Apologetics – Page 25

What’s the relationship between the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles?

A reader writes:

Does the Church teach of any parallel between the 12 Apostles and the 12 tribes of Israel?

I don’t know of a Church document that stresses this connection off the top of my head, though there probably are some that do. It is generally acknowledged among Bible scholars that the New Testament draws clear parallels between the twelve apostles and the twelve tribes–and, more specifically, with the twelve patriarchs (sons of Jacob/Israel) who were the progenitors of the twelve tribes.

By appointing twelve apostles, Jesus clearly indicated his intention to establish the Christian community as a New Israel, without depriving the original Israel of its place in God’s plan.

Does each Apostle represent a separate tribe or a characteristic associated with the tribe?

So far as we know, the twelve apostles correspond to the twelve patriarchs/tribes only in a generic manner. We can’t match each of them up one-to-one.

Also, are the Apostles the inhabitants of the twelve thrones of judgement for the tribes?

Without excluding the idea that there will be other thrones of judgment, Jesus does say that the apostles will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28, Luke 22:29-30).

Lastly, do many faithful Jewish people still know their tribe ancestry or is that knowledge long gone?

At this point, no. Most Jewish people do not know their specific tribal ancestry, though most would be descended from Judah, Benjamin, or Simeon (the southern tribes).

An exception is the tribe of Levi. Jewish people with names like Cohen (“priest”), Levi (“Levite”), etc., are generally thought to derive from the tribe of Levi and–in the case of Cohens–to be descendants of the priestly line of that tribe. They thus can have special roles in the synagogue liturgy.

Is there such a thing as “godparents-in-law”?

A reader writes:

I have been asked to be the godfather to my cousin’s daughter.

My fiancee wanted to know, given the unifying nature of the marriage vows, what her responsibility/relationship to my goddaughter would be once we were married.

So, what is the role of the godparent-in-law?

Canon law does not provide any particular role for godparents-in-law. It doesn’t contain that category.

That said, they can always help the actual godparents just do good in the world.

How to respond to old devotions that refer to Mary “worship”?

A reader writes:

How does a Catholic answer this devotion that uses the word worship?

I would say it is a private devotion that is not binding on Catholics.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ThyshainaMariaMartina17/posts/CKLH4UykXPD?pid=6207924185574319314&oid=116480916868136707341

The word “worship” originally referred to showing honor to someone in a general way.

Thus some British officials are still referred to as “Your worship” (note that Han Solo calls Princess Leia this to annoy her).

Over time, the word “worship” has come in popular speech to be associated with the specific form of honor due to God, however, this was not originally the connotation that the word had.

As a result, particularly in older works, you find it used in a broader sense. In these cases, it does not connote the worship due to God but the honor due to men.

Conscience and Communion

There is a good bit of conversation about how conscience may play a role in the question of whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive Holy Communion.

For example, Chicago’s Archbishop Blase Cupich discussed the subject at a press briefing in Rome during the synod of bishops.

What the archbishop said or was trying to say is not entirely clear to me from the quotations I’ve seen in the press, and I do not wish to speculate based on incomplete press accounts.

I have, however, received a number of queries about the role of conscience in this area, and a brief look at the question may be in order.

1) Acknowledging past abuses

Some people immediately become suspicious whenever the word “conscience” is brought up in connection with controversial moral subjects.

That’s understandable. The concept has been much abused.

After Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae there was a huge push to justify dissent from the Church’s teaching on contraception using conscience as a guise.

Dissidents were turning Jiminy Cricket’s slogan “Always let your conscience be your guide” into “Always let conscience be your guise.”

This is one of the reasons why the word “conscience” appears more than a hundred times in John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor and why the Catechism of the Catholic Church has a lengthy section specially devoted to conscience.

The concept has been profoundly abused.

And it’s no surprise that many become suspicious whenever conscience comes up in a moral controversy.

On the other hand, not every invocation of conscience is contrary to Church teaching. So what does the Church teach?

2) The primacy of conscience

It is often stressed that one must obey one’s conscience. This can be a tactical dodge to justify rejection of Church teaching, but it is not necessarily so.

The Church agrees that one must obey one’s conscience. The Catechism states:

A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself [CCC 1790].

In other words, it is a sin to defy a certain judgment of your conscience. If you are certain that you must not do something and you do it anyway, you are sinning by violating your conscience. You are similarly sinning if you are certain that you must do something and you refuse to do it.

Notice that this applies when you are certain. If you are uncertain, the situation can be different.

Even when you are certain, that doesn’t mean that the judgment of your conscience is right. The Catechism continues:

Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.

What happens when a person’s conscience is wrong? Does that mean he’s off scot-free?

3) Personal responsibility and erroneous conscience

The Catechism states:

This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.” In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits [CCC 1791].

So saying that you are acting in accord with your conscience doesn’t protect you from the charge that you are sinning—and culpable for doing so. If, through your own fault, you have warped your conscience then you are still responsible.

What if your conscience is mistaken but through no fault of your own?

If—on the contrary—the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience [CCC 1793].

In this case, you aren’t culpable for your actions, but they are still evil.

4) Conscience and Communion

Prior to receiving Holy Communion, every person needs to examine his conscience:

To respond to this invitation we must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself” [1 Cor 11:27-29]. Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to Communion [CCC 1385].

This applies to people who are divorced and civilly remarried as much as anyone else.

