Nielsen’s Nook

17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

“That is,” writes Farley, “they are to manifest the Lord’s life on earth, as His Body.” ¹ I remember one of the extremely helpful and paradigmatic books I read in seminary by Benjamin B. Warfield. In this little booklet that he wrote to incoming students to Princeton Seminary, he encouraged us that there is never a time that we would turn from worshiping the Lord to our books or from the study of our books to the worship of the Lord (to paraphrase). ²

Warfield, Farley and St. Paul all resonate symphonically together here. The strange thing about truth is that it transcends all kinds of boundaries, traditions, cultures, and time. Colossians 3:17 underscores union with Christ the paradigmatic element of Christian theology and life. This union is in fact a participation in the divine energies (workings, ενεργη) and is most profoundly proclaimed at the Lord’s Table, where Christians by faith receive the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus—where God gives us himself and we give Him ourselves. And so we say during the consecration of the Bread and Wine:

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him. ³

This is of course a continuation of the theme we find in John 15, where Christ makes plain his desire that we abide in Him and He in us, as He—the Second Person of the Trinity—abides in His Father. In this way Christians graciously participate in the divine life given to us in Christ Jesus. “[Our] life is His life. [Our] existence is to be one continuous outpouring of thanksgiving to God in His Name. The Christian calling is to be a eucharistic man.” ⁴

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¹ Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 186.

² Warfield, Benjamin B. The Religious Life of Theological Students.

³ Book of Common Prayer, 336.

⁴ Farley, 187.

Commenting on Colossians 3:1-4, Farley writes of the parallels between the Gnosticism of the Lycus Valley during the time of the Apostle Paul and the theological novelties of today:

The many forms of theosophy, anthroposophy, and other variations of the New Age spirituality still offer a potent and heady mix to those seeking a spiritually more exotic than what they think they know as the traditional Christian Faith. … The Church will always have to contend with those who falsely claim to offer a more “spiritual” approach. And its answer will always be the same — to reveal the ultimately earthbound nature of such “spiritualities” and our transcendence of them through our union with Christ. ¹

There is not an expression of Christ’s Church on earth that finds itself exempt from this statement. What has struck me about Farley’s comment is the way it speaks to the individuals and the corporate body in one stroke. One the one hand, it asks the individual to consider the desire to make the Church and worship of God after her own image. In chasing after the so-called spiritually more exotic experience, in making what religion does for us the measure, do we not remove ourselves from the self-evident course of Christ’s Church through the experiences of history? In other words, it is not novelty that has endured over millennia in the context of Christ’s Church, but the tradition (i.e., the deposit of faith) that has been faithfully handed down from the Apostles and Prophets. Paul’s words then, when applied to us post-modern persons is as a two sided coin. On the one side is the face of encouragement, pierced hands extended, bidding us to progress patiently and faithfully in the faith to which the Scriptures bear witness. However, upon turning the coin over our eyes would fall upon a great and vicious beast that warns us of the fate of all who would presume to worship God after their own image.

Corporately, this passage gives warning to the Church on how to persevere through the ages. During the fundamentalist-modernist controversy that plagued Protestantism at the turn of the twentieth century (and perhaps the controversy that plagues the Episcopal Church USA today), the Church was faced with modernists, on the one hand, who sought creative, rationalistic, and sophisticated ways to throw-off the deposit of faith handed down to them in their age, namely to divorce themselves from the yoke of scriptural-authority that this deposit necessitated. Fundamentalists responded ultimately by remotion. That is, when the Fundamentalist saw the spiritual rebellion happening in modernist circles, they became anti-modernists, which also misses the deposit of faith that the Apostle Paul has handed down to us in Colossians 3:1-4. It is not in being an anti-modernist that demonstrates the Church’s essential mystical union (hidden with Christ in God), but in being unswervingly focused upon the Christ, beholding His glory, exalting His Name, and being faithful to pass on the tradition and scriptural-authority that has and will continue to be the way that Christ sustains His Church hidden with Him in God.

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¹ Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 179.

