Telos Spring 2009 Issue

TELOS

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A WILLIAMs Journal of Christian Discourse

New Beginnings

On the Campus, On the Horizon

+ Vadis: Whither Goest Thou Quo Climb into the Mercy Seat Retracing the Resurrection SPRING 2009

letter from the

editor

Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 2 Corinthians 5:17

To be in Christ means to be born again, to become new. We are not new creatures because of something we do or don’t do, it is through God that things are transformed. To kick off our inaugural issue we have chosen to focus on “New Beginnings.” 2 Corinthians speaks of the passing of old things. This means that a transition will take place, a passage from one state, stage, subject, or place to another; a movement, perhaps a development, or even evolution. So it is with this guarantee of new things that we should reflect on our telos, from the Greek word or “purpose,” “goal,” or “fulfillment.” This word encompasses an entire collection of thoughts and philosophy from Aristotle to Kant, but for us, telos represents a direction that can only be found through God. So in this moment, on the horizon of transformation and transition we invite everyone to consider the newness and transcendent purpose discovered in Christ.

In this season of blossoming flowers, glorious spring weather, the close of another semester and for some the end of their time as college students, we must be purposeful through transition. It’s important to recognize that a new beginning refers not only to the opening of doors, but also to their closing. Newness, revival, resurrection and purpose can come with the demise and death of certain things, just as the death of Jesus Christ came with the promise of resurrection and the renewal of all creation. So in this new season, we pray that you will reflect on the new direction that God might be revealing to you. In this first issue of the Telos we hope to present an eclectic, yet cohesive collection of writing. Each piece—ranging from a short story about the woes of childhood in Nigeria, to a theological examination of the Pelagian Controversy—testifies to the everyday presence of God on the Williams campus. As we take our first step into our new beginning as a publication we invite you to do the same, for “behold, new things” are on the horizon.

God Bless,

{editor-in-chief } Virginia Cumberbatch ’10 {executive editor} Cale Weatherly ’09 {sciences and humanities editor} Madelyn Labella ’09 {creative arts editor} Andrew Chen ’11 {layout director} Yue-Yi Hwa ’11 {business manager} Shawn Woo ’09 {faculty advisors} Satyan Devadoss Ji-Young Um {contributors} Father Gary Caster Yue-Yi Hwa ’11 Madelyn Labella ’09 Caleb Miaw ’11 Melinda Misener ’09 Anthony Nguyen ’10 Stella Onochie ’09 Adam Stoner ’11 Inez Tan ’12 Peter Tierney ’10 Cale Weatherly ’09 Shawn Woo ’09 {layout} Tasha Chu ’11 Sarah Stone ’09 Emily Yu ’11

{purpose}

The Williams Telos is a journal dedicated to the expression of opinions and perspectives informed by the Christian faith.

{contact}

Email 10vac@williams.edu with questions, comments, subscriptions or contributions.

{thanks}

We are indebted to the Cecil B. Day Foundation, the Chaplains’ Office and College Council.

Back cover photo by lrargerich (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrargerich/2669155906/) available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license

the WILLIAMS

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TELOS SPRING 2009

Blindsided

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Yue-Yi Hwa

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Anthony Nguyen

How Many

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Melinda Misener

The Theology of Grace

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Madelyn Labella

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Caleb Miaw

Untitled

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Peter Tierney

Retracing the Resurrection

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Madelyn Labella & Shawn Woo

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Cale Weatherly

Sabbath

27

Inez Tan

Quo Vadis

28

Stella Onochie

Eucharist

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Fr. Gary Caster

Untitled

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Adam Stoner

Getting hit hard by the Book of Mark

Pursuing Jonah Prophecy, purpose, and fatalism in the Hebrew Bible

Free will, divine power, and agency in the fifth century and today

Freedom from, yet in, Life Through the lenses of Andrei and Pierre in Tolstoy’s War and Peace

A historian’s assessment of the resurrection claim

Nearly Wholly Innocent A meditation on Nick Cave’s song “The Mercy Seat”

Whither goest thou

Blindsided

Getting hit hard by the book of Mark I

02

By Yue-Yi Hwa

cringe at the term “legalism.” The spirit as well as the letter of the law! I cry, basking in my enlightenment. Yet I cannot comfortably pat myself on the back when it comes to appreciating Biblical narratives: often I look only at bare plot lines, ignoring the entrancing textures and (literally) dozing off in front of my Bible.

Once in a while I am jolted awake with a realization: as much as I condemn the Pharisees for paring the God thing down to tithing and mildew, I mirror their bigotry whenever I reduce the Bible thing to arguments and events. I most recently caught myself in textual legalism – confining an exquisitely crafted story to a cut-and-dried Jesus repertoire of healings, teachings and miracles – while reading Mark 8:22-9:13.

The chronology of this passage parallels that of the preceding section: first, healing from a physical impairment; next, a challenge to the disciples; finally, a startling glimpse of who Christ really is. In the first portion, Mark 7:31-8:21, we witness the healing of a deaf-mute, the feeding of four thousand men and a discourse on Jesus’ miracles.

The second sequence begins with Jesus healing a blind man (8:22-26). Like the deaf-mute healing that opened the first cycle, this restoration takes place away from the gawking mob, with an outlandish rigmarole from the Christ, and in fulfillment a Hebrew prophecy that anticipated the liberating Savior.

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Then will the lame leap like a deer,

and the mute tongue shout for joy. (Isaiah 35:5, 6a, NIV) Unlike the deaf-mute healing, however, this is a two-step process. After Jesus spits on the man’s eyes and puts his hands on them, the man declares, “I can see people; they look like trees walking around.” Only when Jesus again touches the man’s eyes are “his eyes… opened, his sight… restored, and he saw everything clearly” (8:24, 25).

Mark proceeds to layer this transformation (blindness to murky sight to true clarity) on top of the sequential pattern from the first cycle (healing to challenge to revelation). To wit: after healing the blind man, Christ poses a question to his disciples, not how to feed the crowd that had been following Jesus (8:1-10), but who they think he is. Peter declares: “You are the Christ” (8:29).

I can only aspire to Peter’s audacious faith, but my study Bible points out that “Christ” is a Greek term for “anointed one” which appears only seven times in Mark’s gospel and carries national associations with the anticipated military conqueror-king. It soon becomes clear that this politically triumphant sort of Lord is precisely what Peter has in mind: once Christ speaks of his imminent death, Peter reproaches him. The once-blind man saw men as trees, Peter saw Jesus as man.

The Williams Telos

And just as the once-blind man soon gains full sight, so Peter soon gains more vision than he’d bargained for. Called the Transfiguration, this preview of Jesus’ majesty takes place once Jesus has drawn a small number of disciples away from the crowd, as he did in the first cycle. In the first sequence, he led the Twelve to a boat; this time he leads Peter, James and John up a mountain. In the first cycle, they were compelled to see the mass feedings in the context of faith rather than nutrition; now they are forced to see Jesus in the context of his glory – clad in dazzling white and flanked by Elijah and Moses – proving him to be so much more than an itinerant preacher.

Bewildered by this splendor, Peter stammers out an offer to set up tents for the three spiritual giants. The disciples had offered an equally obtuse response towards the end of the first set of events: when Jesus cautioned them against the willful disbelief that the Pharisees epitomized, they concluded, “It is because we have no bread” (8:16). Jesus’ reply is scathing: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up? … And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up? … Do you still not understand?” (8:17-21) Every time I read this passage, I feel somewhat – fine, “very” – smug vis-à-vis the half-witted disciples. Then sometimes God nudges me to admit that I’m just as silly as they are. Not only because I ignore the truths that God waves in my face, but also because of my ironic oblivion to the truths embedded in these accounts of the disciples being oblivious.

However I try to spin it, the connections in this passage aren’t just parallels to prior events in the book, but also to my life. Like the disciples who needed to witness two crowd feedings, I need two rounds of stories and teaching in this passage before it even dawns on me that I am blind. Like the disciples who had to be whisked away in a boat and up a mountain, I need to ditch my preoccupations and textual assumptions in order to see more of my God. And as Jesus spits on the blind man’s eyes – a crass gesture to any able-bodied spectator but a revelation to someone without sight – so God graciously fills his word with metaphors and stories that I can comprehend, but which must be so crude from the perspective of heaven. I am enlightened; I am implicated.

As clumsy as the disciples and I may be, there is a comforting upward trajectory in the passage.

Jesus reminds us that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4; Deut. 8:3), and here the disciples progress from discussing a lack of loaves, to marveling at improbably multiplying bread, to contemplating their savior, “the Bread of Life who came down from heaven” (John 6:35, 41). Furthermore, every time Jesus challenges the Twelve, they proffer whatever paltry offerings they have, and see these amplified exponentially.

Christ took seven loaves and gave a feast; he took Peter’s inkling of God and gave him a picture of glory. And when I let him, he takes my literary legalism and gives me words of life.

Every time I read this passage, I feel smug vis-à-vis the disciples.

Then sometimes God nudges me to admit that I’m just as silly as they are.

Spring 2009

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Pursuing Jonah Prophecy, purpose,

and fatalism

in the Hebrew Bible

By Anthony Nguyen

The Book of Jonah, despite comprising only four brief chap-

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The Williams Telos

YUE-YI HWA

ters, is one of the most fascinating tales in the Hebrew Bible.

Though unidentifiable with any of the customary biblical genres, scholars usually group it with the other prophetic books. Delving through its layers of meaning is a perplexing task due to the book’s fantastical plot and numerous allusions; however, in examining the Book of Jonah, readers will notice that it parallels the Book of Ecclesiastes on many points of imagery and motif. Ecclesiastes, a seemingly morose book, is an example of wisdom literature, concerning itself with Koheleth’s existential ponderings about life’s pointlessness and his interior battles with despair. Jonah, God’s reluctant prophet, also struggles with his own sense of uselessness, first fleeing from God’s service and remaining conflicted even after saving Nineveh. Although scholars date the Book of Jonah as written a few centuries before the Book of Ecclesiastes, we see that the Jonah’s interactions with God and nature addresses many of the issues brought up in Ecclesiastes’s philosophical wrestling over fatalism. Viewed through this lens, Jonah’s character becomes the prophetic embodiment of the human descent toward hopelessness as the story itself assumes an allegorical role to proclaim hope against Koheleth’s ostensible message that “[a]ll is futile!”1 The Book of Jonah begins with a dual prophecy and command for Jonah to “[g]o at once to Nineveh… and proclaim judgment

upon it.”2 The first sentence sets up the impression that Jonah is to follow in the footsteps of Abraham, Samuel, and the other great prophets by responding to God’s call with the familiar reply “Here I am.”3 However, in a twist of that familiar type, Jonah does not make any verbal response in criticism or support of God, and instead “start[s] out to flee to Tarshish from the LORD’s service.”4 Jonah’s behavior is in stark contrast to the paragon of prophetic behavior in Elijah, who “proceeded to do as the LORD had bidden” in an immediate response to God’s similar command to “Leave this place.”5 God’s revelation of the Ninevites’ wickedness ironically reveals Jonah’s wickedness more so than theirs. Contrary to the biblical convention of prophets who are decisively obedient to God’s call, Jonah attempts to evade God by fleeing to Tarshish, a city that not only lies in the opposite direction of Nineveh, but also was famed for luxury and pleasure.

This search for worldly pleasure is a major motif in Ecclesiastes. Koheleth, the supposed wise son of King David to whom Ecclesiastes is attributed, claims he “gained more wealth than anyone one else before [him] in Jerusalem.”6 He amasses houses, vineyards, slaves, and all sorts of dazzling treasures, denying himself no wordly enjoyment, but this provides him little satisfaction. These materialistic possessions actually serve to highlight the impermanence of life even further, for such fortunes are inevitably handed “on to be the portion of somebody who did not toil for it.”7 Koheleth thus laments the futility of attaining earthly wealth because he does not gain any immutable or lasting value from perishing possessions. Jonah’s decision to elude God by heading toward Tarshish threatens to leads him down the same path Koheleth traveled, abandoning hope in the face of life’s seeming futility. This flight symbolizes the futile search for personal meaning in the shallow pleasures of physical possessions.