5) Properly Formed Conscience on Civil Remarriage and Communion

What should a person who has divorced and civilly remarried conclude when he makes this examination of conscience? The Catechism states:

Today there are numerous Catholics in many countries who have recourse to civil divorce and contract new civil unions. In fidelity to the words of Jesus Christ—“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” [Mk 10:11-12]. The Church maintains that a new union cannot be recognized as valid, if the first marriage was. If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive eucharistic Communion as long as this situation persists. For the same reason, they cannot exercise certain ecclesial responsibilities. Reconciliation through the sacrament of Penance can be granted only to those who have repented for having violated the sign of the covenant and of fidelity to Christ, and who are committed to living in complete continence [CCC 1650].

A person with a properly formed conscience will conclude that he cannot receive Communion until he has addressed his situation properly.

6) Erroneous Conscience on Civil Remarriage and Communion

Based on the above, a civilly remarried person not living chastely would be unable to receive Communion, and so his conscience would be erroneous if it told him that he could. What are the implications of this?

As we’ve seen, if “the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him.” He thus would not be personally culpable for receiving Communion. However, “it remains no less an evil” for him to do so (CCC 1793).

However, the ignorance responsible for a person’s erroneous conscience “can often be imputed to personal responsibility. . . . In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits” (CCC 1791).

7) Pastoral Care and Erroneous Conscience

What would appropriate pastoral care be for persons in this situation who have an erroneous conscience?

If the individual is not personally culpable for receiving Communion, it remains objectively evil for him to do so, and thus the Catechism states “one must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience” (CCC 1793). The Catechism’s statement could be taken to mean that one must work to correct one’s own errors, but since the pastors of the Church have an obligation to assist the faithful in forming their conscience, they share in this obligation as well.

If the individual is personally culpable for receiving Communion then the matter is even more urgent. Not only is he committing an objectively evil act but he is culpable for doing so—eating and drinking judgment upon himself, in St. Paul’s words—and the pastors of the Church need to take effective action to address the situation.

Thus in both cases—whether the person is culpable or not—it is not sufficient to simply say, “The person is following his conscience” and leave it at that. If it is an erroneous conscience, the pastors of the Church must work to correct it.

This is particularly so in light of what the Catechism has to say about common causes of errors in moral judgment:

Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct [CCC 1792].

Since “rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching” is one of the known causes of erroneous conscience, pastors of the Church must combat this by issuing calls to accept the Church’s authority and teaching (as well as explaining the reasons for doing so).

Further, simply concluding that a person is acting on his conscience and leaving the matter fosters precisely the “mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience” that the Catechism warns against.

And there is another reason why the matter cannot simply be left up to conscience . . .

8) Civil Remarriage, Communion, and Canon Law

The Code of Canon Law contains a provision which applies in this situation:

Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy Communion [CIC 915].

Note that this canon does not have the qualifier “unless they are acting on their conscience.”

What it specifies for the denial of Communion is “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin.”

Couples who have civilly remarried are presumed to be sleeping together and thus committing grave sin, unless they are known to be living chastely. If their civilly remarried status is known in their community then the presumed state of grave sin is manifest. And if their pastor has warned them about their situation and they do nothing to address it then they are obstinately persevering in it. In such a circumstance—the way canon law is presently written—the pastor is obliged to refuse Communion.

There is thus a canonical requirement constraining pastoral action in addition to the theological ones discussed above.

Who (or What) Was Lucifer?

Recently I got a query from someone wondering about an anti-Catholic video that claimed “the pope’s deacon” invoked Lucifer during the Easter Vigil liturgy and referred to Jesus as his Son.

Of course, that’s not what happened, but to understand what really did happen, you need to know a few things about “lucifer.”

What does the word lucifer mean?

It’s a Latin word derived from the roots lux (light) and ferre (to carry).

It means “light-bearer” or “light-bringer,” and it was not originally used in connection with the devil.

Instead, it could be used multiple ways. For example, anybody carrying a torch at night was a lucifer (light-bringer).

It was also used as a name for the Morning Star (i.e., the planet Venus), because this is the brightest object in the sky other than the sun and the moon. As a result, Venus is the first star seen in the evening (the Evening Star) and the last star seen in the morning (the Morning Star).

Venus is also known—in English—as the Day Star because it can be seen in the day.

Because its sighting in the morning heralds the light of day, it was referred to by Latin speakers as the “light-bringer” or lucifer.

So there was no connection with the devil?

No. In fact, it was used as an ordinary name. Thus in the 300s, St. Lucifer of Cagliari was a defender of the deity of Christ and of St. Athanasius against the Arians.

Another bishop in the 300s—Lucifer of Siena—also bore this name.

Is the symbol of the Morning Star used in any surprising ways?

Yes. The Bible uses it as a symbol for Jesus Christ. In the book of Revelation, we read:

“I Jesus have sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16).

(Spoiler alert! This is going to play a key role in what we have to say about the liturgy.)

So we shouldn’t freak out just because we see references to the words “lucifer” or “light-bringer” or “morning star”?

No. They have no intrinsic connection to the devil. In fact, they may be used—as in Scripture itself—as symbols of Jesus Christ.

How did this word get connected with the devil?

It’s based on a passage in the book of Isaiah. Chapter 14 of that book contains a taunt (a kind of ancient insult song or poem—like you might find at a modern rap battle) against one of the oppressors of Israel: the king of Babylon.

It predicts his downfall, but it also depicts his pride, which sets him up for the downfall.

