Yale Logos - Fall 2015 by Yale Logos

Logos The Person of Jesus | Fall 2015

Yaleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Journal of Christian Thought

Dear Reader,

ou are about to read an issue that is

What follows continues from the crucifixion story.

nothing short of a miracle. After two years

It is a meditation on life and death, provoked by the

of inactivity, The Logos has returned to show

passing of a family member. There we see the source

Yale’s campus that Christian thought can satisfy the

of human failings and of death in the Garden of

mind and the heart. This issue centers on the person

Eden and see Jesus Himself as the potent antidote

of Jesus—that is, His life and works. In it, we

to both. However, we have to pause and wonder:

find that Jesus’ legacy sheds light on questions as

if themes of death and rebirth are common to all

deep as the definition of life and death, to

myths, what makes Jesus’ claims any different? Our

ones as personal as how to love one’s neighbor.

article on the problem of myth explains just how

We find this issue saturated with great sorrow and

unique Jesus’ claims are. This transitions into a look

even horror, as writers explore events such as the

at the institution that promulgated Jesus’ message

crucifixion, and great solace, as Jesus’ message

and emphasized its uniqueness: the Church. We see

brings hope for this life and the next. This issue

how one cannot divorce the Christian understanding

engages with these subjects at the micro level, such

of Jesus and His teachings from the Church He

as a conversation Jesus had, and at a macro level,

established. Finally, we have a final provocation: is all

bringing in St. Athanasius’ ideas on life and death.

this reasoning on matters of truth and life in vain? Can reason lead one to faith or even to truth? In this

I would recommend that you follow our issue as

piece, we invite our readers to ponder these questions

a story in two parts. It begins with the crux of Christ’s

and write to us with their opinions, or with a rebuttal.

message, explained while he converses with a young man in society’s elite about God and His

We sincerely hope that the conversation we be-

goodness. He exposing the corruption of the human

gin with this issue will continue with you. We invite

heart, and shows that true goodness must come

you to consider Christianity’s insights, and examine

from the source: God. In the next article, we

the life of Jesus for yourself. We also hope that you

see Jesus demonstrating His teaching by His

keep an open mind, write about your thoughts, ask

loving interactions with his friends: society’s poor

questions, and seek answers with others in the Yale

and rejected. We also see how people, even in

community. We are glad to host this conversation

Israel, his chosen people, and in His own

and will have opportunities for readers and writers

church, failed to live up to his message and

to discuss them together Spring semester. With all

example. Suddenly, human failings reach their

this said, I present to you our issue on the person of

lowest

Jesus and will let the articles speak for themselves.

point

with

the

abject

horror

the crucifixion of Christ. Yet, Jesus forgives those who butchered him and rises from the dead,

Sincerely,

giving hope and extending love to all who follow

Him.

intermission,

have

a conversation with Yale’s Professor Eire about Jesus and wealth and, again, see society’s greed

Pedro Enamorado

and sin juxtaposed with acts of charity and love.

Editor-in-Chief

The Staff Executive Board Pedro Enamorado, Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Dacosta, Executive Director

Mission Named for the Greek term meaning “word,” “reason,” “principle,” and “logic,” The Logos seeks to stimulate discussion of a Christian worldview in a way that is relevant and engaging to the Yale community.

Sydney Wade, Production/Business Manager Annie Jones, Art Manager

Editors Kenneth Kiambati

Writers William Bailey Victoria Campbell Armando Ghinaglia

Acknowledgements This issue of the Logos has been made possible in part by the generous contributions and continuing support of the Cecil B. Day Foundation and the Christian Union.

Involvement Interested in writing an article for The Logos or responding to one of the articles in this issue? Contact Nicholas Dacosta, Executive Director, at nicholas.dacosta@yale.edu.

Max Graham

Production Consultants Justin Hawkins Andrew Shuman

Disclaimer The Logos is published by Yale College students; neither Yale University nor its affiliates are responsible for the material herein.

Contents

A Goodness that Satisfies

Jesus, Friend of Sinners

Horror and Hope in the Cross

Death Undone

Jesus and the Problem of

Wealth in the Church: An Interview with Dr. Carlos Eire

Myth

Who Do You Say I Am: The Centrality of the Church in the Christian Faith A Provocation: Can Reason Lead to Definitive Truth?

A Goodness that Satisfies Mark 10: 17-31 by William Bailey

hen I first came to Yale, I was impressed by how many talented students I was surrounded by. In high school, there was little disagreement in my mind who one of the hardest working students was (me, if you needed the hint). At Yale, I have found people who are just as, if not more, motivated than me. I have seen them lead student organizations, sing with the voices of angels, and dance gracefully across stages. In fact, I have met people with far more knowledge than me; their accomplishments make mine seem minuscule in comparison. I have often responded, “Man, I’m not as smart as I thought.” Considering how prone

we are to overestimate ourselves, might this also be true of our views of our own goodness? Perhaps we are not as good as we think. In Mark 10:17-27, we are introduced to a young member of the Jewish elite who thought highly of his own goodness. Coming to Jesus, the young man asks him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). Jesus saw that this young man had a misconception of what it meant to be good, so he first responds by challenging the man’s assumptions: “Why do you call me good?” (Mark 10:18). Through his interaction with Jesus, the man later recognizes the shallowness of his own ideas of goodness in light of God’s perfect goodness. Jesus confronted the young man with the Ten Commandments—a part of God’s standard of morality. To be truly good and gain eternal life, Jesus told him that he must follow the commandments: “‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not

steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’” (Mark 10:19). The young man believed himself to be blameless. He had not physically murdered anyone or slept with anyone’s wife. He did not steal from his brothers like the tax collectors who often extorted excess taxes for personal gain. He was probably the good kid of the family who obeyed his parents, read his Torah, and went to Synagogue every Saturday. By the world’s standards, he was a success: he had riches, prestige, and political clout. Externally, the man’s performance seemed impeccable. Hence, he replied, “all these I have kept from my youth” (Mark 10:20). However, Jesus wanted the young man to realize that God defines goodness as more than external obedience. Jesus responded, “One thing you lack […] Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor. Then come, follow me” (Mark 10:21-22). With this single request, Jesus revealed the true nature of the man’s heart. The man’s greed would not permit him to do as Jesus asked, and he left sorrowfully. He was willing to forfeit any claims to goodness or eternal life for the sake of keeping his wealth! As Jesus points out, goodness is not merely external conformity but internal purity. It is not enough for us to appear clean outwardly while our hearts are filled with evil desires. While we often judge superficially and by appearances, God sees our thoughts and motives; He judges our hearts. How did the young man fail to fully keep the commandments? The commandments demand more than physically abstaining from the act of murder or adultery. If our hearts are filled with anger, hatred, bitterness, malice, and desires for revenge, we are murders at heart (1 John 3:15). Even if we do not physically commit adultery or have sex outside of marriage, we still do wrong by looking at others lustfully (Matthew 5:27-28). Though we might not have physically stolen, do we covet and envy other’s possessions, friends, successes, and opportunities? Our hearts are not humble, generous, and self-sacrificing. The internal reality presents a different picture: We are prideful, boastful about our accomplishments, and self-centered. If being good is our goal, we have failed miserably. Jesus teaches what true goodness is: conforming to the commandments of God, which reflect his nature. Just as it was easy for me to overestimate my academic prowess, so too is it easy for us to overestimate our goodness when we define goodness on our own terms. In order to properly

understand what it means to call someone good, we must see goodness as God sees it. Goodness flows out of the character and nature of God. Evil is to deviate from who God is. God is truth; to deceive and tell half-truths is wrong. God is love; to hate and mistreat offends Him. God is just; to oppress or belittle others stirs His anger. The Bible describes God as “perfect, for all his ways are justice,” and says that He is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong,” (Deuteronomy 32:4 and Habakkuk 1:13). As these verses attest, God is utterly good and utterly perfect; there is no sin, evil, imperfection, or blemish in Him God is so pure that anything less than His righteousness is unrighteousness and anything less than His goodness is evil.

