In a previous post, I discussed how the word “worship” can cause confusion regarding whether Catholics worship saints, angels, etc.
The term “worship” originally just meant worthiness or honor, and in the old sense anytime you honored or signaled the worthiness of someone (or something), it was an act of worship.
But in contemporary English, the term “worship” has come to mean the honor due to God alone, and if you try using it any other way (without a lot of set-up), you’re going to get confusion.
So people should not get hung up about old uses of the word that they find in old books or—now—on web pages quoting old books. The term has changed its everyday meaning, and we need to look deeper if we want to get to the substance of the discussion.
St. Paul tells us: “Stop disputing about words. This serves no useful purpose since it harms those who listen” (2 Tim. 2:14).
In this discussion, the underlying issue is what honor should be paid to whom.
Only the most closed-minded individual would assert that we should only honor God. Scripture is replete with examples, counsels, and commandments showing we should honor others; for example, our parents, our rulers. People of good will should be able to agree on this.
We also should be able to agree that there is a difference between the type of honor that we should show God and the types of honor we should show any creature.
This distinction, at least back to the time of St. Augustine, has been expressed with the terms latria (commonly translated “adoration”) and dulia (commonly translated “veneration”)—latria referring to the honor due to God and dulia referring to the kind of honor due to creatures.
It seems to me that people of good will should be open to this, since it is only a way naming a distinction we both agree exists.
Where might we disagree?
One place is over a companion term—hyperdulia—which signifies the special honor shown to the Virgin Mary, which is above (huper-) the honor shown to ordinary saints. Christians of good will should be able to agree that Mary, as the Mother of Christ, should be shown a special honor (Luke 1:28, 42, 48). The question would be what kind of special honor, and here Christians will have different views depending on the understanding of Mary presented in their churches.
Another place we may disagree concerns what external actions should be used to show honor. That is a subject I can write about another time if people want. But external actions are symbols of inner attitudes, and symbols can be used different ways. (Think of all the things a kiss can signify, as when Leia kisses Luke “for luck,” Han kisses Leia romantically, or Judas kisses Jesus as a sign to his enemies.)
What is ultimately important is what the symbol is used to signify, and here the Catholic Church is clear: God must be paid a special honor different not only in degree but in kind from the honor that can be shown to any creature.
READ IT FOR YOURSELF (Paragraphs 2096 and 2097).
AND ALSO HERE (Paragraphs 2112-2114).
Category: +Religion
Non-News Is Good News?
Previously in Hello World, I discussed Pope Benedict’s homily in which he pointed out that the last 200 years has seen a great deal of theological and biblical scholarship that, while it has uncovered interesting things, fundamentally misses the point.
Much of this scholarship has been devoted to a skeptical reading of the Scriptures with an intent to discredit them—for example, by arguing that they were written long after the events they record and therefore are unreliable.
Both the books of the Old Testament and the New Testament were assigned late dates to facilitate this claim, but discoveries in the last century have pushed the dates earlier than the skeptics proposed, back toward more traditional dates.
Now comes a story at Fox News and Haaretz concerning a small inscription said to overturn a key plank in the late dating of the Old Testament.
Haaretz reports:
“Did the writing of the Bible begin as far back as the 10th century B.C.E., during the time of King David? That is four centuries earlier than Biblical scholars currently believe – but an inscription recently deciphered by a scholar at Haifa University indicates that for at least some books of the Bible, the answer may be yes. . . .
“[Prof. Gershon] Galil said this discovery disproves the current theory, which holds that the Bible could not have been written before the 6th century B.C.E., because Hebrew writing did not exist until then.
“Moreover, he added, the inscription was found in what was then a minor, outlying community – so if scribes existed even there, Hebrew writing was probably sufficiently well developed to handle a complex text like the Bible.”
So now religious conservatives can take comfort that archaeology has once again thwarted the foes of Scripture.
Not exactly.
Something very bizarre is going on with this story. The first sentences are every bit as problematic as a piece opening: “Is the Pope Catholic? Current scholars believe he is the head of the Baptist church, but new evidence points in a Catholic direction.”
Scholarly consensus, even among liberal scholars, does not hold that “the writing of the Bible beg[a]n” in the sixth century B.C. Many may hold that certain books did not reach their present form until that time, or that particular books were not written until then, but the consensus is not that nothing had been written before then.
Much less is it claimed that the Bible couldn’t have been written prior to that time because of the supposed non-existence of Hebrew writing. The Ancient Near East had lots of writing systems, and sometimes people from one culture borrowed the writing system of another. In fact, that’s how the Hebrew alphabet arose.