Thus we read:

How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low! (Is. 14:12).

In the Latin Vulgate, that’s:

Quomodo cecidisti de caelo,
lucifer, fili aurorae?
Deiectus es in terram,
qui deiciebas gentes.

The king of Babylon thus fancies himself as something high and mighty—like the Day Star itself—but God brings him low in the end.

In this passage the reference to the Day Star/the Morning Star/lucifer is thus an ironic allusion to the king of Babylon’s prideful self-image.

But surely we’re talking about the human king of Babylon—not the devil. Doesn’t the passage refer to him as a man who dies?

Yes. This passage explicitly refers to the king of Babylon as a man (Heb., ’ish) who conquered kingdoms:

Those who see you will stare at you, and ponder over you:

“Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did not let his prisoners go home?” (Is. 14:16-17).

It also refers multiple times to his decay after death and how he will not lie in his own tomb!

Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, the sound of your harps;
maggots are the bed beneath you, and worms are your covering” (Is. 14:11).

All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb;
but you are cast out, away from your sepulcher, like a loathed untimely birth (Is. 14:18-19).

So we’re talking about a human king—at least in the literal sense of the text.

How did this passage get connected with the devil?

Some of the early Church Fathers took it that way.

They compared the pride that the king of Babylon displays in the passage (“I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High”; Is. 14:14) with the pride of the devil.

They also compared the fall of the king of Babylon to Jesus statement that he “saw Satan fall like lightning” (Luke 10:18)—though in context that passage refers to the defeat of the devil in the ministry the apostles just engaged in.

It is legitimate to use the spiritual sense of this text as an application to the devil, but many people have lost sight of the literal sense of the text, which applies to the human king of Babylon.

Worse, in the popular mind “Lucifer” has simply become a name for the devil, and that causes problems when people who only know this use encounter other uses of the term—as in the Latin liturgy.

Is thus just a Catholic interpretation?

No. In fact, the Protestant Reformers Luther and Calvin acknowledged it.

Luther wrote:

12. How you are fallen from heaven, Lucifer! This is not said of the angel who once was thrown out of heaven but of the king of Babylon, and it is figurative language. Isaiah becomes a disciple of Calliope and in like manner laughs at the king. Heylel [the Hebrew word used in the text] denotes the morning star, called Lucifer and the son of Dawn. “Heaven” is where we are with our heads, and that is obviously above the ground, just as that most powerful and extremely magnificent king was once above, but now his lamp is extinguished (Luther’s Works 16:140; Preface to the Prophet Isaiah, ch. 14).

Calvin as quite hostile to the application of this passage to the devil, writing:

12. How art thou fallen from heaven! Isaiah proceeds with the discourse which he had formerly begun as personating the dead, and concludes that the tyrant differs in no respect from other men, though his object was to lead men to believe that he was some god. He employs an elegant metaphor, by comparing him to Lucifer, and calls him the Son of the Dawn; and that on account of his splendor and brightness with which he shone above others. The exposition of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen from ignorance; for the context plainly shows that these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians. But when passages of Scripture are taken up at random, and no attention is paid to the context, we need not wonder that mistakes of this kind frequently arise. Yet it was an instance of very gross ignorance, to imagine that Lucifer was the king of devils, and that the Prophet gave him this name. But as these inventions have no probability whatever, let us pass by them as useless fables (Commentary on Isaiah at 14:12).

So what have anti-Catholics claimed about the Easter Vigil liturgy?

Some have claimed that “the pope’s deacon” invoked Lucifer and described Jesus as the devil’s Son.

This claim is based on translating part of the Easter Vigil liturgy this way:

Flaming Lucifer who finds mankind;
I say O Lucifer, who will Never be defeated.
Christ is your Son, who came back from Hell;
shed his peaceful light and is alive and reigns in the world without end.

What’s the real story?

The pope does not have a personal deacon, though deacons can sing the part of the Easter Vigil liturgy known as the Exsultet, Easter Proclamation, or Paschal Proclamation. (Exsultet is its first word in Latin: “Let them exult!”)

You can read about it here.

The Exsultet is part of a ceremony involving the Paschal Candle, which symbolizes the light of Christ.

In Latin, the relevant part of the Exsultet reads:

Orámus ergo te, Dómine,
ut céreus iste in honórem tui nóminis consecrátus,
ad noctis huius calíginem destruéndam,
indefíciens persevéret.
Et in odórem suavitátis accéptus,
supérnis lumináribus misceátur.

Flammas eius lúcifer matutínus invéniat:
ille, inquam, lúcifer, qui nescit occásum.
Christus Fílius tuus,
qui, regréssus ab ínferis, humáno géneri serénus illúxit,
et vivit et regnat in sæcula sæculórum.

In good English (as opposed to the incompetent translation given by the anti-Catholic commentator), this means:

Therefore, O Lord,
we pray you that this candle,
hallowed to the honor of your name,
may persevere undimmed,
to overcome the darkness of this night.
Receive it as a pleasing fragrance,
and let it mingle with the lights of heaven.

May this flame be found still burning by the Morning Star:
the one Morning Star who never sets,
Christ your Son,
who, coming back from death’s domain,
has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Up to the first reference to the Morning Star, this passage of the Exsultet is asking God to let the Paschal Candle continue to give light, so that it still be burning in the morning (“May this flame be found still burning by the Morning Star”).

