Quotables

"The mystery of human existence lies not just in staying alive, but in finding something to live for."- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Quotables

"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." - G K Chesterton

Quotable

"We won. All of us who have been told that what we did was for kids or what we enjoyed was silly, or that we were geeks or dorks or whatever else-- well, it turns out the whole world actually is, but it took them a while to admit it. We won because our type of fantasy is everywhere, which means if you like superheroes, you can find it in the movies. You can find it on TV. You can find it in animation. We took our comic book readership and spread to over five other media."- Marv Wolfman

A Spritual Anchor

There is wisdom in the desire fundamentalists have to set absolute limits on belief. The Bible acts as an anchor when encountering the mystery of God. The mystical aspect of Christianity is dangerous. The Holy Spirit, without the rest of the Trinity can lead to flights of fancy as the fullness of God rolls in like a tidal wave, and the power to see opens one up to a strange and alien world that can toss one about. A spiritual anchor is needed, something that can help give form and function to the experience. The Bible, even on my model, serves such a limiting factor. Be defining questions and giving the shape of the conversation, it allows us to avoid a religion of chaos. Faith in Christ does the same. If Jesus is the very form of God then He is also the Big Picture, the true shape of the overall, serving as a picture that allows us to put together the jigsaw puzzle that is our individual encounters with the Divine.

God, Gender & Pronouns

Someone told me yesterday that they wish when the Psalms were read in church, that they would replace "He" with "God". I understand the impulse towards this. The desire is to stop prejudicing one particular encounter with the divine. Women and men experience life differently. Which means they experience God differently. The real miracle of Biblical religion is the conviction that God, who is beyond all experience, reveals Himself in and through human experience. God impinges on the human encounter with the world. Unfortunately, most of the Bible was written by men, and expresses God using male pronouns. It is unfortunate because half of the human encounter with God is literally cut out of our scripture. It is hard for me to imagine God as a woman. That is because my own encounter with personhood, my only unmediated human experience is my own, which is male. That is not evil, it is just a consequence of finiteness.

But we do not solve this problem by seeking gender-neutral pronouns. For the record, "God" is not a gender-neutral pronoun anyways, since the feminine is actually goddess. But even assuming we can get to gender neutrality this misses the point. Of course God is beyond gender. Every thinking person of faith knows this. However, that God is a person and indeed is encountered in and through our own personhood is one of the brilliant and necessary insights of Biblical religion. How to talk about God in a personal but not anthropomorphic way is one of the top challenges of theology. But reducing God to an 'it' is not striking the right balance.

No, re-translating the Bible in this way will not do. What we need to do is first face up to the misogyny in the text so that we can fully recognize the need to move past it. We must realize that it is to US to do the work of overcoming this Biblical gap. This has the added bonus of respecting scripture (by seeking the purest translation possible) while avoiding and indeed tacitly condemning bibliolatry (by pointing out that indeed the Bible gets some things wrong). We need liturgies and prayers that acknowledge God as 'she' as well as 'he', and focus on those Biblical texts that hold up womanhood, women, and that are written from a female perspective. If we are not plenary inerrantists then there is no reason why we can't value some parts of the Bible more than others, and putting a special value on texts that do capture a feminine encounter with God is a deliberate way of acknowledging there is a problem and beginning an outline of a solution.

I think it is also important to emphasize the image of Wisdom as an extension of the Holy Spirit and to talk about God as 'she' when talking about the Spirit. There is a rising group that sees the Holy Spirit in feminine terms and I think this is a right and good move. Lets not seek depersonalizing gender-neutral pronouns but inclusive gender pronouns that help us imagine God as what He is: trans personal. There is a definite Trinitarian streak in this type of thinking. Focusing on the female mystics, who often used gender pronouns interchangeably, is also important.

God enters into the human experience...ALL human experience both male and female. We do not need to run away from the maleness we need to embrace the feminine, both men and women created in the image of God and thus revealing in some small way two sides of that Great All that is beyond all distinctions and all the models we build to express it.

Relying On Grace ???

One objection to universal salvation is that if there is no threat of Hell, we do not find ourselves 'relying totally' on God's grace for our salvation. In other words, for these people, salvation has two parts: the giving of God's grace (which is ostensibly a free gift), and the receiving of that grace, which is us relying on it. So there is indeed something for us to do in the economy of salvation: we must rely totally on God's grace.

Now for the believer in universal salvation recognizes, hopefully, that it is only by God's power that we are saved, and specifically God's power as demonstrated on the Cross and through the Resurrection. It is God acting through Christ in life, in suffering and death, and then in life beyond death that salvation takes place. But, the question becomes can everyone be saved by that grace? Is heaven open to all as a result of those acts and that God upon which I rely?

The simple fact of the matter is that any belief that human reliance on grace is a factor in salvation betrays the very need for the cross. For if what is required in reliance on God and God alone to save us, then that was possible before Jesus died. The prophets and wisdom writers are ostensibly bringers of God's word. For plenary inerrantists, they literally spoke and wrote only God's word. Well those writers came and told the Jews that they were not saved by their own power, but by total reliance on God. The law was not some road map to receiving grace, and fulfillment of the rituals of the law accomplished nothing, according to the prophets. It was God's unearned favor that brought the hope of salvation, and God's choice to forgive sins and see His people as blameless. The idea that some payment had to be made to receive God's forgiveness flies in the face of almost everything the prophets and wisdom writers said. In other words, there was no 'payment of sin' that was necessary if one only relied in God's grace. So if people are even capable of "relying on God's grace" then this obfuscates the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

No, people are all but incapable of relying on God's grace except for moments and then only by His grace. People, all of us, are faithless swine who are elevated above the angels by the miracle of Jesus Christ Himself. There is no moral or subjective solution to the problem of sin, if there were then no Incarnation would've been necessary. I do not rely on God's grace, Jesus relied on God's grace, I do not have faith, Jesus had faith.

I've said it before and I say it again. If you or I truly believed that every time we sinned our own child or mother was tortured by a nail through their hand or wrist, our lives and world would look far different than it does now. But the conviction of Christians is that someone closer to us, that we ostensibly are closer to than either of these, retroactively receives just this kind of consequence for every sin we commit. If we really believed that, our lives would like different as they would if our relatives were so punished for our sins. Does your life look like that? Mine doesn't. "Faith", ha, that's a laugh.

But there is a paradox wherein accepting just this kind of need for Jesus Christ does amount to a kind of trusting in grace. That kind of trust, however, is receivable only AS a paradox. And so it can only rest in a kind of solidarity with the sinfulness and lostness of all of mankind. As soon as some distinction is made, in terms of salvation or anything else, that paradox is destroyed and that trust lost. In the end that, too, is a gift, and nothing that comes of me.

To believe in grace in light of the cross is to believe in it as a gift that I can in no way earn or take up as my own. The subjective side of salvation is lost necessarily in this acknowledgement. This leads us inexorably to a universalist outlook.

Off-Topic: College

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-allen-adjunct-professors-20131222,0,4701423.story#axzz2oRgoUGw9

Two secular issues close to my heart are the plight of college students overburdened by costs and adjuncts who suffer perpetual underemployment. This article does a good job highlighting the latter's plight but the "solution" offered at the end is wrongheaded. But something new needs to happen in higher education. We need to find new ways to link up the profs with the people who need the knowledge they worked so hard to amass. A new kind of university? Populist education? It seems to me the solutions to both of these problems are intertwined.

On Being A Man

http://www.upworthy.com/theres-something-absolutely-wrong-with-what-we-do-to-boys-before-they-grow-into-men

This world's attitude towards vulnerability is telling. Truly, God remains hidden in Christ.

The Top Comic Books of the Year

As the year winds to a close, it is time for the various people that pontificate about every topic under the sun to come up with their annual lists of the 'greatest of 2013'. As this was my first full year of regular blogging, I thought I'd put my own two cents in about a subject I spend a fair amount of time on here at LiveJustToServeGod. This is my list of which comic books were the best of the year and why I chose them.

#10- DC's "Forever Evil"
This limited-series run is in its home stretch. While I am a little off-put by the negative vibes I get from the extended exploration of the worst of the human condition, I cannot deny that the artistry and literary value of what has been produced is pretty high. I enjoy the fact that DC has brought in a favorite villain team of mine, The Crime Syndicate, and their treatment of the team has been pretty good. The art has been top notch, and while there are some pretty big plot holes (like the darkening of the sun and the way that has been handled), I think the effect of the entire experience has been top notch. Geoff Johns gets a lot of flack, and much of it deserved, but he remains a brilliant comic book creator, and this book proves why. 

#9- Marvel's "Infinity"
Thanos has always been my favorite villain in all of comicdom. No force of evil is as intellectual, as interesting, or has the potential to be as destructive as that mutant Eternal from the moon of Titan. This book faltered in two key ways. It was too tied to other books like THE AVENGERS, forcing people to buy more than they should've needed to to keep up with the story, and the pacing suffered accordingly. However, there were some scenes here that in and of themselves would've qualified this series for a place on this list, and in truth the overall story held together strong enough to put the comic in a significant place in the Thanos mythology. We had some serious character development here and that is an amazing thing when you are dealing with characters that have been around as long as some of these. I loved seeing the Avengers cut loose and get galactic recognition, I loved the way Thanos was portrayed, and I thought the art was excellent. But for the flaws mentioned earlier, it would've been closer to the top of the list.

