bears’ Lair of the Cromer College Center.

The colloquium for November 6 will be a discussion of a paper that Dr. Edgar Foster has recently written, entitled: “The Anonymous God Tradition in the Pre-Nicene Writers.” The paper explores what the title suggests.

Of the paper, Dr. Foster writes: “The pre-Nicenes (the early Christians writing before the Council of Nicea) commonly write that God the Father has no name except “God” (Deus or Theos). One can interpret the term “name” in many different ways, but it seems that the early Church writers are referring to a proper name when they say that God the Father does not have a name. John W. Cooper differentiates a proper noun from a proper name. Proper names appear to be self-identifying markers that single out one entity from a group of homogeneous entities (e.g. the proper name “John” singles out one man from a class of men). According to the pre-Nicenes, God the Father does not have a proper name like “John” or “Sally” or “Frank.” This paper addresses this issue and looks at what evidently motivated the early Church writers to eschew a proper name for God the Father.” We welcome Dr. Foster—who thus submits a paper for the second time this fall—as a Lenoir-Rhyne graduate who has taught for several years as an adjunct professor in our philosophy program at Lenoir-Rhyne.

Sincerely,
J. Larry Yoder
Director, Center for Theology

Lenoir-Rhyne College Center for Theology - 2008-2009 Program

Greetings from Lenoir-Rhyne College and the Center for Theology as we begin the seventeenth year of service in providing a rich program of continuing education for the college, the community, and the church at large. This year’s program will include:

• Monthly Colloquia: First Thursdays (except when the college is not in session; see schedule below), 4:00 p.m., Bears’ Lair of College Cromer Center.

• Special Course: “Environmental Ethics,” FALL SEMESTER 2007, Monday evenings 7-9:00 p.m., beginning August 25th, Newton Room of St. Andrews Lutheran Church. Instructor: Larry Yoder

• Theologian-in-Residence: The Center for Theology is co-hosting, with the L-R Chaplaincy program, Dr. Robert Jensen as Theologian in Residence, October 19-22. Dr. Jensen will be lecturing at the conclusion of a Vespers service, which begins at 7:30 on the evening of Sunday the 19th at St. Andrews Lutheran Church. The title of his lecture is “An Ecumenical Theologian Speaks to the Church in the Modern World.” On Monday evening at 7:30, in the Centrum, Father Jay Scott Newman, Pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville, South Carolina, will respond to Dr. Jensen’s Sunday night address …and Dr. Jensen will make a response to Father Newman. Throughout the class days of Monday and Tuesday, Dr. Jensen will meet with various L-R classes. He will be the guest preacher at chapel on Wednesday the 22nd, 9:20 a.m. in the Choral Room of the Music Building. Dr. Jensen has taught at Luther College, Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary, St. Olaf College, and Princeton Seminary.

• Aquinas/Luther Conference, Friday, October 31. A one-day conference, on the day of observance of the Festival of the Reformation, with the theme: “Pastoral and Priestly Formation.” Fr. Jay Scott Newman will present a Roman Catholic perspective, Pr. Amy Schifrin will rehearse a Lutheran view, and Fr. Patrick Henry will render the pattern for the Eastern Orthodox. Lenoir-Rhyne Chaplain Andrew Weisner will again offer summary remarks.

• Weekly Preaching Seminar for Pastors: Tuesdays at 1:00 p.m. (when classes are in regular session).

• The Hein Fry Lectures of the ELCA: The Center for Theology is one of the sponsoring units at Lenoir-Rhyne in hosting the Hein-Fry lectures for 2009. The event is Friday, April 3, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. in Belk Centrum. The topic is "Hearing the Word: Lutheran Perspectives on Biblical Interpretation." The speaker is Dr. Esther Menn of Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Dr. David Ratke of Lenoir-Rhyne will be the respondent, and is serving as representative host for the event. The Center for Theology is co-sponsor from Lenoir-Rhyne.

The program of the Center continues in the following dimensions:

• Monthly Colloquia –On the first Thursday of the month (unless college schedule alters, as with January 8 and March 12, which are second Thursdays), an ecumenical group gathers in the Bears’ Lair of the Cromer Center at 4:00 p.m. Discussion centers around papers mailed in the week prior for reading and examination.