Jonah, rejecting God’s command to prophesy to Nineveh about its impending punishment, does so without giving any explicit reason, leaving readers in suspense as to why he dares to thwart God’s will. Only later, after God forgives and pardons Nineveh does Jonah, in a fit of childish temper, explain his motives. Jonah gives only an indirect answer, claiming that he fled to Tarshish in the first place because he knew all along that the LORD was “a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger… renouncing punishment.”8 Nineveh’s future is supposedly clear to Jonah from the beginning. By acknowledging his firm belief in God’s mercy, Jonah implicitly claims to know the mind of God: God would have saved Nineveh whether or not he came to announce the prophecy.

Although God’s pardon of Nineveh instigates the occasion for Jonah’s bemoaning, the real reason behind Jonah’s grief is his belief that he is a useless instrument of an unchangeable fate. Jonah flees God believing that his actions are futile if they can not effect any change. Koheleth understands his life in the same light when he “ascertained… that the actions of even the righteous and the wise are determined by God.”9 Both Jonah and Koheleth view their destiny to be rigid and static. Therefore, from Jonah’s perspective, there is no reason to be bothered to do God’s bidding when all events have already been predestined. A despairing Jonah, confronting God about the value of his own life, shows himself to be possessed by the same hopelessness that also engulfs Koheleth.

In many ways, Jonah’s internal struggles parallel Koheleth’s existential strife over his purpose in life. For one, Jonah questions the purpose of his existence—to the point of begging the LORD to “take [his] life, for [he] would rather die than live.”10 Jonah’s emotional state actually mirrors that of Koheleth, who says “And so I loathed life,” because like Jonah, he had come to understand human life as a pointless activity already determined beforehand by fate.11 Jonah, by phrasing his nearsuicidal thoughts as a question to God, makes his despair all the more deplorable in that asking for death is an even greater rejection of God’s will than his refusal to travel to Nineveh. It implicitly

The real reason behind Jonah’s grief is his belief that he was a useless instrument of an unchangeable fate

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calls into question God’s purpose in giving life to him, and ultimately is a repudiation of the LORD Himself. His request for death betrays a callous selfishness and unconcern for human life in general, because Jonah completely disregards the joyful fact that God saves “more than one hundred and twenty persons,” who have all repented of their wickedness, to self-absorbedly focus on the seeming futility of his prophecy.12 This forlorn attitude is so strongly identified with Jonah that his character has become an allegory for the despair resulting from a disheartened resignation to fate.

Wind imagery is a crucial motif in both Jonah and Ecclesiastes.

The author of the Book of Jonah uses the wind allegorically to proclaim hope in God against self-destroying despair. Wind acts as a transient force, fluid and ever-changing. Its fleeting nature is an excellent metaphor to apply to life’s vicissitudes. Koheleth claims that he has “observed all the happenings beneath the sun, and… found that all is futile and pursuit of wind.”13 To pursue the wind is to engage in an impossible act; there is no hope of knowing where the wind is headed next or how long it will last.

In Ecclesiastes, the wind is used as a metaphor emphasizing the ephemeral aspects of human activity, such as food, wealth, and wisdom, in addition to being used to underscore the brief span of a human life—“man’s lifebreath.”14 This image strongly alludes to the second Creation story in Genesis, when God “blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.”15 By referring back to the Creation in Genesis, the author of Ecclesiastes acknowledges that life is from God, whose very breath is the source of living humanity. When interpreted as a metaphor for the supernatural, the phrase “pursuit of wind” takes on a more deeper meaning of pursuing a life with God, who is omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal—the opposite of transient. The phrase succinctly articulates the Israelites’ attempts to understand God and His often mysterious methods. It is ostensibly contradictory to use the same image to symbolize that which is ephemeral along with He who is eternal. And because the metaphor is found within the gloomy context of Ecclesiastes, the connotation of futility remains strongly attached to the notion of seeking God. Hence, Koheleth is able say, “Let not your throat be quick to bring forth speech before God. For God is in heaven and you are on earth.”16 Koheleth claims it is not only futile to seek earthly pleasures, it is also futile to seek God in heaven since “the same fate is in store for all.”17 Koheleth’s words also imply that God is stationary, as if He is fixed in place in the celestial sphere and is unmoved by human prayers, whether in supplication or thanksgiving. This grim idea of The Williams Telos

divine transcendence is a direct contradiction of the Psalms’ poetic portrayal of God as the LORD who is approachable and prepared to give assistance.18 The Book of Jonah corrects Ecclesiastes’s conception of God as aloof and unresponsive. After Jonah sets sail, “the LORD cast a mighty wind upon the seas, and… the ship was in danger of breaking up.”19 This scene heavily alludes to the first Creation story, which describes “a wind from God sweeping over the water.”20 This reference to Genesis counters Ecclesiastes’s allusion to Creation. Whereas Ecclesiastes compares the life of a human to a breath to emphasize the transient nature of human existence, the Book of Jonah implies that the story is to be interpreted as a divine act of re-creation. God intends to erode away the qualities of Jonah that would lead him down the path toward hopelessness so as to conform him more closely to His image. God is shown actively intervening in the natural order to guide Jonah toward a perspective of hope. This portrays Him as a God who spontaneously acts to protect and inspire mankind to individual and moral development.

The wind that God sends blows Jonah off-course, preventing him from reaching his intended destination of Tarshish. As a city reputed for its lifestyle of luxury, it symbolizes the indulgent path that Koheleth followed to search for personal meaning. God, in sending the wind to stop Jonah, affirms Koheleth’s insight that it is indeed a futile path that holds only sorrow for the follower. In addition to preventing Jonah from traveling further down the path of despair, the wind summons Jonah to wake up from his spiritual slumber. Recall that in Ecclesiastes, the wind is used as a symbol of pointless searching and ephemeral goals. However, in the Book of Jonah, God sends the wind to pursue Jonah, who is the embodiment of fatalistic hopelessness.

In a shrewd inversion of the metaphor in Ecclesiastes, the wind heralds Jonah to his original calling as a prophet of God and summons him to a life of purpose in God’s service. The wind becomes a sign of hope, driving Jonah to wake up out of his complacency.

In addition, the wind itself is a messenger personifying the linea-

ments of the prophetic office: proclaiming the will of God. Thus, it acts as the prophetic predecessor to Jonah, passing on its prophetic mission to Jonah. The shipmates, terrified of the storm that is threatening to tear apart the ship witness Jonah’s acceptance of the prophetic mission when he declares, “I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made both sea and land.”21 In recognition of God’s authority as the Creator, Jonah assents to God’s plan for him and allows himself to be tossed overboard in order to quell the sea. Within the belly of the fish, he is ritually separated from civilization, preparing himself spiritually to meet the demands of the prophetic ministry. This exclusion from humanity recalls how Elijah goes “into hiding by the Wadi Cherith… where ravens brought him bread and meat every morning and every evening.”22 Jonah spends the time in solitary confinement contemplating and praying to God, culminating in his expiating song of praise. He says, “I thought I was driven away [o] ut of your sight…You brought my life up from the pit.”23 He understands his life was heading toward a pit of self-loathing until the wind spurred him up to call upon the LORD’s name.

In contrast to his first reaction to flee upon hearing God’s summon, Jonah prays to God for the first time within the fish’s belly, revealing that he has SARAH STONE acquired enough hope in God to believe that He listens and will lift up those who ask. This is Jonah’s first step in the process of his converting from a fatalistic thinker to a true prophet.

Nevertheless, Jonah opposes God’s judgment by bemoaning His act of mercy upon Nineveh, implying that he desired not the city’s survival but its destruction. Since this callous desire is not fulfilled by God, he succumbs to feeling that his efforts have been worthless and futile. This uncovers Jonah’s lingering reluctance to trust fully in God; he still has doubts of his own significance as a prophet. This irony is significant because it prepares the way for the story to pass its final judgment against the despair embodied in Jonah.

In anguish about God’s judgment, Jonah, behaving like a sulking child, leaves the city and sits facing it. Then “God provided a

ricinus plant, which grew up over Jonah, to provide shade for his head and save him from discomfort,” but which dies early the next morning due to a worm, permitting “a sultry east wind” and the sun to “beat down on Jonah’s head.”24 This is clearly an example of a parable placed within another parable. The obvious explanation of this scene is that the plant is a symbol of Nineveh, which is used as a prop by God to demonstrate to Jonah his hypocrisy for grieving the plant’s death but not rejoicing in God’s pardon of the city. There is an intuitive sense however, that there is some deeper significance to the parable. Recalling that wind imagery was previously used to allude to Genesis, the parable of the plant can also be interpreted in light of the Creation story. In fact, the ricinus plant is a graft from the tree of life and the sultry wind from the east a veiled hint to the “fiery ever-turning sword,” which is “stationed east of the garden of Eden… to guard the way to the tree of life.”25 God recreates the scene of Adam’s and Eve’s banishment from the garden for Jonah. Jonah was happy in the plant’s presence, echoing Adam and Eve’s edenic bliss. Some scholars may object to equating the ricinus plant with the tree of life, noting that the plant withers the day after it came into being on account of a worm. Nonetheless, this account accurately represents the main points of Adam’s and Eve’s banishment. The worm, an image of the serpent without its legs, attacks the plant, corresponding to the serpent’s temptation of Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad. The death of the ricinus plant destroys the idyllic environment, subjecting Jonah to the harshness of life. This is analogous to Adam and Eve’s consumption of the forbidden fruit, which lead to their expulsion from the halcyon lands of Eden, plummeting into an exposed life of burden and torment. In using wind imagery to refer back to the beginning of the first Creation narrative and the parable of the plant to refer back to the end of the second Creation narrative, the Book of Jonah delicately completes the full cycle of Creation within its narrative structure. Thus, against the backdrop of an intentionally allegorical reconstruction of Creation, Jonah’s character stands for a hopeless humanity exiled from its original homeland.

The parable of the ricinus plant, already an ingenious allusion to the expulsion of the first humans, concomitantly serves as encouragement to live a life infused with a sense of purpose in living God’s will. Just as the wind, in its role as the prophetic predecessor, taught Jonah by example the prophet’s basic duty, so then the ricinus plant represents the ideal archetype of a prophet of God. The parable emphasizes three qualities about the plant, which figuratively correspond to three significant elements of the ideal Spring 2009

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prophet. Firstly, the plant “[grows] up over Jonah.”26 The prophet is to rise up as a role model for Israel, guiding and shepherding the Israelites under the protection of God. Secondly, the plant gives shade and protects Jonah from discomfort. The prophet is to console the Israelites in their inevitable sufferings and assuage God’s wrath by calling them to repent for their offences, protecting them from the “sultry east wind.” Lastly and most importantly, the plant withers the very day after its germination. The prophet’s life is brief and transient, like the fleeting wind. This does not mean that it must be a life of futility. The human existence may constitute itself with or without purpose—either assuming a worthy vocation that fulfills the spirit or devolving into a self-pitying despair. Futility is essentially a choice and not an unchangeable fact of the human condition. That is why God refuses to accept Jonah’s excuse that his efforts are futile. The Book of Jonah portrays the prophetic mission as a permanent vocation, to the extent that God is shown pursuing Jonah all the way to the outskirts of Nineveh. Only in giving full assent to God can the prophet hope to cling to an enduring purpose and be liberated from a self-consuming contempt of life’s vanity.

Expanding the domain of the parable of the plant to encompass not only Jonah’s prophetic mission, but also his allegorical role as human despair personified, reveals that the Book of Jonah is an injunction to the Israelites against fatalistic beliefs. God’s determination for Jonah to accept the prophetic epitome gave permanent meaning to Jonah’s life, opposing his former notion that his life was insignificant and futile; otherwise, without God’s wind providing direction, Jonah would have driven himself to Tarshish to mire in gloom. In unison with Ecclesiastes, the Book of Jonah proclaims the futility of discovering meaning in ephemeral accoutrements and momentary pleasures. However, contrary to Koheleth’s message that “There is nothing worthwhile for a man but to eat and drink and afford himself enjoyment with his means,”27 Jonah’s story announces the possibility of a worthwhile life through the act of fully entrusting to God one’s destiny. By raising up the ricinus plant, God presents to Jonah the prophetic role in its perfection, proposing to Jonah to take up the prophet’s mission and become Israel’s beacon of hope. Thus does Jonah stand at the precipice between the hope of Eden and the despair of Tarshish.