#8- DC's "Justice Leagues (JL, JLA, JLD)"
It may seem cheating to include the JUSTICE LEAGUE, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN, and JUSTICE LEAGUE: DARK all in the same spot, but to tell the truth the three books have been so intertwined with the TRINITY OF SIN and FOREVER EVIL story lines it would be more of a travesty not to tie them together this year. While far more interesting in the former storyline than the latter, these teams continue to show why they are the flagship books of DC's universe. Relationships continue to be what draws me into team books, and it is the development of those relationships both within and between teams that made this year a big one for the JUSTICE LEAGUE crews. FOREVER EVIL has eroded some of the quality of the individual books, but not enough to drop them off the list. As much as I found the main FOREVER EVIL title commendable at least aesthetically, I look forward to seeing these teams become more internally focused and return to the kinds of stories that earned them a place on my list.

#7- DC's "Superman & Wonder Woman"
I've heard some people complain that this book cuts Wonder Woman short, and that complaint is not without merit. I hope they develop her more effectively going forward. But the relationship between Wonder Woman and Superman is very interesting, and like SUPERMAN UNCHAINED, this book gives something very important to the DC Universe: stories that focus on individuals and individual struggles rather than big universe-spanning conflicts. Some of the individual scenes from this book, like Apollo accidentally supercharging Superman with a blast of magical sunlight, were enough to earn the book a high place on the list. The pacing, dialogue, and art work are also top notch. Put that together and you have a winning combination. This book is in its infancy, but it has great potential/ 


#6- Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy"
While the story lines in this book have left something to be desired, at least in the last few issues, the dialogue is so good it really earns this book a spot on this list. Good dialogue is usually sorely lacking in comic books, and in fact bad dialogue and bad pacing are the most common weak spots for a book. The way the characters interact in this comic is convincing, and the stuff they say is almost always entertaining, funny, moving of some combination of thereof. Everything flows very naturally, and this also helps strengthen the all-important relational aspect of a good team comic. This book is simply the best ongoing comic that Marvel is offering right now and that is the reason that it is the only ongoing Marvel book on the list.   


#5- DC's "Earth 2"
Earth 2's last few issues have not elevated my spirit the way the early books did. In fact, I am kind of ticked the way Alan Scott has all but disappeared from the most recent issues. But the fact remains that the book delivers an interesting story, and is very good at character development. I liked the way Doctor Fate was introduced, and I especially liked the issue when Alan Scott gathered the team together for an assault on a new tyrannical army threatening the world. Things have gone a little south since then, but I cannot lie and say I am not riveted. Beyond the excellent writing, the art work is simply out of this world, perhaps the best in all of DC's offerings. This book is more than just a good read: it is a work of art. 

#4- DC's "Superman Unchained"
This book started off heavy on the mystery, and I liked that very much. Everything is mysterious without being too cryptic and that too is hard to accomplish. I enjoy the way Clark's individual everyday struggles are being explored and intertwined with a new set of challenges faced by his alter ego. There is something very personal about this book, and yet it doesn't loose the cosmic scope of its subject matter. There is excitement, there is fun, the pacing is good, the dialogue is good, and the story lines are good. Indeed, this is a book that has all the fundamentals to achieve true greatness. The best part of the book, however, is the art. Wow, does this book visually excite. This is one of the best things DC is offering right now.

#3- Big Dog Ink's "Legend of Oz: The Wicked West"
If you follow my comic book reviews should've expected this book high up on the list. This book first and foremost offers something few books on this list, or that were offered by any comic book producer this year, offers: a hopeful and positive take on life in general. The writers were very smart to hold off as long as they could on bringing Dorothy back into the story, and giving us time to really get to know the other characters involved in the story. The key words here are 'character development'. We have been given a chance to care about these characters, and without a loss of action and excitement. And like so many books on this list, this book is elevated by the visuals. The art is, as has always been true with this book, something above and beyond and even more so the coloring. You cannot take your eyes of the pages. If you are not reading this book, go out today and get the original limited series and the ongoing series, much of which is now available as trade paperbacks. This book elevates the entire field and is the best 'alternative Oz' type story out there, as far as I'm concerned.

#2- Archie Comics' "Afterlife With Archie"
See we are really getting into the best of the year with these last three. This book totally threw me for a loop. It was not at all what I was expecting. The mash-up of a classic humor comic and classic horror comics wound up being much more the latter than the former, and that was a very smart move indeed. This book is genuinely frightening, even as it approaches all the favorite characters in the way it needs to. Every beloved character has his or her core self preserved and transferred into this zombie apocalypse type setting. The gruesomeness and horror is deepened because we know these characters and have some basic connection with them. The nods to geekdom's tradition of Archie theorizing also made for some interesting twists and turns. While I usually don't like the pulp type art that is used it works here and transforms the entire experience. We are just beginning this journey and I have little doubt this book will be one of the best of 2014 as well. Check it out today.


#1- Image Comic's "Miniature Jesus"
This limited series is proof that comic books are more than entertainment, they are genuine works of art and are part of a tradition of myth making that reaches back to ancient times. There is something very basic about this book, like it reached into some other place and pulled down truth. It is gritty, and definitely for mature audiences only, but I reiterate an earlier statement that anyone who really wants to understand the struggle with addiction should read this book. It was all very familiar to me. The juxtaposition of mental and physical events captures, to my mind, the real encounter with spiritual forces both dark and light that makes up the inner of life of every self-aware and spiritually sensitive person. We traveled down a dark road with Chomsky, the main character, and the beings that confronted him as he confronted himself. The art by Ted McKeever captures that journey in a way no one else could. It was his story, I think quite literally, and it truly elevated the art form. There was not a bad book in the series, and I for one think this was more than just another comic book. If you are an adult who is interested in learning more about the struggles addicts face, I suggest you check out this book, and truly seek to accept it in all its absurd realism.


Other books that just barely failed to make the cut, but which very well could've include:
Zenescope's ROBYN HOOD Books
Zenescope's OZ
Marvel's HUNGER
DC's CONSTANTINE
Marvel's AVENGERS ARENA

Wisdom From The First Hobbit Movie

People may wonder why I spend so much time blogging about pop culture on a religion and theology blog. Well this right here is just one of many examples of why. Could anything more succinctly express the truth that lies behind God coming in and through Jesus Christ? This statement has truth in it of truly scriptural proportions.

Not-Really Off-Topic: Hope, Comic Books & MAN OF STEEL

After recently re-watching MAN OF STEEL I've come to the conclusion that my original review was not as positive as it should've been. While I still maintain that it was not the best superhero or comic book based film of the year (that honor is taken, IMHO, by THOR: THE DARK WORLD), it is actually a better film than I remember it being. It is quite good.

And like so many of the comic book based films, it has something that has been lacking in too many comic books recently: a theme of ultimate hope. Whatever else is true of MAN OF STEEL, it really did engender this feeling that there is something inherently salvific or hopeful about life. That life itself is salvation. It faces up to the cosmic proportions of the evils it faces, and represents the terrors of life in properly extreme forms. But it holds up the conviction that however dark the world may seem, the darkness cannot overcome the light and the light is grounded in something even greater, for the light is aligned with the good, which is the ultimate power in the universe.

The recent INFINITY and FOREVER EVIL story lines in Marvel and DC comics have been well-written and entertaining. They work as art. But they lack this sense, so present in so many of the great story lines of the past, that good can and will triumph over evil eventually. I'm all for dark and foreboding periods in comic book story lines for without them tensions could not be properly ramped up to give us good dialogue and effective pathos. But comic book writers should see the success of the recent films as a sign that despite the need for realism most comic book readers demand, the general public wants and needs a sense of the salvific, of the hopeful.

It is in art and fiction and in mythos that the human soul expresses its conviction that goodness is truly Ultimate and so life itself is redemptive or at least contains within it the potential for redemption. This conviction may be nothing more than illusion, but in our hearts I do not think we believe this to be so. Good comic book art is at its heart both apocalyptic and soteriological. Too many recent comic books have expressed the former without the latter. Such art can be entertaining and riveting, but it lacks the power to open people up to something better, a potential I explored recently in another post.

Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews

DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE # 26
This book was a series of quick overviews of several members of the CRIMINAL SYNDICATE. The origins of Johnny Quick, Atomica, Power Ring, Grid and Deathstorm are all reviewed in rapid succession. The writing and art is good as has been consistently true throughout the FOREVER EVIL story lines. I liked the way we got inside Grid's head, and the ending was particularly good. But I have to say, I'm growing weary of this endless examination of the mind of the twisted. I read comic books for hope and to renew a sense of the depth of human experience. While these stories are not entirely lacking in that, they do not deliver it as I would prefer it. I am glad the end is in sight for this storyline.

Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 4.5 Stars

Overall: 4 Stars

DC's FOREVER EVIL #4

*SPOILER ALERT* In this book we primarily learn more about Lex Luthor. We learn about his history and who he is as a person. This Lex Luthor is not unambiguously evil. There is still some glimmer of light in his soul. That makes for a more interesting character, and I liked this examination. However, the second storyline about Batman fell a little flat. There was a big lead-up but little delivery. Batman gets a yellow power ring but his battle with Power Ring lasts but a few short panels. What the heck? If there was anything that SCREAMED for a big finish, it was this book. The battle between the two could've been epic. I understand wanting to bring in Sinestro to join with Luthor and his rogue's band. But still, this had so much more potential. The storyline would've gotten a 4.5 rating from me if not for this.
Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 4 STars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars

Quotable

"I decided that comic art is an art form in itself. It reflects life and times more accurately and is more artistic than magazine illustrations, since it is entirely creative. An illustrator works with cameras and models; a comic artist begins with a white sheet of paper and dreams up the whole business-- he is playwright, director, editor and artist at once."- Alex Raymond

Christ Is Come!