  The first such Colloquium is scheduled for September 4th. Dates for the colloquia, in addition to September, are: October 2, November 6, and December 4, 2008; and January 8, February 5, March 5, and April 2, 2009. To receive the monthly papers in advance of the meetings, simply let us know you’d like papers mailed to you. If you have an e-mail address, please share it with us, so that we may save postage whenever the paper is available electronically. Each session meets from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m., in the Bears’ Lair.

• Special Course. For the past eleven years, the Center for Theology has offered, normally during the Fall semester, a course to area clergy and laity at no cost except for textbooks. Bishop McDaniel taught courses in the Lutheran Confessions (Fall 1997), Reformation Theology (Fall 1998), and Science and Religion (Fall 1999). I have taught Ancient Christian Theology (Fall, 2000), an introductory course on The Christian Faith (Fall 2001), American Religion (Spring 2003), the Christian Perspective (Fall 2003), a study of “Selected Works of C. S. Lewis” (Fall 2004), “Ethics: A Study of Major Ethical Theories in the Western Philosophical Tradition,” which Marianne co-taught with me (2005), “The Life and Teaching of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” (Fall 2006) during the centennial year of the birth of German theologian/martyr. Last fall we studied “Modern Theology,” a survey of European and American Christian theology from the beginning of the modern era to the present time.

  This fall, for the 12th such course, we are studying Environmental Ethics as a survey of issues concerning the global environment, especially how various philosophical approaches address the political, economic, humanitarian, and ecological factors in the mix.

  Join us on Monday evenings at 7:00-9:00, in Newton Hall at St. Andrews Church, for this stimulating course. Invite your friends. There is no charge except for the textbook and copying various hand-outs across the course. The text will be Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy, by Joseph R. DesJardins. The text is available in the Lenoir-Rhyne bookstore.

  You can register for the course by calling Beverly Hefner at 828-328-7376 or through e-mail at hefnerb@lrc.edu. The course began on Monday evening, August 25th, and continue Monday evenings through the semester, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

  Annual Aquinas/Luther Conference. The sixteenth annual Aquinas/Luther Conference is slated for October 31. The highlight of each year, these unique explorations of Aquinas and Luther provide a forum for growth in understanding Christianity. Over sixty internationally distinguished scholars have served as leaders, and people of widely varying educational backgrounds and vocations regularly attend and demonstrate interest. (Over 200 people attended last October!) This fall’s event, October 31, 2008 – again a one-day conference addresses a key topic in today’s churches and religious life: Aquinas and Luther on Preparation for Pastoral Ministry/Priestly Formation

  The subject matter of the conference this year turns to the teaching, nurturing, and formation of pastors and priests, a question at the heart of ordained ministry for both the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church.

  As indicated above, Fr. Jay Scott Newman will present a Roman Catholic perspective, Dr. Amy Schifrin will rehearse a Lutheran view, and Fr. Patrick Henry will render the pattern for the Eastern Orthodox. Lenoir-Rhyne Chaplain Andrew Weisner will again offer summary remarks. All four presenters are themselves both academic scholars and ordained, practicing pastors in their respective traditions.

  The conference day (October 31) is Friday only – for Lutherans, it is the day of the Festival of the Reformation. This schedule makes the conference especially congenial for pastors and laity who live within driving distance.

  You can register for the conference by calling Beverly Hefner at 828-328-7376 or through e-mail at hefnerb@lrc.edu. There is no cost for participants this year. On-site registration begins on Friday morning (31st) at 8:30, in the foyer of the Belk Centrum on campus. Morning prayer (Matins) begins at 9:00.

  Weekly Preaching Seminar. Each Tuesday afternoon throughout the year (when regular classes are in session), at 1:00 p.m., area pastors meet in one of the seminar rooms of the Center for Theology (in the Russell House) to study the lessons for the coming Sunday. Pastors of all denominations, especially those using the Revised Common Lectionary 1992 Consultation on Common Texts, are welcome to attend without cost.

