"Pure Religion" is Messy

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”  James 1:27 KJV

So what does it mean to be “unspotted from the world”?

On the one hand, we read that pure religion is to visit the fatherless and widows.  That seems rather straight forward.  It means to look after the most vulnerable.  It is not an instruction to “care” from a great distance and with the best of intentions.  It is not an invitation to join a cause.  It is to visit the fatherless and widows.  And not to visit them in their neatness and tidiness.  It isn’t to behold their purity and loveliness.  It isn’t so that they can do something for me.  It is to visit them in their affliction.

Pure religion is to enter into the messiness.

I don’t believe that the 2^nd part (the part about staying “unspotted”) is contrary to the 1^st part (visiting the most vulnerable).  They are one and the same thing.  So I can’t read this and think that keeping myself unspotted from the world is the same thing as keeping my distance from that which is messy.  The unspotted are those who visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.  This is the pure religion of the Kingdom of God that is not of this “world”.  Or to flip things around, the “spotted” are those who don’t visit the afflicted.

The righteous Pharisee keeps himself “unspotted from the world” according to the ways of the world:

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: extortionists, unrighteous people, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week: I give a tenth of everything I get.  (Luke 18: 10-12 NET)

This is holiness-as-separateness. 

The Pharisee is spotted.

But Jesus is God with us.  His holiness is not like that.  His is a holiness that draws him into the mess, not away from it.  Jesus is the pure religion that is unspotted from the world.

The holiness of “the world” is the type of holiness that draws one away from the mess and the pain.  The holiness of Jesus, the holiness that characterizes “true religion”, draws him into the mess and the pain.  His holiness is not diminished.  Rather, in his self-giving love, it is made manifest.  It is enhanced.

True, we are not Jesus.  So this is not to minimize the complexity of life or our own fragility.  This is not a naive or arrogant self-righteousness that sees itself as the pure gift to all that is less.  In the waiting-for-all-to-be-set-right, that end that we long for but do not know, to follow Jesus is to follow him into the fray.  It is to get a little messy.  Or at least a recognition ultimate well-being is not tied to the avoidance of messiness.  Not only because this law of love that is the holiness of Jesus that is the holiness of God beckons us, but because of the metaphysical truth that “no man is an island”.  Fates are intertwined.  

Because I’m not separate from some abstract messiness that is “out there”.  Not really.

Our destiny, mine and yours, is the eternal Kingdom of God.  In the faith of this Kingdom lies a "pure religion" that is not of this world.

What is it to "belong" to Christ? (1 Cor 15:22-24)

During the Q&A portion of the 3rd session of the Universal Salvation and Christian Theology class that I'm taking online at The School of Peace Theology (this was several Saturdays ago - 4/21), I had the opportunity to ask Dr. Parry a question about 1 Corinthians 15:23.  I'd like to spend a few minutes tossing around a few ideas that didn't have a chance to fully develop in the immediate context of the Q&A.

Here are the verses:

For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.  But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; then when Christ comes, those who belong to him.  Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has brought to an end all rule and all authority and power.  (1 Corinthians 15:22-24 NET)

That whole “then when Christ comes, those who belong to him” part.  That's the part that I was curious about.

Specifically, what is "belonging"?  What does it mean to "belong" to Christ?

Dr. Parry's starting point (though not his settled ending point) was that those who “belong” to Christ are the church - those who have “accepted Jesus in faith”.  Belonging as such is an act of volition, a conscious choice that an individual makes herself.  She knows that she's making it, and if she doesn't know that she has made it then she hasn't made it.  Nobody can make this decision for her, and she cannot ultimately make it for anyone else.  There can be no exceptions with a strict exclusivism, not for children who perish too young to “accept Jesus”, the mentally disabled, or those who "never heard".  The inherent nature of "belonging" forbids it.  And that brings to attention the general idea that this exclusivist criteria must be met before the moment of physical death.  Within the context of universal salvation however (the topic of the class), the implication is that there are subsequent opportunities to "accept Jesus" after that moment in time "when Christ comes" - those who don't "belong" at this point may still yet "belong".  After all, a major theme of 1 Cor 15 is that Jesus has defeated death, so a soul's disposition towards God at an arbitrary moment in time is not given the final word over human history.  Nevertheless, belonging in the relevant sense is limited to those who have "accepted Jesus".  I'll call this the "exclusivist" definition of "belonging".