The key has been turned, and the door opened. God is revealed in vulnerability. The infinite has assumed and so redeemed our nature. No longer must the horrors of the world confuse us and cause us to fear God. No longer must our sin make us doubt His ability to truly love and redeem us. We have a light to guide us and to prove to us the truth about ourselves. We have a savior to free us from the burdens that light might reveal. Humanity is no failure, the experiment has born fruit. The devil is already proved a liar and robbed of the false cloak of divinity. Behold, in a lowly manger the True God is revealed, and this we are saved.

The Key of Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is a night of expectancy. The world waits for the key to turn, and for salvation to flood in from the other side of the door. Within Christmas Eve there is contained a long history, that encompasses the entirety of natural and human experience. God could not be incarnated until several things took place. Everything had to fall, like tumblers on a lock, preparing the way for God to enter into history.

Of course there is the long evolutionary march to humanity itself. Billions of years of beauty and majesty as the universe increased in complexity and in the direction of life and consciousness. Until matter got it's act together, and beauty and complexity led to life and mind, none of this would be possible.

But humanity as a biological phenomenon is not yet ready for God's presence. It could have been, it had the potential to be, but was not. Was Adam a first experiment, an initial try at such a preparation? Or was the full awareness of a truly human consciousness just the first in a line of dominoes? Either way, it became necessary for a long cultural march. Man had to become aware of the spiritual, of the divine, and then had to try to organize its thoughts around that encounter. Moral and spiritual awareness were both necessary if the true nature of the Divine was to enter into history at a particular point.

And then had to come the 'discovery' that it was in the moral side that the most important aspect of the divine was to be known. A people had to organize around the idea that goodness was itself divine. Once such a discovery was made, God could truly begin the process of divine revelation. The Oneness of God took root in many cultures. The personality of this One God was retained in only one. The Jews knew that God was found in the ethical, and therefore God was One. Yet they never gave up the idea (on any significant scale anyways), that within our own experience of personhood and the human condition, there was also something of the divine. God was not some From of the Good, lacking the vitality of human existence. Vitality was seen as but a particular outgrowth of that Goodness-That-Is-God. God was a God of goodness, yes, but also of life. Virtue and verve were seen as one.

Yet these experiences and reflections are rife with tensions and contradictions, tensions and contradictions that themselves had to be encountered, and recorded, if any more progress was to be made. The Problem of Evil, and the Problem of Mercy and Justice, caused a note or shadow of despair to raise up in the Hebraic mind. It had to be so, for without this the reality of sin could never be fully realized. Our true predicament had to be recognized, if the purpose of God was to be identified, and our salvation wrought as it must be.

While these contradictions reigned, worship of politics became the order of the day. The devil had to make his move. No doubt, he saw this as a pre-emptive strike against his creator, but in truth this had to take place if God was to make His Ultimate Appearance. What must have looked to the enemy like an ingenious first move, was in fact playing right into the hands of the One Who Saves.

Meanwhile, awareness that no easy intellectual answer would solve the tensions resulting from encounter with God had caused God's people to look to the day when the answer would take a concrete form. Expectations of a coming messiah, which mirror similar hopes and dreams in religions and cultures across the world, stem from an awareness that whatever solutions were to come to the problems of suffering and sin, they had to be concrete and within history. No mystical escapism was sought, nor would it have ever satisfied the human need for the divine presence. The messiah would be someone who would bring justice and make the world right, instituting the ways of God which seem so hidden to those here below. That these hopes were overly simplistic and in some ways mirrored the activities of saviors-who-were-not-saviors found in Rome and elsewhere is hardly surprising. That the devil mimicked and distorted a justified hope even less so.

What is important is the hope itself not (for the Jewish people) that God would come as a man, but that through a man God's rule would be instituted here on Earth. Yes, messianic expectations had to develop, before the messiah could come. And the idea of the Suffering Servant, unique as far as I know in all of religious scripture, this too was necessary. There could have been no Jesus Christ if there had been no Isaiah the Prophet to lay down the vision that was in many ways a stage of the Incarnation itself.

That night, that night before Jesus was born, all these hopes, and dreams, and histories were contained in the womb of a young woman, in a backwater town, in a backwater kingdom. She could not know it then (who could?), but I have little doubt she felt the magnitude of what was going on. How could she not? Visions of angels and choirs of heaven for all who were near are entirely believable. But no one then could fully realize the magnitude of what was about to happen: the culmination of 15 Billion years of divine activity, in a single moment, in a single person. God was about to enter history. And nothing would ever be the same.

May that key that was turned all those years ago, be turned for you tonight. May you realize the true meaning of Jesus Christ and His coming, not as some particular religious sentiment but as the concrete fulfillment of the ideas, revelations, and struggles of one particular people, and at the same time all people...struggles through which God had been slowly revealing Himself for quite a long time. Jesus is God as man. Not as magical man, or supernatural man, or mythical man, but as an ordinary, common human being. In Him is God revealed and God present. If this becomes true for you tonight, then as it did for the world, everything can change for you as well. Amen.

Good Posts Over At MavPhil

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/12/credo.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/12/advice-for-hollywood-liberals.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/12/mind-and-matter.html

Why All The Niebuhr Posts?

...because the man was freaking brilliant, that's why. He remains my favorite theologian of all time. I go back and re-read some of his stuff sometimes, and it just blows my mind how right so much of it seems. I think 'here is what makes Christianity makes sense, this is why we can say with confidence that our faith is the truest, the most consistent with the facts of the world.' Niebuhr never intended to do apologetics, but in the end that is what he was doing, consciously or not. His work shows that Christianity is reasonable, consistent with the fullest range of human experience. He understood the importance and proper use of scripture better than most. His words are like food and water to me, getting to the heart of passages and showing how a single line of the Bible can say more than we can possibly imagine. BEYOND TRAGEDY is a book of 150 or so pages which are reflections on maybe a total of 10 pages of scripture. He got it, he's got more figured out than most, he's just right most of the time. Brilliant, and right. You can't get much better than that.

More From Niebuhr: On Sin & Morality

One further significant fact remains to be recorded in regard to the temple and the ark. The ark was placed in the temple. The symbol of the god of battles found a resting place in the temple dedicated to the God of peace who condemned David's shedding of blood. The god of the ark who both transcended and sanctified the highest sanctities of Israel was subordinated to the God of the temple, but not wholly excluded from its worship. The prophets were more rigorous than that. For the prophets the gods of particular nations were demons. The eternal God stood against these gods. But in the temple the ark found a resting place. The difference is one between priestly and prophetic religion. Prophetic religion is more rigorous than priestly religion. It speaks an eternal "no" to all human pretensions. Priestly religion, on the other hand, appreciates what points to the eternal in all human values. The priest is the poet who comprehends the meaning of human activities in the light of the eternal purpose. For him they do not deny but partially fulfil the will of God. The priest does not say, "whoso loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me." Rather he gives family life a sacramental character. He sees the love which is achieved between members of the family as a sign and token of a more perfect love. In that sense Jesus was priest as well as prophet when he said, "If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him." That is, the imperfect human achievement is a symbol and sacrament of the eternal. The priest does not condemn a man's love for his country, though there is always the possibility that the nation will usurp the place of God and make itself the center and source of all meaning. The priest sees in men's devotion to a cause greater than themselves the possibility of faith and devotion to the God who is greater than the causes which are greater than man.

There is no way of arriving at a perfect compromise between the priest and the prophet, between the faith which incorporates the ark into the temple and that which regards the god of the ark as the devil. The ambiguous character of all human spirituality makes this impossible. On the whole the religion of the priest is more dangerous than that of the prophet. He places the ark in the temple and tempts men to regard the god of the ark as the eternal God. They will be the more inclined to do this, as the ark is in the temple, and the aura of the temple and its vast dimensions seem to enhance the proportions of the ark. Thus the Christian church, despite its ostensible devotion to the eternal God, is most frequently a temple with an ark. The national flags which hang in the sanctuary are symbols of this fact. But even if the symbol be lacking, the ark is there in reality. Many a church is more devoted to the characteristic ideals of its national life than to the Kingdom of God in the light of which these ideals are seen in their pettiness and sinfulness. For this reason the word of the prophet must always be heard. The prophet is an iconoclast who throws all symbols of human goodness out of the temple. Only the word of the eternal God must be heard in the temple, a word of judgment upon human sin and of mercy for sinners.
But the unambiguous word of the prophet may do injustice to the ambiguity of the human enterprise. That ambiguity may be the source of dishonesty and pretension. But it is also the source of all genuine creativity in human history. The god of the ark is never purely the devil. Human goodness is never merely pretension. Its reaching beyond itself is at once the root of its sin and the proof of man's destiny as a child of God. Man stands under and in eternity. His imagination is quickened by the vision of an eternal good. Following that vision, he is constantly involved both in the sin of giving a spurious sanctity to his imperfect good and in the genuine creativity of seeking a higher good than he possesses.