Koheleth claims that God “puts eternity in their mind, but without man ever guessing, from first to last, all the things that The Williams Telos

God brings to pass.”28 The God of the Hebrew Bible is a mysterious actor; his deeds often obscure and difficult for the inquisitive mind to decipher. Jonah is one of many biblical examples of the Israelites’ endeavoring to comprehend God’s deeds and the greater purpose for their existence within a religious framework. It is not necessary to regard the Book of Jonah nor Ecclesiastes as literal truth for readers to realize the moral and religious implications these books contain. For the Israelites, trust in God is the solution to the bitter anguish and emotional distress over life’s futility, whereas Tarshish and its illusory pleasures hold the fate of those who reject God’s presence. Those who lose or dismiss their religious sense of the eternity which God has breathed into them banish themselves to spiritual desolation and meaninglessness. They may continue to eat and drink and enjoy their lives, but theirs is a life stranded at the material level. For those who still question and still search for greater meaning, as with Jonah, God perseveres in revealing the answers of who they are meant to be.

By deploying natural forces like wind and water, God relentlessly attempts to penetrate through to Jonah’s turbulent heart; but Jonah remains hardheaded.

The story ends uncomfortably, without a clear resolution. Although the Israelites are left uncertain as to Jonah’s final decision, they come away with the sure knowledge that God has left their ultimate fate in their hands. In the Book of Jonah’s final open question, the individual reader makes a choice: to accept humbly the divine will and be lifted to eternal glory, or flee and be lost to futility.

References 1 Ecclesiastes 1.2 2 Jonah 1.2 3 Genesis 22.1 4 Jonah 1.3 5 1 Kings 17.3-5 6 Ecclesiastes 2.9 7 Ecclesiastes 2.21 8 Jonah 4.2 9 Ecclesiastes 9.1 10 Ecclesiastes 4.3 11 Ecclesiastes 2.17 12 Jonah 4.11 13 Ecclesiastes 1.14 14 Ecclesiastes 4.21 15 Genesis 2.7 16 Ecclesiastes 5.1

17 Ecclesiastes 9.3 18 For example, “You will listen to the entreaty of the lowly, O LORD,... You will incline Your ear to champion the orphan and the downtrodden.” (Psalms 10.17-18) 19 Jonah 1.4 20 Genesis 1.2 21 Jonah 1.9 22 1 Kings 17.2-6 23 Jonah 2.5-7 24 Jonah 4.6-8 25 Genesis 3.24 26 Jonah 4.6 27 Ecclesiastes 2.24 28 Ecclesiastes 3.11

How Many

By Melinda Misener From a window, the world passes silently.

A girl strides across the grass, arms swinging.

A dog canters and halts, nosing the ground.

Without sound, these things are both fact and fiction, evaporated of their usual context like a recording of my own voice.

How many stories are there in the world, really: and at how many endings have I marveled?

There are fine and sculpted first sentences, and final words that click like the latch of a door.

There are bland interiors, whitewashed walls, that stink of boredom. And are not some true, and some false?

Night begins to arrive.

Buildings and trees lose their color but not their shape: evening draws the outer limits of everything, then erases the silhouettes it has drawn.

There are not so many stories, there are only many tellers, many talkers. There is only silence on this side of things. There is only the echo of those mute footfalls whose steady rasp on pavement I doubt no more than I doubt the impermanence of night.

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The Theology of Grace

Free will, divine power, and agency in the fifth century and today

By Madelyn Labella

The distribution of agency among the human and the di-

10

vine has long been a central question in Christian thought. The Church passionately upholds the principle of free will, insisting we ourselves are responsible for freely choosing to follow Christ, while simultaneously exalting God’s unmerited grace as the source of all virtuous behavior. This apparent conflict produced a prolonged and vigorous debate between Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, and Pelagius, a British monk, during the fifth century. Pelagius was disturbed by the perceived threat to divine justice and human agency implied by the Pauline doctrine of grace, which credits God as the author of all good. He published two treatises, On Nature and Defense of the Freedom of the Will, arguing that God has supplied man with the ability to choose the good through the gift of free will. Volition, that is, willing the good, and action, doing the good, are both derived from this prerequisite possibility, so that man’s choice of good is ultimately traced back to God. However, volition and action are both proper to the human agent, and can be achieved by the sole force of human will. Augustine, a recent convert from the dualist cosmology of Manichaeism, took issue with this assessment. He wrote a series of letters lambasting Pelagius for overestimating our fallen natures and underestimating the necessity of grace in order for people to will and do the good.

The Williams Telos

As the controversy progressed, Augustine reasserted his views with “a steadily increasing dogmatism.”1 After years of strenuous argument, Augustine summoned the Council of Carthage, where his teachings were accepted as articles of faith by the assembled bishops of the Catholic Church. Pelagius was excommunicated and his followers banned from Rome for the heresy of privileging human capacity over the divine.

Pelagius did not, of course, believe he was degrading divine power, but asserting divine justice. Believing that a just God would never command the impossible, Pelagius concluded, “every divine command can be fulfilled by men unaided.”2 He permits the activity of God’s grace, but his definition diverges sharply from Augustine’s understanding of the Catholic tradition. Augustine speaks of grace as a freely given gift restoring the strength and clarity lost in the Fall, helping man to avoid evil and will the good.

This grace, which is necessary for good works, derives from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and is distributed through the sacraments, primarily baptism for the forgiveness of sins. It is independent of natural and revealed moral law. Pelagius, by contrast, identifies grace with the free will inherent in human nature, the message of Scripture, the example of Christ’s life, and the remission of past sins. In addition, God grants grace, “in order that men may more

easily accomplish through grace that which they are commanded in Chapter 9, which emphasizes the gratuity of God’s grace, to do by their free will.”3 Quoting Pelagius in his apologetic trea- granted to Jacob but not Esau, the elect but not the reprobate, tise On the Grace of Christ, Augustine laments the inclusion of “not because of works but because of his call.” (9:11) Paul cauthe phrase “more easily,” whose omission would eliminate the tions us against questioning the justice of an apparently arbicontroversy. According to Augustine, Pelagius erred, not in de- trary election, saying, “he has mercy upon whomever he wills, nying the role of grace, but in limiting it, deeming it valuable but and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills.” (9:18) Pelanot necessary to live a righteous life. In short, Pelagius acknowl- gius reduces this implied intervention to divine foreknowledge, edged the necessity of enabling grace, which gives people the paraphrasing 9:16 as “I will have mercy on him whom I have ability to do good, but not operative grace, which accomplishes foreknown will be able to deserve compassion.”8 This revisionist interpretation is not fully satisfying; Pelagius is ultimately good through them.

As a corollary to his position, Pelagius asserted that people are unsuccessful in his attempt to reconcile Paul’s ideas about grace born in the same state of innocence that Adam first enjoyed. This with his own theory of the will.

The intention behind this contrived commentary is both comsharply opposes Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, which asserts 4 so that prehensible and commendable. Pelagius found the Augustinian ““the seminal identity of the human race with Adam,” we share in both his guilt and his punishment, the ignorance and idea of grace “debilitating to the point of catastrophe.”9 He feared weakness of a sin-sick soul. This primal guilt is transferred during the doctrine of original sin, with its emphasis on the incapacitated will, would discourage Christians conception, the crowning moment from attempting to live virtuously. of sexual union, which, since the AccordingtoAugustine,Pelagiuserred, If people of their own accord can Fall, is tainted with cupidity. Pelanot in denying the role of grace, do nothing, the business of working gius, rejecting this medical-juridical but in limiting it, deeming it valuable out salvation with fear and tremmodel, proposes that sin is simply a bling seems to belong to God alone. social habit in which we all partake, butnotnecessarytolivearighteouslife.

Moreover, in defending free will, following the example of our ancesPelagius sought to defend God from tor Adam. His commentary on the Epistle to the Romans betrays the strain of maintaining this inter- charges of complicity in our wrongdoing; as Augustine himself pretation, as seen in his unsatisfying account of Romans 3:9-10, notes, Pelagianism addresses the unspoken fear that utter reliance which states, “I have already charged that all men, both Jews and on grace involves God in our sin -- “just as God is associated with Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: None is righ- ourselves in the praise of good actions, so must he share with us teous, no, not one.” Pelagius argues that when Paul says that all the blame of evil actions.”10 His teachings thus seem designed to men sin, “he uses ‘all’ for the greatest part,”5 and when he says that exonerate God and reassert our responsibility for leading moral no men are righteous, he means, no men at the time of Christ. lives. His doctrine is not an academic system, but a missionary He stresses that Adam’s sin spreads to all man “by example or by cry, “the exclamation of a preacher seeking to rouse his hearers pattern,”6 not by heredity. In response to 6:24, Pelagius says, “one from the slumber of sin.”11 However, the implications of this miswho does military services for sin receives death as remuneration.”7 sionary movement posed distinct theological dangers, from which This explanation of death as the wages of sin is implausibly narrow, Augustine valiantly sought to preserve the faithful. suggesting that Pelagius may, like his more radical disciple CaelAugustine’s initial interpretations of the Pauline epistles were estius, ascribe to the belief that Adam was made mortal, and did Semipelagian, proposing that man secures the help of cooperanot become mortal through sin. Pelagius believes that Paul speaks tive grace with an initial act of will: “Charity strengthens a will in the voice of one under the law when he laments, “I do not do which has already chosen the good and enables it to overcome what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (7:15), exclaiming, the contrary force of concupiscence and custom.”12 However, he “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (7:23) The body came to reject this position for the same reason that he rejected of death, then, is not his mortal state, but his habitual attachment that of Pelagius: it reflects a prideful reluctance to acknowledge our to evil, which can be overcome by the grace of forgiveness and a fallen nature and an ungrateful unwillingness to thank the Lord to sincere act of the will. Pelagius’ biggest challenge, however, lies whom all credit is due. Augustine reports coming to this mature

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understanding while meditating on I Cor. 4:7: “What have you guilt of all mankind, so freeing human will from the paralyzing that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you responsibility of accomplishing salvation.

This liberating theology of grace, however, develops inevitably boast as if it were not a gift?” In his letter to Simplicanus, Augustine acknowledges faith itself as a manifestation of God’s grace into a theology of predestination that many experience as imwhich we must acknowledge in all humility, instead of insist- prisoning. According to Augustine, souls selected for salvation ing on our own human role. Beyond encouraging us in pride, that is, the elect - are chosen irrespective of merit but the choice Pelagianism discourages us from seeking our real help in God’s produces merit in its object. God’s grace is dispensed freely, not grace by insisting on our independent efficacy; “whoever does earned by good works or faith or foreknown goodness. This is not own himself to be weak, is not in the way to be perfect.”13 Of not to say that the human will is irrelevant; grace works through Pelagius, Augustine laments, “Why does he check such cries so as man’s will, such that, “It is the decision of the human will to beto hinder future health, by insisting as it were on its present pos- lieve or not to believe but in the elect the will is prepared by the sibility?”14 The refusal to acknowledge the crucial role of God’s Lord.”16 8Augustine refines this idea by introducing the concept of the call congruenter, that is, the grace leads to alternately a selfcall to faith in Christ presented confident complacency or a Augustine’s conception does not allow for to the elect soul in such a way self-loathing despair. a divine will that freely subordinates that it will respond. Its response Ultimately, Augustine’s priitself to human will, even as is not simply enabled but guarmary objection to Pelagianism Jesus’ Godhood freely clothed itself in flesh. anteed, for “a divine assistance seems to be the implication of which only enables a person the futility of Christ’s sacrifice to act would not guarantee the for a people who could achieve salvation by the force of human will. This fear is palpable in Au- achievement of God’s purpose and would allow the human person gustine’s treatise On Nature and Grace, which warns, “If righteous- to frustrate the divine will.”18 God’s will is always achieved, which ness comes by nature, then Christ is dead in vain,”15 and exhorts means he cannot permit the elect to fall away from the salvation he his readers not to “incur the guilt of declaring the Savior to be has ordained for them. Thus, in addition to predestinating salvasuperfluous.”16 This reading seems somewhat simplistic. Pelagius tion, God predestinates merit; the grace that marks a soul out for does not argue that Christ’s sacrifice is meaningless – indeed, it is salvation draws out its virtues and aids its pursuit of the good.