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It is His great delight to carry all who trust in Him safely to Heaven’s shores, through the goodness only He can provide.

If God is utterly good and demands perfect obedience, where does that leave humanity with God? Jesus teaches that God will judge the world and hold every person accountable for his/her actions, thoughts, and words. Indeed, the outcome of this judgement is so important that Jesus warned: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:29). God will surely not let evil go unpunished; He will administer justice to the wicked. Indeed, the Bible says “as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire...” (Rev. 21:8). For all those who continue in wrongdoing, He will punish with an eternity of conscious suffering. This is one reason the young ruler wanted to be sure of his goodness. Where does this leave us personally with God? Like the young ruler, our goodness falls far short of the perfect goodness of God. If we are honest, we do not deserve eternal life but eternal judgment. Because we cannot attain goodness on our own, we need a

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substitute. We need one who could suffer Hell for us and clothe us with a perfect righteousness. God Himself has provided this substitute for the Day of Judgment. Yes, the Lord would much rather have us spend an eternity living in His presence: to forever be in a living relationship with the Creator of the universe, the Ruler of all things who we were created to know. He longs for us to be in Heaven— the place of endless bliss and delight in God. Rather than living lives in rebellion against Him and His laws, God desires that we walk with Him as we live in obedience to Him. What is this goodness that satisfies God and can stand in our place? Such a goodness exists in the person of Jesus. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16). Jesus (who is fully God) came to the earth and became a human being. He walked the earth being both fully man and fully God. He lived the perfectly good life we failed to live. On the cross, He “who knew no sin,” bore the penalty and wrath of God that our evil deeds warranted and has “become the righteousness of God,” for us (1 Corinthians 5:21). He paid our debt so that we might live, legally transferring Jesus’ goodness to us and our sinfulness to His broken body and soul on the cross. Three days after His death and burial, Jesus rose from the grave to show us just how sure the promise of eternal life is in Him and to inaugurate the New Creation which rolls back the effects of sin and death. He now extends an offer of eternal life to all who are willing to repent (turn from evil and follow God), believe who Jesus says He is, and trust in Him as the source of our goodness and the only way to Heaven. God then promises to place His Spirit within us and give us new hearts that long to please Him and walk with Him (Ezekiel 36:25-27). When we thus trust in Jesus, our seat in Heaven and our relationship with God is eternally secure. When God looks upon those who trust in Jesus, He does not see their evil deeds but the perfect goodness and righteousness of Christ. Just as God is completely satisfied with His own goodness so too will we be a great delight in His eyes. We have seen how easy it is to overestimate our abilities and our own goodness; we have seen the goodness God requires of us through examining His perfect character. What goodness can we depend on to satisfy God on the day of our

judgement? We could rely on our own efforts and merits. Alternatively, we could trust in the perfect goodness of Jesus. He promises to hear all who cry out to Him in repentance and faith asking for salvation. He helps all those who are willing to admit their wrongdoings and their need for mercy. Indeed, He stands eager and attentive to clothe us in His own goodness. He freely grants pardon and forgiveness of sin to all who sincerely ask for it. He is mighty to save us from the fires of hell, the natural consequence of an inadequate goodness, and forever place us in a relationship with God. It is His great delight to carry all who trust in Him safely to Heaven’s shores, through the goodness only He can provide. William is a senior in Calhoun College majoring in Computer Science.

Jesus, Friend of Sinners by Nicholas Dacosta

esus Christ has been one of the most influential and controversial figures in history. Embodying a message of radical love and a system of values antithetical to that of his day, Jesus’ teachings were contentious and unpalatable in a world where legalistic obedience and worthiness were inextricably linked. The church, as conceived after the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry, was intended to be the extension and manifestation of Jesus’ message of divine reconciliation here on earth. Historically, however, the church has been a source of division and derision, often creating a dichotomy of us-versus-them between believers and

non-believers. This separation between the ecclesiastical and secular flies in the face of the message of the Gospel. Looking closely at the life and teachings of Jesus, we see that isolating oneself from those who are perceived to be “unclean” is completely contrary to the Gospel. Jesus Christ, rightly understood, has always been the defender of the downtrodden, the champion of the disinherited, and a friend of sinners. Jesus among Sinners The society that Jesus lived in was heavily stratified, with religious scholars and rabbis inhabiting the top tiers of social status while women, tax collectors, prostitutes, and sick people all fell towards the bottom of the social hierarchy. In many ways, the Pharisees and other religious leaders embodied a literal holier-than-thou mentality, effectively ostracizing those who did not adhere to their strict

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legalist interpretation of Scripture. Invalids and beggars were seen as unclean, prostitutes were publicly shamed for their promiscuity, and tax collectors were despised for collecting money for the oppressive Roman government. Jesus, being the embodiment of the perfect laws of scripture, would have the most reason of anyone to dissociate himself from the sinful pariahs. And yet, he does the exact opposite. In the Gospel of Matthew, we see Jesus call Matthew, who is a tax collector, to follow after him. He goes on, to the outrage of the Pharisees, to eat dinner at Matthew’s house among “many tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 9:10). When travelling between towns, Jesus and the disciples were accompanied by women who had been cured of evil spirits, despite the fact that anyone else would have turned these women away or kept them at a distance (Luke 8:2). When a prostitute heard that Jesus would be at a Pharisee’s house, she knelt at Jesus’ feet and began washing his feet with her tears and her hair. Whereas the Pharisee was appalled by this, Jesus blessed her and forgave her of her sins (Luke 7:36-50). Compassion, not Condemnation From a pragmatic point of view, it is difficult to understand why Jesus chose to associate himself with such derelict individuals, knowing that such

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Unlike the religious authorities of the day, Jesus was concerned not with outer displays of religiosity, but with the internal state of the heart.