Then the prayer pivots to re-conceive of the Morning Star not as the literal one in the sky but as Jesus Christ himself, based on the symbol in Revelation 22:16 (“the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son”).

It is a moving, poetic prayer to God—not an invocation of the devil.

Did Pope Francis Really Say Jesus Was a Failure?

In his recent homily at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Pope Francis made a comment that some have leapt on as yet another outrage committed by the pope.

Allegedly, Pope Francis said that Jesus was a failure.

I’d provide links, but I don’t want to give the outrage mongers the traffic.

I have, however, received several queries from people saying they are troubled and wonder what to make of the remark.

So for those concerned by the situation, let’s take a look at it.

1) What did Pope Francis actually say?

In his Sept. 24 vespers homily at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in which he was addressing a group of priests and religious, Pope Francis said:

We can get caught up measuring the value of our apostolic works by the standards of efficiency, good management and outward success which govern the business world.

Not that these things are unimportant!

We have been entrusted with a great responsibility, and God’s people rightly expect accountability from us.

But the true worth of our apostolate is measured by the value it has in God’s eyes.

To see and evaluate things from God’s perspective calls for constant conversion in the first days and years of our vocation and, need I say, it calls for great humility.

The cross shows us a different way of measuring success.

Ours is to plant the seeds: God sees to the fruits of our labors.

And if at times our efforts and works seem to fail and produce no fruit, we need to remember that we are followers of Jesus… and his life, humanly speaking, ended in failure, in the failure of the cross.

2) People are really upset about that?

Yes.

3) Really?

Yes. Next question.

4) Why would they be upset about it?

I’m not going to go into the psychology of the outrage mongers, beyond noting that they appear to have an anti-Francis animus that distorts their ability to read straightforward texts.

However, they are objecting to the statement that Jesus’ “life . . . ended in failure, in the failure of the cross.”

5) But wait! Didn’t you just omit an important qualifier in what the pope said?

Yes. The ellipsis (i.e., the “ . . . ”) in the above statement replaces the all-important qualifier “humanly speaking.”

It’s only by omitting or ignoring or misunderstanding this qualifier that one could take offense at the pope’s remark.

This qualifier tells the listener (or reader) that the statement is only an apparent, not an actual, description of affairs.

Pope Francis means that from a superficial, human point of view Jesus’ death might make it look like he was a failure, but from God’s perspective, this was not so.

6) How would that human assessment work?

In Jesus’ day, people expected the Messiah to lead a triumphant rebellion against the Romans, restore political independence to Israel, and reign in Jerusalem as a Davidic king.

Jesus didn’t do any of those things.

Instead, the Romans killed him, and they did so in a particularly painful and humiliating way via his death on a cross.

Similarly, his followers were scattered and took to meeting in secret after his crucifixion.

From the perspective of most people of the day, based on their expectations of what the Messiah would do, he looked like a failed political revolutionary.

7) How does that contrast with the true perspective on Jesus?

From God’s perspective, Jesus did exactly what he was supposed to.

He was never meant to lead a political rebellion against the Romans. He expressly told the Roman governor, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

Instead, he fulfilled God’s plan precisely by dying on the cross.

And, while his followers may have been scattered and driven to meeting secretly for a time, they later became a massive movement that converted the Roman Empire to the Christian Faith.

Even in the first generation of that process, the early Christians could be described as having “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

While, from a human perspective, Jesus and his movement looked like failures at the moment he was killed, from God’s perspective, Jesus was a success, and in time this would be revealed by the fruit his movement bore.

8) How do we know this is what Pope Francis has in mind?

Well, the phrase “humanly speaking” tells the reader that the pope is setting up precisely this kind of contrast between the human and the divine perspective.

So does the surrounding text. Look at the beginning of the quotation above: The pope is telling priests and religious that they should not judge the success of their efforts by purely worldly standards. That kind of evaluation has a role, but it is not the definitive standard. Instead, God’s perspective is.

Thus he stressed:

But the true worth of our apostolate is measured by the value it has in God’s eyes. . . .

The cross shows us a different way of measuring success.

Ours is to plant the seeds: God sees to the fruits of our labors.

The pope’s point is that, judged by worldly standards, our efforts might seem to end in failure, when in reality—from God’s perspective—they are actually succeeding!

Thus he reminds us that

if at times our efforts and works seem to fail and produce no fruit, we need to remember that we are followers of Jesus

It is at this point that he introduces the merely apparent failure of Jesus’ efforts in human terms and how the apparent “failure of the Cross” was actually a brilliant success that bore fruit according to God’s timetable rather than man’s.

9) Isn’t this contrast between the human and the divine perspective on Jesus’ ministry reflected in the New Testament?

Yes. Multiple times. One example is 1 Corinthians 1, where St. Paul writes:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor. 1:18, 22-25).

The fact that Jesus’ death on the cross was scandalous and a mark of failure to people in Paul’s own day (“folly . . . a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Greeks”) is being contrasted with the true perspective, according to which it is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

It is precisely this contrast in perspective that Pope Francis is referring to.

10) Couldn’t Francis have been clearer?

One can always say that someone could have been clearer (even when this isn’t true).

But we, as listeners and readers, have an obligation to devote reasonable efforts to understanding what is being said in the things we hear and read.

Pope Francis is not obliged to speak at all times in public as if he were addressing small children.

When he’s addressing adults, he can reasonably expect them to know what is meant by phrases like “humanly speaking” and to be able to recognize the use of ironic references like “the failure of the cross.”