According to Augustine, the reprobate, too, are called - but not essential for the remission of our manifold sins. The universality of the sacrifice is, however, called into question by the sugges- chosen. In his mature analysis of Romans 9, he argues that the tion that some men could avoid sin through nature and the law, Pharaoh and Esau were both “called, but in ways that were not without requiring Christ’s intervention. It is not clear whether effective” – that is, called to faith in ways to which God knew Pelagius actually believed this; testifying before the Synod of Pal- their souls would not respond. This preserves the inviolability of estine, he claimed he never said that any man had lived his whole divine will and defends divine justice on a technicality. By calling life without sin. Elsewhere, however, he suggested that Old Tes- the reprobate in ways they will refuse, God permits, indeed, entament figures like Abel had led sinless lives, implying that they sures their damnation. According to Augustine, this is part of the received salvation on the basis of their own good works, rather glorious divine plan, a simultaneous manifestation of God’s great than the sacrificial offering of Christ. Augustine identified this as a mercy and great justice. He carries this idea to terrifying extremes, fundamentally un-Christian denial of the centrality of Christ’s sac- concluding that the damned must outnumber the saved, “in order rifice. Moreover, he claimed, the denial of universal sin represents that it might be shown, by the very multitude of the reprobate, a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, inclining the that the number of those who are most justly damned, whatever it faithful to despair as they inevitably fall into sin. In modern times, may be, is of no concern with the righteous God.”19 It seems in his Augustine’s particular iteration of original sin is increasingly prob- zeal to demonstrate God’s righteousness Augustine has neglected lematic, apparently requiring a literal interpretation of the Yahwist God’s charity. Aware of the theological cost of his doctrine, he creation narrative, and a faulty physiological mode of transmis- wonders briefly whether such a God is in fact merciful or just. He sion. Nonetheless, the Church continues to affirm the collective ultimately insists on humble submission to our own self condem-

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nation, insisting, “Those who do not receive mercy can have no ground to complain of a justice which all in Adam deserve.”20 This is not a completely satisfactory account, and Augustine closes the gaps by appealing vaguely to “a certain hidden equity”21 in God’s distribution of grace. This may not suffice to comfort the charitable soul disturbed by a God who deliberately chooses to damn the many in order to display his glory.

Opponents may quote I Timothy 2:4, according to which God “wills all men to be saved.” Augustine counters this by paraphrasing it to mean “he wills all men who will be saved to be saved,” a solution as contrived as the Pelagian analysis of Romans.

Augustine’s conception does not allow for a divine will that freely subordinates itself to human will, even as Jesus’ Godhood freely clothed itself in flesh. According to this understanding, God endows human hearts with the need for his love but the freedom to deny it. Born into a world of misdirected desires, the fallen soul struggles in its attempts to discover the good, lacking the clarity of the original vision. The soul falls into sin, privileging lesser over greater goods, and participating in its own destruction.

Increasingly deformed by sin, the soul becomes less and less likely to acknowledge God as the highest good and embrace the grace that remains perennially available. Souls freely make the final decision to accept or reject God’s mercy; in the taxonomy of C.S. Lewis, souls who refuse to say “Thy will be done” force God, in the end, to say it to them.22 By this schema, those who are damned choose to be damned, thwarting God’s will, which is their salvation. Paradoxically, the reprobate makes manifest divine will even as it frustrates it, by demonstrating the extent of

God’s commitment to freely given love, his mercy in supplying grace, and his justice in permitting condemnation. This God is not Augustine’s God, who supplies grace only to the elect, deliberately ensuring the rejection of the reprobate by calling them ineffectively, in order to display his vengeance.

Augustine’s arguments in the Pelagian controversy tend toward a dogmatic harshness that takes God’s great love insufficiently into account.

However, he successfully argues that the collective guilt of mankind is well-established in Scripture, heading off both pride and despair by teaching of a resource beyond our conflicted wills. Moreover, he gives due credit to God as the author of all good, inspiring humility and gratitude for all he has given us, including faith itself. Finally, he defends Christ’s sacrifice as the universal and necessary path to salvation, affirming the cornerstone of all Christian belief. His theology of grace is far more empowering than the fatalist Manichean hangover it is sometimes thought to be. Augustine strives to reserve a place for man’s will by asserting that God works through it without abrogating it. Nor is Augustine as pessimistic as the Protestant proponents of total depravity who quote him; as he asserts in his treatise On Nature and Grace, “We do not deny that human nature may be without sin; nor ought we by any means to refuse to it the power of perfectibility, since we admit its capacity for progress – by God’s grace, however, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”23 This professed perfectibility may seem like a Pelagian heresy; it is in fact the hallmark of Christian hope, which animates the theology of grace.

References 12 J. Patout Burns, The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative 1 Bonner, Gerald, Augustine and Modern Research on Pelagianism. VilGrace. Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1980, p. 1 lanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1972, p. 3 13 Augustine, On the Grace of Christ, p. 14 2 Christopher Kirwan, Augustine. London: Rutledge Publishers, 1989, 14 Augustine, On the Nature of Grace, p. 282 p. 106 15 On the Nature of Grace, p. 238 3 Augustine, On the Grace of Christ, p. 29 16 On the Nature of Grace, p. 267 4 Bonner, p. 371 17 Kirwan, p. 114 5 Pelagius, Commentary on the Romans, p. 77 18 Burns, p. 4 6 Commentary on the Romans, p. 94 19 Augustine, Against Pelagius, p. 2 7 Commentary on the Romans, p. 99 20 Chadwick, p. 109 8 Commentary on the Romans, p. 117 21 W.S. Babcock, “Augustine and Paul: The Case of Romans IX,” Studia 9 Chadwick, Henry. Augustine: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Patristica 16 (1985), p. 7 University Press, 2001. p. 108.

22 C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 75 10 Augustine, On the Grace of Christ, p. 19 23 On the Nature of Grace, p. 292 11 Bonner, p. 35

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Freedom from, yet in, Life

Through the lenses of Andrei and Pierre in Tolstoy’s War and Peace

By Caleb Miaw

Set in the early 1800s in the era preceding, during, and following the Napoleonic inva-

sion of Russia, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace follows the experiences of five aristocratic Russian families. Although the cast of characters is expansive, many of the primary characters are introduced at a soirée near the beginning of the novel. Two characters of particular importance are Prince Andrei Bolkonsky – the intelligent, sardonic, ambitious son of a retired military commander – and Pierre Bezukhov – the socially awkward, but kindhearted, illegitimate son of a wealthy, dying count. This essay traces the spiritual development and maturation of Andrei and Pierre, closely examining the marked senses of personal freedom that they both experience in the final stages of their spiritual lives. Their sense of freedom seems to be shaped differently, as Andrei’s spirit is oriented toward dying, while Pierre is oriented toward living. This tension between two different conceptions of freedom encapsulates the Christian life.

Serving as a military adjutant at the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is inspired by a vision of glory to lead a desperate charge, but is severely wounded. Left for dead, he contemplates the “lofty, infinite sky” and realizes that “everything is empty, everything is a deception, except [the] infinite sky … there is nothing except silence, tranquility.”1 His friend Pierre inherits a massive fortune and is suddenly thrust into the world of aristocracy. He is seduced by the beautiful Hélène and marries her, despite initial doubts and hesitation, nevertheless he cannot restrain her from pursuing an affair. Pierre is distressed by his marital woes and attributes them to flaws in his character. He turns to Masonry, seeking a “brotherhood of people, united with the purpose of supporting each other on the path of virtue” (354). His carefree attitude largely vanishes, but, though he tries to do good, he ultimately achieves nothing significant or beneficial. In pursuit of virtue, he also battles with vice and confronts weighty intellectual questions – his greatest struggle is to figure out how to live a moral life in a corrupted and imperfect world.

Disillusioned with life, Andrei withdraws from society to his estate and focuses on his own affairs – he believes that there are “only two very real evils in life[,] remorse and illness[, and that] the only good is the absence of these evils” (383). When Pierre visits him, the two friends talk about the possibility of an afterlife and, swayed not by Pierre’s argument, but by his rapturous demeanor, Andrei regains “[something] joyful and young in his soul” and re-enters society (389). He falls in love with Natasha Rostov after witnessing her vivacity and abruptly decides that “everyone must know [all that’s in] me, so that my life is not only for myself …

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p.

281. All further references to this work will be cited parenthetically.

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but so that it is reflected in everyone, and they all live together with me” (423). During their year-long engagement, Natasha is seduced by another man and annuls her engagement with Andrei, who coldly rejects her for her infidelity and refuses to forgive her. Pierre becomes attracted to Natasha as he consoles her: “If I were … free, I would go on my knees this minute and ask for your hand and your love” (599). Later, Pierre observes a magnificently bright comet and feels that “what was in his softened and encouraged soul, now blossom[ed] into new life” (600).

In 1812, Napoleon invades Russia and Andrei returns to active military service.

Pierre convinces himself through numerology that he is connected by fate to the Apocalypse and the downfall of Napoleon, whom he believes to be the Antichrist.

He feels that fate will “lead him out of that spellbound, worthless world that Moscow inhabits where he felt he was imprisoned, and bring him to a great deed and great happiness” (665). French and Russian troops battle at Borodino, where the Russians win a substantial moral victory by withstanding the onslaught of Napoleon’s seemingly invincible army. Andrei is mortally wounded by shrapnel from a stray cannonball and reported dead, while Pierre observes the battle from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew. The battery is bombarded and captured twice, and Pierre later flees from the battlefield with a gruesome impression of warfare. He returns safely to his Moscow estate but, after receiving news of Andrei’s death and Hélène’s impending remarriage, disappears from society and prepares plans to assassinate Napoleon. Meanwhile, Andrei reappears, critically ill, among the fleeing Rostov family’s carts, mixed in with other wounded soldiers, unbeknownst to Natasha. Though feverishly delirious, he is finally reunited with Natasha (who he initially misidentifies as a figment of his imagination), forgives her for her betrayal, and confesses his reignited love for her. Under her care, Andrei slowly recovers from his wound. Wavering between consciousness and oblivion, he ponders the nature of love, earthly vs. divine, and, shortly thereafter chooses to die. For Andrei, however, death is “an awakening from life” (985).

When Napoleon’s army finally occupies the abandoned and aflame Moscow, Pierre sheds his identity in the chaos and becomes an anonymous peasant. He sees widespread anarchy, looting, and fire while wandering the city streets. His plan to assassinate Napoleon never reaches fruition, as he is apprehended by the French for assaulting a soldier. After he witnesses the executions of several fellow prisoners, “[Pierre’s] faith in the world’s good order, in humanity’s and his own soul, and in God, [is] destroyed” (968). He quickly befriends another prisoner, Platon Karataev, a “rounded” peasant who “love[s] and live[s] lovingly with everything that life [brings] his way,” entirely without pretense, and is “unable to understand either the value or the meaning of a word or act taken separately,” only as a part of the whole (973, 974). After talking with Platon, Pierre feels that “the previously destroyed world was now arising in his soul with a new beauty, on some new and unshakeable foundations” (972). They are forced to march with the French army, in the harsh winter, during its retreat from Moscow. Along the

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way, Pierre learns “that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of natural human needs, … that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity[, and] … that there is nothing frightening in the world” (1060). After months of adversity, Platon is shot by the French as a straggler and Pierre is freed by a Russian raiding party.

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In the crucible of the Napoleonic Wars, both Andrei and Pierre forge identities founded on theories of personal freedom. After surviving the battle of Borodino, Andrei discovers love “for those who love us [and] for those who hate us, … that love which God preached on earth” (814). Earthly love “loves for something, for some purpose, or for some reason,” while divine love “is the very essence of the soul and … needs no object. … Nothing, not even death, nothing can destroy it” (921). In delirium, Andrei reinterprets this principle of divine love and clings to it, extrapolating that “to love everything, everybody, always to sacrifice oneself for love, meant to love no one, meant not to live this earthly life” (982). He overcomes his fear of death and experiences “an awareness of estrangement from everything earthly and a joyful and strange lightness of being” (982). He feels that his soul has been “freed of the restraining weight of life,” that he is “not bound to this life” any longer, and thus discovers a freedom from life (982). Having freed himself from life, Andrei believes that he will now be free to love life. His love for life, which is not attached to anything, but is detached from everything, nevertheless ties him to life: “Love is life” (984).