* * * * *

I wish to express my gratitude to each of you for your prayers, contributions, and personal participation over the past years. As we go forward together, the continued support of our friends is vital. The college expects the Center for Theology to raise $10,000 annually for operating costs, apart from endowment yield. I am happy to report that the endowment currently stands at close to $500,000.

I invite you to consider helping either in the current operation or in the long-range endowment growth, which we hope eventually will totally support the program. Please join or continue in the growing number of those whose patronage makes possible the continuing efforts of the Center to provide thoughtful theological and ethical reflection as we live at the beginning of the Third Millennium of the Christian faith.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

The Rev. J. Larry Yoder, PhD, STS
Director

April 3, 2008 Colloquium: "The Uncomfortable Truth of Easter" by N.T. Wright

The Uncomfortable Truth of Easter

Acts 10.34-43; John 20.1-18

a sermon at the Sung Eucharist in Durham Cathedral

Easter Day 2008

by the Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright

The Easter stories are full of people getting the wrong end of the stick. Mary thinks Jesus' body has been stolen. Peter sees the linen wrappings and can't work out what it's all about. The disciples didn't understand the scriptures. The angels question Mary and she still doesn't know what's going on. Then she thinks Jesus is the gardener. Then, it seems, she reaches out to cling on to him, and he tells her she mustn't. You could hardly get more misunderstandings into a couple of paragraphs if you tried.

And the point is, of course: Easter has burst into our world, the world of space, time and matter, the world of real history and real people and real life, but our minds and imaginations are too small to contain it, so we do our best to put the sea into a bottle and fit the explosive fact of the resurrection into the possibilities we already know about.

At one level, of course, the continued puzzlement of the disciples is a mark of the story's authenticity. If someone had been making it all up a generation later, as many have suggested, they would hardly have had such a muddle going on. More particularly, nobody would have made up the remarkable detail of the cloth around Jesus' head, folded up in a place by itself, or the even more extraordinary fact that Jesus is not immediately recognised, either here, or in the evening on the road to Emmaus, or the later time, cooking breakfast by the shore. The first Christians weren't prepared for what actually happened. Nobody could have been. As one leading agnostic scholar has put it, it looks as though they were struggling to describe something for which they didn't have adequate language.

But this problem isn't confined to the first century. Ever since then, people have tried to squash the Easter message into conventional boxes that it just won't fit. There was a classic example in the Times on Good Friday (I know I probably shouldn't have been reading a Murdoch paper on a holy day, but there you are). In a first leader entitled 'Universal Truths', the writer suggested that the Easter message is one that everyone can sign up to. 'Good Friday,' it says, 'commemorates sacrifice, the giving of oneself as a martyr for the love of others, so Easter is the achievement of victory through suffering.' 'These,' the writer goes on, 'are universal spiritual truths. And the more interaction acquaints those of different faiths with the beliefs of others, the clearer is the common acceptance of these truths.' So, in conclusion, 'The Easter message draws the devout together' (presumably the devout of all religions). 'From suffering, goodness can triumph. Death is not final.' And then, a grand and woefully misleading last sentence: 'That is what all faiths in Britain can proclaim and where they can come together this weekend.'

Well, sorry. Of course we must work to find common ground and common purpose with those of all faiths and none. I found myself on a platform in Sunderland not long ago with the deputy chairman of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, discussing these very things. The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently asked me to join a small group working to take forward the discussion of the Open Letter from leading Muslims to the Pope, entitled 'A Common Word'. These things matter enormously.

But you don't achieve anything by downgrading the unique message of Easter. Just as I would expect to take my shoes off if I went into a mosque, so any sensible Muslim would expect, in a church on Easter Day, that we wouldn't be talking about the generalized half-truth that 'out of suffering goodness can triumph' - even that takes some believing when you look around the world today - or that 'death is not the end'. They would rightly expect us to be talking about something unique that happened as a one-off, something that happened to the previously dead body of Jesus, something because of which Christianity cannot be contained in the vague religiosity of late-modern Britain, any more than Mary or Peter or John could grasp the truth by saying that someone had taken away the body. Easter is what it is because, together with Jesus' crucifixion, it is the central event of world history, the moment towards which everything was rushing and from which everything emerges new. The gospel, says Paul in Colossians, has already been preached to every creature under heaven; which must mean that with the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth a shock wave has rattled through the world, so that despite appearances the world is in fact a different place, full of new possibilities, previously unimagined.