But what about those who, due to the time and place that they lived and died, never even heard of Jesus?  Those faithful Jews who, though "faithful", didn't "believe in Jesus"?  What of those whose hearts are inclined towards God and who love others yet don't possess the "proper vocabulary" or whose circumstances didn't permit a "proper" Christian faith (the majority of the human race)?  C.S. Lewis elucidates this well in Chapter 15 of The Last Battle in the character of Emeth:

But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.

By this criteria, we would say that Emeth belonged to Aslan prior to his awareness.  I'll call this the "inclusivist" definition of "belonging".

Or does belonging transcend any sort of moral assent or our “acceptance” of it all together?  Might we belong to Christ regardless of our awareness or even the "good intentions" of Emeth?   It isn't so much about whether a conscious faith in Jesus is “necessary” or not - "necessity" being characterized by the idea that God is looking for a minimum level of “faith” in order to grant "belonging".  It's that our belonging might entirely transcend any conscious awareness of it as such.  That we might all find ourselves caught up in "belonging to Christ" when that day comes, finding ourselves home in such a way that some of us might have known and anticipated while others of us might not.  Either way human knowledge and consent is simply not the point (though it's not to say that a belonging can be forever separated from the experience of it as such).  This idea of belonging ultimately rests on the premise that the original goodness of God, the goodness from which all things have come and to which all things are called, is irrevocable and fundamentally true regardless of our "acceptance" of it.  This is not to say that a "conscious faith", the type envisioned in the "exclusivist" category above, is excluded or minimized or is anything other than our telos.  It's just to say that while "faith" might be the means by which we perceive and participate in our belonging, "faith" is not what first originates that belonging.  It gets tricky I guess, but the idea is that belonging in the sense here is prior to "faith" - that belonging actually creates and sustains faith.  It recognizes that God works deep and mysteriously within the human person, well below the surface of awareness, conscious choice, and the time/place in which we were born.  In other words, we do and will "belong" and ultimately our experience will catch up to this fundamental fact.  Call this the "absolute" definition of "belonging".

Or we might look at it as Henri Nouwen does in The Return Of The Prodigal Son:

At issue here is the question: "To whom do I belong?  To God or to the world?"  Many of the daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God.  A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed.  A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me.  It takes me very little to raise me up or thrust me down.  Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves.  All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me. (p 42)

So in this case, my “belonging” is understood in terms of that which existentially defines me.  What religion a person belongs to, what she professes to believe, what sacraments one has partaken of, or what "sinner's prayers" one has prayed are largely irrelevant.  Belonging, in this case, is a matter of the soul's home and the reality in which a person participates.  It isn't all together opposed to the exclusivist/inclusivist characterizations above (though it has inclusivist overtones), but it is distinct in some ways.  It is primarily about our makeup, our state of being, our "ontology" and isn't concerned with exclusivism/inclusivism according to the way that the terms are generally used.  Call this the "ontological" definition of "belonging".

Each of these has it's own set of questions and complexities, but a universalist can be fine with any of these definitions in a way that is thoroughly Christian.  They aren't necessarily opposed to one another and may even represent a sort of progression - with a consciously understood and ontologically mature "faith" being the end toward which God mysteriously calls and forms us.

Random Thoughts: The Week of 3/25/16 to 4/1/16

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In his Meditation from Friday, 3/25/16 entitled "The View From The Bottom", Fr. Rohr writes:

"Only by solidarity with other people's suffering can comfortable people be converted.  Otherwise we are disconnected from the cross - of the world, of others, of Jesus, and finally of our own necessary participation in the great mystery of dying and rising."