Pierre also experiences “those irrevocable, strong, and joyful sensations, and above all … that full peace of mind, that perfect inner freedom” (1013). He fails to find “that peace and harmony with himself ” in Masonry, in the distractions of social life, and by way of thought (1012). Instead, he paradoxically discovers this inner freedom in life, that is, in the satisfaction of his basic needs, in captivity, where his choices are the most limited. Inner freedom also indicates a freedom from life, through a retreat from society to self. Unlike Andrei’s withdrawal from life, however, Pierre’s withdrawal is rooted in, not estranged from, earthly things. Pierre argues with the abbé at Anna Pavlovna’s soirée about the means to achieve eternal peace through political balance in Europe and, later, with Nikolai about the means to attain peace in Russia through active and united virtue. Before, his arguments dealt with abstract issues; now, his arguments deal with concrete issues. Before, his opinion had little real influence; now, his opinion possesses the power to unite disparate factions. But, for Pierre, to argue with Nikolai about the government’s policies and to unite political factions in Petersburg – in short, to express his thoughts – is to temporarily abandon his freedom from life by returning to life. His concretely expressed thoughts, grounded in reality and in the present, lead to tangible results. Although he immerses himself in thought and treats “all the rest [as] an amuseThe Williams Telos

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ment,” Pierre’s freedom from life is simultaneously rooted in life because his thoughts eventually translate into actions (1176).

Freedom from Life, Freedom in Life Andrei and Pierre’s distinct experiences of freedom evoke the paradoxical concept of Christian freedom. Andrei’s sensation of being freed from life reflects an awakening to the unconditional and unmerited love of God, revealed in the life and death of Jesus Christ. The acceptance of this love liberates the Christian from the whims of fortune and from the fickleness of human affection. As Pascal wrote in the Pensées, in every human heart there is an “infinite abyss [that] can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”2 The attempt to fill this abyss with finite and mutable objects, the idolatry of placing something else in the place of God, is called “sin” in theological jargon. In contemporary individualistic culture, these objects often take the form of accomplishments, talents, social statuses, feelings of independence and control, and love relationships. And when these temporal conditions are threatened, people’s identity and sense of self-worth are shaken, leading to deep anxiety and fear. Therefore, only when one’s identity is derived from God and rooted in his love, can one enjoy true peace and security. This is the “perfect love [that] drives out fear” (1 Jn. 4:18). The key to attaining true fulfillment and contentment, then, lies in abdicating control and restoring God to the throne of one’s heart. This is the paradox: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt. 10:39).

This freedom derived from one’s surrender to God is only a partial manifestation of the Christian concept of freedom. Unlike Andrei’s freedom from community, Pierre’s freedom finds expression within community, and this is another aspect of Christian freedom. While divine love may be without an objective, it requires an object; in this context, the theology of the Trinity, which states that God is not only One, but also a Community of Love, is compelling.

Having been created in the likeness of God, people are also meant for community, rather than autonomy and isolation. This is why the Greatest Commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” is given in conjunction with “love your neighbor as yourself ” (Mt. 22:36-40). Love for God not only progresses naturally toward love for one’s neighbor, it is the prerequisite for genuine love for one’s neighbor. When one’s highest love is one’s nation or race, one becomes a chauvinistic nationalist or racist.

When one’s highest love is individual happiness, one becomes selfish and manipulative. When one’s highest love is a religion or a cause, one feels superior and sometimes even hostile toward those who do not share the belief. Even if the cherished value is tolerance, those who live by it will inevitably feel a certain aversion toward those who are intolerant. Only when one’s highest love is God, only when one is completely infused with the unconditional love of God, can one envelop the whole world in love. This is why Jesus “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:15).

In exploring the ideas of freedom through the lenses of Andrei and Pierre in War and Peace, we discover the paradox of Christian freedom. This is the meaning of the enigma, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21): a Christian’s freedom from, yet in, life.

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Only when one’s highest love is God, only when one is completely infused with the unconditional love of God, can one envelop the whole world in love.

Blaise Pascal, “Pensées,” in Pascal Pensées, ed. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 45.

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Retracing the Resurrection

By Madelyn Labella and Shawn Woo

The early Church was predicated on the proclamation that Jesus

Christ died but rose again. Evaluating the historicity of this claim today is undoubtedly a complicated, but worthwhile endeavor. Some modern scholars, like Willi Marxsen, argue that we have no direct access to the alleged event, only to the beliefs of the early disciples, and that we are hamstrung as historians since we cannot confirm the veracity of their reports.1 While caution is commendable, such historical positivism is utterly impractical, founded on a fundamental misunderstanding of historiography itself. The only information we have about the past is mediated through the reports of the people who experienced it. Our sources are necessarily subjective, but this personal bias does not warrant a wholesale dismissal. Instead, we must approach the accounts of the resurrection critically, evaluating motives, methods, and claims, and assigning weight accordingly.

Some scholars approach the resurrection accounts with the certainty of materialism, others with the certainty of dogma. The historian must do neither, but engage the texts directly, facing the question of their historicity without a predetermined response.

The reliability of the documents available for assessment requires elaboration,2 but it will suffice for the purposes of this article to note that the biographies of Jesus that concern us, hereafter restricted to the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), have superior documentation to their classical contemporaries. The Gospels, all written between 55-110 A.D., are together represented in 5,200 manuscripts, the oldest of which, the Bodmer Papyrus (II), is dated around 125 A.D. by a general scholarly consensus.3 The plurality of textual attestations and their antiquity ensure that we indeed The Williams Telos

possess what the authors originally wrote with minimal corruption in the case of Jesus, when unprecedented claims to bodily resurrecand redaction.4 Furthermore, the canonical Gospels were written tion transformed and fulfilled messianic belief. within a generation of Jesus’ death and circulated in the very locaResurrection expectation was also absent in pagan thought, which tion where the events they described took place. This is not enough tended to follow the Homeric model of inevitable imprisonment in time for an elaborate legend to develop organically, particularly as Hades. Epicureans, alternately, believed that the soul dissolved at the contemporary witnesses were still alive to constrain mythologizing moment of death, while Platonists envisioned an escape from the and verify reported events. prison of the body after cycles of reincarnation. In these schemata, Having established the textual integrity of the Gospels, we next resurrection is not only impossible, but also undesirable, a return to examine the context in which they arose. It would be a grave mis- the misery of material existence. Pagan mythology very rarely detake to interpret them in light of our modern sensibilities, without scribes returns from the grave, and only the story of Alcestis refers to making any attempt to comprehend the milieu in which they were anything approaching the bodily resurrection of Christian claims— written. First, we must dispense with the fiction that the term resur- although Alcestis, unlike Jesus, was expected to die again. Various rection denotes life after death. Despite its modern application to a pagan deities were described as dying and rising [again], a metadisembodied postmortem state, resurrection at the time of Christ phorical trope linked to the harvest, but there is no evidence that the referred to a bodily phenomenon. Resurrection was preceded “by an literal bodily resurrection of human beings had any role in pagan interim period of death-as-a-state,” followed by the reanimation of thought. The resurrection claims of the early Christians do not apthe body itself, that is, “life after ‘life after death.’”5 If, as some mod- pear to have stemmed from either pagan tradition or Jewish belief. ern scholars assert, the first Christian claims If the resurrection was a fiction, it was one of resurrection spoke of spiritual exaltation, without precedent, logic, or clear connotaIftheresurrectionwasafiction, they did so in language reserved for bodily tion in the culture that produced it. it was one without precedent, awakening by Jews and pagans alike.

The centrality of the resurrection in the logic, or clear connotation in At the time, Jewish attitudes toward early Church, evidenced by its ubiquity in bodily resurrection reflected the disparate the epistles of Paul, is not obvious in the the culture that produced it. views recorded in the Hebrew Bible. Early Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry, which Jewish scripture speaks of death as undesirscarcely allude to the coming resurrection, able and inevitable, rejecting any possibility of emerging from the and then only obliquely. Wright interprets this relative silence about pit. Later scripture though, shows a range of thought regarding a fu- the resurrection as an indication, first, that it was not a major topic ture resurrection. 2 Maccabees anticipates the bodily resurrection of of Jesus’ teaching, and second, that the evangelists did not feel free the martyrs, while Daniel 12 describes a resurrection to judgment: to retroject invented sayings into the mouth of Christ. Jesus’ silence “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to on the question of the resurrection thus becomes a probabilistic ineverlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” (12:2). dication of the authenticity of the evangelists’ accounts. Moreover, These rival perspectives were represented in two major schools of the prophetic references to Jesus’ own resurrection are rejected by his Jewish thought at the time of Christ. Pharisees taught an apocalyptic distressed disciples. The formula of the passion prediction includes resurrection at the end of time, when Israel would be glorified and references to Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection, as in Mark the Gentiles judged. Sadducees, however, cleaved to the conservative 8:31 and parallels: “He then began to teach them that the Son of understanding of death as inevitable and irrevocable. Neither group Man must suffer many things and… be killed and after three days expected the inaugurated eschatology of the early Christians, with a rise again.” The allusion to his future exaltation is completely missed general resurrection preceded by the individual resurrection of the by his disciples, who instead fixate on the prediction of his suffering, Christ. Furthermore, there were no texts from the Second-Temple prompting Peter’s attempted intervention and Jesus’ famed rebuke. era between 615 B.C. and 70 A.D. that predicted a resurrected Mes- This reaction indicates that the followers of Jesus did not understand siah, so it is unlikely that the resurrection was invented to reinforce his teaching as a reference to an immediate and individual resurrecmessianic belief. In fact, the deaths of numerous self-proclaimed tion. Instead, they seem to have interpreted it in light of the eschatomessiahs during this time invariably met with abandonment of the logical framework of Pharisaic theology. movement or transfer of messianic expectation—except, of course, The Gospel accounts of the public ministry thus reinforce our

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sense of the historical milieu of the Christian claims, which represented a radical deviation from Jewish messianic expectation. Furthermore, the evangelists demonstrate theological restraint, both in the ministry and the resurrection proper. Wright notes that the resurrection narratives are uniquely stark, devoid of the “embroidery from the biblical tradition”6 that the evangelists employ to varying degrees in describing Jesus’ birth, ministry, and death. This unvarnished nature of the resurrection narratives is particularly unusual since the Christian Church considered the resurrection to be a fulfillment of Old Testament promise. There is no indication of the bodily glorification predicted in Daniel 12 as a corollary to the final resurrection, none of the radiant light that characterizes the transfiguration. The accounts are not validated by precedent from Jewish tradition, but emphasized as strange and unexpected, validated by eyewitness accounts. This lack of quotation, allusion, and reference are evidence of the historical orientation of the resurrection accounts; the evangelists seem to believe that they are conveying real details of a physical event, rather than a theologized metaphor.

The resurrection accounts are further substantiated by the embarrassing detail, shared by all four Gospels, of initial female witness.

If, as some claim, the early Church began with a theology of Christ’s spiritual exaltation and elaborated it into bodily resurrection, they must have invented the detail that women were the first to discover the empty tomb. This is extremely improbable, for, as Wright points out, “women were simply not acceptable as legal witnesses,”7 rendering their inclusion an apologetic liability. Similar embarrassment results from Matthew’s inclusion of the detail “but some doubted” (28:17). It is unlikely that the evangelist would invent the detail that some of the eleven disciples at the Great Commission failed to believe in the risen Christ, undermining the central project of the Christian mission. Moreover, if Jesus’ disciples fabricated the resurrection story intending to co-opt the populist community Jesus left behind, as Elaine Pagels suggests,8 it seems that they would have concealed their own mistakes to bolster their credentials as Christian leaders. However, the opposite is true: they are portrayed as oblivious, impetuous, and power-hungry defectors, disqualifying the idea that the Gospels are mere propaganda.