It is, I grant you, better to say that from suffering goodness can triumph than to lose hope altogether. For some people who would say that, the glass of faith is perhaps half full. But what the article has done, in a typically patronizing example of late-Enlightenment rhetoric, is to offer a glass that's half empty and getting emptier. Its wishy-washy religion has little to do with any actual faith, particularly with real Christianity. And, not surprisingly, it doesn't even spill over into the surrounding subject-matter. The second leader on Good Friday was rightly complaining about Tibet. What good does it do to say there that 'from suffering goodness can triumph'? Isn't that just a further encouragement to the bullying Chinese government? And what would a Buddhist say, for whom suffering is an illusion? And would mouthing these platitudes do one tiny thing to encourage our government, or even our athletes, to put pressure on China?

Contrast today's story from Acts. This shows robustly what it means to have a glass that's half full and getting fuller. The Roman centurion Cornelius had come, in his personal devotion and prayer, to invoke the God of Israel in respect and humility. Now God calls Peter to go and speak to this Gentile, and tell him about Jesus, and particularly about his death and resurrection. Peter doesn't say 'I gather you've got a wonderful faith already; isn't that marvelous, we're all on different paths up the same mountain.' He says 'The God you've been worshipping from afar has come near to you in Jesus, and has done something in Jesus which gives a new shape to world history and a new meaning to human life.' And Cornelius believes and is baptized. Real Christianity, the full-glass version, is both the truth that makes sense of all other truth and the truth that offers itself as the framework within which those other truths will find their meaning. The one thing it doesn't do, uncomfortably for today's pluralistic world, is offer itself as one truth among many, or one version of a single truth common to all. And this discomfort - so disturbing that many people try to hush it up, to belittle it, to pat it on the head and say 'there, there, that's a nice thing to believe' - comes out today in several areas, not least in some matters of urgent public debate. Let me just mention two.

First, the current controversy about embryo cloning. Our present government has been pushing through, hard and fast, legislation that comes from a militantly atheist and secularist lobby. The euthanasia bill was another example; defeated for the moment, but it'll be back. The media sometimes imply that it's only Roman Catholics who care about such things, but that is of course wrong. All Christians are now facing, and must resist, the long outworking of various secularist philosophies, which imagine that we can attain the Christian vision of future hope without the Christian God. In this 1984-style world, we create our own utopia by our own efforts, particularly our science and technology. We create our Brave New World here and now; so don't tell us that God's new world was born on Easter Sunday. Reduce such dangerous beliefs to abstract, timeless platitudes. The irony is that this secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we (it's interesting to ask who 'we' might be at this point) have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people, and to play games with the humanity of those in between. Gender-bending was so last century; we now do species-bending. Look how clever we are! Utopia must be just round the corner.

Have we learnt nothing from the dark tyrannies of the last century? It shouldn't just be Roman Catholics who are objecting. It ought to be Anglicans and Presbyterians and Baptists and Russian Orthodox and Pentecostals and all other Christians, and Jews and Muslims as well. This isn't a peripheral or denominational concern. It grows directly out of the central facts of our faith, because on Easter day God reaffirmed the goodness and image-bearingness of the human race in the man Jesus Christ, giving the lie simultaneously to the idea that utopia could be had by our own efforts and to the idea that humans are just miscellaneous evolutionary by-products, to be managed and manipulated at will. The Christian vision of what it means to be human is gloriously underscored by the resurrection of Jesus, and we as Easter people should make common cause with all those who are concerned about the direction our society is going in medical technology as in so much besides.