association could potentially tarnish his reputation and have negative implications for his credibility. Indeed, he was not unaware of the epithets people had been saying about him, that he was “a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19). Why, then, was Jesus willing to risk being thought of this way? Jesus addresses this concern unequivocally: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick…for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners...” (Matthew 9:12-13). Unlike the religious authorities of the day, Jesus was concerned not with outer displays of religiosity,

but with the internal state of the heart. Jesus did not try to distance himself from sinners because the centerpiece of his ministry was compassion. Jesus understood that the depravity of the human heart was ubiquitous, and that all were— and still are—in need of redemption. The way to reconciliation with God is through the transformation of the heart, but before there can be transformation of the heart, there must be unconditional compassion and acceptance. The book of Romans tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that there is nothing we can do to earn grace or eternal life (Romans 3:23, 11:6). As a result, we are all deserving of the penalty of sin—an eternity of separation from God. The beauty of the Gospel is that Jesus did not come to condemn the world but to redeem it (John 3:17). Acceptance is not Approval However, it is necessary that there be distinction between acceptance and approval, as well as the understanding that one does not necessarily connote the other. Jesus did not, and neither must we, compromise truth for the sake of affability. Jesus’ relationship with sinners is characterized, the apostle John writes, as one “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Truth without grace is legalism and grace without truth is sentimentality. Neither is attractive without the other, and one without the other is not an accurate representation of the gospel message. In extending grace and forgiveness to sinners, Jesus does not trivialize the gravity of sin, nor is he compromising the principles of scripture in order to assuage the transgressor. Acting out of both grace and truth, Jesus not only says “you are forgiven,” but takes it a step further and commands that we “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). The application of Jesus’ message not only allows but even requires that relationships exist between Him and sinners. It would be the ultimate act of spite to be convicted of truth and not share that truth with others. That compassion to befriend the outcast springs out of this desire for others to know the truth. It is why, when a single sheep is separated from the flock in Jesus’ parable, the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine in the open to go search for the lost sheep (Luke 15:1-7). The time spent searching for the sheep, or in community with tax collectors and sinners, does not serve to justify the actions of the lost, but

rather is an effort to rectify the issue of their sin and restore relationship between them and God. Changing the Church In a regrettable twist of irony, the Church today has come frequently to resemble the Pharisees more than it resembles Jesus. For non-believers, the biggest barrier to entry into Christianity is often the Church itself. “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians; your Christians are so unlike your Christ,” said Ghandi famously, a sentiment expressed by disillusioned seekers and on bumper stickers alike. Entrenched in self-righteous dogma, Christians have lost sight of what it means to be Christ’s ambassadors. In a world where so much negativity and division already exists, that the church should be anything other than a beacon of God’s loving grace and redemption is unthinkable. If the church is to reflect Jesus, it is imperative

that they extend compassion and acceptance to those whom the Church has historically ostracized and alienated. As believers, it is our responsibility to bring this message of reconciliation to those who need to hear it. Let us, therefore, look past the differences that divide us and find instead unite in our need for salvation. Let us not forget who the Church is called to represent. Let us be mindful of the beams in our own eyes before calling attention to the speck in the eyes of others. Let us cast aside our pride and self-righteousness so that we may instead be humbled by the outpour of grace in our lives. Above all, let us never lose sight of what it means to embody the fullness of the gospel of redemption: to live full of compassion and truth, and to be a friend of sinners. Nicholas is a sophomore in Davenport College majoring in Philosophy and Religious Studies.

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Horror and Hope in the Cross by Tori Campbell

s a child, I grew up both terrified and fascinated by the sculpture of a dying man that hung on the wall of my grandmother’s church. As the priest evenly intoned through the mass, my gaze would slide up to the statue, darting back down when I saw the nails in the statue’s wrists. A few moments later, my eyes would inch their way up again. Invariably, I would end up having nightmares that night, related to the wrongly-accused Jesus hanging on the cross. After a few years, this image of the cross became somewhat sanitized in my mind; it gained the somewhat more dignified title of “crucifix.” Overall, the genre of statue seemed more artistic,

somehow more tragically romantic, than frightening. There may, however, be some wisdom in my childhood fear. In fact, the biblical account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ actually has more in common with a horror movie than a romance. That said, in the midst of the cross’ darkness, God’s justice and love for humanity becomes clearer than ever before, and the object of horror becomes a beacon of hope. According to philosopher Noel Carroll, an object must contain a “compound of threat and impurity” in order to be dubbed truly “horrific.” The crucifixion of Jesus Christ contains both elements. It is hard to understate the undercurrent of threat present in the historical Roman practice of crucifixion. The governors of first-century Roman provinces specifically used this form of execution as an intimidation tactic to put down potential insurrection. A number of forensic texts speak on

the medical nature of their methods, and, without putting too fine a point on it, there were about a dozen ways that a subject of crucifixion could die throughout the process; the top killers seem to have been shock from blood loss, suffocation, and exposure. The process may have been slow, but it was effective, and it was extremely painful. There is good reason why full Roman citizens were legally exempt from the practice. Apart from the physical pain, which any of the tens of thousands of people who were killed on Roman crosses may have faced, there is a certain sense of impurity attached to this particular instance. A bloody, public execution is a humiliating way for anyone to die—especially a death under false accusation (Matthew 27). This form of death held particular weight in not only Roman culture—it echoes the Old-Testament principle that anyone whose body is “hanged on a tree is cursed by God” due to the desiccation that accompanies the exposure of a corpse (Deuteronomy 21:23, Galatians 3:13). Yet Christianity takes this several steps further. The Bible states that Jesus was not only innocent of his supposed crimes, but that he never did anything wrong whatsoever (1 Peter 2:22, Hebrews 4:15) and, furthermore that he was God in human form (John 1:1, Colossians 2:9). The doctrine of the Christian cross is an inherently offensive doctrine because it asserts that at one point in history, humans took hold of God himself—the perfect creator of the entire universe—and executed him in this torturous manner. Far from a heroic-looking or romantic death narrative, the account of Jesus’ crucifixion smacks of a sick cosmic anarchy. So why, exactly, has Christianity embraced the narrative of the crucifixion so fully for 2,000 years? In order to understand why Christians are not just a bunch of sadists, it helps to consider why Jesus had to die in the first place. It centers around sin, which can be most simply defined as “every human’s fundamental tendency to screw good things up.” It doesn’t take much effort to observe this tendency in our world today—selfishness, oppression, and violence splash themselves across our headlines, through our actions, and through our minds on a constant basis. If this sin makes us, as people, justly angry, it is only logical that it would make God, the perfectly sinless creator of humanity, justly angry, as well. In fact, the Bible explains that God,

by virtue of his goodness, destroys and punishes these imperfections—somewhat like the way a fire naturally consumes dead leaves (Psalm 5:4). Tragically, every member of humanity has committed sin against God and each other. To put it succinctly: everyone screwed up, and everyone has to pay for it. More unfortunately, in the words of Paul in the epistle to the Romans, “the wages of sin is death”—the experience of living in a dying world, temporary death at the end of life, and eternal death in the anger of a just and righteous God. Or maybe not. Enter Jesus, a man seemingly very aware and assertive of the fact that he is literally God in human form (John 8:58). Apart from his status as the Creator and Sustainer of everything, this would make Him the primary offended party when it comes to sin. And yet, He seems equally

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‘I am the living one! I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I hold the keys to death and the grave!’

assertive of the fact that His life’s mission is to somehow reconcile the world and its people to Himself. This, however, would involve taking on those “wages” mentioned earlier—Jesus knows and says that he has come to shoulder God’s curse of death, the punishment due to humans, in all of its forms. Furthermore, he says that he will do so “willingly,” in order to reconcile humanity to God fully (John 10:18). Oddly enough, Jesus predicts the manner of his death, too—execution by flogging and crucifixion (Matthew 20:19). Why a cross, specifically? Not only is this manner of death an illustration of God’s curse, Jesus notes that his manner of death echoes the Old-Testament image of a bronze snake that was “lifted up” so that the ancient Israelites who were dying of plague could be healed by the sight of it (Deuteronomy 21:23, John 3:14). In doing so, Jesus declares His sacrifice a public display of hope and healing. We, as humans, are plagued by sin and its consequences, and yet He— the “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”—took all of that spiritual plague upon Himself so we wouldn’t have to bear it (Hebrews 1:3). His final words, breathed out between suffocated

