Take time today to read this speech by Archbishop Charles Chaput. It begins:

The Catholic faith is not simply a collection of doctrines and ideas, or a body of knowledge, or even a system of beliefs, although all those things are important. At its root, Christianity is an experience: a life-changing, personal experience of the risen Jesus Christ. Everything else in the writings of St. Paul, and everything else in our life as Catholics, flows from that personal encounter with Jesus Christ. If we truly seek him, then we will always find him. But when we find him, we need to be ready for the consequences, because nothing about our lives can be the same.

This is the underlying theme of my book Who Do You Say That I Am? As Catholics, we highly value the Scriptures, our Tradition, the doctrines of the faith and our liturgy. But all of these are intended to be in service of our personal encounter with Christ; each one should direct us to interacting more deeply with the person of Jesus.

Too often there are two opposing trends in our attitude regarding our Catholic traditions. On the one hand, there are those we say that these traditions prevent a deep relationship with Christ; we need to jettison them and return to a “pure” practice of the faith like in the first century. This, however, is faulty reasoning: by looking to see how our forefathers (and foremothers) in the faith followed Christ we can be given insights into our own discipleship. It is spiritual hubris to think that we can simply follow Christ without any guidance from the giants of the faith that have come before us.

On the other hand, there are those who elevate our Catholic traditions to be the end of our faith, not the means to deepening it. They believe that man was made for our traditions, not traditions for man. This was clearly condemned by Christ himself in the Gospels, but unfortunately it seems to be human nature to elevate our own creations above the Creator.

As Archbishop Chaput reminds us, what we need is to have a new life in Christ – everything we do and believe should be directed towards that goal. It might be painful at times and it might (and probably will) involve suffering, but the result is beyond anything we can imagine.

I found this to be a wonderful little video:

H/t: Creative Minority Report

I can’t believe I’ve taken so long to blog about this story – it involves St. Francis (my favorite saint), Pope Benedict (my favorite pope), and Jesus Christ (my favorite incarnate God).

The Franciscans recently celebrated the 800th anniversary of the founding of their order, and Pope Benedict reminded them of the process in which Francis renewed the Church – he first renewed himself, then his order, then the Church:

“Like St. Francis, always begin with yourselves. If you prove capable of renewing yourselves in the spirit of the Gospel, you will continue to help the pastors of the Church to make her face, as the bride of Christ, ever more beautiful.”

What I have always loved about St. Francis is his intense desire to be molded into the likeness of Christ. As Pope Benedict said, “the ‘Poverello’ became a living Gospel, capable of attracting men and women of all times to Christ, especially the young who prefer radical commitment to half measures.” This is what attracts people to Christ: not halfhearted, fearful and watered-down explanations, but the bold living and preaching of the Gospel. This is why I love the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal so much – they preach the Gospel with every part of their lives, from how they live in brotherhood to how they care for the poor to how they preach the truth of Christianity, even when the world rejects it.

If we want to renew the Church, we must first renew ourselves.

St. Francis, pray for us!

Yesterday I posted about the “oddness” of Easter, linking to an excerpt from an N.T. Wright book. The final example given by Wright of the oddness of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection might be a bit hard to understand at first:

The fourth and final strange feature of the Resurrection narratives, which may call into question many of the Easter sermons that I and others regularly preach, is the absence of any mention of the future Christian hope.

Almost everywhere else in the New Testament, where you find people talking about Jesus’ resurrection, you find them also talking about our own future resurrection, the final hope that one day we will be raised as Jesus has been raised.

But the Gospels never say anything like, “Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death” (not that many first-century Jews doubted that there was); or, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die” (most people believed something like that anyway); or better, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised at the last.”

No: insofar as the event is interpreted in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it has a very “this-worldly” meaning, relating to what is happening here and now. “Jesus is raised,” they say, “therefore he is the Messiah; he is the true Lord of the whole world; therefore we, his followers, have a job to do: we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world.”

It is not, “Jesus is raised, therefore look up into the sky and keep looking because one day you will be going there with him.” Many hymns, prayers, and Christian sermons have tried to pull the Easter story in that direction, but the line of thought within the Gospels themselves is, “Jesus is raised, therefore God’s new world has begun, and therefore we, you, and everybody else are invited to be not only beneficiaries of that new world but participants in making it happen.”

Wright is addressing the common charge that the Gospels were written well after the events they recount and therefore contain added theological reflections and downright inventions that the later Church created. For example, many who deny the resurrection claim that the apostles had a purely spiritual encounter with Christ after the crucifixion and then invented these stories to justify them.