Ironically, the accounts gain additional credibility from the apparent inconsistencies among them. In Matthew, two women visit the empty tomb and meet an angel, while in Mark three women go to The Williams Telos

the tomb to find a young man. In Luke and John, Peter and another disciple also witness the empty tomb, and the women are greeted by two angelic figures. The conflicting details defy harmonization, so that some scholars deny these divergent accounts have any claim to historicity. However, contrary to their claims, complete uniformity would raise grave suspicions of collusion. These discrepancies render it highly unlikely that the resurrection was a late fiction developed by the Church, and indicate different strands of oral tradition about the same event. Moreover, in terms of the basic framework, all Gospels agree—including the Gospel of John, which elsewhere diverges dramatically from the Synoptic accounts and probably arises from independent tradition. All accounts are set in the early morning of the first day of the week, with Mary Magdalene, sometimes accompanied by other women, going to the tomb. The women worry about the stone, but it is already rolled away when they arrive at the tomb, where they encounter an unusual stranger. In Matthew and John, the women then meet Jesus himself, and in all but Mark, they go on to tell the disciples what they have seen. Incidental inconsistencies do not undermine the extraordinary consistency of the Gospels on the most salient issues. Rather, they present a compelling case for the Gospels as multiple attestations of a real historical event.

It also remains that in all four accounts, Jesus’ empty tomb is a puzzle, not the revelation of a miracle. Grave robbery was a common phenomenon then, and in John, Mary Magdalene naturally assumes that someone has taken his body away. It is therefore unlikely that the empty tomb alone gave rise to resurrection belief, despite some speculation that the disciples went to the wrong tomb and mistakenly assumed he had risen from the dead. In fact, until the appearance of the risen Christ, the empty tomb confuses and distresses the disciples who witness it. The one notable exception occurs in the Gospel of John, after Peter enters the tomb and the Beloved Disciple follows: “Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed” (20:8). Tellingly, this moment of faith occurs in reaction, not to the emptiness of the tomb, but to the careful folding of the burial cloths, indicating something more unusual than grave robbery has occurred.

In all other cases, the witness of the empty tomb is mediated into resurrection belief only by the appearances of the resurrected Christ.

Mark alludes to appearances only in Galilee and Luke limits them to Jerusalem. Both Matthew and John describe appearances in both Galilee and Jerusalem, raising the genuine possibility that they occurred in both places, but were reported selectively due to differing access to tradition and/or theological motifs. Luke, Matthew, and John all report the phenomenon of “transphysicality,” with Jesus’

body not merely resuscitated, but transformed. He is solidly embodied, shares meals with the disciples, and in John, invites Thomas to touch him. However, he also moves through locked doors, appears and disappears at will, and in Luke, ascends into heaven. Some argue that this transphysicality has simply been co-opted from Pauline theology, but this is unlikely, given the difference in its form.

Paul speaks of Jesus’ body as newly incorruptible, no longer subject to the reign of death, and applies this phenomenon to the postmortem hope of all Christians. The evangelists, however, speak of the strangeness of a solid body to which natural law only selectively applies, without anticipating similar fates for themselves. The two transphysicalities are similar enough to be derived from the same underlying tradition, but betray no evidence of literary dependence.

Other scholars point to the elaborated meal scenes in Luke and John as late inventions intended to combat the heresy of docetism, which proposes that Jesus only appeared to be human, and was in fact a divine spirit. However, if this were the case, it is unlikely that the evangelists would have included the counter-productive details of his sudden apparitions and passage through walls.9 Just as the empty tomb accounts were an insufficient basis for resurrection belief, such appearances are unlikely to have given rise to resurrection claims independently. As Wright points out, visions and hallucinations were well-known throughout the ancient world, including the phenomenon of visits from loved ones as they departed the mortal realm. This notion, evident in Acts 12, explains the reaction of Peter’s companions to his maid’s announcement that she hears his voice outside the door: “‘You’re out of your mind,’ they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, ‘It must be his angel.’ But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished” (Ac 12:15-16). The disciples had assumed that Peter died in prison and that his spirit had come to bid them farewell, hence their surprise upon opening the door to find him in the flesh. Surely similar skepticism would have met postmortem visitations of Christ, were it not discounted

by the evidence of the solid body and the empty tomb, which “certifies that Jesus is not among the dead.”10 This cultural context undermines Gerd Lüdemann’s theory that the initial visions of Peter and Paul were hallucinations induced by extreme grief and guilt.11 Without corroborating evidence, these visions would have been dismissed by the skeptical audience, not accepted and preached as fact. Even if cognitive dissonance inclined the disciples to disbelieve the evidence of their senses, it is extremely unlikely that the illusion would have been so widespread or so prolonged. Furthermore, as Wright notes, Matthew’s addition that Jewish leaders instructed the Roman guards to spread the rumor that Jesus’ disciples stole his body while they were sleeping discloses a general acceptance of the authenticity of the empty tomb. Though the story almost surely represents “apologetics meant to refute Jewish polemic against the resurrection,”12 it is comprehensible only “in a community where the empty tomb was an absolute and unquestioned datum.”13 All in all, the attempts to describe resurrection claims as political, spiritual, or psychological fail to account for the behavior of the early Christians. We must conclude that “the life of early Christianity is inexplicable apart from the assumption that virtually all early Christians… did indeed believe that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised bodily from the dead.”14 Their continued messianic conviction, the interpretation of Jesus as Lord, and the transfer of the Lord’s Day to the first day of the week are all intelligible only in light of resurrection belief. Given the cultural context of the disciples’ claims, their superficially discrepant and embarrassing reports, and the early Christians’ post-Easter behavior, the resurrection itself proves both plausible and parsimonious. We must therefore overrule our materialist prejudice and acknowledge the probable authenticity of the resurrection claim.

1 Willi Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), 29.

2 For a detailed discussion on the subject see F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), and Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, And Restoration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

3 Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 81-82.

4 The plurality of Gospel manuscripts and their chronological proximity are especially remarkable when compared to classical works such as Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, which was written between 58-50 B.C. and survived by only 10 manuscript copies, the earliest of which is dated at 850 A.D. 5 N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress

Press, 2003), 31.

6 Ibid., 599.

7 Ibid., 607.

8 Elaine H. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), 3-27.

9 Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 655.

10 Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 497.

11 Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 99.

12 Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 202.

13 Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 638.

14 Ibid., 587.

Photo by Xauxa (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bogens_kyrka_4. jpg), available under a GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

Spring 2009

Nearly Wholly Innocent

A meditation on Nick Cave’s song “The Mercy Seat”

By Cale Weatherly

Australian songwriter, Nick Cave is a worthy successor to

popular music’s greatest literary composers, such legendary figures as Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen, musicians whose lyrics are rife with metaphor, character and thematic explorations. Although popular success has eluded him, Cave’s career has been long and varied, beginning as the lead singer of gothic post-punk band The Birthday Party (1977-1983), and continuing to the present day with art-rock band Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, who released their fourteenth album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! to great critical acclaim in 2008.1 The past few years have been a sustained high mark in Cave’s career, during which he has also fronted the deafening garage rock outfit Grinderman, and composed the soundtracks for the films The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s

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novel The Road.2 Like his forbears, Cave is a master of the narrative song, and like Dylan and Cohen especially, his writing teems with Biblical allusion, though his own religious stance is unclear. At his least interesting, Cave merely uses Christian icons and narratives as an aesthetic backdrop for his own imaginations and musings, but at his best, Cave delves deeply into the Biblical text, producing songs that fiercely convey and expand the meaning of his inspirational source. Such compositions fill his 1988 album Tender Prey, home to Cave’s best and most famous song, “The Mercy Seat,” a devastating depiction of the nature of humankind’s rebellion against God. “The Mercy Seat” is told in the first person, and in its first whispered verse, we learn that its narrator sits on death row and that he does not fear his pending execution for a crime of which he is “nearly wholly innocent”. The narrator names

the electric chair that will facilitate his execution “the mercy seat,” the name first given to the lid of the Ark of the Covenant,3 believed in the Judeo-Christian tradition to be the sacred container of the stone tablets on which God has inscribed the Ten Commandments. The narrator’s metaphor is a masterful touch and the key to the song’s meaning. According to the Old Testament book of Samuel, the two golden cherubim which adorn the mercy seat form the throne of God.4 Held in the Most Holy Place in the Israelite Temple, the mercy seat was also the site of an atonement ritual during the holiday of Yom Kippur, a means by which the Israelites’ violations of God’s commands could be cleansed and forgiven. The author of the New Testament epistle Hebrews writes that this atonement ritual foreshadows Christ’s atonement for the sins of all mankind in his crucifixion. “Mercy seat” is a translation of the German word gnadenstuhl, literally meaning “seat of grace,” or the place where one receives grace, used in Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German. Moreover, the Hebrew word used to name the ark’s covering is kapporeth, probably derived from the word kaphar, meaning wiping out or cleansing.5 With such a storied and complex label for the chair, the narrator weaves together several different possible views of the instrument of his execution: a place where he will receive grace and vindication, a place of cleansing of evil, or a place where his own divinity will be conferred. His execution is not merely an unjust sentence or a case of martyrdom but is compared in kind and magnitude to the sacrificial crucifixion of Christ.

Throughout the song, a striking interplay resonates between the narrator’s blasphemous pride and near his confessions of guilt. In one verse, the narrator transforms the chair on which he will die into the throne of God: “In heaven his throne is made of gold…down here it’s made of wood and wire,” undercut by the confession “My kill hand tattooed ‘E.V.I.L’/ Across its brother’s fist/That filthy five/They did nothing to challenge or resist.” As the song proceeds, the listener becomes more certain of the narrator’s guilt, and more perplexed at how he can continue to proclaim his innocence.

The musical cornerstone of “The Mercy Seat” is a martial chorus propelled by imposing snare drum rolls, over which Cave incessantly chants variations on the refrain “And the mercy seat is waiting/And I think my head is burning/And in a way I’m yearning/To be done with all this measuring of truth/An eye for an eye/A tooth for a tooth/And anyway I told the truth/ And I’m not afraid to die.” The narrator maintains stubborn insistence on his innocence as a cacophony of spiky guitar noise, piano tone clusters and sawing string ostinati builds around it, and the song concludes with the narrator’s barely audible insinuation of his guilt “And anyway I told the truth/But I’m afraid I told a lie.” Cave reveals a keen understanding of criminal psychology in its capacity for self-deception, its tendency to glorify itself, its retention of the truth and its lurking desire to be found out.

However, the song’s true greatness becomes clear when one reads his narrator not only as a heinous criminal, but as a general representative of man in rebellion against God. To understand this reading, one must exammine Biblical sources. The Sermon on the Mount, Christ’s famous dialogue comprising chapters 5-7 of the gospel of Matthew, begins with a series of exhortations, collectively called the Beatitudes, which are often regarded as describing the essential character of the Christian life. The first of these Beatitudes is “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”4 In his “Studies in the Sermon on the Mount,” D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes that poverty of spirit is “a complete absence of pride. . .a conscious

The narrator weaves together several different possible views of the instrument of his execution: a place where he will receive grace and vindication, a place of cleansing of evil, or a place where his own divinity is conferred.

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Like ours, [the narrator’s] self-deception is never quite complete; he retains enough knowledge of the truth that his lies are willful.

ness that we are nothing in the presence of God.”6 The person who is poor in spirit recognizes her state of sinful behavior and sinful character, and it is to such persons Christ promises the kingdom of heaven, the community of God’s blessed people in the past and present time on Earth, and the literal kingdom that these people will inhabit after the triumphal return of Christ. The beatitude states that to become a Christian, to enter the kingdom of God, is to acknowledge one’s thorough sinfulness, unworthy of the favor of God and unable to attain character worthy of God’s favor by one’s own efforts. Seeing her sin, such a person will cry out to God for salvation and forgiveness, repenting of her sin and receiving God’s mercy.