The discovery of a Hebrew inscription from the tenth century B.C. also isn’t revolutionary, because we already have Hebrew writing from that period, such as the Gezer Calendar.
Either the newspapers are getting it wrong or Prof. Galil is miscommunicating or—since we’re dealing with an ink on clay inscription—there might be archaeological fraud in play.
This is a non-news story, either on grounds of it being hopelessly garbled or on grounds that we already knew of tenth century Hebrew writing.
St. Gilbert of Beaconsfield?
Hey! Tim Jones here.
Saint Gilbert?
Bereft of any terribly original or helpful thoughts of my own, I would like to draw your attention to recent posts by Sean Dailey at the Blue Boar, and Eric Scheske at The Daily Eudemon, as well as this news story at Catholic Online, all highlighting a small but solid and growing movement for the sainthood of G.K. Chesterton.
It seems clear to me, and to many of Chesterton's readers, that of course
he was a saint, but it is not clear to all. Old stereotypes die hard,
and for some the picture of a rotund, hearty, jocular, wine-bibbing
Englsih journalist does not fit their idea of sainthood – never mind
the luminous spirituality underlying his prose and poetry, and the many
people (like C.S. Lewis) he inspired to see afresh the truths of the
ancient creed.
He was not a missionary or a cloistered religious.
He was not a priest, a theologian or a martyr. He was enthusiastic
about books, beer and bacon. He was no slayer of infidels, but a slayer
of heresies… he slew them with his pen. We hardly need to look around
for definitive arguments against the modern heresies that most plague
the people of the West… G.K.C. dealt them the death blow a century
ago, though many of them continue to walk around like zombies. For the
most part, in all seriousness, we need not invent new arguments against
these varied insanities, we need only to blow the dust off of
Chesterton's eloquent defense of reason and common sense.
I
remember well the moment at last year's Chesterton conference when the
audience was rather stunned to hear from speaker William Oddie that not
only was there no "cause" being championed for G.K.C.'s sainthood in
his home country, but that the idea was pretty well dismissed with a
kind of condescending chuckle by church officials in his home diocese.
It seems they, too, were influenced by stereotypes, or perhaps were too
close to Chesterton's roots to consider the idea… "Only in his
hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.".
For
my part, I find myself more often, now, calling on G.K.C. for prayer
and intercession, along with other favorite patron saints (Fra
Angelico, Catherine of Bologna, Luke the Evangelist, Augustine…). I
think I might also add J.R.R. Tolkien to that list, if I am going to
teach. I am pretty confident that he, too, is in a position to hear and
to help.
(Cross-posted on Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine, for double your blogging pleasure)
Rick Warren *Is* Totally Oblivious
He said so!
Why Worship? Why Praise?
(Courtesy NASA.gov)
Last week in the combox discussion related to SDG’s post, I wrote
the following in response to an unbeliever who held that the praise and
worship of God – especially in heaven for all eternity – strikes even
most Christians as a bore and a drudgery, but they do it anyway because
it’s what God commands;
I have always been an artist. I have always understood that the
world is a work of art, that it means something, and if it means
something, then there must be someone to mean it.(I know I’m paraphrasing Chesterton here and there)
The worship of God – due praise to the artist – is not only
something I don’t find AT ALL to be a dreary duty, but is something
that can hardly be helped. It wants to leap out on its own, like a
laugh or the "Oooohs and Aaahhhs" you hear at a fireworks show. They
won’t be able to shut me up in heaven.
I believe I did get the point across that the praise and worship of
God is a very natural response, and this statement is alright as far as
it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough and could leave the false
impression that we worship God mainly for what he does, rather than who he is.
God does deserve endless praise just for his work, his artfulness in
creating the universe, but that is only the beginning of the story. The
universe is as achingly beautiful and subtle and powerful and
fascinating as it is because it reflects in many ways the character –
the attributes – of the artist who made it. If the world is an artwork
and does have meaning as I maintained above, then it all points back to
the one who made it and what he is like. Not that a
person would be able to really understand everything about God from
nature alone (the pagans demonstrate that), but as St. Paul said in
Romans 1:20, "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible
qualities—his
eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being
understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.".
As we pray in the Gloria, "We praise you for your glory.".
God’s glory is this revelation of himself, this radiant presence that
comes to us through all of his creation. His glory consists in the very fact that the Triune God, infinitely perfect and complete, does not keep himself to himself.
He continually shares his divine life with all creation, holding every
atom in existence by his will from moment to moment. God shares with us
the attributes of existence and free will in a completely unnecessary
and ongoing act of love.
