Deus Misereatur

In dealing with friends who have crossed the Tiber or gone to Constantinople, I have thought long, hard and prayerfully. I appreciate the grief many feel about the fragmentation of 'Christianity', especially the North American version, that seems to have unsettled my friends and caused them to search for answers. It's true, that for all of our Protestant rhetoric, there is no real, stable authority that keeps us glued together. It is almost as in the days of the Judges when "there was no king in Israel," and "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17.6). We have been infected with the parasites of self-authentication and self-authority. Therefore every time you turn around a new preacher/teacher pops up onto the scene with some new fangled interpretation of Scripture that contradicts what has been normally held to, and leads off a whole passel of people after his/her new-found light. It's shameful. Having a standard, unchangeable int...

We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place; Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me; As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face, May the Last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.                            John Donne, "Hymn to God my God". Donne was playing out a complementary set of themes which can be heard in some ancient Church pastors/theologians. (1) The fall at the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, & our rescue at the cross (a tree of shame turned into the tree of life by Christ’s death and vindicating resurrection), and (2) Adam’s disobedience undone by Christ’s obedience (2 Adams). For example, St. Irenaeus (late 2nd Century) explains the relationship this way: “And not by the aforesaid things alone has the Lord manifested Himself, but [He has done this] also by means of His passion....

“[...] arguments about Scripture achieve nothing but a stomach-ache or a headache” (Tertullian 42; paragraph 16), so quips Tertullian in his Prescriptions Against Heretics . And in the next paragraph he states, “True, you will lose nothing in the dispute but your voice; and you will get nothing from their blasphemy but bile” (42; Paragraph 17). Then, in exasperation, he states “It follows that we must not appeal to Scripture and we must not contend on ground where victory is impossible or uncertain enough” (42-3; Paragraph 19). For anyone who has ever entered into dogmatic debates with those who are on the fringe of Christianity (for example The Way International , Jehovah’s Witnesses et al) will understand Tertullian’s frustrations. Is it possible that what Tertullian was pointing at with these statements, and what he seems to have meant by them, might be helpful in the 21 st Century post-Christian circumstance? To begin, it appears that Tertullian was fighting hard against an obst...