A few thoughts:

1. The word "solidarity" is a carefully chosen word.  It is not "caring" about other's people's suffering (as in feeling a twinge of emotion or guilt when watching the news or a movie) though this is not a bad thing in and of itself.
2. It is not simply a long distance financial commitment to the suffering of others (though this is far, far, far from a bad thing).
3. It is solidarity with other people's suffering.
4. Solidarity implies that you also will suffer.  You too are affected.
5. Change that word "you".  I will suffer.  I am affected.
6. Solidarity leads to suffering.
7. But I don't want to suffer.  And it seems like the entirety of my life is set up to avoid it.  The "panem et circenses", the "bread and circuses", seeks to define my life.
8. Solidarity can only happen in love.  And love can only happen in solidarity with others.
9. Love leads to suffering.  The Way of the Cross.
10. Love, the manifestation of which is solidarity, also leads to conversion.
11. This "conversion" itself is a "participation in the great mystery of dying and rising."
12. Conversion  = participation.
13. Now what???

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Paul Ryan in a recent speech:

"There was a time when I would talk about a difference between "makers" and "takers" in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. "Takers" wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don't want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point.

So I stopped thinking about it that way—and talking about it that way. But I didn’t come out and say all this to be politically correct. I was just wrong. And of course, there are still going to be times when I say things I wish I hadn’t. There are still going to be times when I follow the wrong impulse."

It's impossible to pretend that the rhetoric that Ryan seeks to eliminate isn't prevalent.

Check this out - Who Said It: Fox News or Jesus?

Biased?  Perhaps.  But the question is not whether there is "bias" in the presentation, but whether the source material itself is real and being used in reference to broad groups of people (as opposed to addressing specific cases of abuse).  It represents a fundamental way of seeing the world, one in which all people get and are getting what they deserve.  Poor?  It's your fault.  The opportunities are there and are available to all without exception.  Government should get.  Out.  Of.  The.  Way.  I'm successful?  Wealthy?  I have earned it.  Me.  The system works!!

This is not true for me.  I have two wonderful parents who stayed married.  My health and basic needs were provided for.  I lived in safe neighborhoods growing up.  I went to safe schools where I could learn effectively.  I wasn't ANY more motivated than any other teenager, but my own lack of motivation was effectively covered up by extensive opportunity.  I was able to get into a good college.  My parents paid for it, and I graduated virtually debt free.    This lack of debt opened up opportunities - to travel a little bit, to buy a house, to save money, etc.  Would I have started dating my wife if I'd been living at home with my parents?  Through all of this, I made TONS of mistakes that I got away with where others haven't.  I have done things that could have ruined my life.

This is not to say that life is just pure randomness with no cause and effect.  It's just to say that where you start goes a long way in determining where you end up.

I'll be curious to see how this plays out within the political world.  Is this posturing, rhetoric and political gamesmanship, or something more?

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A walk from Thursday to Sunday of Holy Week with two of my favorite bloggers, Richard Beck and Brian Zahnd:

Thursday: To Hell With Symbolic (Richard Beck)

Friday: Good Friday: A World Indicted (Brian Zahnd)

Saturday: Awake, O Sleeper, And Rise From The Dead (Richard Beck)

Sunday: The Gardener (Brian Zahnd)

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Much of what marinates in my mind over the course of a week originates either directly or tangentially in the things I’ve read during the week, some of which is new, some was published earlier but is new to me, and some I’m returning to after having read it some time ago.  Among the dozens of excellent blog posts and articles that I read each week, here are a few that I found to be particularly profound, inspiring, challenging, enlightening, informative, memorable, or provocative for me personally.  I might even reference something with which I profoundly DISAGREE (which I’ll identify accordingly - there won’t be a need to guess!)