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breaths, serve to confidently seal the full exchange of our sickness for his healing: “It is finished” (John 19:30). The cross not only demonstrates the overwhelming power of God’s justice, but the depths of His love and mercy towards humanity. Even as humanity unjustly nailed Him to the cross, Jesus asked for the perpetrators to be forgiven (Romans 5:8). But, there is a deeper dimension to this love: God, the one who hates sin so much that he must destroy it, let himself be destroyed in order to spare his people from the consequences of their own actions. This is an extravagant mercy, completely unparalleled in any other circumstance. The cross is not just a symbol of a good man dying because of screwed-up people. It is the remembrance of a good God covering the sins of his screwed-up people with his own blood. Furthermore, the story of Jesus’ cross doesn’t end in death. Three days after our debt had been paid, three days after Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross, God raised Him bodily from the dead (Acts 13:28-31). The threat and the impurity of the cross, along with the powers of sin and death that it represented, was obliterated in the victory of Jesus’ sacrificial love. His quiet “it is finished” has become a shout of triumph: “I am the living one! I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I hold the keys to death and the grave!” (Revelation 1:18). Jesus is not only free from death—he rules over it. If God can transform the most miserable of deaths into a wellspring of life available to everyone, what’s left on this earth that can make his followers rightly afraid? Christians are called to “deny ourselves and take up our crosses” to follow Jesus. That sounds threatening and humiliating, but there is hope, because God, the one who took the threat and humiliation of the cross upon Himself, has gone before us. He will be with us, always, until He returns to share his victory with us (Matthew 28:20). So why have I, who flinched to look at a crucifix as a child and who regarded it as mere art later on, now come to love the cross? I suppose that I, and Christians around the world, love the cross in its irony—the irony that God came to take the punishment for the very ones who had wronged him. The irony that in Jesus Christ’s dying, his followers gain eternal life. The irony that God can craft the deepest, most horrific suffering into the source of even deeper joy. We love the cross because it is a reminder that, because of Jesus, we need not

fear it, nor anything that it stands for, ever again.

Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror, Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. 1

For more information, please refer to “The Crucifixion—A Forensic Approach” 2

Gildenhard, Ingo, and Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero, Against Verres, 2.1.53-86: Latin Text with Introduction, Study Questions, Commentary and English Translation. Cambridge: Open Book, 2011. Open Book Publishers. 2011. Web. 7 Oct. 2015. 3

Tori is a senior in Morse College majoring in English.

Wealth in the Church

from the first century on, certainly from the second century, one of the ways that Rome achieved such importance in the church as a whole was that the Church of Rome could dispense more charity than any other church because of its connections to rich people. So, for the first few centuries, the debate went forth about wealth and poverty and so on and so forth. One extreme [was that] by the fourth century when emperors became Christian and you’ve got people at the very top who are Christian who are shakers and movers who dispense charity and so on and so forth. Anyway, to cut to the chase, monasticism is one of the church’s responses to the poverty and wealth issue because the monks, they’re all about giving up the world, they’re all about giving up property, and they have to take the vow of poverty. So, what happened when the church became ‘the world” in the Roman empire and everybody was included— it included people at the very top, people at the very bottom—there were some Christians that were upset about this. The Church never pronounced wealth a sin; the Church never pronounced private property a sin but the monks and nuns opted out of the economy by going aside and doing their own thing and having no private property. But the Church has never condemned wealth. What it has condemned is when the wealthy don’t contribute to charity and don’t help the poor.

his is a transcript of an interview between Logos Staff and Yale Professor Carlos Eire on October 8th, 2015. It deals with Jesus’ teachings on wealth, society’s means of alleviating poverty, and the Church’s interpretation of Jesus’ teachings. Certain edits were made for clarity and approved by Professor Eire.

Then do people with wealth have a responsibility to help those in poverty? What kind of responsibility?

The Logos’ staff member who conducted the interview has his questions in bold and Professor Eire’s responses are in normal text. During his life, Jesus often defended the poor and chastised the rich, so does this mean it’s wrong to accumulate wealth? Well, there have been various interpretations of that throughout Christian history. Especially because, as the church grew and started appealing to what we might consider upper class people, they wanted to make room for that too. Plus, from day one, the rich or so-called rich have been the source of most of the charity dispensed by the church. And, we know

Well, I don’t think the Church has ever spelled out a specific kind of responsibility but it has always taught that you’ve got to do something. And one way that used to be promoted throughout the entire medieval period and the early modern period, you know before industrialization, wealth was always tied to land, right? So, where did the church get most of its land? From rich people. Where did the monastery get their lands? From rich people. Where did they get the funds to build churches, monasteries, hospitals and so on? Rich people. And the land that was donated to the church generated income. So, during the middle ages and into the early modern period, the Church as a whole became very wealthy because of the land that it had and the treasures that were given to it by rich people. So, the Church for two millennia has depended on rich people for its funding. It never specified a special kind of giving, right, but it always

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makes suggestions like, you know: “we need to build a school here, can you help? Can you contribute? so on so forth.” Something else that happened that is now no longer visible because they no longer exist is confraternities. These were private associations of lay people who would dedicate themselves to perform either works of charity or certain rituals. But works of charity, until industrial age, most of the hospitals and orphanages and almshouses, all these charitable institutions that were run by the church, many of them were run by lay people and the money came from wealthy people who established those things. Now, there was always a payback to anyone who donates, of course, because the work of charity is a meritorious work. So, literally, you score points with God. You also, for instance, if you donate land to a monastery—say, take this whole plot of land and build a monastery on it—then the monks are gonna pray for you and for your family. So, I think it’s impossible to get away from the give and take. The Church needs property, it needs an income. If the church were composed strictly of poor people, it’d be very hard to run a church. So it has always needed rich people. It has never proclaimed that property is a sin. Radical Franciscans in the 13th century, some of them, declared private property a sin and they were declared heretical. Interesting. Here’s the next question: Does a capitalist society create paradigms that are contrary to Christ’s message? Every society creates paradigms that are contrary to Christ’s message. It’s not just capitalism; it’s every society. Totalitarian socialist or communist societies create paradigms that violate Christ’s teachings more intensely and with much more cruelty than capitalism. So, it’s human nature that’s the problem; it’s not the economic system that’s the problem. It’s human nature; it’s human selfishness. Monasticism is the perfect example of why socialism and communism will never, ever work. Ever. Because, even though monks and nuns have been committed to poverty, individual poverty, they have always fallen into corruption in one way or another. And the history of monasticism is nothing but a long history of establishing a religious order or a monastery falling into corruption, reform, corruption, reform, corruption because human selfishness is impossible to overcome. Absolutely

impossible. So, running a monastery involves dealing with human selfishness. However, here’s the difference between monasteries and socialist or communist economies. People in a monastery or convent are there willingly. They’ve decided to have that kind of lifestyle and, even so, they fall into corruption. A communist or socialist society where everyone is forced to live like a monk or a nun requires violence because people are selfish, and if you can’t get a monastic order to practice what it preaches a hundred percent, which is voluntary, how are you going to get an entire population to share, right? And to have everything be equal? You have to use force; you have to use violence. Plus, on the other side, capitalism actually spreads wealth. Socialism and communism put a limit on wealth, which means you will always have a higher number of poor people under a socialist and communist system than you will in a capitalist system. This is not to say that the inequality in capitalism is excusable, but it’s simply to point out an obvious thing: capitalism generates wealth, socialism and communism especially, do not. And