St. Paul expects the same thing of his readers when he uses phrases like “the foolishness of God.” (Just imagine how the outrage mongers would get the vapors if Pope Francis had uttered that phrase!)

Popes—and this certainly includes Pope Francis—are not always clear, but this is not one of those times. What Pope Francis said is perfectly clear for anyone who reads it attentively and with good will.

In the Foreword to his Jesus of Nazareth series, Pope Benedict XVI made a simple request:

I would only ask my readers for that initial goodwill without which there can be no understanding.

That is precisely what the outrage mongers are not showing to Pope Francis in this case.

Did Paul Know He Was Writing Scripture?

Some folks have the idea that the authors of the New Testament did not know that they were writing Scripture.

According to this view, they just thought they were writing Christian literature, and the Church gradually—even a century or more later—recognized that it was Scripture.

Some time ago, I wrote about this issue, and I argued that the authors of several books in the New Testament clearly knew that they were writing Scripture, right from the get-go.

These books were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and Revelation.

That’s everything in the New Testament except the letters.

So what about them?

The Case Against

If any authors of the New Testament weren’t aware or weren’t clear that they were writing Scripture, it would be the authors of the letters.

There are several things you might appeal to if you wanted to argue for this view:

There isn’t a prior precedent for letters as Scripture. None of the books of the Old Testament are letters. Some have historical accounts that contain letters, but none are letters. As a result, the New Testament authors of letters would have been striking out in new conceptual territory to think of their works as Scripture. Letters in their day weren’t thought of as Scripture any more than letters in our day typically are. What’s more, in their day there was no precedent for thinking of letters as Scripture (whereas, at least in our day, we can look back on the letters of the New Testament).
Many of the letters may have been written before the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation. If so, they were written before the Christian works whose authors have clear scriptural intent. Consequently, they may have been written before it was clear that there would be any Christian Scriptures, which would be another conceptual hurdle for the early letter writers to jump.
The letters often contain material that is local and situational—e.g., Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians about how to discipline a particular man (1 Cor. 5:1-5) or his offer to pay Philemon to compensate him for money or goods that Onesimus may have stolen (Philemon 18-19). Such passages are more specific than the more general matters we find discussed in clearly-recognizable books of Scripture.

Still, this doesn’t mean that the authors of the New Testament letters didn’t recognize that they were writing Scripture.

Here I’d like to suggest one reason which supports the idea that Paul, in particular, did recognize it.

First Century Letters

Most of us don’t have any exposure to first century letters other than those found in the New Testament.

As a result, it’s easy for us to have misconceptions about them and how they were written.

For example, the picture above is the product of later artistic imagination. Paul did not write his letters personally, alone, or at a table!

We can also miss how unique Paul’s letters are. They are not typical of the letters in the ancient world.

One way they are different is very simple: their size.

In his excellent book Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition, and Collection, Randolph Richards writes:

The typical papyrus letter consisted of one or two sheets. Paul’s letters were not typical length. We think of Philemon as a very short letter, but in actuality, it was a fairly typical letter in length, perhaps even a trifle long. Imagine the church’s surprise when Paul’s letter to the Romans arrived! (p. 52)

How long, specifically, were ancient letters?

Writing out a dispatched copy of a letter of Paul was complicated by the fact that Paul’s letters were inordinately long. The typical papyrus letter was one papyrus sheet. In the approximately 14,000 private letters from Greco-Roman antiquity, the average length was about 87 words, ranging in length from 18 to 209 words. The letters of the literary masters, like Cicero and Seneca, were considerably longer. Nonetheless, Paul stands apart from them all. (p. 163)

Cicero’s Letters

Let’s take Cicero as an example. He was one of the most famous letter-writers of the ancient world, and his letters have remained in print to this day.

Here’s an example of a letter from Cicero—the kind he (and his audience) thought worth preserving and publishing in his volumes of collected letters. This one was sent to his friend Atticus in Athens in December of 68 B.C.:

All’s well at your mother’s, and I keep an eye on her.

I have undertaken to pay L. Cincius 20,400 sesterces to your credit on the Ides of February.

Pray see that I receive at the earliest possible opportunity what you say in your letters that you have bought and secured for me.

I should also be very much obliged if you would, as you promised, think over the means of securing the library for me.

My hope of getting the one enjoyment which I care for, when I come to retire, depends entirely on your kindness (The Letters of Cicero, vol. 1, III [A 1, 7]).

This letter is only 97 words long in English (minus the greeting, etc., which isn’t included here). That makes it a bit longer than the average ancient letter (87 words).

It’s a bit short for Cicero, though. His average was 295 words in Latin. But that’s Cicero’s average.

Now let’s compare it to Paul’s shortest letter: Philemon.

Paul’s Letters

Philemon is 335 words long in Greek, which means that Paul’s shortest letter is longer than Cicero’s average one.

By contrast, Paul’s average letter is 2,495 words, which is more than 8 times Cicero’s average and almost 30 times the average ancient letter.

Paul’s letters are huge by ancient standards.

They’re epistolary monsters, and Paul’s longest letter—Romans—runs to 7,114 words in Greek.

That makes it 82 times the length of the average ancient letter, so Romans is the city-stomping kaiju of Paul’s literary corpus.

Richards is right: The Romans would have been shocked when Paul’s letter courier showed up with his letter to them!