We praise God for who he is, and we only know who he is because he
has revealed it to us in this radiant penumbra of glory called Creation. We often think of Creation as a noun, like it’s
only a thing. Creation is also a verb, the ongoing act of God.
Visit Tim’s blog Old World Swine)
The Tripods are Coming
Kewl! The Tripods,
the science fiction trilogy by John Christopher (real name Samuel
Youd), is one of the stories well known and oft quoted in our
household. My son even named his cat Ozzy, after the character
Ozymandias. We read the books and watched the BBC TV series until the
venerable VHS tape finally gave up the ghost a few years ago. We hadn’t
given it much thought for a while, until my son found some video clips
on YouTube. It was fun rediscovering the series and covering old,
familiar ground. I’ll have to look around and see if the series may be
found on DVD.
It occurred to me, after reading some comments on YouTube (always an
intellectual treat) that the themes of the book could be interpreted as
a slam at religion. I’d considered the idea before, but dismissed it, however…
that was before Hitchens, Dawkins and Pullman labored to make the world
safe for anti-religious bigotry, dragged it out of the closet and onto
the New York Times Bestseller list.
For those unfamiliar with the story, the world has been conquered
completely by aliens who travel around in gigantic tripods (okay, not
terribly original, but consider it flattery to H.G. Wells) and the
population are kept in line through the use of an electronic wire mesh
"cap" that is stamped onto their cranium around the age of 16 (when
young folk typically begin having serious rebellious thoughts) and that
makes them content, docile and obedient to the tripods. The cap keeps
them from thinking in certain ways, eliminates violent and deceitful
thoughts, but also wonder and inventiveness. Human kind is restricted
to about an 18th century level of technology. The heroes run away as
their "capping day" draws near, in search of a secret enclave of human
resistance, based on nothing but a rumor and a map picked up from a
"vagrant" (a human whose capping has gone wrong, they are considered
insane).
I never interpreted the story as anti-religious, and in fact saw the
cap in much broader terms as the common tendency for the Spirit of the
Age (any age) to become tyrannical and oppressive, or the readiness of
people to give up thinking for themselves in exchange for the promise
of peace and safety. These are human themes into which religion of one
kind or another might figure… or not.
If the story was meant as a veiled anti-religious screed, it’s
odd that an unabashed religionist like myself would find so much in the
story to relate to and delight in. To me, the Map could just as well
represent Holy Scripture, the Resistance the Church, and the Cap
atheistic materialism. I always assumed that once a person was capped,
religious impulses would be the first thing to go.
I Googled around a bit and couldn’t find any blatantly anti-religious sentiments attributable to to Mr. Youd (aka John Christopher), but I’d be interested to hear from someone who may know more.
God Debate On Hugh Hewitt Today
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!
Quote Of The Day
Seems about time to delve into the Great Quotes file again:
"God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days." –Samuel Johnson
Who was Samuel Johnson?
If you like this quote and are eager for more Johnsonian wisdom, check out The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page.
Browsing through the site, I found another gem of Johnson’s:
"A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself."
Feel The Solstice!
St. Augustine of Canterbury, as distinguished from his more famous predecessor, may have supposed that however bad the state of religion had become in England that at least the Brits were no longer pagan.
If so, he’d be wrong.
St. Augustine of Canterbury, pray for them:
"Cloudy skies, dense fog and spurts of rain did not seem to dampen the energy of smiling revelers who bobbed and swayed to cheerful beats with arms outstretched and shouts of ‘Feel the solstice!’
"About 19,000 New Agers, present-day druids and partygoers gathered inside and around the ancient circle of towering stones [of Stonehenge] to greet the longest day in the northern hemisphere as the sun struggled to peek out against a smoky gray sky at 4:58 a.m. …
"’This is the nearest thing I’ve got to religion,’ said Ray Meadows, 34, of Bristol, England. The solstice ‘is a way of giving thanks to the earth and the universe.’
"Meadows, wearing a wreath of pink carnations over long pink hair-wrapped braids, identified herself as a fairy of the Tribe of Frog."
"A fairy of the Tribe of Frog"? Just how exactly does one become a Fairy of the Tribe of Frog? Is one born a frog and become a fairy? Is one adopted by a tribe of fairy frogs? Inquiring minds want to know.
Into The Lion’s Den…
An agnostic has learned the hard way that thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God (Matt. 4:5-7).
"A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal’s enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.
"’The man shouted "God will save me, if he exists," lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions,’ the official said.
"’A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery.’"
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Now….
Anyone know how I can nominate this guy for a Darwin Award?