Whatever the prophets may say therefore, there will always be King Davids. Nor could history exist without them. They are actually the authors of all human enterprise. Many of them do not have David's uneasy conscience. Their religion never transcends devotion to the ark. But even those who hear the word of the Eternal and in moments of high insight confess "we are but sojourners and strangers — we are as a shadow that declineth" cannot for that reason cease from performing the tasks of today and tomorrow.
It is significant that America, for all of its simple religion of the ark, had at least one statesman, Abraham Lincoln, who understood exactly what David experienced. Lincoln was devoted both to the Union and to the cause of the abolition of slavery, though he subordinated the latter to the former. Speaking of the divergent ideals of the north and south he said, "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. The prayers of both could not be answered." Here is the recognition of the will of God which transcends the northern and the southern idealism. Stephen Vincent Benet puts this insight of Lincoln in the memorable words:
"They come to me and talk about God's will
In righteous deputations and platoons,
Day after day, laymen and ministers.
They write me Prayers From Twenty Million Souls
Defining me God's will and Horace Greeley's.
God's will is General This and Senator That,
God',s will is those poor coloured fellows' will,
It is the will of the Chicago churches,
It is this man's and his worst enemy's.
But all of them are sure they know God's will.
I am the only man who does not know it."
"And, yet, if it is probable that God
Should, and so very dearly, state his will
To others, on a point of my own duty,
It might be thought He would reveal it me
Directly, more especially as I
So earnestly desire to know His will."¹ Yet this religious insight into the inscrutability of the divine does not deter Lincoln from making moral judgments according to his best insight. He continues in his Second Inaugural: "It may seem strange that men should ask the assistance of a just God in wringing their bread from other men's toil." That is a purely moral judgment and a necessary one. That is devotion to the highest moral ideal we know, which in this case was the ideal of freedom for all men. But Lincoln returns immediately to the other level: "But let us judge not that we be not judged." One could scarcely find a better example of a consummate interweaving of moral idealism and a religious recognition of the imperfection of all human ideals. It is out of such a moral and religious life that the moving generosity is born which Lincoln expressed in the words, "With malice toward none, with charity toward all, let us strive to finish the work we are in." This is a religion in which the ark has not been removed from the temple, but in which the temple is more than the ark. Unfortunately the Christian Church manages only occasionally to relate the ark to the temple as perfectly as that. But the example of Lincoln, as well as of David, reveals the possibility.

Superman & Salvation

This brings up some very interesting grist for the spiritual/theological mill. Lets put aside for the moment the question of whether or not this is true. I want to reflect on the way this imagery had a kind of existential power within the context of the story as reported. The comic book spoken of is, I believe, Grant Morrison's brilliant ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. In it Morrison explored, perhaps better than any other writer, the way in which Christian messianism has influenced the Superman mythos.

I have written about this numerous times. Here is just one example: http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/04/not-really-off-topic-supermane.html
 I have long believed that comic books and related media express an unconscious desire and or awareness of spiritual realities, that are sublimated in the modern world. Apocalypticism dominates our movies and our television. The idea that we are subject to vast and powerful spiritual forces that require even more powerful spiritual forces if they are to be overcome just permeates everything we watch and read. It is everywhere. The idea that we need something greater than ourselves to believe in us is equally gaining strength thematically. I do not believe this is incidental. I think it speaks to the human condition and the needs of the human heart in the here and now.

This article reminded me of this great scene in the movie SUPERMAN VS THE ELITE (animated), where Superman tells Lois that in order to show the world that there is a 'better way', he is willing to die, proving that there is something truly great out there that loves humanity so much it is willing to die for them. Who can deny that this kind of thinking is only popular because of the Christian spirit that still animates even secular western culture. The world cannot escape Christ even when it tries. Push Him down one place He pops us somewhere else.

I want to suggest to you that, in some strange way, this person was being touched by that spirit. Filtered, yes, unformed, yes, and unrecognized. But this feeling, this experience of salvation that this person could conceivably experience through this character is to me a 'pointing' to the reality that underlies the myth. Mythos is the human reaching out to the divine, I believe Christ is the divine's 'reaching back' and revealing what we have dimly perceived. That continues to happen today. What if this isn't purely fiction, what if no fiction is purely false, but contains within it a deeper truth that can only be apprehended through imaginative language. What if Jesus is God's saying to us, "yes, you can believe."?

On Testing God

A weird synchronicity-type thing happened yesterday. In confirmation class, we were talking about testing God. One of the students, the only adult taking the class, mentioned testing God as a sin. I informed her, and this may be a surprise to many of my readers, that the Bible is not consistent on this matter. Like so much in scripture, what we have is a conversation. Yes, there are some places that pretty clearly mark testing God as something you are not supposed to do:
"Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”- Matthew 4:7


Yet in Judges 6, Gideon tests God without God getting angry. God seems to willfully and almost happily acquiesce to Gideon's testing. And in Isaiah 7, Ahaz and Isaiah openly argue whether it is okay to test the Lord by asking for miracles, with Isaiah clearly being guided by God to command the king to test God.

So, indeed, what we have here is a conversation on an important issue.  Is it okay to make deals with God or to test God? I don't think we can simply take the Bible whole cloth as our foundation for making a decision on this issue. What we can do, is take Jesus' words as being the supreme message, the foundation of the house, as it were. Jesus' interpretation of the text can guide our own, and that is what it does for me. I take Jesus' words here to be preferable to the Old Testament conversation, perhaps even being the settling word on that conversation. But to take the Bible this way, to weigh things differently in terms of importance, is just to deny a plenary inerrantist view.

The interesting thing is that the Isaiah 7 passage ended up being the Old Testament reading for the day in Church, which I had no inkling of. It is funny how God does these things, creating connections in the world. Anyways, I thought perhaps the point was to have me bring this up on my blog, which I have now done.

Quotables: Reinhold Niebuhr

From yesterday's long post from BEYOND TRAGEDY:

"The Christian view of the future is complicated by the realization of the fact that the very freedom which brings the future into view has been the occasion for the corruption of the present in the heart of man. Mere development of what he now is cannot save man, for development will heighten all the contradictions in which he stands. Nor will emancipation from the law of development and the march of time through entrance into a timeless and motionless eternity save him. That could only annihilate him. His hope consequently lies in a forgiveness which will overcome not his finiteness but his sin, and a divine omnipotence which will complete his life without destroying its essential nature."- Reinhold Niebuhr