The second area of Easter concern is our treatment of people from other countries. Last year Daniel Bourdanné, a distinguished African scientist, was installed as General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, a long-standing and highly respected body which serves members in 150 countries, has its headquarters in Oxford. The British High Commission in Accra dragged its feet over Daniel's application to come here, and then turned it down with minimal explanation. Daniel then asked for permission to travel to the UK on his current visitor's visa, and was told he could. But when he arrived he was detained for 22 hours, his mobile phones were seized, and he was flown back to Africa. He is still waiting to appeal this decision and treatment. This of course echoes the shabby treatment of our friends from Lesotho a couple of months ago. I would love to think that many people here this morning might wish to take up the case of Daniel Bourdanné with our immigration authorities, our Home Office and indeed the High Commission in Accra. Details of this will be on the website with this sermon (see appendix at end).

But I raise his case not simply as a one-off but because it typifies the careless and shabby treatment our supposedly civilised country now metes out both to bona fide people coming here as part of their proper work and to those who have come here validly seeking asylum, highlighted by the critically ill woman who was recently returned to Ghana and who has now died. Actually, in hunting for her case by doing a Google search with the words 'asylum seeker dies', I was horrified to discover that there has been a whole string of asylum seekers committing suicide because they have lost hope of fair or just treatment.

Why am I talking about all this on Easter Day? When I mentioned asylum seekers in passing at the Christmas midnight sermon I was rebuked by someone who told me it had nothing to do with Christmas. Well, according to Matthew, the boy Jesus and his family were themselves asylum seekers in Egypt. But Easter gives us more.

First, Peter's message to Cornelius was that through his resurrection Jesus has been constituted as the judge of the living and the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the final putting-to-rights of all things. In the light of the resurrection, the church must never stop reminding the world's rulers and authorities that they themselves will be held to account, and that they must do justice and bring wise, healing order to God's world ahead of that day. Those who want to de-politicize the resurrection must first de-historicize it, which is of course what they have been doing enthusiastically for many years - and then we wonder why the church has sometimes sounded irrelevant! But we who celebrate our risen Lord today must bear witness to Easter, God's great act of putting-right, as the yardstick for all human justice.

Second, that same message from Peter to Cornelius stressed that, with the resurrection, the one true and living God was welcoming all people into his family. The church is the original multinational corporation, copied but not outdone by the empires of this world both territorial and financial. The xenophobia which treats other people as inconvenient and disposable is unworthy of a country seventy per cent of which describe themselves as Christian. Actually, I rather wish the real problem was xenophobia; I fear it is in fact the box-ticking mentality of some junior civil servants, coupled with the habit of normally unscrutinized bad behaviour. And this at a time when the same government is not only tying us hand and foot in complex and trivial compliance legislation, but refusing to provide or police even basic rules for the conduct of its own members. I make no apology for raising all these issues on Easter Day. Easter is about real life, not escapist fantasy. Easter is about God's judgment, calling the world to account and setting up his new, glorious creation of freedom and peace, and summoning all people everywhere to live in this new world. Easter is about God's rich welcome to all humankind. We Easter people are called to celebrate all of that in practical ways as well as in glad and uninhibited worship. I pay tribute to the many people in this diocese who are sacrificially doing just that, not least with asylum seekers. That is the point of it all.

And it's all because Easter is about Jesus: the Jesus who announced God's saving, sovereign kingdom; the Jesus who died to exhaust the power of this world's rulers; the Jesus who rose again to be crowned as king over all things in heaven and on earth. God give us grace, this day and from now on, to live as Easter people, celebrating Jesus' love and joy at his table and making his kingdom and justice known in his world.

March 13, 2008 Colloquium: “The Designs of Science.”

The subject matter for discussion on Thursday the 13th is a paper by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, entitled “The Designs of Science.”

Cardinal Schönborn writes concerning “intelligent design” and the human mind’s capacity for discerning it:

In theology, although the mind’s ability to grasp the order and design in nature is adopted by, taken up into, and elevated to new heights by the faith of Christianity, that ability precedes faith, as Romans 1:19-20 makes clear. In science, the discipline and methods are such that design—more precisely, formal and final causes in natural beings—is purposefully excluded from its reductionist conception of nature.