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Monasticism is the perfect example of why socialism and communism will never ever work. Ever.

you end up with a class system anyway. You end up with haves and have-nots and no middle class. That’s also a good way to move onto the next question, which is that the issues of privilege and inequality are talked about very often here at Yale. So how would Christ encourage people to approach issues of socio-economic inequality? Give to the poor. Give to charity. You know, do what you can. But actually, you know, for instance, to say as Pope Francis has said, that capitalism is somehow an un-Christian system, is not to realize, not to understand, that capitalism creates jobs in a way that no government ever can. And, if you want to lift people out of poverty, really truly lift them out of poverty, you create jobs. And, private enterprises can create many, many more jobs than government ever

has. And it’s been proven throughout history that prosperity, genuine prosperity, is never produced by communist or socialist economic systems. Inequality is a fact of life, and Jesus said, “You will always have the poor among you”—always. Now, if you consider Jesus divine and consider what he said truly prophetic then you have to begin, I think, from that statement of Jesus: “You will always have the poor among you.” And, actually, he says that in response to a complaint: “Why are we eating this meal here? why are we eating so nicely when that money could be given to the poor?” And, Jesus says, “You will always have the poor.” Without actually saying it literally, well, “We need something too,” is what he’s saying. Nothing in the Gospels points to inequality as something that can be overcome in this world. It’s just a fact: You will always have it. As a matter of fact, there are also other statements that are kind of hard to take such as, “to him who has, more will be given,” “to him that has not it will be taken away.” Of course, that has a spiritual interpretation. It can also have a very material interpretation: that it’s just a fact of life. I think this will be my last question: the American Dream is to earn enough money to live a comfortable life and to be able to support one’s family. Is this idea compatible with a Christian notion of living a meaningful life? Sure it is. They’re not mutually exclusive. Not at all. I mean, what’s more meaningful than providing for one’s family? What’s more meaningful than being able to have one’s children, work their way up to a different socio-economic level where they will be able to provide the same thing for their children and their children and their children, and so on, and have it spread, you know? There’s nothing incompatible with that. If one is Catholic, and one is disturbed by private property or doesn’t want to have economic success as a goal, one can always join a religious order. Right? The option is always there. And for many centuries the Church has built the system with a kind of escape valve, and that’s what’s very interesting about monasticism. And, Protestants don’t have monasticism, so they have a harder time with this, but for Catholics, you always have the option. Well, you want to help the poor, live like the poor, and help the poor as a poor person? Come here. But, in order to do that, in order to fund, let’s say a mission to the poor, to run a hospital for the poor, to give food to the poor, those monks and nuns have to get money from someone because they’re not generating

income, generally. Now, in the Middle Ages, monasteries generated a lot of income through farming back when land was the source of wealth. Nowadays, it’s very different; you can’t [have] nuns and monks running farms and using the income from those farms to run hospitals, and so on. I don’t know of any case where they do that, you know? It’s always donations from people who have some surplus or what we call “disposable income.” That’s the key: to run charities you need disposable income. Now, in the modern, post-industrial world what happened was the churches stopped being the main source of charity for the poor. Governments take over that function and this begins with the Protestant Reformation. They get rid of monasticism, you know, and they get rid of confraternities. So, who takes care of the poor? The government. In some catholic countries they tried to do that, but they realized it didn’t work as well as having the church dispense charity. But now in the post-industrial world, you know, you have taxation and you have some of that money go and help the poor, but it’s never enough. So that’s why, for instance, here in the United States, you still have many Catholic hospitals. And, when you think about it, it’s kind of strange. Why should you have a Catholic hospital? What does the Church have to do with hospitals? Well, it’s because this is how it began. The Church was often the first institution in many places to establish hospitals, orphanages, schools and so on and so forth. And to this day, another example is the fact that the Catholic Church runs many schools in poor areas where that school is usually far superior to the public schools. And, there you have, again, the difference between taxation and government control and private initiative where the private initiative is proven over and over again, in most cases though not all cases, to work better than the government agency. And, it’s always there as a safety net for governments, especially here in the United States; the Church or churches plural, are always there as a safety net, extra safety net, for the poor. Well, thanks again, Professor. Sure, sure. It’s a tough, thorny problem. Carlos M. N. Eire is the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University.

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Death Undone by Pedro Enamorado

“O

ur little old lady has gone with the Lord.” My mother’s tender, aching voice whispered these words on the other line the minute I answered her call. I sighed heavily, sniffled as I held back my cries and I softly replied, “Ok, Mama,” and hung up the phone. Last February, I lost my paternal grandmother, Rosalia, just a month after losing my maternal grandmother. I remember hearing about her passing at eight in the morning, and letting my tiredness serve as anesthesia. Just two weeks ago she was alive and healthy but now I knew that when I returned home, her chair would be empty and her absence would take its place. The days that followed were the darkest days I have ever experienced. Those days, I felt as if a part of me

had been torn out of my chest. I could not help but think about death and what it meant for Christians. Death Defined Christianity teaches that death has plagued humanity since shortly after its creation. When God blessed His creation and called it good, death was still absent. The phenomenon of death, rarely welcome and often involving suffering, seems to indicate something wrong in the world. Its visits do not go unfelt and in its wake it leaves grief. Christianity affirms that something is gravely wrong in the world. In the Hebrew Bible, often called the Old Testament, death is mentioned often and rarely in a positive light. Naturally, biblical authors beg God for deliverance from it and personify it as a predator. In Psalm 49:13-14, for instance, we get this description: “This is the way of those who are foolish.../ Like sheep they are laid in the grave/

Death shall feed on them...” Death hurts in a way that feels deeply personal; it makes one feel like a victim rather than simply an observer of a biological process. This is exactly how I felt when I saw my grandmother’s body in a casket. Notwithstanding, the thread that spans the entire Bible is that death and its effects will be removed from the world. This gives me great hope but it also raises the question: why is there death in the first place? Death came to humanity as the withdrawal of Life. God Himself, being the fountain of Life, removed an aspect of His presence from humanity when its progenitors, the couple from whom all peoples descend, willingly broke His law (Genesis 3:6). Athanasius, a learned scholar of the early church, describes their actions as “throwing away their birthright of beauty…” by their disobedience and “dying outside of it, [they] continue in death and in corruption” Humanity’s birthright, the image of the immortal God, ensured a state of eternal life and fellowship with God. God had endowed them with immortality and moral perfection. When they cast off that birthright by a single immoral act, it put them and their race under the shadow of death. In this context, one understands death as a natural consequence of disobedience that only perfect obedience can remedy. Physical death, disease, and spiritual separation from God that inclines humanity away from Him all invaded a perfect world. This explains how the death of human beings often have such a profound effect and feel unnatural.

thoughts and desires of love, hope, and faith. My grandmother believed these claims about Jesus and they helped her face death. In fact, they provided her with unspeakable comfort, especially when the reality of death came closer to her when my grandfather nearly died during a trip to the hospital. Since then and because of its nearness to her, talk of death seemed doubly hurtful and provoked fear in her. Even so, her eyes lit up when she spoke of Heaven and the resurrection that Christ promised at His return. Truly, His resurrection gave her the hope of having a perfect, physical body and seeing God. St. Paul declares, “the dead will be raised incorruptible…for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” [italics original] (1 Corinthians 15:52-53). Why should she worry at the end of her life? In light of the resurrection’s beautiful hope, death granted her the gift of freeing her from her infirm body and transporting her to see her beloved Jesus. This sweet relationship is true life itself.