If poverty of spirit is the essence of Christian character, then the antithesis of Christian character is richness of spirit, a confidence in one’s own ability to attain godliness. This attitude is exemplified in Christ’s Luke 18 parable by the teacher of the law who prays “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”4 The teacher of the law, flaunting his own righteousness and condemning the unrighteous, is much like Cave’s narrator. The most striking feature of this criminal is not his motivation for or means of crime, of which we learn almost nothing; it is his richness of spirit, his suggestion that his suffering is comparable to Christ’s crucifixion, his seat of execution akin to the throne of God. The narrator is a symbol of humankind in rebellion against God, seated in the place where it will receive final punishment for its sin, declaring “Here is where I shall make a name for myself and become like God.” This is opposite the behavior of the Christian, represented in the same parable by a tax collector who “would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”4 Christ states, “’I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.’”4 With this parable, Christ proclaims that God answers favorably the wretched sinner who cries for mercy. Cave’s narrator makes no such cry, confessing his guilt only in his final words, after the chance for redemption has passed. He is a master of lies, but he cannot fully deceive himself. For his crimes, the narrator receives death, which the apostle Paul declares to be “the wages of sin.”4 In its intimate conversation with an unrepentant sinner, Cave’s song is terrifying and nuanced, revealing layer upon layer of psychology and theology. Whether or not he intended listeners to hear the narrator of “The Mercy Seat” in the way I have described is uncertain; Cave’s compositions often trade in thrilling religious imagery that holds no greater meaning.

It is nevertheless the work of a man who has excavated deeply into the chambers of the human heart, and in the absence of God, found only filth and sin.

References 1 “Nick Cave Biography.” Allmusic Guide. 2008. Macrovision Corporation. April 3, 2009 http://www.allmusic. com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:hiftxqw5ldfe~T1 2 “Nick Cave.” Internet Movie Database. 2009. IMDb.com, Inc. April 3, 2009 http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0147022/ 3 “Ark of the Covenant.” Encyclopedia Biblica. Ed. Thomas Kelly Cheyne. New York: Macmillan Company, 1899.

4 Holy Bible, New International Version. New York: International Bible Society, 1984.

5 “Mercy Seat.” Encyclopedia Biblica. Ed. Thomas Kelly Cheyne. New York: Macmillan Company, 1899.

6Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984.

Photo by auspices (http://www.flickr.com/photos/auspices/2910917376/), available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

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Sabbath

By Inez Tan

To step back and realize afresh that I am just another part of creation, not the creator, I am not God God knows I’d need a whole day of not doing work, not turning on the lights, not checking my inbox, not going to the store, not disturbing the world, for a whole day.

Resting.

Watching the flowers that grow wild in the grass.

They never stop growing, even on Sundays.

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Quo Vadis

Whither goest thou

By Stella Onochie

M

y brother arrived in the rain, thin and sucking hungrily from a bottle of Western liquor. His uniform was soiled. I hung on the door and watched him stare at me unknowingly, his eyes open like those of a broken, lonely dog.

Victor, I said his name and pulled the door wide. Victor shook his head as if waking and dropped the bottle—a sharp splash upon the concrete. There was reason for him not to recognize his brother. Several years had passed since he was carried to Yola, away from the Niger Delta oil. Mama complained to our neighbor Jonah, that for all his rare visits, Abacha might as well have sent him abroad—to Cameroon or whatever else on that side.

Stretching out his arm, he pushed past me, his touch cold but gentle enough not to make me scared. I was looking at the puddle of liquor on our porch step. So much wasted. It must have been about N400 left that he could have saved, had he given it to me.

My brother was home, tracking water down the hall towards the kitchen. I was torn between cleaning the water before Mama woke and took the mess as an excuse to whip me, or giving Victor a towel to dry himself. Mama had laid some towels out in the living room, near the windows to dry inside, due to rain. I brought him the least damp one.

Against the kitchen wall when you enter, we have a wooden bench. He was sitting there, facing the stove and our bath kettle. I held out the blue towel and then, slightly hesitant, I wrapped it around his shoulders. Victor never called except to wire us money, but he always saved credits to talk with me.

Here brother, I said, giving him an awkward pat on the shoulder. He grabbed my hand suddenly, the grip tight, but still did not look at me.

Please, Obi, he said, squeezing hard. Put on the kettle.

And then he let me go. I drew my hand back quickly and walked towards the stove against the opposite wall. The silver kettle was large and heavy, full of water from the buckets we stored in the pantry.

I turned the gas, lit it with a match, and placed the kettle on the burner.

Victor never called except Obi, my brother said. to wire us money, Yes. but he always saved credits I wasn't looking at him as I was trying to balance the kettle on the bulky to talk to me. burner. Mama had found these at the market and they didn't fit our make of stove exactly.

Obi. When I looked, he was off the bench and on the floor, legs spread and out. The stained cloth along his right thigh was torn—I could see dirty bandages soaked with blood. Victor's weak arm dragged the towel into his lap.

Mama's door was closed but I pulled the broken handle and pushed it open. Mama, I said. Mama. Her large figure rolled over and I heard exasperation in her voice.

Obioma1, she scolded, not fully awake yet. Hei. What kind thing is this? If I leave this bed, I will beat you.

Mama, Victor— My throat was tight and swollen. At the sound of his name, her eyes stretched wide.

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Victor? She drew herself up in one motion, bringing her wrapper to close tighter across her chest and stumbled past me into the hall.

Victor? My pikin-o? Chineke, Ekene-dilichuwku, thanks be to God. I'm ashamed to cry before my brother, so I stood where she left me, in the hall, swallowing like a fool. Mama's mumbled litany was a whisper, seeming to wax and wane into the walls. She didn't scream until she entered the kitchen.

God-o please, my God. The shrill swell of the kettle began to sound. She yelled for me: Obi. Ooobi. Bring me Jonah.

I came to the kitchen and peered through the doorway. Victor's lean figure was bent against our mother's strong shoulders, half standing, half falling. She was crying prayers in Ibo while the kettle wailed.

I'm sorry Mama, he said, eyes closed. He favored his right leg. I am sorry.

Mama turned and saw me. I rushed across the street to our neighbor, nearly slipping in the dark water I had forgotten to clean. I fought the urge to look back and see—if Victor's blood was in it too. *** Victor stayed in the hospital for three weeks and Mama with him, as much as she could. Even though I was old enough to know what happened, she didn't explain anything to me. She left me to guess why my brother required her assistance to urinate; how and why he bore a jagged wound in his thigh, the infection which drove him delirious with fever. Chizoba2 said she heard him crying last night.

Liar. You live two streets from us.

And Nnenna's mother said he is dying. Is it true? Can I see him?

Death fascinated Chizo. When the stray I adopted died, she was the first to touch it and lay her small, searching ear against his chest for a heartbeat. When the rain came and worms drowned in dented puddles, she wondered at their bloated bodies. I would get angry with all the other children, spreading stories about Victor, but not her. Though not a little brother, I found a sister in Chizo.

Nonsense, I said. We were sitting outside my house on the trunk of Mama's Peugeot 505, an old, rusty thing that clang, clanged down the uneven roads. We sat sideways to face the upperstory window, Victor's room, where the curtains were thickly drawn. He's not dying, Chizo.

Then why can't I see him? Why doesn't he come to church?

I shrugged. He's tired.

She touched my arm and slid down from the trunk, fixing her skirt: Someone's coming. Chizo loved to wear her pleated grey and white blouse long after classes ended. Despite the beatings merited by a dirty uniform halfway into the week, she could not be persuaded to renounce the simple pleasure.

Do you know them? She asked.

The tin gate leading to our driveway had opened and a black Mercedes nosed itself into the driveway, slow. It slipped behind our Peugeot with the graceful glide of a snake. I took Chizo's hand and walked to the door step to watch.

It's the soldier from the hospital, I said to her, looking into the tinted glass where the shadow of his smooth head lay.

While in the hospital, we found that one of Victor's peers was in Warri, working there as a technician. I thought he still carSpring 2009

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ried himself like a soldier—his voice was dark and grating. We greeted him.

Good afternoon, he said to me, though looking at Chizo. Is your mother home?

No sir, I said, remembering that fact and feeling strangely bereft. She went to market.

Little sister, what is your name?

Chizoba.

He smiled very pleasantly. I didn't know Victor had a sister.

She's my friend, I said, to which the man winked at me. Chizoba dropped He looked less like a soldier, my hand. and more like a fat lizard I asked if he wished to see my brother and he answered yes. Chizo usually with his neck hated being ignored, us speaking over her now like she was not there. But this and hooded eyes. time, she did not interrupt us. She moved away and began to follow the blue and red lizard, sitting like a sentry above us. Leaving Chizo outside, I took the man to my brother's room.

When I opened his door, Victor's head rested against his wrist as he sat in bed. There was a book of prayer in his lap, still wrapped in plastic. In his other hand was a worn rosary.

Ah, welcome, he said, looking up at the man. Nno. Victor began clearing his bed.

Dalu, my friend. The man glanced at the prayer book and rosary that Victor was placing in his table drawer. So, you are a priest now?

No. But you tried to make yourself one—I heard it.

Victor's arm jerked sharply and he slid the drawer shut. He gestured to me, where I was by the door. Be quiet, Samuel.

His friend chuckled, but there was contempt in him. He doesn't know?

Victor was always quiet with me, since he was twice my age, almost 26. He was my brother but also the man of our house, to the point of being father-like since his had passed and mine was as good as dead.

Were you in a fight, I asked coming to stand closer, next to Samuel which was a mistake. He smelled strongly of cigarettes and body odor.

Victor's hand was pulling at the blanket, smoothing the wrinkled mountains. I was fighting—something.

Samuel took the chair beside the bed and sat, spreading his legs wide. How old is Chizoba? He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and took Victor's lighter from the dresser table.

Go sit down, Obi, Victor said, propping himself against the backboard. His whole leg was elevated on pillows.

But— Do you hear? Samuel asked, puffing grey smoke trailing from his lips. I did not like him anymore. He looked less like a soldier, and more like a fat lizard with his neck and hooded eyes. I turned away.

Close the door.

I drew it shut.

Chizoba was sitting on the door step when I came back from his room.

Close your legs, I said, out of habit. She pulled at her skirt so it covered her knees.

Why? I don't know, I said, feeling uncomfortable. Doesn't your father tell you that?

Yes, but why? She asked.

It's not proper.

She wrinkled her nose at me, but otherwise made sure she was sitting correctly. I sat on the edge of the step to give her more room, cutting back a feeling to say that they were talking about her. It was one of the first times that I had ever felt jealous of

{

30

The Williams Telos

}

Chizo. The other time had been when we were younger and the woman selling chin chin gave her more snack than me. She called her Nwamaka because Chizo was a very beautiful child.

Despite her upbringing.

We both craned our necks upward to the window where the drapes blocked sight of us in all their heaviness.

I wonder what they're talking about, she said before guessing. Probably war.

We spent the rest of the afternoon fanning each other with banana leaves from trees in the yard, tormenting the little boys in the street with their plastic-bag waters, and searched laughingly for the bread seller's straggling chicken, a hen Chizo had named Chia-pet. *** Mama loved Victor more than God, though she hosted the prayer warrior meeting every month. The women carried sweet puff-puff with them for me. They spoiled me in the way Mama must have spoiled Victor. Mrs. Arinze always hugged me upon leaving, remarking that despite my little size, I was almost a big man. I missed her presence. She and the other women had agreed to pray elsewhere for the duration of Victor's illness.

My mother was in the kitchen, cooking ogbono soup for us to eat. She sang loud and brash: O God, I am very, very thank-ful. For all you have done for me. I try not to laugh, especially in church since I sit right near her, the noise thrashing my ears. So I volunteer to altar serve as much as possible, to be near the priest's soft tenor, full of reverence, and the altar that holds the paper-thin bread and sweet wine. I took the plates from the kitchen counter and brought them to the table before she could take them herself.

Obi, wait now, she said. Take one more.

I hid my surprise. Is it Samuel, I asked.

But she was singing over me. I took the plates to the table, arranging them quickly and then went to Victor's room without knocking.

When I came in, Victor held the strap of a suspender in hand and was clipping it to the front of his pants. He looked at me briefly before continuing to dress.

The food is almost ready, I said.