From Reinhold Niebuhr: On Ultimate Fulfillment

BEYOND TRAGEDY, Chapter 15: The Fulfillment of Life I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. The Apostles’ Creed. These closing words of the Apostolic creed, in which the Christian hope of the fulfilment of life is expressed, were, as I remember it, an offense and a stumbling-block to young theologians at the time when my generation graduated from theological seminaries. Those of us who were expected to express our Christian faith in terms of the Apostolic creed at the occasion of our ordination had long and searching discussions on the problem presented by the creed, particularly by this last phrase. We were not certain that we could honestly express our faith in such a formula. If we were finally prevailed upon to do so, it was usually with a patronising air toward the Christian past, with which we desired to express a sense of unity even if the price was the suppression of our moral and theological scruples over its inadequate rendering of the Christian faith. The twenty years which divide that time from this have brought great changes in theological thought, though I am not certain that many of my contemporaries are not still of the same mind in which they were then. Yet some of us have been persuaded to take the stone which we then rejected and make it the head of the corner. In other words, there is no part of the Apostolic creed which, in our present opinion, expresses the whole genius of the Christian faith more neatly than just this despised phrase: "I believe in the resurrection of the body." The idea of the resurrection of the body can of course not be literally true. But neither is any other idea of fulfilment literally true. All of them use symbols of our present existence to express conceptions of a completion of life which transcends our present existence. The prejudice that the conception of the immortality of the soul is more believable than that of the resurrection of the body is merely an inheritance from Greek thought in the life of the church. One might perhaps go so far as to define it as one of the corruptions which Hellenistic thought introduced into biblical, that is, Hebraic thinking. It is, of course, not absent from the Bible itself. Hellenic and Hebraic conceptions of the after-life wrestled with each other in the mind and the soul of St. Paul; and his dictum, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God," belongs to the Greek side of the debate. Whatever may be the truth about the degree of Greek thought in either the Pauline Epistles or the Johannine literature, there can be no question that the dominant idea of the Bible in regard to the ultimate fulfilment of life is expressed in the conception of the resurrection. This is also true of the entire history of the Christian Church until, at a recent date, it was thought that the conception of immortality was more in accord with reason than the idea of resurrection. This latter prejudice is easily refuted. It is no more conceivable that the soul should exist without the body than that a mortal body should be made immortal. Neither notion is conceivable because reason can deal only with the stuff of experience; and we have no experience of either a discarnate soul or an immortal body. But we do have an experience of a human existence which is involved in the processes of nature and yet transcends them. It is conscious of them and possesses sufficient freedom from them to analyse, judge, modify and (at times) defy them. This human situation is a paradoxical one and it is therefore not easy to do justice to it without falling into the errors of either naturalism or dualism. I The idea of the resurrection of the body is a profound expression of an essential element in the Christian world-view, first of all because it expresses and implies the unity of the body and the soul. Through all the ages Christianity has been forced to combat, and has at times capitulated to, the notion, that the significance of history lies in the banishment of the good soul in an evil body and in the gradual emancipation of the soul from the body. Involved in this conception, which is expressed most consistently in Neo-platonism, is the idea that finiteness and particularisation are of themselves evil and that only the eternal is good. Pure spirit is thus conceived as an eternal principle, which is corrupted by its very individualisation in time. Salvation is consequently thought of as release from physical life and temporal existence. In these latter days such conceptions have been related to modern individualism and made to yield the idea of personal survival. But in its more classical and consistent forms this dualism involved the destruction of individuality, so that salvation meant the release from all particularisation and individualisation and reabsorption into the oneness of God. In contrast to such forms of dualism it must be recorded that the facts of human experience point to the organic unity of soul and body, and do not substantiate the conclusion, suggested by a superficial analysis, that the evil in human life arises from the impulses of the flesh. Soul and body are one. Man is in nature. He is, for that reason, not of nature. It is important to emphasise both points. Man is the creature of necessity and the child of freedom. His life is determined by natural contingencies; yet his character develops by rising above nature’s necessities and accidents. With reference to the purposes of his life, it is significant that the necessities of nature are accidents and contingencies. Sometimes he is able to bend nature's necessities to his own will; sometimes he must submit his destiny to them. But whether he dominates or submits to nature, he is never merely an element in nature. The simple proof is that his life is not wholly determined but is partly self-determining. This is a very obvious fact of experience which is easily obscured by philosophies, which either lift man wholly out of nature or make him completely identical with it, usually for no better reason than to fit him into a completely consistent scheme of analysis. The soul and the body are one. This fact is more perfectly expressed in the more primitive psychology of the Hebrews than in the more advanced philosophy of the Greeks. The Hebrews conceived the soul, significantly, as residing in the blood. They did not even distinguish sharply between "soul" and "life" and expressed both connotations in several words, all of which had an original connotation of "breath." This unity of soul and body does not deny the human capacity for freedom. It does not reduce man to the processes of nature in which he stands, though yet he stands above them. It merely insists on the organic unity between the two. The mind of man never functions as if it were discarnate. That is, it is not only subject to the limitations of a finite perspective but also to the necessities of physical existence. This very dependence of the soul upon the body might suggest that the finiteness of the body is the chief source of the corruption of the soul. It is because the mind looks out upon the world from two eyes, limited in their range, that it cannot see as far as it would like. And it is because rational processes are related to natural necessities that the mind is tempted to exchange its ideal of a disinterested contemplation of existence for the task of special pleading in the interests of the body in which it is incarnate. But to explain human evil in these terms is to forget that there is no sin in nature. Animals live in the harmony assigned to them by nature. If this harmony is not perfect and sets species against species in the law of the jungle, no animal ever aggravates, by his own decision, the disharmonies which are, with restricted harmonies, the condition of its life. The root of sin is in spirit and not in nature. The assertion of that fact distinguishes Christianity both from naturalism, which denies the reality of sin, and from various types of mysticism and dualism, which think that finiteness as such, or in other words the body, is the basis of evil. Even when sin is not selfishness but sensuality, man's devotion to his physical life and to sense enjoyments differs completely from animal normality. It is precisely because he is free to centre his life in certain physical processes and to lift them out of the harmonious relationships in which nature has them, that man falls into sin. In the first chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans he accurately defines sin, first, as the egotism by which man changes "the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man." But he continues by suggesting that sensuality is a further development in the nature of sin, "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves." Whatever the relation of sensuality and selfishness in the realm of human evil, whether they are two types of sin or whether one is derived from the other, it is obvious that both are the fruits of the spirit and not of the flesh. It is, of course, true that the peculiar situation in which man stands, of being a finite and physical creature and yet gifted to survey eternity, is a temptation to sin. The persistency of sin is probably derived from the perennial force of this temptation. When man looks at himself and makes himself an object of his own thought he finds himself to be merely one of many creatures in creation, but when he looks at the world he finds his own mind the focusing center of the whole. When man acts he confuses these two visions of himself. He knows that he ought to act so as to assume only his rightful place in the harmony of the whole. But his actual action is always informed by the ambition to make himself the centre of the whole. Thus he is betrayed into egotism. Quite rightly St. Paul suggests that, once he has destroyed his relation to the divine centre and source of life, man may go further and centre his life in some particular process of his own life rather than his own life in its totality. In fact, the second step is inevitable. Since the real self is related organically to the whole of life, it is disturbed in its own unity when it seeks to make itself the centre and disturbs the unity of life. Thus sin lies at the juncture of nature and spirit. If it is untrue that the body is of itself evil while the soul or the spirit is good, it follows that the highest moral ideal is not one of ascetic flagellation of the flesh but of a physical and spiritual existence in which mind and body serve each other. Browning was right in the anti-asceticism expressed in Rabbi Ben Ezra: "To man, propose this test— The body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? . . . . . . . . . . . . . Let us not always say ‘Spite of this flesh to-day I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!’ As the bird wings and sings, Let us cry ‘All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!’" The possibilities of the fulfilment of this life transcend our experience not because the soul is immortal and the body is mortal but because this human life, soul and body, is both immersed in flux and above it, and because it involves itself in sin in this unique position from which there is no escape by its own powers. The fulfilment of life beyond the possibilities of this existence is a justified hope, because of our human situation, that is, because a life which knows the flux in which it stands cannot be completely a part of that flux. On the other hand this hope is not one which fulfils itself by man’s own powers. God must complete what remains incomplete in human existence. This is true both because there is no simple division in human life between what is mortal and what is immortal so that the latter could slough off the former; and because the incompleteness of human life is not only finiteness but sin. II The hope of resurrection of the body is preferable to the idea of the immortality of the soul because it expresses at once a more individual and a more social idea of human existence. Human life has a paradoxical relation not only to nature but to human history. Each individual is a product of the social forces of human history and achieves his significance in relating himself to them. Most ideals of personal immortality are highly individualistic. They interpret the meaning of life in such a way that the individual is able to think of ultimate fulfilment without any reference to the social process of which he is a part. This process is interpreted in purely negative terms. It is merely a part of the whole world of mortality which the immortal soul sloughs off. In contrast to such an interpretation, it is significant that the biblical idea of the resurrection grew out of a social hope. The Messianic kingdom was conceived of as the fulfilment of a social process, first of all, of course, as the fulfilment of the life of Israel. The idea of individual resurrection arose first in relation to this hope. The righteous would be resurrected to participate in this ultimate triumph. The idea of a social fulfilment was consequently basic. Not only individual life, but the whole development of the human race was understood as standing under the curious paradox of pointing to goals which transcended the possibilities of finite existence. Social history, in other words, was a meaningful process to the prophets of Israel. Protestant Christianity has usually been too individualistic to understand this religious appreciation of the meaning of social processes. In consequence, the liberal idea of progress as the meaning of history and the Marxian idea of a revolution which will usher in a fulfilled history are justified protests against Protestant Christian individualism. They are both mistaken in not taking the idea of resurrection seriously enough. They think it is possible for a history, involved in the conditions and contingencies of nature, to overcome these by some final act of mind or will and establish a conditionless goodness in human history. Their Utopia is, in other words, the Kingdom of God minus the resurrection, that is minus the divine transformation of human existence. But whatever the defects in these social conceptions, they restore an important element to prophetic religion. Any religion which thinks only in terms of individual fulfilment also thinks purely in terms of the meaning of individual life. But man's body is the symbol of his organic relationship to the processes of history. Each life may have a significance which transcends the social process but not one which can be developed without reference to that process. In the Cromwellian Revolution a great many sects sprang up, Levellers, Diggers and Anabaptists, who insisted on this old prophetic hope of the Kingdom of God in contrast to the individualism of the churches in which there was no appreciation of the meaning of history. These sectaries felt that the revolution in which they were involved had a religious significance and pointed toward a society in which the hopes of brotherhood aid justice would be fulfilled. Significantly one of the host thinkers of this sectarian movement, a man named Overton, spent time and effort to refute the idea of immortality and establish the conception of the resurrection. It is not apparent from his writings that he consciously connected the idea of resurrection with his social hopes. But it is significant that he had this interest. The idea of resurrection is a rebuke and a correction of all too individualistic conceptions of religion. This individualism is always a luxury of the more privileged and comfortable classes who do not feel the frustrations of society sufficiently to be prompted to a social hope and who are not in such organic relation to their fellows as to understand the meaning of life in social terms. It is true of course that modern men express their social hope in terms other than that of the idea of the resurrection. They are either liberals who believe in progress, or radicals who believe in a classless society on the other side of a revolution. But this secularisation is no advance. It is not, as assumed, a substitution of superior scientific ideas for outmoded religious myths. It is rather the proof of modern man’s blindness to the paradoxes of human existence. He does not understand the hopes of an unconditioned perfection, both social and individual, which beckon the human conscience and which are involved in every concept of the relative and the historical good. He sees them in history but does not see that they point beyond history III Strangely enough, and yet not strange to those who think profoundly upon the question, the body is the mark of individuality as well as of sociality. Pure nature does not, of course, produce individuals. It produces types, species and genera. The individuality of human life is the product of freedom; and freedom is the fruit of the spirit. Yet pure spirit is pure mind and pure mind is universal. Pure mind expresses itself in the universally valid concepts of mathematics and logic. These concepts are universal because they are forms without content. That is why "spiritual" religions, which may begin with a great degree of individualism than more earthy and social religions, end by losing the soul in some eternal and divine unity. All consistent mysticism (which does not include most Christian mysticism which is not consistent) regards individuality, egohood, as of itself evil. If Christian mysticism is not consistent upon this point that is due to the fact that Christianity, no matter how greatly influenced by more dualistic thought, never completely escapes the biblical ideas of the goodness of creation and the resurrection of the body. The fact is that individuality and individualisation are the product of human history; and human history is a pattern which is woven upon a loom in which the necessities of nature and the freedom of the spirit are both required. Perhaps it would be more exact to describe one as the loom and the other as the shuttle. Whenever the significance of history is depreciated the ultimate consequence is also a depreciation of individuality. To believe that the body is resurrected is to say, therefore, that eternity is not a cancellation of time and history but that history is fulfilled in eternity. But to insist that the body must be resurrected is to understand that time and history have meaning only as they are borne by an eternity which transcends them. They could in fact not be at all without that eternity. For history would be meaningless succession without the eternal purpose which bears it. The idea of the fulfilment of life is very difficult, partly because of the dialectical relation of time and eternity and partly because of the dialectical relation of the individual to society. The old classical idealism resolved the difficulties by denying the significance of time and history; and modern naturalism seeks to resolve it by seeking to make time and history self-sufficing. The naturalists divide themselves into individualists and communists. The former destroy the dialectical and organic relation of the individual to his society and produce discrete individuals who have no interest in society or history. The communists on the other hand think it possible to offer the individual a satisfactory hope of fulfillment in terms of an ideal society. They do not understand that individual life always transcends the social process as well as being fulfilled in it. This will be true in the most ideal society. There are aspects of meaning in individual life which will escape the appreciation of even the most just society; and there are hopes of fulfilment which transcend the power of any society to realise. The very genesis of the idea of resurrection lay in this dilemma. The great prophetic movement in Israel promised the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes. But what would become of the individuals who perished before those hopes were realised? The question is put searchingly in one of the great apocalyptic books, Fourth Ezra: "Lo, Lord thou art ready to meet with thy blessing those that survive to the end; but what shall our predecessors do, or we ourselves or our posterity? Couldst thou not have created them all at once, those that are, and those that shall be?" Or again in the same book: "What does it profit us that there is promised us an imperishable hope whereas we are so miserably brought to futility?" Here is a very legitimate individualism. Social and political religions which do not understand it, stand on the level of Hebraic prophecy before the idea of the resurrection of the body answered those questions. It is an individualism which must emerge whenever human culture is profound enough to measure the full depth of human freedom. At such a time it becomes apparent that each individual transcends society too much to be able to regard it either as his judge or as his redeemer. He faces God rather than society and he may have to defy society in the name of God. If an adequate prophetic religion expresses the real relation of the individual and society in terms of a hope of fulfilment in which the individual is resurrected to participate in the fulfilment of society, such a conception is rationally just as difficult as the idea of resurrection itself. The former seems to take no account of a society continually involved in flux just as the latter seems to defy the inevitability of mortality in nature. But that merely means that such a religion is expressing the idea that history is more than flux and that nature is not just mortality. Here, once more, religion is involved in myth as a necessary symbol of its faith. It is important not to press the myth of the resurrection to yield us too detailed knowledge of the future. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." Every effort to describe the details of fulfilment and to give plans and specifications of the heavenly city leads to absurdity. Such efforts have in fact encouraged the modern man to reject all conceptions either of individual fulfilment or of a Kingdom of God which fulfils the whole human enterprise. But it is instructive that these disavowals of mythical absurdities have tempted modern men to curious rational absurdities. Among the greatest of these is to revel in the relativities of historical flux and yet nourish a covert hope that history, as it is, will finally culminate by its own processes into something which is not history but a realm of unconditioned goodness. Every one who rejects the basic conceptions, implicit in the idea of the resurrection, is either a moral nihilist or an utopian, covert or overt. Since there are few moral nihilists, it follows that most moderns are utopians. Imagining themselves highly sophisticated in their emancipation from religion, they give themselves to the most absurd hopes about the possibilities of man’s natural history. It is significant that there is no religion, or for that matter no philosophy of life, whether explicit or implicit, which does not hold out the hope of the fulfilment of life in some form or other. Since it is man’s nature to be emancipated of the tyranny of the immediate present and to transcend the processes of nature in which he is involved, he cannot exist without having his eyes upon the future. The future is the symbol of his freedom. The Christian view of the future is complicated by the realization of the fact that the very freedom which brings the future into view has been the occasion for the corruption of the present in the heart of man. Mere development of what he now is cannot save man, for development will heighten all the contradictions in which he stands. Nor will emancipation from the law of development and the march of time through entrance into a timeless and motionless eternity save him. That could only annihilate him. His hope consequently lies in a forgiveness which will overcome not his finiteness but his sin, and a divine omnipotence which will complete his life without destroying its essential nature. Hence the final expression of hope in the Apostolic Creed: "I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting" is a much more sophisticated expression of hope in ultimate fulfillment than all of its modern substitutes. It grows out of a realization of the total human situation which the modern mind has not fathomed. The symbols by which this hope is expressed are, to be sure, difficult. The modern mind imagines that it has rejected the hope because of this difficulty. But the real cause of the rejection lies in its failure to understand the problem of human existence in all its complexity.