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When they cast off that birthright by single immoral act, it put them and their race under the shadow of death.

Life descends to Earth

Life-Giving Communion

If death is the absence of God, however, Christ and His incarnation is surely His presence. The well-known Christmas hymn, “O Come O Come Emmanuel” illustrates this well. Jesus is called Emmanuel, meaning “God with us” by the angel Gabriel who announces His birth to Mary (Matthew 1:21-22). Christians believe that Jesus is life itself, bringing God’s spiritual presence to those who believe in Him. The effect of this is a new birth, restoring spiritual life to human beings and working in them to undo the effects of death. God’s Spirit who dwells in believers conforms their hearts and thoughts to those of Jesus, who alone among men had perfect love for God and His neighbor. Therefore, in the place of the spiritual death and its products (selfish thoughts and an aversion to pursuing God), Jesus provides God’s life which produces

Indeed, Jesus defines this relationship as life itself. The Christian experience of God’s touch marks the life of all Christians in history. Nowhere else can one find a God like Jesus who descends as fully man, participates in family life, makes friends and enemies, and submits himself to bodily needs and pains for the sake of His love. Furthermore, Jesus Christ invites all people to know Him and speak to Him, just as my grandmother did during her life. He proclaims, “this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Death’s greatest triumph had been the divorce between God and man. With Christ’s resurrection, those who believe may partake in the special relationship Christ had with God His Father which Adam and Eve lost in the beginning. When Christ bodily rose from the dead, He

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overturned death in every sense. Where Adam failed in disobedience, He succeeded in perfect obedience. He is a new progenitor for the human race, under whom it can find spiritual blessings and life through His merits. Our divorce from God caused by human immorality and disobedience disappears because God graciously attributes the works of Jesus to those who believe. In other words, although Christians who remain steadfast until death are judged according to their works, God will pardon their sins and credit Jesus’ good works to them. Nothing remains between God and man to prevent their reconciliation. Where physical death and disease exist, God promises resurrection in an incorruptible body to paradise in a restored, perfect world. Where spiritual death existed, God deposits His Spirit to make human souls immortal. And so, death and its effects have come to naught. Humanity’s separation from God, the entrance of physical death, and the suffering caused by their separation radically usurped. Death lost its sting and the grave has lost its power. Yes, I dearly miss

my little old lady who always said I looked skinny and told me to wear a sweater when it was chilly. I can no longer hold her hand while leaning on her shoulder and watch Caso Cerrado, the Spanish Judge Judy. I cannot hear her cheerful, peaceful humming. I won’t be able to sing to her as I did one last time over a phone call. However, I know I will see her again. She received Jesus’ life and His offer of reconciliation and let it change her. She even loved her husband to the very end, forgiving his past moments of unfaithfulness, his drunkenness, and coarse words and humor. For her, Christ was life on earth and life in Heaven and death became a chariot that descended to take her home. I am now all the more eager to await the glorious day when the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will raise all saints to life, as eternal and joyful witnesses to His triumph over death. Pedro Enamorado is a junior in Ezra Stiles College majoring in History.

Jesus and the Problem of Myth by Max Graham

he Roman Catholic priest Ronald Knox once preached a sermon wherein he commented that “comparative religion is an admirable recipe to becoming comparatively religious.” That may be true, but comparative religion certainly does not seem to result in one becoming even comparatively Christian. Instead, it seems that the majority of comparative religion departments address Christianity, at best, as a confused attempt to portray God and, at worse, as a dangerous ideology worthy of contempt. All in all, the general tone of these departments’ response to Christianity is a big, long sneer. But why is this the case? —

Many scholars of religion would argue—like an old, grizzled war veteran—that they’ve “seen too much” to believe in Christianity. Too many parallels, too many similar teachings, too many familiar archetypes. What they actually mean by all of these statements is sometimes not addressed, but I can guess what the argument is: that Christianity, because it bears resemblance to many other religions, must therefore be just as false as those other religions. There are two problems with this argument—what I like to call the problem of history and the problem of myth. Historical Facts First, the problem of history. The professors, while they explain away Christianity as just one among many stories, forget a crucial fact. That is, there is quite abundant historical attestation to the fact that the life and death of Jesus Christ actually happened, something which cannot be said about other

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myths. Although there could have been natural phenomena or real-life individuals who inspired the creation of a mythical god, there is no historical record of Zeus living with the Greeks, or of Odin’s crucifixion. Excluding whether or not the resurrection occurred, most historical scholars accept the fact that Jesus lived and was crucified.

through a mirror, darkly”—used by St. Paul to describe our imperfect vision of God here on Earth— also applies to the case of pagan myth. Even though we cannot take them to be infallible divine revelation, pagan myths should be studied and mined for wisdom and insight that testifies to the unique position Christ has in our hearts, regardless of time or place.

Again, we are not discussing whether the Christian story is beautiful or not, only whether it is true. When we look at the gospel accounts, we face a historical fact. “What difference,” you may ask, “does this make for the Christian seeking to convince others of the truth of Christianity?” It makes a tremendous difference, for Christianity revolves around the person of Jesus. If he did not live and die and rise again then, as St. Paul argues, our faith is in vain. Yet he did live. He did walk with His disciples and teach for three years. He was condemned, beaten, and crucified by the people he claimed to have come to save.

Now, some critics may argue that Christianity fulfilling all of the pagan myths is too fantastic, too miraculous. Christians, however, have never claimed that Christ’s incarnation1 and resurrection was anything less than miraculous. In fact, we emphasize this point fully. The main disagreement, then, is not over whether Christianity is miraculous, or incredible, but whether it is truer than the pagan myths.

So, what does this mean for the pagan myths that bear such striking resemblance to Christianity? “A Mirror, Darkly” The answer to this question is contained in what I call ‘the problem of myth.’ As Christians, we believe that God revealed Himself to the Jews and then later, more fully, to the whole world in the figure of Jesus Christ. But we also believe that God put His mark on the heart of every individual, even those living before the incarnation and without Scripture. Because of this, humanity has constantly tried to fulfill its need for God in whatever way it can. This is where myths come from— the need to fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts. We see this yearning in many of the ancient pagan myths. In particular, the idea of a righteous man/god who is sacrificed in order to atone for the transgressions of a nation is present in many cultures. Mesopotamian societies had their abundance of “Corn-god” myths where a semi-divine figure was sacrificed and buried, like a seed in planting season, only to be later raised from death. The pagans believed that this process of death and rebirth fueled nature’s seasonal cycle and ensured a good harvest. The myths of Adonis in the Greco-Roman world, Balder in the Norse world, and Osiris in the Egyptian world address the same theme. The sacrifice of Jesus, although most clearly prefigured by Jewish rituals and prophecies, also found its testimony amongst the Gentiles. The phrase “seeing

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The life and death of Jesus Christ actually happened, something which can’t be said about other myths.

