Nielsen’s Nook

Commentary

[1] σκληρύνητε (σκληρύνω) in the LXX this is used to describe the disposition of indifferent self-absorption that results in further alienation from the Lord. 1 Clement 51:3a alluding to Psalm 95:7-11 reads, “For it is good for a man to make confession of his trespasses rather than to harden (σκληρῦναι) his heart, as the heart of those was hardened (ἐσκληρύνθη) who made sedition against Moses the servant of God” (Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers). In light of the Love that the Lord had shown to Israel’s fathers, God’s people were commanded: καὶ περιτεμεῖσθε τὴν σκληροκαρδίαν ὑμῶν καὶ τὸν τράχηλον ὑμῶν οὐ σκληρυνεῖτε ἔτι (Deuteronomy 10:16 LXX). Circumcise your hardheartedness and do not let your necks remain stiff (author’s translation).

[2] πειρασμοῦ the testing of God by people (BAGD, 641).

[3] ἐπείρασαν … ἐν δοκιμασίᾳ tested me with trials. BAGD suggests “put to the test” and follows the NRSV and ESV. The NIV renders “tested and tried me”. The KJV is significantly different because it follows the Byzantine Text at which has variations from the NA27.

Hebrews 3:9 in the Byzantine Text reads, οὗ ἐπείρασαν με  οἱ πατέρες ὑμῶν, ἐδοκιμασάν με, καὶ εἶδον τὰ ἔργα μου τεσσαράκοντα ἔτη. The variations between the two texts are as follows:

1. The word με is supplied where in the NA27 it is assumed.
2. ἐδοκιμασάν με (Byz) “they tested me” instead of ἐν δοκιμασίᾳ “with testing” (NA27).
3. Verse 9 ends with καὶ εἶδον τὰ ἔργα μου in the NA27; however, in the Byzantine Text it continues through the first two words (τεσσεράκοντα ἔτη) of NA27 verse 10.
4. Lastly, the last two words of Byzantine verse 9 are τεσσαράκοντα ἔτη where the corresponding first two words of verse 10 in the NA27 read τεσσεράκοντα ἔτη. Both are rendered “forty.”

[4] τῇ γενεᾷ ταύτῃ “with this generation” in the NA27 meets τῇ γενεᾷ ταύτῃ “with that generation” in the Byzantine Text. We chose to render the text as “with that generation” because conceptually the generation reading these words in Psalm 95 was altogether different than the one about which the Psalm speaks.

[5] Technically there is no negative particle in this sentence. It is a conditional ellipses which begins with the ὡς at the beginning of verse 11 (BAGD, 897). Literally, the Greek renders “As I swore in my wrath, if they will enter into my rest…” Parents speak to their disobedient children like this, “Son I’ve already told you a thousand times and if you do that one more time …” The force of the ellipses is that in abrupt ending, the silence of the incomplete thought looms ominously. Conceptually, the result of that generation coming into the Lord’s rest would be catastrophic because of the oath that God swore in his wrath. Thus, the verse is rendered “They will never enter into my rest.”

[6] κατάπαυσίν (κατάπαυσις) rest. 2 Maccabees 15:1 uses this word to refer to Sabbath rest.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter. [1]

These lines of Eliot give me pause to ponder. Many changes have come in life and many that I have longed for have eluded me. A hardened unbelieving retirement age man told me one time that he did not have any regrets towards the end of his life. What sort of devil can so numb our souls that we become indifferent to the sense of loss and regret that grows up around us, great weeds in our aging garden?

I watch my little girl play in the sprinklers, make mud volcanoes, and sprinkle music power on me. Flashes of the once-before short like a fused bulb across my weathered memory. Ah, when time was free and naivety had thrown its blissful cloak across the mud puddle.

There was something tranquil about the moment. It wasn’t important that we were in our back yard. It wasn’t important that we were together on a Saturday or otherwise. The warming peace that comes, even now while writing, is that of simple communion, just being together. Contentment, I think, is the obscene key to unlocking love.