Owning Up to Torture (New York Times) – Eric Fair

The growing controversy over Georgia’s Indiana-style religious freedom bill, explained (Vox) – German Lopez

The Self and the Gospel (Eclectic Orthodoxy) – Brian Moore

Traditio Deformis (First Things) – David Bentley Hart

It’s Always Better to be More Gracious than God (Speaking Freely) – Matthew Frost

How the Soul Matures – Fr. Ron Rolhesier

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And lastly, a few quotes that I came across this past week:

"Life is lived forward, but is only understood backwards."
--Kierkegaard (as quoted in Walking With Grandfather by Michael Hardin)

"If the skill could not be practiced by anyone, anywhere, then it was useless."
--(Walking With Grandfather by Michael Hardin, p70)

One Story, Two Revelations, Four Voices: Reading Biblical Narrative Christocentrically (Brad Jersak)

Read the essay by Brad Jersak at Clarion Journal here.

A profound, thoughtful, and challenging essay regarding the multi-vocality of the Jewish and Christian scriptures.  Any Christian tradition - Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical - can benefit from the scholarship and arguments put forth here.

My interpretation of the argument put forth in the essay is that multi-vocality is inherent within scripture, and thus argues that the allegorical interpretations (edifying as they may be), the absurd harmonizations that render theological language equivocal, and the gatekeeper terminologies of "infallibility" and "inerrancy" are unnecessary at best, harmful at worst.

This multi-vocality isn't a bug, it's a feature.  This multi-vocality should be permitted to be what it is.

Childhood, an image of the Divine

First, click on this link to go to the website of A New Liturgy.  Press the play button at the top of the screen and listen to Chesterton's words being spoken aloud.  It's barely a minute long.  Listen first, read later.

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“The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grownup person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

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Imagine the child in this scene.  Perhaps you can't, never having seen or experienced it, or having forgotten it.  Perhaps you have better things to do.  Perhaps your own kids demand your attention.

Nevertheless, close your eyes and try for a moment.  Perhaps you've seen it somewhere.  A movie.  The park.

"Again!  Again!"  Laughter.

Rightly do we treasure childhood.  It's a crime to violate it, because it's a picture of humanity.  And what Mind conceived of and created it?  What Heart decreed that all of us, each and every one, should enter the world in this way?

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36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Mark 9:36-37 (NRSV)

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But when we receive the child in the name of Christ, the very childhood that we receive to our arms is humanity.  We love its humanity in its childhood, for childhood is the deepest heart of humanity - its divine heart; and so in the name of the child we receive all humanity.

God is represented in Jesus, for that God is like Jesus: Jesus is represented in the child, for that Jesus is like the child.  Therefore God is represented in the child, for that he is like the child.  God is child-like.  In the true vision of this fact lies the receiving of God in the child.

The Child In The Midst - George MacDonald

The Wrath Of God & The Bible, 3 Options? (Michael Hardin)

The following excerpt is taken from What the Facebook? by Michael Hardin, a compilation of roughly a year of Facebook posts.

The content of this post cuts right to the heart of many of the issues that I've been wrestling with over the last few years as it relates to the Bible, wrath, and the very nature of God and the Gospel.

What IS the Bible?
How far do we take "God is love" as an interpretive axiom?
In the end, is the ONLY way to be done with the "angry alcoholic in the sky" to extract the Bible from the umbrella of verbal plenary inspiration and infallibility?  Is this, then, to confirm that a "plain reading" DOES reveal a God who's wrath is ultimately just as axiomatic as love, as I often suspect?
And on, and on.

What I Believe (4) Aug 19 

Yesterday one of my FB friends from Melbourne asked me a question. She said, “The biggest problem I have is the one everyone has OT God can be the least loving thing imaginable, and yet the most loving at times also. NT God (as shown in Jesus) is nothing but loving. Jesus lost his temper pretty badly (only once that is recorded, granted), but frequently showed signs of frustration and what I'd call mild anger at the disciples and some of the crowd. I often wonder if there isn't a bit of 'selective editing' going on in the NT stuff to play down the anger side of Jesus (and hence, of God) or if the 'angry God' of the OT still exists but we chose to ignore him?”