Yet the actual stories contained in the Gospels reflect a very early tradition, dating back to the time of Christ himself. Paul, for example, writing 20-30 years later, has contemplated the implications of the resurrection and applies it to the Christian life (see 1 Corinthians 15). This is an understandable development within the Church. Yet the Gospels offer no such reflection. If you notice, the story of the crucifixion takes up a lot of the text, yet the resurrection does not – it is almost an afterward to each Gospel. This is because the crucifixion was something they could quickly understand; there is much Scriptural support for it (such as Isaiah’s suffering servant). Yet the resurrection is a completely new event – there is no precedent for it in the history of Israel. So the initial reaction to it was simply to proclaim it (see the first sermons in Acts), not necessarily understand it or interpret it.

So the fact that the Gospels do not apply any eschatological sense to Christ’s resurrection is actually a good sign of the earliness of the tradition being used: nothing is added on to the story, it is just recounted as it actually happened.

Last week Larry Hurtado, the author of Lord Jesus Christ (one of my all-time favorite books), wrote an article for Slate entitled “Why Was Jesus Crucified?” (h/t Mike Aquilina). Hurtado writes,

Indeed, one criterion that ought to be applied more rigorously in modern scholarly proposals about the “historical Jesus” is what we might call the condition of “crucifiability”: You ought to produce a picture of Jesus that accounts for him being crucified. Urging people to be kind to one another, or advocating a more flexible interpretation of Jewish law, or even condemning the Temple and its leadership—none of these crimes is likely to have led to crucifixion. For example, first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus tells of a man who prophesied against the Temple. Instead of condemning him, the governor decided that he was harmless, although somewhat deranged and annoying to the Temple priests. So, after being flogged, he was released.

This is an important point: if your “Jesus” is not one that so upset the Roman authorities that they kill him in humiliating fashion, then it is not the true historical Jesus.

Yesterday I posted about Bart Ehrman, who has made it his business to find all the “problems” with the Bible. For Ehrman, if two tellings of the same story are not completely identical, then someone is lying.

On the other hand, N.T. Wright has a new book coming out which discusses the Passion and Resurrection, explaining what the Gospel writers intended by their respective perspectives. Christianity Today excerpts a portion in which Wright explores the “oddness” of the resurrection accounts, and how this oddness gives them more credence, not less. He mentions four particular aspects of these stories:

1) The strange absence of Scripture in the Resurrection accounts.
2) The presence of women as the primary witnesses.
3) The portrait of Jesus himself.
4) The absence of any mention of the future Christian hope.

The second and third points are pretty well-known, but I have to admit that I have never considered the other two points. Be sure to read the whole article.

Bart Ehrman has gotten a lot of press in recent years over his supposed debunking of the Bible. A former Evangelical, Ehrman has left the Christian faith over the supposed contradictions he has found in the Bible.

Last week, he was on The Cobert Report and frankly, Cobert took him to school:

I have to admit, I’ve never read any of Ehrman’s books. After seeing him on Cobert, I’m not inclined to – his arguments are laughably weak. For example, in the clip above he claims that Jesus is not presented as divine in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark or Luke. This is an old argument that has been debunked on both the popular and scholarly level. The truth is that Ehrman doesn’t understand how 1st century writers like Matthew would express Christ’s divinity. (I’ll give you a hint: it’s not by writing “Jesus is God!”) Pope Benedict shows the fallacy in Ehrman’s claim in Jesus of Nazareth and a fuller treatment can be found in Larry Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ. Scholarship has shown decisively that the early Christians considered Jesus divine from the first days of the Church. Moderns may reject his divinity, but it is dishonest to claim that the early Christians and writers of the New Testament did.

Update: Dean gives some informative details in the comments regarding Ehrman’s previous life as a Christian as well as why he left the faith.

Hallelujah! He is risen!

Lo! I tell you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed, in a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound,
and the dead will be raised imperishable,
and we shall be changed.
For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable,
and this mortal nature must put on immortality.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable,
and the mortal puts on immortality,
then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?”
The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:51-57

Click here for my Sunday scriptural reflection.

St. Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s descent into Hell.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me,
from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.
Yet thou art holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In thee our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
To thee they cried, and were saved;
in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed.
But I am a worm, and no man;
scorned by men, and despised by the people.
All who see me mock at me,
they make mouths at me, they wag their heads;
“He committed his cause to the LORD;
let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
Yet thou art he who took me from the womb;
thou didst keep me safe upon my mother’s breasts.
Upon thee was I cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God.
Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help.
Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast;
my strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue cleaves to my jaws;
thou dost lay me in the dust of death.
Yea, dogs are round about me;
a company of evildoers encircle me;
they have pierced my hands and feet –
I can count all my bones — they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
and for my raiment they cast lots.
But thou, O LORD, be not far off!
O thou my help, hasten to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog!
Save me from the mouth of the lion,
my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen!
I will tell of thy name to my brethren;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee:
You who fear the LORD, praise him!
all you sons of Jacob, glorify him,
and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
and he has not hid his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.
From thee comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the LORD!
May your hearts live for ever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD;
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the LORD,
and he rules over the nations.
Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and he who cannot keep himself alive.
Posterity shall serve him;
men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
that he has wrought it.
Psalm 22

I have longed to eat this meal with you before I suffer.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently finished reading Cur Deus Homo by St. Anselm. From this work developed the theory of atonement called “penal substitution” (note I don’t call it a doctrine nor do I wholly credit it to Anselm). This theory goes something like this:

Man sinned against God and thus in justice deserved punishment. Since the offense was against an infinite God, the punishment deserved to be infinite as well. But since it was committed by man, only man could receive the punishment. Jesus, as both God and man, was able to represent man but also accept an infinite punishment. His death thus substitutes for our punishment of death.