The Grounds of Tolerance & Doubt

One of the benefits and detriments of foraying into philosophy, as I've done only as an amateur but a better-educated-than-the-average amateur, is the degree to which it fosters moral skepticism. You can see two people argue very effectively on an issue that seems clear to you, realizing just how weak are the grounds on which you stand making moral judgments. For just one example, Peter Singer argues for infanticide, which I find abhorrent, but his arguments are not simply fallacies. Listening to Singer argue this issue with another philosopher sickens my stomach, as I see clearly that Singer is wrong. I have little doubt on this. Yet explaining WHY he is wrong is far more difficult. Other moral issues are murkier, and so making pronouncements either way are even harder. Doubt increases as the intuitions get weaker and the grounds become ever harder to clarify.

Something similar happens in the Bible. We are told that compared to God, all human moral striving is 'but filthy rags' and appears as such before Him. If we are at such a moral deficit, on what grounds can any of us claim to know when someone else is doing something truly wrong or sinful? Indeed, one of the primary grounds for forgiveness found in the New Testament is a recognition of my own sinfulness. Not just as a means of avoiding hypocrisy, but as a means of recognizing the limits of my own moral status. I can never claim a God's-Eye-View even when I am reasonably sure that God is living within me.

Yet making moral judgments is unavoidable, and necessary. One must act with conviction even when one acts uncertainly. I am thus stuck speaking confidently about issues with which I have little confidence. These considerations, one philosophical and one theological, should cause me to be more tolerant of those who do not believe or act as I do or think they should. This uncertainty becomes a ground for acceptance of other positions, a willingness to compromise where necessary, and an ability to debate an issue without hating the other side.

However, when this realization becomes paralyzing, when I am no longer able to act with conviction, then this awareness becomes a detriment. It also makes it hard to "caucus" with other like-minded individuals, as they often are possessed of moral certitude for which there is no justification. Indeed, sometimes I am more passionate about the uncertainty in a moral dilemma than defending either side of that dilemma.

Knowing that one is nothing before God can, paradoxically, be a ground for action in that it creates a humility of spirit and an awareness of the needs of the world that lives without Him. But to the degree it becomes a stumbling block, it can be destructive. 

20,000 Page Views!

I've crossed 20,000 page views today. A guy came up to me in church today and said he read my blog. It wasn't someone I know very well at all, so I was surprised and thankful. Thank you to all of my readers. I am seriously thankful my sister pushed me to start blogging more regularly last year. I plan to continue to do it long into the future.

Great Article of AJ Ayer

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/roundtable/an-atheist-meets-the-masters-of-the-universe.php

On The Virgin Birth

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-david-felten/oy-vey-maria-the-virgin-b_b_4476301.html


I think the implication that IF Mary was not a virgin THEN Jesus was not born divine to be a major weakness in the article. Assuming for the moment that the Virgin Birth is a symbolic attempt to make parity with Jesus' status and Caesar, then the whole point of the symbol could be this: Caesar, and all he embodies is not God. Jesus, and all He was and is, IS God. God could just as easily become fully incarnate, at conception in a humanly conceived child. In fact the story would then be seen as an insistence or conviction that Jesus divinity was real an inherent. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater? It seems to me that the entire point of Jesus is lost if Jesus, from womb to tomb and back again is not divine, since it is meant to challenge the lie that Caesar is god. If the incarnated being is the second person of The Trinity, Jesus is both God and the Son of God regardless of the biological details of His earthly descending.

Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews

Dynamite's GRIMM #8

This was a side-story recounting Nick's aunt's last days as a GRIMM. The story had a few wholes and the pacing was off. There were definitely a few good scenes but this was not as good as most issues of this book have been. The art continues to disappoint and it really becomes noticeable when the story is not as strong.