An Anecdote: Reality and Appearance Let me demonstrate with an anecdote. Say there lived a man named Joe who was an expert in sculptures. For decades, Joe had dedicated himself to studying the details of different statues from different cultures. From all of this study, he’d gotten quite good at what he did. Let’s say our fictional scholar, however, had never met or even seen a living, human woman. All he had seen were statues of women. One day, Joe stumbles on an extraordinary find, what he believes to be the best sculpted statue of a woman he has ever seen. Joe brings his friend Jack over to have a look. “Isn’t that the most lifelike statue you have ever seen?” Joe exclaims. “But don’t you see,” Jack says “that’s not a statue, but a real-life woman.” “A woman, why that’s impossible,” Joe explains “look at how closely it resembles the other female statues I have over there. And besides, there aren’t any real women. That’s just a myth.”

“Of course they look alike; not because she looks like the statues but because the statues look like and are modeled off of her. How could there be any female statues at all if there wasn’t a real woman out there to be a model.” “But everyone knows that real women are just make-believe.” “Not according to the person standing in front of us. Besides, that’s what we’re trying to determine. Your assumption makes any evidence for the contrary impossible.” And so it is with many scholars of comparative religion towards Christianity. But by examining their arguments and their assumptions, along with studying the Bible intensely and looking at the comparisons it has with other stories, we see the parallels between Christ’s life and pagan stories to be good reason to support Christianity.

Conclusion C.S. Lewis called the Gospel “Myth become Fact.” Through the Gospel, the yearnings present in every man’s heart from the beginning of time are met. Through Christ, the need for an atonement and rebirth is fulfilled. God has given us a religion that is both true and beautiful, and that stands out from pagan myths. This is the good news that Christ and the apostles after Him proclaimed. We have something worth being joyful about and spreading.

By this concept, I mean the central Christian event that the Son of God (the second Person of the Trinity) took to Himself human Nature. I suggest reading St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation or St. Anselm’s Why the God-Man for more insight into this deep topic. 1

Max is a sophomore in Morse College majoring in Physics and Philosophy.

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Who Do You Say That I Am:

The Centrality of the Church in the Christian Faith by Armando Ghinaglia

“H

e said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’” (Luke 9:20). Just as the Apostles before us, Christians have developed many responses to this question Jesus asked two thousand years ago. Some answers— “the way, the truth, and the life”—have become standard across all of Christianity. Others—“the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father”—became tests of orthodoxy and heresy. Foundationally, however, any response to this question must lead back to the Church—not the individual—as the normative means by which

we come to know Jesus as and deepen our relationship

the Christ with God.

For Trinitarian Christianity, to understand Jesus in addition to the creedal statements handed down over the generations, we should understand Jesus by what He does at the most fundamental level. As is so beautifully declared at the conclusion to the hymn to the Logos (the philosophical title that John the Evangelist ascribes to Christ), “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”1 In the 4th Century, St. Athanasius writes on how the Incarnation allows the reconciliation between God and man that lies at the heart of Christ’s mission, a mission that depicts Christ as recovering through His obedience what Adam, through his disobedience, had lost. Moreover, from both John and the tradition of the Church, we see

Christ Father

as the means by which God the has revealed Himself to the world.

The Christian scriptures developed slowly after Christ’s death and, as they stand now for most denominations, came to official if not entirely universal recognition in canons throughout the first few centuries. Nonetheless, even as they underwent this process, the Church took on the task of promulgating the faith as it had received it from the Apostles. Bishops and presbyters formed councils to maintain orthodoxy and in the end were responsible for establishing the biblical canon in line with the criteria of catholicity and apostolicity. The individual gospels and epistles ultimately derive from the life of Christ, the divine revelation Himself. The biblical canon which ties them all together derives from the life of the Church, which carried on Christ’s life and teachings through the centuries. I mention these ties to make clear the importance that the Early Church had, outside Scripture, in passing on the faith, even while Scripture had been written and was being compiled. To ignore the importance of the “holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” as passed down from the First Council of Nicaea, or the “holy catholic church” as passed down from the first or second century onward, is to ignore the history of the Christian faith and the importance of our baptism into the Church. While major denominations disagree on its meaning, Christianity has traditionally considered baptism the beginning of a new relationship with God. As St. Paul notes in his epistles, “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death”2 and just as we have been “buried with him in baptism, [we] were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”3 And our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection joins us with the Church. This may trouble many individuals. Churches are flawed; they are messy, run by fallen human beings who rob, steal, rape, and kill. Would it not be better to go it alone and try to grow by ourselves with Christ? In short, no. As Michael Ramsey notes, “we do not know the whole fact of Christ Incarnate unless we know His Church and its life as a part of His own life.”4 The Church provides the normative space for us to grow as Christians. This isn’t to say that Christians cannot grow alone; on the contrary, many do, and this is an important aspect of the

Christian life. But Christ’s teachings, as interpreted by Paul, foreclose a solely personal walk with God. In John, Christ states, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from Me you can do nothing.”5 St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians ties these images together: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”6 The “you” to whom he refers is the Church in Corinth, not just one of many churches without shared apostolicity, but part of the universal Church whose foundation is Christ and whose founders are his apostles. The Church is the Body of Christ, and our baptism is both into Christ’s death and

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To ignore the importance of the ‘holy catholic church’...is to ignore the history of the Christian faith and the importance of our baptism into the Church.

resurrection and, thus, into the Church. The life of the Christian, notes one prominent churchman, is a continual response to the fact of his baptism.7 To act as if our baptism is somehow separate from the Church is to ignore the instruction we have received from Christ and his Apostles to grow in him and in his body, so that we may bear much fruit and so that we can commune with the great “I Am” who alone has true being, for “in him we live and move and have our being.”8 The Church serves to make manifest the mystical communion of individual believers with Christ through its worship, especially through its music, preaching, fellowship, and liturgy. These means provide the most visible way that Christians experience the body of Christ on any given day. Music has enormous power to shape belief and action, to convey different parts of humanity and the divine and stir the soul. The Psalms show forth the wide range of human experience, from despair and turmoil to hope and renewal, always pining for communion with the

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Lord. Preachers convey messages about God to audiences that are invited to reflect upon how the life of Christ and the life of the Church—one and the same—shape their own lives as they go into the world. Fellowship creates the more interpersonal aspects of community that are so important in drawing people closer to one another, a move toward self-giving love and joining with others toward the common life that the Gospels and the Epistles call us to live. Liturgy with all its ritual and elegance takes us out of the mundane reality around us and, at its best, brings us to a mystical experience of Christ and His beauty and timelessness, an experience that transforms us continually into new creations, prepared to live His life in the world. Through the Church, we come to God, to declare and show forth the great “I Am” in his fullness. For us as Christians, we need all of these things, and for them, we must return to the Church. Leaving aside the thorny issues of apostolicity and catholicity for now, return to a church, if possible, that feeds you emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Our culture is often obsessed with what it means to find ourselves as if we were solitary beings wandering this

earthly journey with no one beside us to comfort us or struggle with us, to remind us that we are meant for more and that we are loved. The temptation to go it alone—to rely on our own interpretations of Scripture or to drop by a church only during the holidays—is strong, but recognize that, except in extraordinary circumstances, that temptation draws us away from the humble faith we have received from the Apostles and away from the community of believers to whom we have committed ourselves in our life of faith.