The concept of the wrath of God is so deeply embedded in us that to understand what the Bible is doing with the concept can be difficult. Basically there are three positions one can take.

1. The texts that speak of God’s wrath or anger are literally true. God gets angry at sin, unrighteousness, idolatry, injustice and any number of other things. Heck, God gets angry if the ark of the covenant tips over and you try to help out! In this view, wrath is an attribute of God. This understands wrath as an affectus of God.

2. Texts that speak of the wrath of God are to be interpreted in the light of an emerging dissociation of the affective view (#1) and see wrath as an effect: God allows us to go our own way and suffer the consequences of our actions. This view uses Romans 1:18- 32 which begins by saying ‘the wrath of God is revealed from heaven’ and three times uses the verb ‘to give over’ with regard to the consequences of sin. Wrath in this view is not so much anger as it is resignation.

3. Both views #1 and #2 are grounded in a view of the Bible’s infallibility. However, if one is willing to come to the Bible critically, one can understand texts about God’s wrath as projections. That is, these texts are not really about God but instead reflect Israel’s and the church’s inability to break free from pagan notions of God’s wrath.

At one time or another, I have held all three views. I began at #1, moved to #2 in seminary and then have since moved to #3. My Melbourne friend is right to notice that there are two seeming contradictory trajectories in the Jewish Scriptures, sometimes God is like an angry alcoholic in the sky, at other times God is like a gentle grandmother. When these views are put together they create what I call a Janus- faced (or two- faced view of God), and this way of conceiving God has been the heritage of Christianity even going back into certain New Testament churches and documents.

When the early church sought to understand the character of God in the light of the revelation of Jesus what they produced was the doctrine of the Trinity. It took several hundred years for this to fully emerge and even then, there were splits, some deeper than others. There still remains a split today between the Eastern and Western churches on the Holy Spirit. It has never been completely settled. Today we stand at the cusp of a new Reformation, a time when Christians the world over are rethinking the doctrine of God. Who is this God we worship? How shall we understand God’s character? Is God like Jesus? What is the relation of Jesus to God? What is the relation of the various traditions about God in the Jewish Scriptures to the One Jesus called Abba? If I John says “God is Love” how does this statement play out in our thinking as an interpretive axiom? What is the role of the Passion and death of Jesus in the light of God’s love? These and many more questions can be raised.

The Big Hurdle is in the way we understand the issue of the authority and inspiration of Scripture. It is what sets apart view #3 from views #1 and #2. Those who are willing to rethink the Bible (and I don’t mean those who throw the Bible out, whom I call “fundamentalist” progressives), but to do the hard work of rethinking theology within the context of the larger historic Christian tradition, are the ones to whom we can turn fruitfully and find answers to these difficult questions. The fact is that just as the “fundamentalist” position is outdated, psychologically crippling, moldy and no longer intellectually viable, so also those who would throw out the theological baby with the ecclesial bathwater are just as ill informed and ungrateful for the real valuable positive gains that have also been made in Christian life and thought for the past 2000 years. We seek a third way, a genuine intelligent, spiritual, faith oriented, Jesus centered way. I believe this way is manifesting itself all over biblical scholarship and theology these days. I see it in hungry congregations and pastors willing to risk their ministries for the sake of the gospel. I am glad to be part of those who are helping move us into this wonderful new theological space that I believe is being created by the Spirit of Jesus.

Hell: The Nemesis of Hope? (Nik Ansell)

The essay "Hell: The Nemesis of Hope" was written by Nik Ansell and published in The Other Journal in 2009. Read the essay here.

An updated form of the essay also makes an appearance as the Afterword in Her Gates Will Never Be Shut by Brad Jersak.

A few citations from the essay:

Despite the Church’s curse, there is no one
so lost that the eternal love cannot
return—as long as hope shows something green
—Dante, Purgatorio, Canto III. 133–1351

The traditional claim that the eternal suffering of the impenitent serves to glorify God by revealing his justice reduces the revelation of God’s glory to the restoration of God’s honor, thus separating the glory of God from the glorification of creation.