And, further:

… my argument (is) based on the natural ability of the human intellect to grasp the intelligible realities that populate the natural world, including most clearly and evidently the world of living substances, living beings. Nothing is intelligible—nothing can be grasped in its essence by our intellects—without first being ordered by a creative intellect. The possibility of modern science is fundamentally grounded on the reality of an underlying creative intellect that makes the natural world what it is. The natural world is nothing less than a mediation between minds: the unlimited mind of the Creator and our limited human minds. Res ergo naturalis inter duos intellectus constituta — “The natural thing is constituted between two intellects…

Click here for the full text of Schonborn's "The Designs of Science" (First Things January 2006).

February 7, 2008 Colloqium: "Getting Stem Cells Right", by Maureen Condic

For the colloquium for February 7th we will examine a piece by Maureen Condic, Associate Professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah School of Medicine. In the February 2008 edition of First Things -- "Getting Stem Cells Right" -- Dr. Condic reviews and analyzes the recent announcement "that ordinary human skin cells can be converted to stem cells with all the important properties of human embryonic stem cells by a process termed direct reprogramming (Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells - IPSCs)." Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto, Japan, made the joint announcement in November of 2007.

Writes Dr. Condic of the announcement: "A true, no-cost resolution of a conflict, where the interests of all parties are served without compromise, is an exceedingly rare thing. Yet just such an unlikely resolution may be in hand for one of the most acrimonious conflicts of recent times: the debate over hyiman embryonic stem cells."

January 10, 2008 Colloqium: "Ignatius and Unity", by Sean Fagan

What does it mean to be in union with one another? Good question, but one with as many answers as people who could be asked. Therefore, we will look at two individuals, one ancient, one modern, who can hopefully give some insight into this question. In this paper, we will examine the work of modern theologian Hans von Balthasar as elucidated in his short work Truth Is Symphonic and the seven letters of the first century martyr and bishop Ignatius of Antioch.1 More specifically, we will attempt to show how Ignatius’ ideas of unity, personified by the bishop, manifested in communal teaching, and exemplified through individual witness, in many ways run closely parallel to themes that von Balthasar suggests and elaborates in Truth Is Symphonic. First, what is meant by symphonic?

In his work, von Balthasar describes how unity—viewed with some similarity to Ignatius (which will be addressed later in the paper)—is organized in plurality and differentiation. He likens it to a symphony playing a tune. There are many different players, each with his own instrumentation, but disorganized before the coming of Christ: “Before the Word of God became man, the world orchestra was ‘fiddling’ about without any plan: world views, religions, different concepts of the state, each one playing to itself.”2 As the players come into tune, they play the tune given to them by God as conducted by Christ, creating a unity that is not unity, but symphony:

As for the audience, none is envisaged other than the players themselves: by performing the divine symphony – the composition of which can in no way be deduced from the instruments, even in their tonality – they discover why they have been assembled together. Initially, they stand or sit next to one another as strangers, in mutual contradiction, as it were. Suddenly, as the music begins, they realize how they are integrated. Not in unison, but what is far more beautiful – in symphony.3

Ignatius, in his Letter to the Ephesians, chooses the word “symphony” to describe the relationship between congregation and bishop. This word and image are not only used for this prior relationship, but also to explain how bishop, presbytery, and congregation, together in one movement, praise Jesus Christ.4 In this particular letter, the theme of unity is used in conjunction with symphony. For Ignatius, the union of a bishop and his presbytery is likened to that of a musical instrument, a lyre. This unity of bishop and presbytery allow for Jesus Christ to be praised in love, or as Ignatius writes, “Jesus Christ is sung in harmony and symphonic love.”5 Ignatius goes on to commend this to the congregation, encouraging them to “join the chorus, that by being symphonic in your harmony, taking up God’s pitch in unison, you may sing in one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father.”6

Why does Ignatius write this? As previously stated, this imagery is used to describe the relationship between those in leadership and the congregation. For Ignatius, the underlying issue is to stress the unity that is manifested and maintained between the leadership and congregation. In this instance, the unity that is maintained by the congregation with their bishop is a means of showing the unity that exists between not only Christ and the Father, but Christ and the church. Take for example, what Ignatius says in the fifth chapter of his Letter to the Ephesians.