Lawrence Farley writes regarding Colossians 2:8-9:

Christ is not just one link in the Fullness of the Godhead’s series of emanations. All the Divine Fullness dwells in Him. And not only that, but the Divine Fullness dwells in Him bodily. It is not, as the Gnostics asserted, that the true Divine Nature would not deign to soil Itself with contact with the bodily; corruptible world. On the contrary, the Fullness of God has actually assumed a body, sharing our physical nature.

Meditating on this passage from Colossians and from Farley’s reflections, there are two things that confront me. First, is of course the importance of my human body. God himself was pleased to take on a body like ours and in that there is great impetus to care for my own body. This point of impetus is related to the second confrontation I experienced. Elsewhere Paul will write about offering our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom 12:1-2) and we find Jesus concerned in the Gospels not only with what our body does but also with what our minds (in connection with our bodies) think.

Insofar as we participate in Christ, we participate in one who has a body that is perfect. That is, he has a body that fulfills the purpose for which human bodies were created and the destination that human bodies in Christ are headed. In other words, Christ’s body then provides for us a cosmic goal and direction. And so when I sin in body or mind, in things done or in things left undone, I do with my body that which is immature, that which is in a direction other than the cosmic final direction that Christ has laid down for us and then raised for us on the other side of death.

Lord, in your mercy, forgive us the use of our bodies for those things that are unlike Jesus, so that we might abide in the fullness of the One person in whom the fullness of the Divine indeed dwells. Amen.

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¹ Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 171-2. Commenting on Colossians 2:8-9.

[Christ's] death on the Cross was Bloody, painful, and real. Human physicality was thus not something of which to be ashamed. Rather, it was the instrument of our salvation. The Gnostics retreated in revulsion from the flesh as if it were something unworthy. For them, there was a great dichotomy between flesh and spirit. But this was an error: for the Incarnation of Christ dissolved this dichotomy, making the flesh spiritual and making the physical world a channel of divine grace.

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Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 162. Commenting on Colossians 1:21-23.

¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:18-20)

“We see from this how great and cosmic is our salvation. Christ did not just die for men, to save our souls so that we could go to heaven. It is better and grander than that. Christ’s Blood has washed the whole world, restoring all to its original pristine beauty and freshness, making all things new (Rev 21:5). We men have our share in this salvation, since man is the microcosm of the world. But the fact remains that Christ’s death brought the whole cosmos back into life-giving unity with the Father — not just us!”

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Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 160-1.

I was reading through a forum recently where Protestants of a variety of types were addressing the Church season called Lent. In dismissing Lent, there were phrases like, “the scriptures do not command it” and “ungodly superstition.” After all, one person smugly noted, Lent gave us Mardi Gras and that of course has to prove that Lent is wrong.

The scriptures don’t command that we go to church on Wednesdays, but Christians all over the world, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant all go to church on days that are not Sunday. The scriptures do not command that we celebrate Easter or Christmas and yet those Christian holidays seem to be practiced ubiquitously. So what’s the problem with Lent?

Is it superstitious? Is it ungodly? If I might quote from A Handbook for Lent that St. John’s Episcopal Church, Dallas, Texas put out this year, I’d like to establish from the perspective of a group celebrating Lent, what the season is about:

Lent is a penitential season of the Christian Year, forty days in length, in which Christians focus on repentance and personal devotion in light of the coming celebration of Christ’s resurrection at Easter. The forty-day period alludes to many Scriptural events which are important in salvation history: the forty days of the flood; the forty-year Exodus of the Hebrews in the Sinai wilderness: Moses’ forty days on Mount Sinai when he received the Law; Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the desert, during which time the Father prepared him for his public ministry.

In this quote, I think we can see that the length of forty days has historical precedence and is purposed to connect the Church today with the Church of History that transcends the ages. Lent is a time of personal devotion and repentance in preparation for Easter. Is it personal devotion, repentance or Easter that is the problem? It is hard to believe that if truly considered that any of these three core components of Lent could be considered “ungodly superstition.”