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning. [2]

I’m 34 and I’ve got regrets. Places I should have gone. Things I should have studied. Holes that I can’t seem to circumscribe. And yet, if I understand Eliot here, the exploration is not sailing away from our regrets, but moving through them.

For me, I am sure that I will never mature past the Cross, where in Jesus’ perfect sacrifice, God passes over and forgives all for which I have regret. The Eucharist is a cross-shaped celebration of life in Jesus, where all the holes are circumscribed. It is a time when I confess my sins, taste the goodness of God, and hear the Gospel of grace proclaimed over me in thought, word, and deed. In the stillness there is a reposed reminder that I am aboard a Great Ship that continues moving Christward as it has for millennia. In dying I am raised, indeed my end is my beginning.

[1] Eliot, T.S. East Coker, V.190-201.

[2] Eliot, T.S. East Coker, V.202-209.

An Unraveling Mystery

It was as if living in Russia (2000-2002) had provided the snag in my garment the fabric of which began to unwind at increasing rates. We arrived in Russia believing that it was only an exceptional case for a Russian Orthodox person to be a Christian. We left having met many Russian Orthodox who were irrefutably beautiful Christians, reveling the anemic nature my own Christian faith. Now we were presented with the possibility of weaving a new and more beautiful garment out of the same golden thread.

Herman Bavinck has a well known quote that begins the second volume of Reformed Dogmatics, which nevertheless has resonated with me since the first moment I heard it quoted by Rev. Dr. David McWilliams at WTS:

Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics. To be sure, the term “mystery” (μυστηριον) in Scripture does not mean an abstract supernatural truth in the Roman Catholic sense. Yet Scripture is equally far removed from the idea that believers can grasp the revealed mysteries in a scientific sense. [1]

At that time, it was precisely my modern enlightenment approach to Christianity that explicitly and implicitly attempted to reduce the faith to the confines of a mental spreadsheet. While I’m not convinced that modern Roman Catholics, particularly Thomists, would recognize themselves in Bavinck’s description of their own approach to mystery; it is the balanced sense of wonderful mystery represented in this quote that imbibed a way forward for me in autumn of 2002.

[1] Herman Bavinck, God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 3 vols., Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2004), 29

Commentary

[1] μὲν … δὲ If for some reason the contrast being made is not clear in English translations, the μὲν … δὲ construction is explicit in Greek.

[2] Ambiguity, does αὐτοῦ refer to Moses or God or Christ?

[3] The ambiguity of αὐτοῦ persists and now the question of how many houses are there. Is there one house, such that Moses and Christ were over this singular house at different times? Or are there two houses, one of Moses and one of Christ?

[4] κατάσχωμεν hold fast, faithfully retain (BAGD, 422). We find it used in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 when scripture teaches us πάντα δὲ δοκιμάζετε, τὸ καλὸν κατέχετε. But examine everything that you may hold fast to what is good (author’s translation).

[5] παρρησίαν openness, confidence. Jesus is marveled at because he spoke openly (παρρησία) in John 7:26, 11:54.

[6] The Byzantine Text adds μέχρι τέλους βεβαίαν, firm until the end (author’s translation). τέλος here has to do with the goal, perfection and completion of something, not merely arriving at the end of one’s own life.

Introduction

What follows is a piece that I needed to write for myself and those around us who love us and pray for us. If you are hunting for polemic, I pray you will be greatly disappointed here. Rather, this is a personal reflection about personal reasons that my family and I joined the Episcopal Church. It is an attempt to articulate these reasons which have led me away from pastoral ministry in the vibrant Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) to pursuing holy orders in The Episcopal Church (TEC) which is at the best in dire tumult.

Our confirmation in the Episcopal Church on June 1, 2008 was the culmination of a complicated process that started while we were serving in Russia from 1998-2002, flowed through Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) and was tutored by John Calvin and other pre-modern scholastic reformers. This is a short documentary of self-realization and pilgrimage. It is one with which you will likely find all sorts of inconsistencies and yet it is my journey, together with my wife and daughter. I hope you will also find a sincere pursuit of the Lord Jesus who lives and reigns with the Father and Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.