In chapters three and four, Ignatius complements and exhorts the local congregation for being faithful to both Christ and their bishop. It is this trajectory of thought that flows into chapter five, for Ignatius writes again once more to praise the unitizing faith of the congregation, who “are mingled together with [the bishop] as the Church is mingled with Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ with the Father, so that all things may be symphonic in unison.”7 In Ignatius’ thought, the unity that comes with being united to the congregational bishop implies unity with Christ and the Father; this allows Ignatius to follow in this vein, adding that “anyone who is not inside the sanctuary lacks the bread of God.”8 Therefore, this tri-part unity, the unity of congregation-bishop, Church-Christ, and Christ-Father, written in the language of symphonic unison, lies at the heart of Ignatius’ conceptualization of unity.

But while this lies at the center, Ignatius uses other images as well. A striking example, as if to build on that mentioned above, is taken from his Letter to the Magnesians. In the sixth chapter of that work, Ignatius portrays the bishop “presiding in the place of God and the presbyters in the place of the council of the apostles and the deacons…entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ.”9 As to emphasize his point, he elaborates further, stating that “just as the Lord did nothing apart from the Father—being united with him—neither on his own nor through the apostles, so too you should do nothing apart from the bishop and the presbyters.”10

In his Letter to the Trallians, Ignatius underscores the necessity of unity with the bishop, for “the one who does anything apart from the bishop, the presbytery, and the deacons is not pure in conscience.”11 For Ignatius, this impurity of conscience is related to the formation of an individual’s Christian character. This formation is only possible within the context of the church, not outside; therefore the stress in other sections of his corpus on the conformity with the bishop, who is the teacher of the flock and congregation.12 Ignatius summarizes himself concisely on this point: “Thus the head cannot be born without the other parts, because God promises unity, which he himself is.”13

For Ignatius, “symphonic unison” includes the correspondence between teaching and leadership. In other words, the bishop is the center of teaching, and those who are gathered and united with the bishop as “strings on a lyre”14, are correct in their vision of Jesus Christ as well. He writes that “it is fitting not only to be called Christians, but also to be Christians, just as there are some who call a person the bishop but do everything without him. Such persons do not seem to me to be acting in good conscience, because they do not hold meetings in accordance with the commandment.”15

Before exploring this point, let us take note of two things. Ignatius is consistently appealing in his letters that the congregations remember and teach the humanity of Christ; it is of importance for Ignatius that the churches do this.16 Second, Ignatius is adamant on the unity of the congregation with the bishop celebrating the Eucharist, which is a reflection of the synthesis of correct teaching and higher leadership.

Therefore, in his Letter to the Philadelphians, Ignatius makes the connection between correct teaching and the bishop, as he notes that those teach contrary to the bishop “abstain from the eucharist and prayer, since they do not confess that the eucharist is the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ.”17 He repeats himself, but with greater detail, in order that the Philadelphians understand his point: “Let no one do anything involving the church without the bishop. Let that eucharist be considered valid that occurs under the bishop of the one to whom he entrusts it. Let the congregation be wherever the bishop is; just as wherever Jesus Christ, there also is the universal church.”18 This unity of the church extends further to the churches throughout the world; in Ignatius’ mind, there is an internal unity that is seen and reflected within the episcopate. Just as Jesus, who is united with us because he is the mind of the Father (that is, the expression of the Father’s will and good pleasure), so are all the bishops in the world of one mind.19

For Ignatius, the consistent appeal to the unity of bishop-Christ-congregation is on the order of faithful witness. In faithful witness, there is the power of God, “for if the prayer of one or two persons has such power, how much more will that of the bishop and the entire church?”20 To put it another way, the tenacious use of language and metaphors is an exhortation. It is an exhortation of one who is on his way to martyrdom, desiring to be a faithful martyr, wishing “to be allowed to fight the beasts in Rome, that by doing so [Ignatius] might be able to be a disciple.”21

So what does this mean for von Balthasar? We earlier used the word “symphony” to describe both the Ignatian and von Balthasar’s vision of unity; is this still the case? Ignatius’ idea of symphony is in the relationship between the three components – bishop, congregation, and Christ – portraying the living witness of Christ, but how does von Balthasar, a theologian and Christian of a different age and time, compare in this way on the question of symphony and unity?