(In fact, there’s reason to think that they may have gotten something even bigger and more shocking than Romans alone in the mail, but that’s a story for another time.)

How Much This Cost

Writing letters of Pauline length was not cheap. Paper (papyrus or parchment) was hand-made and expensive.

So were the secretaries who prepared the drafts and final copy for mailing (as well as the copy literary figures like Paul tended to retain for their records).

While it’s difficult to make cross-cultural cost comparisons, by one way of estimating it, Romans would have cost Paul $2,275 to produce (Richardson, p. 169).

This would have been no small amount for an itinerant preacher who eked out a living making tents on the side.

In fact, Paul was almost certainly dependent on the donations of wealthy patrons to be able to produce letters like this.

Implications

Between the impressive length and investment that Paul sank in writing his letters, one conclusion is clear: Paul knew he was doing something extraordinary.

The fact that he so dramatically breaks the literary customs of his day and spends large amounts of money doing so indicates how important his letters were to him.

This, coupled with their theological content, indicates that—at a minimum—Paul thought he was producing highly important works of Christian literature.

Important enough to rank as Scripture?

It’s a distinct possibility, and the length and cost of his works aren’t the only reason for thinking so.

We’ll go into additional reasons in another post, but for now it’s worth noting the implications of the sheer size and cost of his letters.

Learning More

If you’re interested in learning more about the subject, I’d recommend Randolph Richards’ book Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition, and Collection.

It covers not only the length and cost issues but also many other aspects of first-century letter writing that most of us have no idea about—as well as the implications for our understanding of Paul.

I was delighted when this book recently came out on the Logos Bible software platform.

Personally, I use the Catholic version of Logos—Verbum—every day as part of my research, and I highly recommend it, too.

If you’re interested in checking it out, you can click here (affiliate link), and I can save you 15% on their base packages if you use the code JIMMY1 at checkout.

Debating Doctor-Assisted Suicide

After having failed to get a doctor-assisted suicide bill passed earlier this year though the normal legislative process, the California legislators who are in the pocket of the assisted-suicide lobby recently rammed one through in a surprise move.

The time they did it happened to be suicide prevention week!

Now the bill is on the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown, who has not announced whether he will sign it or not.

You can use this form to tell him no.

In May, 2015, Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) and I engaged in a cordial, online debate on doctor-assisted suicide.

He, and users of his web site, came up with the questions, and I provided answers.

Since the topic is now back in the news, I thought I’d re-present the exchange.

It got rather lengthy, since there were 18 questions (actually more than that, since some were compound questions) on a sensitive subject, and they could take a few hundred words to answer on average.

For that reason, I’m providing a set of questions with hyperlinks so that you can read the part of the exchange that most interest you.

You can read the original version, on Scott’s blog here.

Questions:

Also, here is Scott’s response to my answers.

Elijah’s journey: 40 days and 40 nights?

Sunday’s readings contain an interesting illustration of the way that the Bible can use numbers.

In the Old Testament reading, Elijah is on the run from the evil queen Jezebel and he goes out into the wilderness and asks God to let him die.

Instead, God sends and angel who makes Elijah eat and drink two times in order to strengthen him for a journey.

Then we read:

He got up, ate, and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.

One of the first things that you learn about the geography of the Holy Land is that it’s tiny by American standards. From north to south, the modern state of Israel is only 290 miles long, and its width varies between 9 miles and 85 miles.

With distances like that, a journey of 40 days and 40 nights is remarkable.

Some Basic Math

The fact that the text says Elijah travelled day and night would presumably indicate at least 10-12 hours a day, leaving time for breaks and sleep.

A normal person can walk around 3 miles per hour, so that would be 30-36 miles a day.

After 40 days of that travel, one would have gone 1,200 to 1,440 miles, which would be enough to take one far outside the Holy Land.

Since the number 40 is used in the Bible to indicate significant periods of time, this raises the question of whether the number is being used here simply to indicate a long journey rather than being meant literally.

Fortunately, we can shed some light on the question

Where was Elijah starting from?

Although the verse we need isn’t included in Sunday’s readings, we know where Elijah was starting from. According to 1 Kings 19:3-4:

Elijah was afraid and fled for his life, going to Beer-sheba of Judah. He left his servant there and went a day’s journey into the wilderness, until he came to a solitary broom tree and sat beneath it.

So Elijah fled from Jezebel (queen of the northern kingdom of Israel) down to Be’er-sheva, which was on the southern border of Judah.

Indeed, the phrase “from Dan to Be’er-Sheva” was proverbial in biblical times as a way of referring to the entire Holy Land, from north to south.

So Elijah has fled to a city in the far south and then gone a day’s journey farther into the Negev desert. That’s where he had his angelic encounter at the broom tree.

Where was Elijah going?

The text tells us that he went to “the mountain of God, Horeb.”

In the Old Testament, Horeb appears to be another name for Mt. Sinai, “the mountain of God” where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Unfortunately, the location of Mt. Sinai/Horeb isn’t entirely clear.

A prominent tradition identifies it with Jabal Mousa, a tall mountain in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, by St. Catherine’s Monastery.

This is not the only proposed location, however. There are other locations—also in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as outside of it.

The plausible ones are either closer to Be’er-Sheva, though, or not much farther away, so we can use the location of the modern Mt. Sinai to get a reasonable approximation of Elijah’s maximum travel distance.