It is worth reminding ourselves, especially in this age of ecological violence and crisis, that the annihilation and destruction of God’s good creation is precisely the aim and goal of evil, not evidence of its defeat. The destruction, including the self-destruction, of those made in God’s image represents a victory for the forces of darkness. In the transformation of everlasting punishment into final judgment, evil still has the last word.

But as this is an earthly place outside Jerusalem and as the “last days” are clearly understood as taking place within history, this is very different from the Gehenna of later rabbinic literature in which the Valley of Hinnom has become an underworld or otherworldly realm that has been in existence since the creation. Such a place can indeed be identified with the Hell of traditional Christian theology. But these later Jewish texts all come from a time after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 when the Jewish worldview was thrown into crisis, to be recast by the rabbis into a far less geographically rooted form.

Contrary to popular belief, no Jew in Jesus’s day was expecting God to bring about the end of the space-time universe. But the destruction of the temple, which was built to symbolize the creation, thus revealing God’s presence within it, would be seen as truly cataclysmic. For Jesus, this was God’s judgment on Israel, signaling nothing less than what we might call the end of the old world order. The only appropriate language was the language of de-creation.

It is significant that here, in the most sustained discussion of the general resurrection in the New Testament, there is no mention of Hell, either as eternal torment or as annihilation. But this should come as no surprise, I suggest, as the Christian doctrine of Hell, for all the appeals to Scripture that have been made on its behalf, has no biblical basis.

Generalizations have their limits, but a good generalization is generally true. More often than not, I suggest, the church has gone on to recapitulate the sins of Israel: calling God’s wrath down on sinners, setting itself “over” and “against” the world, hiding its true light under a bushel. The Roman Empire fell. Christendom was born. The Holy Roman Empire, as it came to be known, ruled the world, threatening all who would not toe the line with the fires of eternal torment. There is a place for nuanced historiography, but to those who were oppressed by the church when it was at the height of its powers, this would not be seen as a caricature. The secular critique of Christianity, for all its one-sidedness, is not without foundation.

If the Christian era came to an end with the dawn of the Enlightenment, which, in it's secular form, attacked the church for its evils, not least for its cruel doctrine of Hell, then instead of condemning it, should we not, first and foremost, ask whether the dawn of the modern age can be seen as God’s judgment against the church? Even as we may also ask whether, given the violence with which modernity has dealt with people of faith, God has now handed modernity over to its postmodern critics.

The good news of Gehenna is that for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, the attempt to invoke God’s judgment as an end in itself, as final, is revealed as a dead end. Such a spirituality does not belong to, and cannot be a part of, the life of the age to come. Thus, in looking back over church history at the rise and fall of the doctrine of Hell, we may be set free to develop an eschatology in which hope is allowed to triumph over fear.

St. Paul in the Trenches, Part 2 of 2

**Note, this is the 2nd of 2 posts on the GWC Bible Translation - otherwise known as "St Paul in the Trenches".  First post here.

“Does that matter?  What sort of timbre emerges from this muck and mire?  What rhythm, order, and tone?”

What emerges is unique.  Poetic.  Powerful.  I wish he'd done the entire New Testament.

It’s eye opening to compare translations.  From 1st Corinthians 15:19:

NIV: "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

GWC: "If the Christ exists for this world only and has no eternal existence, we are the most miserable of all the dwellers on this planet!"

Certainly these two translations don’t conflict with one another, but notice the subtle difference in emphasis.

Or Ephesians 1:9-12:

NIV: "he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.  In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory."

GWC: "Infinite and far-reaching beyond the bounds of all mortal vision is the wealth and power of that grace, so abundant in its wisdom and understanding, whereby there opens to the inner eye the wondrous revelation of His will, of His ever benevolent purpose, foreseen and fore-ordained in the Christ, which the gathering up and unfolding of the ages was to effect, even the subjection of all things to the Christ, the making of him as the sum and head of all as his consequent effect, a purpose to be carried out on earth as in heaven. Yes, the inheritance which we have now obtained is part of that consummating purpose, is in him, in whom we were first seen and known as the objects of this infinite purpose which subdues all things, destined to adorn his glory as we even now hope and expect by faith to do."