Or put another way: I am found guilty of murder and am sentenced to death. However, an innocent man (who happens to be the judge’s son) offers to die in my stead. So he is executed and I am set free.

I think it should be clear from the second explanation the problem with this theory: how is it just to kill an innocent man instead of a guilty one, even if he volunteers for the punishment?

Anselm himself uses a different analogy, which is a bit better: the people of a kingdom reject their king and the king decides to punish them. His son, however, does a great service for the king and the king grants him anything he desires as a reward. The son choose pardon for the people.

This analogy, it seems to me, comes closer to the theory of fiscal substitution. In this theory, we owe a debt to God we cannot pay (and Anselm often uses debt language in Cur Deus Homo). However, Jesus offers to pay this for us if we follow him. This is more understandable to me, for if I had a debt to the bank there is nothing against justice if someone else were to volunteer to pay that debt (and anyone can feel free to contact me for my mortgage payoff information).

Thus I am more apt to accept the theory of fiscal substitution over penal substitution. And yet…Jesus died for us. He died a horrible, humiliating death to atone for our sins. This is how he paid our debt for us; it was not just a financial loan – our sins literally brought death upon us.

Yet why does the death of an innocent man help us who are guilty? Perhaps, in the Incarnation, Jesus becomes part of the guilty race of men. He no longer is really innocent of the charges against man – he takes humanity on so completely that he too is guilty. So his death for our sins is not against justice. So although I’m uncomfortable wholeheartedly accepting the theory of penal substitution, there does seem to be a great deal of value in it.

I think the key is to realize that no theory fits completely. If you go too far with any one, it will fall apart. We can speculate for eternity how Christ’s death atones for our sins, but ultimately it comes down to this: his death does save us and I’m very thankful for that fact.

Perhaps I should use this beautiful video to promote my upcoming book on the titles of Jesus:

H/T: Archdiocese of Washington

I just finished reading Cur Deus Homo by St. Anselm. It was my second reading of the book, the first being almost 15 years ago shortly after I became Catholic. Although not as well-known as classics such as Confessions by St. Augustine, Cur Deus Homo is one of the most influential books ever written. It is the foundational text for the theory of atonement know as “penal substitution”: the belief that man deserved death for his sins, but Christ as the God-man was able to die in our stead, thus taking the punishment we deserve. This is the most widely-held theory of atonement in Evangelical Protestant circles today.

I have a number of difficulties with the penal substitution theory, which I’ll attempt to address in a later post, but for now I’m more interested in the acceptance of this theory in Evangelical circles. At the time of the Reformation, Anselm’s theory reigned supreme in the West (it never gained traction in the East), and it was assumed as true by both Catholics and Protestants. However, it is a bit odd that Protestants have accepted Anselm’s arguments so readily. First. Anselm explicitly argues from reason, not the Scriptures. The whole purpose of Cur Deus Homo is to show to the “infidels” (i.e. Jews and Muslims) why God had to become man and die. Since these peoples don’t accept the authority of the New Testament, Anselm bases his arguments on reason, not revelation. There are few Scriptural references in the text and none are part of the main argument. This does not mean his arguments are contra Scripture, but considering the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, I find their wholesale acceptance of Anselm’s arguments ironic.

Furthermore, Anselm’s theory was quite innovative for his time. Penal substitution is not found widely in the Fathers, and it is only after Anselm that it becomes a “tradition.” Thus it seems to be the type of theory that Protestants are most leery of: a later tradition “added on” to the purity of the Gospel. Yet it endures as the heart of the Evangelical message.

Of course, proponents of penal substitution would argue that it is biblical and clearly in the sacred text. I’m not so sure. There is plenty of talk in the New Testament of the fact that Jesus’ death saves us, but very little as to why this is so. Also, if it is so clear, why did it not become prominent within the Church until the Middle Ages and then only after it had first been shown by reason alone?

Regardless of Evangelical acceptance of this theory, there is much value in the theory of penal substitution, but I also think much is problematic with it. I’ll try to address those concerns in another post.

My servant, the Just One, will justify many by taking their sins on himself.

- Morning Prayer, Antiphon 3, Tuesday of Holy Week