(Note: You could suppose that the author of 1-2 Kings meant a different and otherwise unknown Mount Horeb—one located 1,200-1,440 miles away—but this is not suggested by the text, which appears to refer to the same mount of God on which Moses received the Ten Commandments.)

How far did he go?

According to Google, the distance from Be’er-Sheva to Mt. Sinai is 417 km or 260 miles.

Of course, that’s along the modern road system, but we’re dealing with an approximation, so 260 miles will do.

How long did it take him?

Since Elijah had already gone one day into the Negev when he had the angelic encounter at the broom tree, and since he travelled another 40 days and 40 nights, that would be 41 days total.

What was his travel speed?

Using the numbers above, Elijah’s travel speed would have been 6.3 miles per day (260 / 41 = 6.3).

If that represents 12 hours of walking a day, that would be half a mile per hour.

That’s painfully slow.

A normal walking speed is around 3 miles per hour, so Elijah would have needed to walk only around 2 hours a day in order to cover the distance in 40 days.

This would hardly be day and night travel, and that suggests that the description of it as taking “40 days and 40 nights” is a stock description meant to indicate a long journey and not meant to be taken literally.

It’s rather like when we say, “Thanks a million”—using a stock number to indicate great thanks.

(Note: You could suppose that Elijah encountered extraordinarily difficult travel conditions that slowed his progress to a crawl—like slogging through sheeting rain or mud the whole time—but this is not suggested by the text. The author of 1-2 Kings would be expected to indicate such extraordinary conditions, and he doesn’t. He just says Elijah travelled, without indicating that it was an unbelievably difficult trip.)

Confirmation from Deuteronomy?

If Elijah was able to travel at a normal walking speed for 10-12 hours per day then he would make 30-36 miles per day.

He would thus be able to do 260 miles in between 7 and 9 days.

A less determined person only putting in 8 hours of walking a day, rather than travelling day and night, could make 24 miles in a day and cover the 260 miles in around 11 days.

That’s very significant, because in Deuteronomy 1:2 we read:

It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea.

The precise location of Kadesh-barnea is also debated, but it is clear that it was on the southern border of Israel, placing it near Be’er-Sheva.

Deuteronomy thus gives us a remarkable confirmation of the approximate time it would take to travel from Be’er-Sheva to Mt. Horeb: It’s something like 11 days under normal travel conditions, not 40 days and 40 nights.

Ancient Expectations

This is also significant because the ancient audience would have known that.

Not only would many in the audience (particularly those from Judea) have known the approximate distances and travel times, many would have known Deuteronomy’s statement!

The same applies to the author of 1-2 Kings (they were originally one book), who was clearly literate and who records the finding of “the book of the Law” in the temple in 2 Kings 22:8-10. The author even refers to the mountain as “Horeb” rather than “Sinai”—which is the way that Deuteronomy overwhelmingly refers to it.

Both the author and the audience were thus in a position to recognize the description of Elijah’s journey as taking 40 days and 40 nights as a stock number representing a long journey rather than a literal description.

This illustrates how ancient expectations differ from modern ones regarding the use of number: The ancients were willing to use numbers in a literary or symbolic way in different circumstances than we do.

Modern Expectations

If we fail to recognize this then, compared to the ancients, we can come off as overly pedantic, like Mr. Spock or Mr. Data—insisting on numerical precision while utterly missing the point.

The point of the text is: God strengthened Elijah for a long journey, not how long the journey literally took.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that numbers are always literary or symbolic in ancient texts—the 11 days mentioned in Deuteronomy isn’t.

But it does mean that they can be, and we need to be sensitive to the context to tell us what the ancient author intended.

This applies, particularly, to skeptics wanting to accuse the Bible of being inaccurate.

Sometimes the Bible just uses numbers differently than we do today, and if we fail to recognize this, the fault is ours, not the Bible’s.

Got that?

Thanks a million.

Pope Francis on the Divorced and Remarried: 10 things to know and share

Pope Francis recently gave a general audience in which he discussed the situation of those who have divorced and remarried without an annulment.

His remarks are particularly significant in light of the upcoming Synod on the Family and the proposals to give Holy Communion to those in this situation.

They also attracted attention because he stressed that people in this situation are not excommunicated.

Here are 10 things to know and share . . .

1) Where did the pope make his remarks and where can I read them?

He made them at his Wednesday general audience on August 5, 2015. They are part of a series of catecheses he has been doing on the family.

You will eventually be able to read them at the Vatican web site here.

However, at the time of this writing there is only a brief summary of his remarks as a placeholder until the Vatican’s English translation can be prepared (usually a delay of a week or more).

Until then, here is the Italian original, and you can read Zenit’s English translation here.

2) What did the pope say about divorced and remarried couples not being excommunicated?

He said:

[I]n fact, these people are not at all excommunicated, they are not excommunicated! And they are absolutely not treated as such: they are always part of the Church.

3) Is he correct?

Yes. The idea of excommunication is commonly misunderstood as not being able to take communion. While the Church does not permit people who have divorced and remarried without an annulment to receive communion (unless they are living as brother and sister), this is not the same thing as excommunication.

Excommunication is a canonical penalty that has various legal effects which are described here.

Excommunication does not cancel one’s membership in the Church, and divorcing and remarrying without an annulment does not incur excommunication.

Therefore, people in this situation are not excommunicated, and even if they were, they would remain part of the Church.

Consequently, they are to be treated as such.

The pope is absolutely correct.