For von Balthasar, any talk must begin with the centrality of Christ, and his participation with us. Von Balthasar argues that it is God’s infinite freedom, manifested within the infinity of aspects in Christ, which grounds any discussion of the church.22 Balthasar gives an illustration for his point: through the sacraments, preaching, all the dogmas of the faith, Christ is objectified; they reveal Christ, but only in a manner which makes him slightly obscured.23 From within the Church, all these things are “in reality modes of existence of Christ, who is at work in the world through his living Holy Spirit.”24 Balthasar uses the imagery of Scripture to deepen his point. While at the same time Scripture is the word of God, from within, subjectively, Scripture is given power and vivified by the power of the Spirit.25

He continues, adding that

Illumination can only come through being joined in the body of Christ. By being joined, not by making a comparison. For the Church is not merely metaphorically the body of Christ, but by the power of the Eucharist it is that part of mankind that he has joined to his personal body in such a way that he lives in the Church as the soul lives in the body. The image is imperfect, for he has his own body; it exercises its being within the body of the Church without dissolving and being subsumed into it, because his (Eucharistic) body is a transfigured body that is no longer subject to the destiny of mortal things.26

And it is this Eucharistic presence that is brought into the world, the presence of the Church gathering the world into itself.27 But this is not enough. The Church, while being open to the world, must do so as the Church; the identity of the Church, as the body of Christ, interiorly must be maintained at all times.28 For Balthasar, this adherence to self-identity allows the possibility of sacrament to occur. Sacraments are gifts to those who are only in a position to receive, and it is by receiving that the Church can give in return.29 In its interiority, the sacrament of ordination exists; the office of priest is to nourish those who go out into the world. Priests “keep open the believers’ direct access to the original sources of salvation.”30

This momentum builds to a crescendo for Balthasar. The office of the ordained is primarily one of mission, in that “Church office ultimately guarantees that the Christians’ love for another…will not become closed in on itself in the manner of a sect.”31 In other words, the Church is not restricted to dualisms between those who are of greater love than others. A Church that is such is closed to the world, and not catholic. It cannot be unitary.32

Why does he make this particular point? The priesthood is the means by which individual experience is “forced” onto a higher level of renunciation; “it is Church office that wrests the individual’s own criteria from him and hands them over to the Lord of the Church, guaranteeing that the Church’s experience of love shall transcend itself in the direction of the love of Christ and shall overcome all its subjectivisms and attain…objectivity.”33 For von Balthasar, this is the only legitimate experience of love within the Church. Anything else will not endure.

So how does this relate to Ignatius? In chapter five in his Letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius creates a large structure of resounding praise to the Father; through the congregation, to the bishop, in Jesus Christ, the Ephesians are recognized as members of the Son and known by their works.34 The Ephesians, known by their works, are a congregation who are perfecting the love that von Balthasar speaks of; it is by their growth in unifying love that Ignatius can praise them for being mingled with their bishop to such a degree that they are one as the Father and Son are one.35

Therefore, to be symphonic is to grow in love, but only with those who are appointed in order to tend that love, tending in a manner which is both objectively correct and subjectively powerful. For both Ignatius and von Balthasar, this is the meaning of unity.

2007 Aquinas-Luther Conference "On Preaching the Old Testament"

Greetings from Lenoir-Rhyne College and the Center for Theology as we announce the 2007 Aquinas/Luther Conference, slated for Friday, October 26th at the Belk Centrum, Lenoir-Rhyne College.

The topic for the fifteenth annual conference is "Aquinas & Luther on Preaching the Old Testament."

Presenters are Dr. Matthew Levering, Associate Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida; Father Patrick Henry Reardon, Senior Editor of Touchstone, A Journal of Ecumenical Orthodoxy and pastor of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago; Dr. Amy Schifrin, Lutheran homiletical and liturgical scholar and interim pastor of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in York, Pennsylvania; and Dr. Andrew Weisner, college pastor to Lenoir-Rhyne.

You may register by calling Beverly Hefner at (828) 328-7376, or contacting her at hefnerb@lrc.edu. There is no charge for registration.

Click here for further details.