Okay, thank you, Victor said, looping his belt back around his waist. He balanced his weight on his left leg—he didn't like walking with a cane, but had to until the wound fully healed.

I didn't ask what I had come to ask, but instead lingered by his bed stand. The drawer was open again and the Bible was out of its store wrapping. Victor, I said. What happened?

His reflex was to smile but the movement was awkward. Obi...And then he frowned, not knowing what else to say. Obi, he began again but then heard the expensive motor of Samuel's car. His fingers trailed down the suspenders to make them flat.

Let's eat, he said. He brushed my shoulder in passing and then said firmly, You've been sheltered, Obi. You're much too old to play with little girls. *** All through dinner, his comment stung. It bothered Mama that my only friend was Chizo, the one whose father drank his money in palm-wine and had the mother who “knew” many of the officers patrolling Airport Road.

She knows them well-well-o, Mama would laugh during Jonah's visits. He was a friend of

“He brushed my shoulder in passing and then said firmly, You’ve been sheltered, Obi. You’re much too old to play with little girls.”

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Victor's father and by association, a very good man.

But I was too small to follow the older boys my age into the city at night. And my back was too delicate to bear the beatings I was sure to receive if I skipped class with them. So Chizo found me during catechism, relinquishing herself to my company in her bright, earnest way. I had no need of anyone else.

Mama's soup was bitter, but Victor obediently finished his plate. Dalu, Mama, he said, allowing her nervousness to drain and pride to enter.

She smiled warmly. Ndo. Samuel's mouth was full of ebba; the soft dough stretched his cheeks like a frog. He had picked all the meat from his soup and laid the marrow-empty bones in neat rows on his plate.

As his visits became more frequent, he brought more and more promises of jobs outside the military. Victor had only joined for short service and would be done now if it weren't for his injury. He had a degree. There was much to look forward to. This was one of Samuel's first dinners with us, as he usually visited in the afternoons, when Mama braided at the beauty shop and me and Chizo roamed the yard.

I hated that he knew things I did not. He was privileged to know more of Victor than his own brother— half-brother. He was asking me a question.

So, does the military call you too, Obioma?

I looked to where Victor was, in the kitchen, washing his own plate, laughing silently at Mama's protests for him to go sit.

Yes, I said, drinking Fanta. When he looked at me, his eyes were lazy. Unfocused. To show even more that he didn't care for my answer.

He drank his malt. Your father should have stayed in the army. Abacha is doing good things for those with tenure.

The orange drink fizzed against my throat and I coughed. I don't like you, I thought, as if the sentiment would bore its way through his thick skull. My father left the military and our family to chase big money and large breasted prostitutes in Lagos. If he had stayed in the army like Victor's father and died there, his memory would have been easier to stomach. My father had probably contracted syphilis in a back alley and died.

Victor came back into the living room with his jacket. He walked tight and stiff—he didn't have his cane. You ready? he said.

Samuel washed his hands in the bowl of water on the table. Dalu, Mama, he said, lowering his head a bit. It's not late: we're going to my church for Bible study, he laughed. I will return him around eleven o'clock.

Mama laughed too. Take your time. Okay. Bye. I was surprised by her lack of worry. This was Victor's first time, since arriving in March, spending April in the hospital, and secluding himself for half of May, to leave the house. As for Bible study, I believed it for Victor, but not for Samuel. *** I explored his room when they left, looking for his ridiculously important Bible. Even for Bible study, he hadn't felt the need to carry it. I began to doubt if he read it at all, the musky smell of new leather, the weight of a hundred uncreased or dog-eared pages. Something fell out when I lifted the black book. The notebook paper was wrinkled from water and neat, quiet The Williams Telos

“My father left the military and our family to chase big money and large breasted prostitutes in Lagos.”

stanzas were written on it in Victor's hand. I have failed you. It read, and my breath, your lips, your cries... I dropped it in disgust.

A love letter. Or poem. I didn't know my brother was capable of such things. It was something I imagined doing later, when I met the woman I'd marry, but I never actually thought to do it.

I looked in the drawer for anything else, more clues as to what had happened and why it was such a secret. But it was empty, now that the Bible was in my hand and the rosary hung from the front bed post. I wished Chizo were here—she was excellent at reading the missing parts; of understanding what people meant precisely by what was left out. In my dream of our mysterysolving, I thought about writing her a poem. Of friendship, later. *** His slurred voice woke me. I put on my sandals and creaked open my door. My room was next to Victor's, the walls so thin that I could hear him praying to Our Lady at night. It was when he was sick though that he spoke to her with the most passionate of petitions. I am sure Mama heard him too, but we both lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, begging God to help him through this desperate affliction.

Lay down, Mama said. Let me help you, she said and then I heard her exclaim. He must have pushed her because I didn't hear the crack of a palm, but the force was enough that she went, Oh. I opened my door an inch more in time to see her shadow go back to her own room, in distress. I went the opposite direction—into my brother's room.

Did you hit Mama? I asked, disbelieving, my bare chest starting to goosepimple because of the late night cold.

He didn't weave around unsteadily, but sat down, calm with his hands in his lap. Victor was drunk and the smell of him hit my nostrils when his mouth opened.

If she touches me one more time, he said, leaving it at that. The air between us had grown pinched. I struggled to navigate within it and made eye contact. He returned my stare.

Do you want a story? He asked, sounding like Samuel. Little brother Obi. Ah, Obi. Are you a baby? Do you still suck woman's breast?

My stomach twisted. No, I almost shouted. What's happened to you?

Now Victor smiled and in between the gesture, I could see his dark eyes beginning to fill. But he never cried as a child, and he certainly would not as an adult.

I slept with a girl.

My cheeks began to burn at the rush of blood. He sounded like the older boys, the not-yet-men who loved talking about such subjects; who teased Chizoba because she grew breasts faster than all the others.

I pulled her off the bus...in the bushes.

I knew a little of what he was talking about, but I didn't know the details of how it happened. Except that women did not like it. Men did.

I did. Victor said, pulling at his rosary, his head beginning to lower ever so slightly. And I left her to my friends.

Victor—I said.

Ah, fuck it, he broke off. Dropping the beads to the floor, he took a struggled breath and that was it. He cried in the same way he laughed—silently.

I should have cut it off, Obi. His black eyes implored a figure above him, one I knew I could not see. It was only then that I truly realized what he had done to himself; it was only then that I was flooded with shame for him.

Back into the comfort of my room with its thin, onion walls, I covered my head with a pillow. In my dream, I followed Victor in a mud field, open-mouthed, gripping the back of his suspenders. We reached a tiny hole where a glint of metal, like liquid, shined. I knelt for Victor and pushed mud into the hole where it splattered and filled.

I'm glad, I said upon standing, wiping the mud on my pants.

Why, he said, still looking for his knife.

And I grinned until my teeth began to fall out.

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*** I watched Mama the next morning, as she made Victor a cup of hot Milo and buttered bread. Though he hadn't drunk the chocolate milk since his teens, he took it without question as she hovered behind his shoulders. There was no mention of what happened last night. It wasn't until he rose to take his own dishes that Mama knew she was forgiven, for what, I don't understand.

Gratitude twisted her face at Victor's thank you, and her forehead creased with deeper lines.

Ndo, she had said, smiling firmly. Ndo. *** Obioma!

Chizo was running towards me, a sight that embarrassed me because of her blouse and the eyes of the other boys. When she had reached my driveway, I drew the tin gate shut.

Why did you do that? She asked, looking at me strangely.

I'm tired of their round mouths, I said.

No—why didn't you wait for me?

Chizo and I always walked home together: first to my house, and then I took her to her own. But today, I wanted to be by myself.

Aren't you embarrassed? I asked.

Of what?

Of what they say—Obi's wife. That's what they're saying.

Does it embarrass you?

I hesitated. Yes...and you?

Of course.

We reached an agreement in silence. I wanted to tell you something, she said. My father's leaving—Mama made him leave yesterday. Chizo said this with excitement, though her brown eyes were sad. She said, Pick your things—carry go.

Normally, I would reach for her hand. This time, I put my hands in my pockets. She hurried on.

I laughed and Papa kicked me. Placing her hand on her hip, she added, Mama worried it was broken.

But you were running just now, I pointed out.

Her crested tone dropped a little, out of hurt. I needed to tell you.

My chest, which had been tight for Victor and those few days before, released some weight. Chizo read me so well. Wait, I said, feeling a resurgence in feeling. We don't have Fanta but I'll get you some.

Obi, she scolded with a deeper tone, but it was her way of hiding her voice, and the small tears straining to fall.

No, no, it's okay. Mama's not home. We were both remembering the time when she had been chased from the house.

Mama had mistaken her curiosity for the toys in my room as evidence that she was like her mother. That was three years ago. I wondered if I even knew what it meant then. If Chizo understood even now.

She waved her fingers as if to ward away a mosquito. I'll wait here, she said, lowering herself onto the door step.

I checked my shorts pocket for change. Then I made my way to Mr. Okoro's store which was actually an indoor store, not The Williams Telos

like the market stalls and their mildewed wood surrounding us. It was a farther walk and more expensive, but the drink would be cold; Chizo appreciated The pressure in me the little things I sometimes gave. bled out my pores, *** a shame and agony.

When I returned, Chizo was gone. The dirt stained my socks with a rustdappled coat that Mama would have to rub away, at the next laundry. Passing the black car reminded me that Samuel was back, but I shivered more at the thought of meeting my brother. We were on awkward terms now. Victor and Mama renewed their silence, my knowledge not enough to bring me into their circle. I thought of smashing closed his mouth as it leaned for communion. In my dreams, I never spoke to Mama again, and moved to Lagos with Chizo where we lived in a high rise apartment and ate suya meat every night, the roasted skin hot and filling. I was restless with pretending.

Chizo was on Samuel's lap when I entered the living room. Her skirt was spread over his legs while the contortions of his face swallowed his eyes. His thin tongue hung over his lips.

I don't think he saw me, where I stood frozen, until I fell on him. The bottle did not break into diamond shards like in the movies, but bounced hollowly off his smooth head. I punched and scratched, hitting Chizo in the process, but not really caring since the worst had already happened. I pulled her from him and she cried out, finally breaking her silence. With her body gone, Samuel had clear grasp of me. He punched me in the stomach and I retched.

Victor appeared suddenly and his gaze absorbed us all: Chizo on the floor, her legs still spread; myself kneeling, vomit on my school clothes; Samuel buttoning, buttoning his pants in anger.

My brother looked at Chizo whose hair stood up in askewed strands, whose white shirt was discolored with red dirt. He helped her stand, not looking at me or Samuel for the matter, but his grip was tight around her arm. He said softly: I thought I told you to run home, Chizoba. He took her, almost dragged her to our door.

And I, kneeling there, winded without breath, couldn't even stand to take her home myself. Samuel left minutes later and Victor followed, the two men talking in casual, self-conscious Ibo. I think Victor stood outside so I could straighten my face in private. The burn of vomit coated my tongue. I shook all over. I couldn't remember her face—only Victor's composed expression as he glanced through me.

When I slid the lock to the bathroom door, I heard his empty footsteps go past, into his room. I sat on the floor, wishing to wash my mouth and remembered the Fanta. The pressure in me bled out my pores, a shame and agony.

I told myself that Victor had not been home, which was true. That he decided to go walk before they had reached the house.

{

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}

Obioma- Male Ibo name; means good/clean/clear hearted.

Chizoba- Female Ibo name; means God save us/God be with us.

Photos by Jed (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Mercedes-Benz_Cabriolet_-_front.jpg), available under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2, and Amy (http://picasaweb.google.com/amymcglinn/MoroccoAndHollandApril2007#5193016063083870034), available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Spring 2009

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Eucharist

By Fr. Gary Caster

Te quiero!

Qué quieres?

Quiero pan.

Spanish makes it easy To want love In a simple slice of bread, To link need Together with desire Fraternal twins Kneaded together In one loaf That isn’t What it seems to be in English Or in any other vulgar tongue.

Why ask for wine Or anything more fulfilling Than blood That quenches arid hearts And sweetens The flavor of acceptance With a taste of God? Qué quieres?

Quiero pan.

Te quiero!

36

The Williams Telos

By Adam Stoner

TELOS SPRING 2009