Storyline: 2.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 2.5 Stars
Art: 2.5 Stars
Overall: 2.5 Stars

DC's GREEN LANTERN: THE NEW GUARDIANS #26

Star Sapphire needed a bigger role in this issue. They need more involvement by the original team, that is what made this book great early on. Still, this was a pretty good story though the pacing was off. I like the way Kyle takes charge. Good stuff, but still nowhere near the early issues.
Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 2.5 Stars
Art: 3.5 Stars
Overall: 3 Stars

DC's BATMAN 1966 #6

This book not only captures the fun of the television series, but it improves on it in a number of ways. I love the different villains we meet every week. "Villain of the Week" comics rarely work very long, but the tongue-in-cheek nature of this offering makes it work well indeed. This week is all about Bookworm. I loved it.
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 3.5 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars

Not Really Off-Topic: Art Projects I Would Like To Commission

In my mind I have several art projects I would like to commission people to undertake. I wish I could draw, and draw well. I have so many ideas but no way to execute them myself. This can lead to a rather expensive hobby. It costs a lot to get commissions like the ones I want done, but having the image in my hand really would be awesome. I guess on another level it is cool to have it all be a collaborative effort, to see how another artists interprets my vision. Here's a list of projects I'd like to see completed:

1) I'd like to see a series of iconography for some of my favorite pop culture phenomena. There is an example here: http://blog.chron.com/believeitornot/2010/01/lost-saints-and-a-mini-iconography-lesson/

I think ONCE UPON A TIME would be a great one. That would also make for a great LAST SUPPER adaptation. But really I'd like to see a series of DC superheroes re-cast in incongraphic representation.

2) I'd like to see an artist's representation of the Lamb and the Dragon in Revelation fighting each other. A super-literal approach that is yet internally coherent. How does one represent these figures in a way that doesn't make them look chimeric? I already have an artist in mind who I think can do this one particularly well.

3) I had a dream once of Jesus being nailed to the cross with hypodermic needles. I know this would be disturbing, but it says a lot too about the evils of drugs and the selling of drugs.

4) I would like to do a comic book about a man that faces moral dilemmas in life, and whenever he does he has visions of cosmic demons and angels doing battle with him at the center. Like every common struggle to be a good person is re-cast in a comic book like context.

So these are some of my ideas, I hope some day to bring some of them to fruition.

One-Post Wednesday: On Certainty

http://www.faithit.com/brilliant-comedian-on-certainty-truth/

Yes, yes indeed. Conviction is important, it matters. But what if what I am convicted about is the uncertainty of the matter at hand?

"Literalism"

It is interesting to read the way in which those who claim to believe in plenary inerrancy deal with problematic texts. All of a sudden the straightforward reading of the text is no longer correct. One must delve into the cultural milieu of the day, or the historical context to make the passage mean something else. Anyone reading that text would get one impression, but all of a sudden the impression they get is the wrong one. Except where the original impression is 'the right one', then you just go with that. It makes me sick to my stomach, my friends, because it is disingenuous in the extreme. Why not just assume the writers said what they meant? Ah, because then there would be a contradiction. But why can their be no contradictions in scripture? Because scripture says there can't. Except where it does. But then that too is just an apparent contradiction.

Don't trust your lying eyes, we are told. In the end each person becomes their own god, with the very word of the living God on their side, whichever side they take. Those of us who love and study scripture 'deeply' but reject plenary inerrancy do not claim unqualified divine judgment to be on our side. We rather appeal to the reliability, not perfection, of our own relationship with God, centered and founded on scripture, as something that we can trust. We trust our judgments knowing ourselves to be fallible. We trust what we believe we have received from God in full knowledge that we could be wrong. The plenary inerrantist does not read the Bible literally. I read the Bible literally. And there are literally contradictions that you literally have to deal with.

I say, let the contradictions stand. Let the text speak to you as itself. Sometimes you may need to pick one arm of a dilemma over another. Sometimes you need to let the dilemma stand in a creative tension, sometimes a middle compromise position is preferable. These methods are not perfect, as you are not perfect, but if you step back and let the overall take hold, you can find God within that bigger picture.

Wisdom From FORREST GUMP

"You died on a Saturday morning. And I had you placed here under our tree. And I had that house of your father's bulldozed to the ground. Momma always said dyin' was a part of life. I sure wish it wasn't. Little Forrest, he's doing just fine. About to start school again soon. I make his breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. I make sure he combs his hair and brushes his teeth every day. Teaching him how to play ping-pong. He's really good. We fish a lot. And every night, we read a book. He's so smart, Jenny. You'd be so proud of him. I am. He, uh, wrote a letter, and he says I can't read it. I'm not supposed to, so I'll just leave it here for you. Jenny, I don't know if Momma was right or if, if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time. I miss you, Jenny. If there's anything you need, I won't be far away."

So ends one of my favorite movies.  Forrest's final insight, which seems so clear by the end of the film, so moving and indeed so true, is lost on so many people. God is not deistic, and God IS, God is involved, and things happen sometimes because God is involved. But freedom is real. Not just our freedom, but the freedom of the world around us. There is openness and randomness, and self-direction. Fate is not simply 'what you make' nor 'the Will of God'. It is the intersection of creation and created. It is life itself, as it truly is.

Jesus' Soteriological Significance

What is our salvation all about? Why did Jesus have to be born and have to die? Christians have struggled with these questions from the beginning. Broadly speaking these are questions of soteriology, focused on the issue of atonement: "how does Jesus make God and man 'one'?" In the West, the main theory of atonement is juridical. We are sinners who deserve punishment, a punishment meted on on Jesus instead to spare us. In the East, the idea is that of theosis: God, by appropriating human nature, set man back on the course for which he was originally created, namely to become more like God.

These do not in any way exhaust the ways people have thought about atonement. There is the idea that Jesus defeated the devil, or that Jesus Himself was a sort of trick played by God in the devil to get the devil to lose power. There is the idea that mankind was in some way ill, and that Jesus came to heal us from that illness.

All these routes have some value, and the more intriguing theories often combine elements of several. I have on occasion defended Rene Girard's theory of atonement which is just such a fusion. Here I give my own opinions on the matter of soteriology and Jesus.

The convictions from which these reflection emanate are born of experience. Religion does not begin with dogma or doctrine, though it may begin with belief and faith. But whether the beginning point or the slowly-growing under-current, no religion is worth anything without experience. The early Christian writers, of which the Gospel writers are the apex, experienced something that changed their lives and around which their lives would come to be centered. They experienced salvation in and through Jesus Christ. The risen Christ was as alive in the early church as my heart is within me.

I believe in Jesus because I have encountered the risen Christ, as I have experienced the Holy Spirit. "Jesus was Christ and saved us." This is central to the New Testament texts. But equally central are the inherited (from the Old Testament period) experiences of both the sinfulness of mankind and the unity and primacy of God. A human being cannot be savior unto himself. Only God saves. The Old Testament is clear on this matter: to experience salvation is to experience Yahweh and Yahweh ALONE.

So only God saves, yet Jesus Christ saves us. These are the experiences of the early Church and they are my experiences today. I encounter the risen Christ all the time, as a Revelation of God, as the presence of the One True God. I will not get into the details of how these experiences work or what the phenomenology of them are like, as that is beyond the scope of this post. The central convictions must be clarified: the experience of God as One, the experience of human sinfulness and spiritual destitution, the salvation wrought from Jesus Christ.

The encounter with God as One is found throughout the Old Testament. The Jews discovered, encountered, the One True God. One can look at this discovery within a wider human context. Everyone all around the world was looking for god. What, people asked, is truly worthy of worship? That something is worthy of worship is almost a basic part of human nature. People pray and worship as a matter of course, it is as comfortable, nourishing and necessary as eating or drinking or human contact. Yet where this energy should be directed is not as clear.

Some worshiped sex, others romance, others the cycles of nature, and so on. Eventually most peoples looked at all of these as worthy of worship. But this attitude was inconsistent with the place in which the Jews discovered God: in the moral order. For the ancient Hebrews, in the earliest of times, the attitudes ABOUT God did not differ all that much from other peoples. Worship styles were very similar to other Canaanite peoples. Yet what did differ was the way this worship was directed: towards goodness itself. This attitude, that goodness was truly God, truly the Ultimate Reality, precluded any other object of worship. For multiple objects of worship implied multiple moral orders of behavior, and the conviction that morality itself was God made that impossible. Discovering that goodness was God, the Hebrews could no longer call anything else god, for that would imply that there was no one, over-arching moral order to which worship could be directed.

The working out of the implications of this encounter with the God-Who-Is-Good is the the substance of what Christians call 'the Old Testament'.  But as these implications were worked out, problems arose. For one, there was the problem of innocent suffering. The writers of Ecclesiastes, Habakkuk, many of the Psalms and the Book of Job all questioned how, if goodness is truly God, nature and human nature do not exhibit an abiding moral order at all. The suffering in the world makes belief in this God problematic.

A separate problem is the problem of Mercy and Justice. The prophets go on long rants wherein they state clearly that next to the goodness that is God, all human moral action looks like 'filthy rags'. No person is good, or justified, before the God-That-Is-God. And so we have long monologues (just look at Zephaniah for an example), where we are told God is so good, and the world so rotten, that when the Good-God meets the evil-world, the latter will be completely annihilated. Yet the prophets then schizophrenically go on rants proclaiming the mercy of God and a coming salvation for those who are 'good'. This is strange, given the fact that we were often told moments before that none are good, at all.