Mardi Gras of course is the debauchery in New Orleans, Louisiana in which people impale themselves on as much sin as possible with the unbelievable assumption that then they would give up such sinful practices during the Lenten season. This actually has nothing to do with the Lenten fasting. During Lent one gives up good things (alcohol, meat, etc) with a view towards laying hold of the best thing, the reward God promises his people, Christ himself. There is never a time when Christians are permitted or encouraged to sin in order to worship God. To say that Mardi Gras demonstrates that Lent should not be practiced, is analogous to saying that because Christmas is a time when people gorge themselves in a feast of materialism that we should not celebrate the ancient Christian holy season of Advent. It is in this vein that we must conclude that Mardi Gras is a godless aberration of Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday), is in no way a Christian practice, and has no bearing on whether one should celebrate Lent.

Lent is not something we of course observe as individuals, but as the Church. It is a season of preparation for Easter, when Christ Jesus rose from the dead, swallowing death and hell whole. For “if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19, ESV). Lord have mercy upon your Church that in this age her members might finally learn how to play charitably as you came and gave us charity that we never imagined. Amen.

In reading Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad makes a comment on life that I found quite insightful if not profound in light of the Christian belief of Jesus, the bread of life, who became flesh to dwell among us.

Life is a thing of form. It has its plastic shape and a definite intellectual aspect. The most idealistic conceptions of love and forbearance must be clothed in flesh as it were before they can be made understandable.[1]

[1] Joseph Conrad. Under Western Eyes. Everyman’s Library. (London: Random Century Group, 1991), 132.

Whether I kneel or stand or sit in prayer
I am not caught in time nor held in space,
But, thrust beyond this posture, I am where
Time and eternity are face to face;
Infinity and space meet in this place
Where crossbar and upright hold the One
In agony and in all Love’s embrace.
The power in helplessness which was begun
When all the brilliance of the flaming sun
Contained itself in the small confines of a child
Now comes to me in this strange action done
In mystery. Break time, break space, O wild
And lovely power. Break me: thus am I dead,
Am resurrected now in wine and bread.
Madeleine L’Engle
as found in the book A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation

HT: Mike & Rachel Vendsel

His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.

For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us.

Merry Christmas,
St. Athanasius

St. Athanasius. On the Incarnation : The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 33.

I thank God that he has given us literature, which stokes the imagination and even returns refreshing fervor and dimension to theology. The Inclings met again last night and continued our study of Dante together, by reading chapter XI “The Paradiso” from The Figure of Beatrice by Charles Williams, who is stylistically quite different from Dorothy Sayers and every bit as profound.

The Paradiso is concerned to exhibit beatitude; that is — proper relationship between men and men and men and God. So full of derivation and nourishment are these that they may well be named the in-othering of men and the in-Godding of men. It is not an exterior but an interior relationship which is in question. It is also, in a sense, the absolute relationship, or at least it is one than which nothing more can be imagined or expressed.¹

In the world as it is, outside the universe of Dante’s Commedia, there is resonance with the mystery of the Incarnation itself. Like Dante, every human being is on a pilgrimage in one of two directions either plunging to the Inferno of our own desire or processing humbly to the perfect union, uninhibited communion with God through his Incarnate Son, Jesus. In the case of the former direction, the relationships of “men and men” are cut loose from the moorings of the relationship between “men and God” and the plunge deepens as that rift digresses. In the case of the latter, the relationship between “men and men” is exposed in its weakness and recalibrated on the basis of the New, the Incarnate relationship between “men and God.”

Even in this there is unquantifiable mystery wrapped up in an enigma. It is in this Beatitude of communion of men and God that we find the great joy of love. “[W]e love; we love the divine will, we love as that chooses to love, we are in-willed to will, in-loved to love.”²

Perhaps the most difficult part of the mystery of the Incarnation and the Christian’s mystical union to the incarnate and resurrected Christ is that it transcends us. When the Almighty God comes near we should expect the ineffable and immeasurable and I think that underscores much of our problem today in the contemporary church. We want what we can measure and then exhaust when God has given us himself with out end. It is precisely because the union we have with God in Jesus is eternal and immeasurable that “we should more expressly long to understand the union of our nature with God’s, that is, the Incarnation.” ³ For Jesus alone is our Beatitude, the place in which our relationship to God is put to rights and becomes far more than we can eternally imagine.

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¹ Williams, Charles. The Figure of Beatrice (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2005), 190.

²_____, 196.

³_____, 195.