Wow.

What I find so compelling in this particular case is the poetic articulation of the cosmic nature of this Christ; his "eternal existence" which is "beyond the bounds of all mortal vision".  This "ever benevolent purpose" that is grounded in the Christ.

These words breathe differently.

I could provide other examples. Now this is obviously not a word for word translation.  I don't know how "scholarly" it is and I’ll leave that to others.  In general I’m quite conscious of the variations in translations, but in this case it doesn’t concern me.  Why not?  For several reasons I suppose, but mostly because I’ve yet to find a translation that so powerfully communicates this cosmic wonder, this love and complete victory of God in Jesus Christ, articulated with particular eloquence in 1 Cor 15:

"That is the only significance of that practice which obtains amongst some of you, whereby the living are baptised on behalf of those already dead. It means that this progressive victory over death will ultimately include all who have died. The purpose of the Christ penetrates far beyond the little sphere of this life. But if you think that the Christ only comes to you on earth and for this life, what significance has this rite of baptism on behalf of those already beyond its pale? Unless they too are changed by the infinite operation of the Christ life, the rite is meaningless. And if the dead rise not, if there be no such victory and struggle at work, what is the significance of present struggles? I have faced the beasts in the circus before the crowd at Ephesus, I have run every risk, endured every danger, and won through them successfully — that is your boast, and the glory which you accord me for my service of the Christ; but if in this daily death of mine there is no underlying meaning, if it does not mean that even now Christ in me is fighting his victory over death, and successfully putting it under his feet and rescuing me from it, then what is the use of it all? I would rather say with the disobedient “Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we shall die” (Is. xxii. 13) for there is no longer any meaning in my struggles. Beware! Do not let sleep overtake you, and your spiritual perception be cheated and fade."
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭15:29-32‬ ‭GWC‬‬

Christ in me
far beyond the little sphere of this life
the progressive victory over death
ultimately including those who have died
the infinite operation of the Christ life
fighting his victory over death
successfully putting it under his feet
and rescuing me from it.

Those are some of the phrases and images that have stuck with me.  They breathe.  They give me hope.  They proclaim Christ.  In all of human history, to whom else could these words be applied?

Cornish’s translation confronts me with this Christ's victory in ways that I’m unaccustomed to, ways that I cannot dismiss as the banal Christianese "hope" that quickly crumbles when I look closely.  Bleaker darkness reveals a brighter hope, the triumph of a cosmic benevolent Christ, Lord of space and time.

Seeing what men do to one another and God's seeming silence in the face of it, I can understand why he might have left the work of translation behind.  Nearly two thousand years had passed since the Kingdom had “come near”.  Billions of births and deaths.  Bill-yons.  There've been billions since, by the way.  That could wear on a person.  It might make you want to find some theological loopholes to tone it down a little bit.

He faced the choice to either plunge into the darkness of his own unique and time bound existence - into the unique yet hauntingly recurrent depths of the human condition and experience - and to let refined words of the Christ victory emerge anew, or to live in despair, having left the Greek text behind at the halls of the university.

I dare not minimize their power, nor limit the hope and victory that they proclaim.  If I read them as they're truly written, I can't.  And I don't want to.

Back to Part 1

St. Paul in the Trenches, Part 1 of 2

**Note, this is the 1st of 2 posts on the GWC Bible Translation - otherwise known as "St Paul in the Trenches".

While I do appreciate the feel of imitation leather and wispy paper, I often use a Bible App on my phone while at church.  (No, I’m not checking my fantasy football teams…..usually).  I’m not partial to any one translation and like having the option to flip through a few different versions on a given Sunday.