Perfect goodness would include both perfect mercy and perfect justice. Yet mercy is to refuse to give people what they deserve. Justice is to give people exactly what they deserve. The problem of innocent suffering recognizes a disconnect between our experience of God and our experience of the world. The problem of mercy and justice recognizes a conflict within our experience of goodness through which we encounter God Himself.

These problems were not only experienced by the Hebrews. Other peoples who had come to broadly monotheistic conclusions, like the Greek Philosophers, faced similar logical problems in their ideas. "How," these great men asked, "is this world to be brought in line with Righteousness, which we experience as divine?"

The answers came in a tacit worship not of goodness, but of the power that people identified with it. If goodness is God, then goodness must be indeed powerful, coercively powerful, and it is that power that we should seek in the world. The quest for power became the quest for God. Hebrews waited for a worldwide empire that would establish God's justice forever, Greeks looked for the philosopher-king who would make this world all it could be, and Romans worshiped Caesar as god on earth. The worship of human kings became common place.

The irony is that such a worship of power replaces, rather than clarifies, the worship of what God actually is. Worship of coercive power is actually the worship of something other than God, it is satanic in its manifestation. Like Girard, I see sin as a kind of disease of the mind, that manifests itself personally. But whereas Girard focused on violence, I focus instead on the need for control that underlies that violence. As Girard saw the devil incarnate in the polytheistic gods, I see that same incarnation in the worship of political power that became ascendant in the late centuries of the BC era and the early centuries of the AD era.

The devil became incarnate before God did. He became incarnate as the political idolatries that promised to usher in God's kingdom, a kingdom of righteousness, while taking up the very coercive structures that made God's righteousness unattainable in any political order.

God's incarnation was an answer to this challenge, and a way to finally end the tensions that sat at the heart of the conviction that virtue is God, that in and through the moral experience we encounter the divine. For until these tensions were solved, the worship of power was inevitable. (No clearer examination of this can be found than Dostoevsky's THE TALE OF THE GRAND INQUISITOR).

God must be reconciled to man. We must make sense of how a God-Who-Is-Goodness exists simultaneously with a nature that lacks a moral order.

Man must be reconciled to God. We must make sense of how mercy and justice can co-exist. Until we have some sense of how this works, we will seek the power that makes our moral vision more likely, rather than rest in faith in God as God is now.

Jesus comes as an answer to all of these problems. In the Old Testament, there are hints of an answer, but no Revelations, nothing like we see in Jesus. Jesus tells us how God saves. For in Jesus we see God receiving the consequences of every sin. Jesus stands not in the place of every sinner, but in the place of every victim of sin. God, we now know, is the one who suffers BECAUSE of our sin. Our sins hurt God. This is the central message of the Gospels (as it is the central message of Hosea, btw). It is the truth that is laid out on Jesus. Jesus is the cost of not only salvation, but of creation itself.

In this way, Jesus solves the problem of evil by making it clear that God, too, suffers. Nothing can be cheap to us that is costly to God, if God cannot exist without suffering, then neither will we. To be angry at God for the suffering in the world is to blame the victim. It is to hate God for what God is: Suffering Love. As Rene Girard says, "Man is never the victim of God, God is always the victim of man."

Jesus also solves the problem of mercy and justice, as Kazoh Kitamori points out in THE THEOLOGY OF THE PAIN OF GOD. For the pain of God, Christ's suffering, exists as a higher concept beyond both mercy and justice. A God who gives mercy without acknowledging the depth of sin is indeed less than good. But a God who chooses to take on the pain of all sin and forgives anyways, exists Himself AS a judgement on all we do. If every time you sinned, your own child was tortured, this torture would be a punishment on you as much as them. God's pain, then, is a judgment upon us, and our punishment for our sin. The one we love and who loves us is nailed with each lie, each forsaking of our ideals, each pain caused to another. The cross reveals our sin for what it is: a terrible evil of infinite proportions. But it also shows us a God who chooses to make sin THIS, so that we can be forgiven.

This then also robs the devil of his power to incarnate, at least for those who believe in Christ Jesus. For if Jesus is God, then indeed God is like Jesus. Jesus reveals God's nature, and the real nature of goodness. Persuasive love is the Ultimate Power, coercive power is lesser and cannot be worshiped. The Caesars can no longer pretend to be god because of their power. For their power is something less than the power of God, which is found paradoxically through suffering for others, through humility, through service, and through obedience to others.

We clamor for fame and fortune as if these are the trappings of divine blessings, yet to see Jesus is to see that God is actually only found when we wash the feet of others. As we clamor for the top, He waits with a towel and bowl of water at the bottom. The Cross reveals the true Glory of God. The Resurrection reveals that the glory of the Cross is truly God's.

This makes sense, then, of the idea that Jesus is truly vital, while keeping us from falling into the trap of believing anything we do... by faith or by deed... has the power to save us. Jesus death resolves the contradictions of God and reveals that God is not separated from us. That is a fact, plain and simple. Nothing can keep us from the love of God now or in eternity. Yet without faith in Jesus Christ, without the conviction that in this man we truly see God, the God that is Goodness, without knowledge that suffering love is goodness and that goodness is Divine, we are left to the mercies of satan, who incarnates in every generation as the political power that promises to make the world what we think it should be. It sows dissatisfaction with the way things are and leads us to worship things like money and power.

Without the historical Jesus, the living incarnate Jesus Christ, we will never be able to see God for what God is. This leaves us open to all kinds of disappointments and disasters. Yet to know Jesus Christ is to know a God who right now and for all times truly can save, each and every moment of our lives.

Another Patrick Sullivan Question

 Patrick Sullivan writes on Facebook:
"What is the meaning of the quarrel within Christianity over the separateness and the oneness of Christ with God? Why is there such violence and turmoil over its precise articulation? Is the /content/ of the quarrel in some sense incidental to the political/historical/social structure of it?

Religious faith can be a source of identity. In the Roman Empire of the 4th century there were many reasons to be concerned with identity, with which stream of culture one followed, and a confession of faith can be in a sense totemic.

Then again, I remark that theological distinctions can indicate, represent, or evoke metaphysical ones. Is there something special about the idea of being as close as possible to being God /without_being_God_Himself/, and does this articulate a metaphysical problem or structure, an irreducible distance, e.g.?"

The early controversies over the exact nature of Jesus, His identity with and distinction from God, speak to the very heart of what it means to be a Christian. There can be no doubt that the violence that arose from these disputes, The Arian Controversy, Nestorian Heresy, etc, are a black mark on the Church's history and are the opposite of the life Jesus should've inspired within the church. However, it is equally apparent that these disputes were not merely covers for political divisions. They were genuine conflicts of faith.

The questions of who Jesus was and what His relationship is with God stem from both the life of the early church and from the soteriological questions that arose from reflections upon what happened in the Gospels. The early church worshiped Jesus. They prayed to Jesus, and they assigned Him an honor that was either very close to, or identical with, God. This practice goes back pretty close to the beginning, if not to the very beginning.

Yet the conviction that Jesus was a man, a human being like any other, fully human, also runs deep throughout the Gospels and the early Church. That is why the opposition to Gnosticism was so strong. The idea that God had just put on the cloak of illusion of humanity was anathema to the early Church. That is because in that early church the idea of theosis was so strong. People believed that Jesus had come here to fundamentally change humanity: to make us more like God. In that sense Jesus had to have moral relevance, to give us an example of how to live. If Jesus was just God in disguise, He could in no way serve as an example of how we should, in fact live.

Gregory of Nyssa said it best, I believe, when he said: 'anything in the human condition not assumed by God in the Incarnation, is not redeemed.' Jesus had to be fully human to have soteriological significance, as well as moral significance. Yet, such a soteriological significance is lost if Jesus is not also, in fact, fully God. And not just A god but THE God, the God of the Old Testament. Polytheism was unthinkable in a movement that truly began as a Jewish sect. Further, the idea that only the One God could save, forgive sins, and defeat satan runs throughout the Old Testament. The conviction was that Jesus indeed saved, and yet because of human sinfulness and the primacy of God over creation, only the One True God could accomplish that goal. 

Two branches of early Christianity grew up. One, centered in Antioch, tended to emphasize juridical models of atonement, and were more concerned with the problem of sin. They thus emphasized Jesus as a human exemplar, who because of his sinlessness could accomplish something the rest of us could not. Yet other Christians criticized this view because it robbed Jesus of the power to truly overcome the forces that oppress us. The Antiochan camp wanted to distinguish God and Jesus so that the moral power of Christ was not lost.

The other school, centered in Alexandria, emphasized theosis over juridical atonement, and thus they were more likely to associate Jesus closely with God. God needed to 'assume' human nature to redeem it, and Jesus was seen as a super-being who did battle with the forces of darkness (often called an Atonement of Victory). They were criticized by the Antiochans for devaluing the human condition and denying the reality of sin as a moral dimension, and what was needed to save us from that kind of sin.

Anything that denied the divinity of Jesus as being that of the One True God of the Old Testament, further, (like Arianism or any Tritheistic tendencies), lost all the insights of the Old Testament and broke with the practices that sat at the center of church life: practices that included worshiping Jesus in a way that was only appropriate for Yahweh. 

The struggles between these groups eventually led to settlements like the Trinity and the Incarnation, which despite their logical inconsistencies were the only linguistic way of capturing the experience of the early Church. The passion of the various players stemmed from convictions about the primacy of God and the soteriological significance of Jesus Himself.