4) How did Pope Francis introduce his remarks on the subject of the divorced and remarried?

He said:

[T]oday I would like to focus our attention on another reality: how to take care of those that, following the irreversible failure of their marital bond, have undertaken a new union.

The Church knows well that such a situation contradicts the Christian Sacrament. However, her look of teacher draws always from her heart of mother; a heart that, animated by the Holy Spirit, always seeks the good and salvation of persons. See why she feels the duty, “for the sake of truth,” to “exercise careful discernment.” Saint John Paul II expressed himself thus in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio (n. 84), pointing out, for instance, the difference between one who has suffered the separation and one who has caused it. This discernment must be made.

5) Did John Paul II refer to these things in Familiaris Consortio?

Yes. He said:

Pastors must know that, for the sake of truth, they are obliged to exercise careful discernment of situations. There is in fact a difference between those who have sincerely tried to save their first marriage and have been unjustly abandoned, and those who through their own grave fault have destroyed a canonically valid marriage. Finally, there are those who have entered into a second union for the sake of the children’s upbringing, and who are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and irreparably destroyed marriage had never been valid.

He went on, in the same section, to say:

However, the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.

Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they “take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.”

6) Did Pope Francis cite any particular reasons, apart from the good of the spouses, why these situations need to be looked at carefully?

Yes. He called attention, in particular, to how children are affected (something also mentioned by John Paul II). Pope Francis said:

If, then, we look at these new bonds with the eyes of little ones – and the little ones are looking – with the eyes of children, we see even more the urgency to develop in our communities a real acceptance of persons that live such situations. Therefore, it is important that the style of the community, its language, its attitudes are always attentive to persons, beginning with the little ones. They are the ones who suffer the most, in these situations. Otherwise, how will we be able to recommend to these parents to do their utmost to educate the children in the Christian life, giving them the example of a convinced and practiced faith, if we hold them at a distance from the life of the community, as if they were excommunicated? We must proceed in such a way as not to add other weights beyond those that the children, in these situations, already have to bear! Unfortunately, the number of these children and youngsters is truly great. It is important that they feel the Church as a mother attentive to all, always willing to listen and to come together.

7) What did Pope Francis say the Church’s response has been?

He said:

In these decades, in truth, the Church has not been either insensitive or slow. Thanks to the reflection carried out by Pastors, guided and confirmed by my Predecessors, the awareness has greatly grown that a fraternal and attentive acceptance is necessary, in love and in truth, of the baptized that have established a new coexistence after the failure of their sacramental marriage; in fact, these people are not at all excommunicated, they are not excommunicated! And they are absolutely not treated as such: they are always part of the Church.

Pope Benedict XVI intervened on this question, soliciting careful discernment and wise pastoral support, knowing that “simple recipes” do not exist (Address to the 7th World Meeting of Families, Milan, June 2, 2012, answer n. 5).

8) What did Benedict XVI say in the passage that Pope Francis quotes?

He said:

Indeed the problem of divorced and remarried persons is one of the great sufferings of today’s Church. And we do not have simple solutions. Their suffering is great and yet we can only help parishes and individuals to assist these people to bear the pain of divorce.

He went on to say:

As regards these people – as you have said – the Church loves them, but it is important they should see and feel this love. I see here a great task for a parish, a Catholic community, to do whatever is possible to help them to feel loved and accepted, to feel that they are not “excluded” even though they cannot receive absolution or the Eucharist; they should see that, in this state too, they are fully a part of the Church. Perhaps, even if it is not possible to receive absolution in Confession, they can nevertheless have ongoing contact with a priest, with a spiritual guide. This is very important, so that they see that they are accompanied and guided. Then it is also very important that they truly realize they are participating in the Eucharist if they enter into a real communion with the Body of Christ. Even without “corporal” reception of the sacrament, they can be spiritually united to Christ in his Body.

9) What did Pope Francis say about how people in these situations should be received?

Building on the remarks of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he said:

Hence the repeated invitations of Pastors to manifest openly and consistently the community’s willingness to receive and encourage them, so that they live and develop increasingly their belonging to Christ and to the Church with prayer, with listening to the Word of God, with frequenting of the liturgy, with the Christian education of the children, with charity and service to the poor, with commitment to justice and peace.

The biblical icon of the Good Shepherd (John 10:11-18) summarizes the mission that Jesus received from the Father: to give his life for the sheep. This attitude is also a model for the Church, which receives her children as a mother that gives her life for them.

He then quotes his own apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium:

“The Church is called to be the House of the Father, with doors always wide open […]”

No closed doors! No closed doors!

“Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community. The Church […] is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, n. 47).

10) What significance do these remarks have for the upcoming Synod on the Family and the proposals to give Holy Communion to people in these situations if they are not living as brother and sister?

They do not appear to have a decisive significance, one way or the other.

On the one hand, Pope Francis does not mention such proposals. In fact, he is frank in saying that “such a situation contradicts the Christian Sacrament.” He also stresses continuity with his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and he quotes from passages where both of these predecessors explicitly reject giving Holy Communion to people in these situations if they are not living as brother and sister.

On the other hand, he does not quote from those parts of the passages, and he also is clear that he wants to find ways to help such people have more involvement with the Church—particularly in light of the effect that their situation has on their children.

There is thus not a decisive indication of what he is likely to do, either way, though on balance the text of this audience seems to favor continuity with the Church’s historic practice more than it indicates any forthcoming change on this point.