Now if I had to settle on a single translation it’d be the NRSV (though the app that I use doesn't have it).  My pastor uses the NKJV (having moved on from the NIV after many years, as have I), so when I want to follow along word for word I’ll go with that one.  The NET, CEB, HCSB, and the Message are some of the other translations that I’ll commonly use.  At other times I’ll turn to a translation that’s quite unfamiliar to me: the Orthodox Jewish Bible, the Tree of Life Bible, the Jubilee Bible.

While scanning the different translations available on the app, I noticed the GWC Translation - ”St. Paul From the Trenches 1916" - a translation of only 1st and 2nd Corinthians and the first 4 chapters of Ephesians.

And I love it.

By saying that “I love it”, I don’t want to imply that my relationship with the Bible is akin to a love affair, because it’s not.  Far from it actually. To be honest, I don’t buy ”the Bible as a Love Letter" trope - it strikes me as being rather…..(to keep things amicable)……disengaged with the actual text of the Bible. No, my relationship with the Bible is as messy and confusing as the Bible itself (whichever canon).  And yet something of this translation has fixed itself to me.

Now, I'm aware of the difficulty in translating the biblical texts.

Translators bring their own complex and highly personal theological presuppositions to the translation process.  They don't check their human selves at the door, passing through a magical sieve leaving only a mind purged of all but pure unsullied objectivity, masters standing over and above a perspicuous text.  Translations are thus inextricably tangled up with translators.  This is true no matter the time nor place nor stature of the translator.  Translation is thus as much an art as it is a science, a process involving the whole person and the person's surroundings.  That is, it involves words.

I’ve grown to love words, to appreciate their beauty and power, that beauty and power being found in both their precision and in their wideness.  They live and breathe, communicate what was, what is, what could be.  They connect people, a medium by which experiences are intimately shared and by which they live on.  A gift for words is truly a wonderful gift.  I admire the creative ability of the architects who build and create with the raw materials of these squiggly lines.

For all the perceived solidity of the finished product, however, words are also a dynamic thing; connected to culture, tied to symbols and experiences.  In the end though, they’re mere blots of ink spoken movements of air that have no meaning in and of themselves, no substance outside of shared experience and comprehension.  Language is born, it changes and evolves, and it dies.  A word or phrase that may once have been provocative or subversive may, over time, become stale or impotent.  As human understanding of reality grows and changes, language must grow and change with it.

So while the various Bible translations may ring at roughly the same frequency, they aren’t identical.  They simply aren’t.  Not only do they communicate different things, they each possess a unique timbre - a rhythm, order, and tone of their own that may resonate with the reader/listener in different ways *even when* they’re communicating something *substantially* similar.    One or two English words rendered differently, removed, added, put in a different order, etc. can significantly alter the meaning of a text.

Suffice it to say, it’s a conscious choice for me to turn to a number of different translations.

Back to St. Paul in the Trenches.

It has a cool backstory.

Gerald Warre Cornish, a professor of Ancient Greek at Manchester University, England in the early 20th century, is the author of the GWC. Cornish joined the English army during WW1 (I'm uncertain as to whether he was drafted or joined of his own accord), achieved the rank of Major, and was killed in action on September 16, 1916 at the age of 41.  Cornish began his translation of St Paul's letters during active service using only a Greek New Testament and King James Bible. The muddied journal housing the translation that later came to be known as "St. Paul in the Trenches" was found on his body, the words having quite literally been put to paper "in the trenches" of the "war to end all wars".

I’ve spent some time thinking about this backstory.

These are not words inked in the safety or sophistication of a warm library of dark wood, or bathed in the tranquility of firelight.  Flickering tongues of fire danced on a battlefield rather than within a hearth of sturdy brick.  There are no scholarly notes.  No board of directors nor co-translators.

It was penned in the midst of darkness, death, suffering, fear, and loss.  Bullets whizzing by. Bombs exploding. Cold, dirty, muddy.  Lonely.  I don’t believe this to be a sensationalized overstatement.

Does that matter?  What sort of timbre emerges from this muck and mire?  What rhythm, order, and tone?


Read part 2