Jn. 1:18 (NRSV) Romans 6:3 (NRSV) 3 Colossians 2:12 (NRSV) 4 Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church, p. 35 5 Jn. 15:4-5 (NRSV) 6 1 Cor. 12:27 (NRSV) 7 Ramsey, p. 33 8 Acts 17:28 (NRSV) 1 2

Armando is student at the Yale Divinity School studying for his Master of Arts in Religion in Ethics.

A Provocation: Can reason lead to definitive truth?

rational faculties are at work, and so we expect our resulting conclusion arrived at to be unquestionable and evident to all reasonable human beings. Religious faith is not like that. We cannot approach questions of faith expecting to arrive at unambiguous truths through intellectual arguments alone. We fail to realize this error when we adopt a “flow chart approach” to sieving out the answers to life’s biggest questions. That is, before being convinced of the affirmative when we begin by asking whether God exists, and working through the various ontological, teleological, and cosmological1 arguments, we are bound to be disappointed. We will not thereafter answer the questions ‘Which god is the right God?” or “Which religion is the right one?” Our valiant attempts at philosophizing faith will only lead us to despair towards the inconclusivity and unknowability of these answers.

have always been a little hesitant about engaging with non-Christians in debates about God. The hesitancy is not so much an unwillingness to talk about God—of course I’d love to share about the core of my identity—but an understanding that there can simply be no resolution reached on an intellectual front. Who will change his or her mind? Will the atheist concede, or will the Christian renounce? The reason we won’t hear either one say “Ah, I see where you’re coming from. I was wrong all this while!” during the debates is that matters of faith cannot be explained by reason alone. Consequently, reason alone can never convince one to change the worldview he has held to this point.

The problem is not with the arguments we work through, and the solution is not to look for better arguments. The reason that reason fails to give us a conclusion on faith is that the arguments we believe in are not divorceable from our initial worldview, our starting point, and our deeply held axioms that we assume to be self-evident. As much as it may unnerve us to admit it, any argument we give credence to is ultimately traced back to a foundational, unanalyzable view we hold of the world and of our humanity. If we are atheists, we may be tempted to insist that all our views are purely rational and justified, and we hold nothing on the basis of faith. Yet, is that so? Even if we do not hold to a religious faith, let us not delude ourselves into thinking that our fundamental outlook on the world is able to withstand thorough rational scrutiny. If someone were to ask “Why?” in response to every belief we express, we would eventually reach a point where we have to admit, “There’s no why. I just believe this!”

‘Reason’ is defined as the deductive process that begins from premises and carries us to unambiguous conclusion. This ranges from strict logical syllogisms (like the conclusion that Socrates is a mortal because all men are mortal and because Socrates is a man) to appeals that proceed from universally endorsed standards (like the conclusion that racially induced police brutality is an injustice because all human beings are dignified with inviolable rights regardless of their skin color). The common thread in these cases is that only our

So, then, we cannot expect to use argumentation, a construct of human beings’ reason, to arrive at a conclusively correct worldview or an exact understanding of the best position to hold concerning religion. Our arguments lack coherence unless we understand them within the framework of the particular worldview we hold. Yet, we use the same arguments to try to answer the question of which worldview we should adopt! Argumentation, at its core, is not neutral, but given and tailored according to the specific individual’s

by Dinnie Ee

λόγος

worldview—if I am an atheist, every piece of evidence in nature will be argued in a way to denounce God’s existence; if I am a Christian, every piece of evidence in nature will be proof of a supernatural Designer. So, arguments alone cannot accurately guide us in the adoption of a worldview. As human beings, we look at the world and comprehend our existence through an overarching narrative structure that we have either grown up with or acquired from our environment. We cannot rationally criticize another person’s core narrative, nor expect one to change his or hers on the basis of intellectual argument. We should neither expect Christianity, or any religion for that matter, to convince us of its truth through the power of robust argumentation alone. Once we have relieved Christianity, or our stressed Christian friend with whom we are debating about religion, of the burden of proof, we can also relieve ourselves, the skeptics, of the impulse to dismiss Christianity based on its inability to persuade us of its truth. Does all this mean, therefore, that Christianity, and all that is faith is irrational and that faith is an irrational, blind, and unreasonable leap into the dark? On the contrary, faith is superrational; it stands on a plane higher than reason and it is outside the scope of reason. After all, the core of the Christian faith is a personal response to the person of Jesus Christ. This response can certainly be informed by reason. One might rationally assess: is there reason to believe the historicity of Jesus, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the authority of Scripture? For all these questions, the use of reason is well and good. Yet our response to the evidence presented through these rational questions is fundamentally not a matter that reason can give us an answer to. We can pledge intellectual assent to the historical and sociological questions on the personhood of Jesus and the events of His day, yet we can simultaneously choose not to acknowledge Him as relevant, personal, and present. No argument can tell us whether or not to make that latter choice. That choice is a question of whether one is willing to step inside a different worldview, to use another pair of eyes to look at the world and yourself, and to take a wholly different set of beliefs as your own. The provocation I put to you is this: are you willing

to accept something larger than your reason has ability to prove? If you are a straight line that has lived all your life on a sheet of paper, are you willing to believe that a cube can exist, even if all your two-dimensionality cannot prove so? If you are an unborn fetus, are you willing to believe that there is a Parent who loves you and there is life after birth, even if all your existence constrained in a womb cannot prove so? Dear friend, don’t despair at your inability to reason your way into Christianity. Are you worried that, after having willed to adopt the Christian worldview as your own, you would be left in a perennial state of intellectual insecurity: never completely sure that you have made the right choice because you can never prove it by means of reason? Do not fall prey to the illusion that all knowledge must be internally justifiable; that you can only know something by virtue of your knowing the reasons for its truth. As the philosophical position of externalism states, one is not necessarily privy to the reasons for one’s holding of right beliefs. Like a cat that senses that there is a mouse in front of it, even though it cannot give reasons to justify its knowing, we can likewise know the Lord, and know Him to be unequivocally true, even though we cannot give reasons to justify our knowing in the context of a traditional verbal debate. To the atheist or skeptical friend, I leave you with this: would you recognize that reason does not do the work of proving faith, and would you be willing to consider, on a plane that transcends reason, that Jesus may be who He says He is? Now, Jesus’ identity is fixed and independent of your response—either He is who He says He is, or He is not, and whether you think so is not going to change that. But, here’s the important thing: while your response does not change who Jesus is, it does change who you are.

These relate to the study of what things “are” essentially, the study of design and purpose in the material world, and the study of space, respectively. 1

Dinnie is a sophomore in Branford College and is a prospective Ethics, Politics, and Economics major.

The Nicene Creed WE believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. WE believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, He suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom will have no end. WE believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. WE believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. WE confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

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