« November 2005 | Main | May 2006 »
December 26, 2005
The Oxford History of Christian Worship
I have been enjoying reading a book I got with a great deal a few weeks ago from the History Book Club. Released just this year, The Oxford History of Christian Worship should prove to be an excellent resource for years to come. The book is arranged more or less chronologically but also has essays on Christian worship as performed by certain traditions (e.g. Mennonite, Baptist, Pentecostal, Anglican, Catholic) in certain parts of the world (e.g. India, Australia, Latin America, Korea, Africa) in association with various activites (music, art, cultural transformation, vestments). I just finished reading the intoductory chapter called "Christian Worship: Scriptural Basis and Theological Frame," written by one of the book's editors Geoffrey Wainwright. If that essay is a foretaste of the rest of the essays, I can hardly wait to dive into the book and bathe in its depths! Here are some words that Mr. Wainwright wrote concerning worship that I thought particularly worthy of noting.
"Christian worship recognizes its own scriptural basis by the fact that the continual reading of the scriptures is a constitutive part of the liturgy: these scriptures narrate the fundamental story, up to and including its awaited consummation; they contain the promises, commands, and patterns that worshipers take up as they play their own part in the story. The theological frame is vital because scripturally derived doctrine concerning God, man, and their proper relationship proves the standards by which Christian worshipers seek to abide as they embody and enact the ongoing life of the Church before God that is Tradition. In very broad lines, there is a consistency in the content and structures of Christian worship across the centuries..." (4).
"God's glory, in the first instance, is the sheer 'godness' -- the deity -- of God, which is love (1 John 4:16). Christian theological speculation, prompted by the self-revelation of God in history, will figure this as the love among the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity in all eternity. It can be said -- after the event -- that it was God's love that freely undertook the creation of a world other than himself, and that it was God's good purpose especially to create humankind in the expectation of a loving response that would also please God. In the words of the late-second-century bishop Irenaeus of Lyons..., 'the glory of God is man alive,' whose 'life is the vision of God'... Humankind, however in its God-given freedom has preferred to go its own way: idolatry is, at root, creaturely self-worship. Thus humankind has failed to reflect the radiant, self-diffusive goodness of God (cf. Exod. 33:17-23). In so doing, humanity has missed its vocation, as made in the image of God, to 'render' glory to God. True worship occurs when human beings are restored to their original vocation and final end. This has happened redemptively in Jesus Christ, who is the image of God both from the divine side (2 Cor. 4:6; Col. 1:15-20; Heb. 1:1-3) and from the Adamic side (Rom. 5:15-21; 1 Cor. 15:42-50), being himself (in Chalcedonian terms) on Person, the Son, known in two natures. 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father... No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known' (John 1:14, 18).
"Those who adhere to Christ by faith and are incorporated into him by baptism are being renewed after the image of their Creator (Col. 3:1-10), conformed to the image of the firstborn Son (Rom. 8:29), and may thus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, render God the glory that is theirs by reflection (Rom. 8:30; 2 Cor. 3:17-18). Their daily lives and their cultic acts will not be at variance. Eschatologically, Hans Urs von Balthasar suggests, the bringing home of humankind to God may be considered an 'additional gift' ... in the eternal and ever-new mutual self-giving of the Father, Son, and Spirit, in 'enrichment'... or 'enhancement'... of the divine life through its inclusion of the redeemed creature to which God grants participation in himself. God's generosity in creation and salvation is his own 'greater glory'" (8-9).
"Christian ritual constitutes a complex symbolic system—employing verbal, gestural, and material signs—by which the Church and the churches explore, describe, interpret, and fashion reality; express and form their thoughts, emotions, and values; and communicate across time and space in ways that both build and convey traditions as well as both allowing and reflecting social relations in the present" (16).
Well worth the read!
Posted by jhyink at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2005
Language Made by Apple
Though Apple Computer did not create the term, 'podcast' was dubed the Word of the Year by the honorable folks at the New Oxford American Dictionary. The word is a combination of 'iPod' and 'broadcast.' You know that you have impacted culture when you begin shaping its very speech!
Posted by jhyink at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2005
Borromean Rings
On Italy's northern border, about 50 miles north of Milan, sits Italy's second largest lake, called Lago Maggiore. The lake is a long and narrow finger that stretches so far north as to reach into Switzerland. About the place of the bottom joint of the finger is a bulge in the lake to the west. Within that bulge lay three small islands, called Isola Bella, Isola Madre, and Isola Superiore. These three islands have been owned for many generations by the Borromeo family. Throughout Italy's history that wealthy family has played a part in Italy's commerce and religion. On the small island, Isola Bella, the Borromean family built a beautiful palace with extensive gardens. The gardens and palace have been carefully designed and decorated. And both contain variations of a common theme throughout, an symbol found on the family crest called the Borromean Rings. Notice those rings in the small blue portion of the crest just behind the horse toward the bottom. Throughout the estate these rings occur in the design of the flower gardens and in the inlaid wooden floors.
Imagine the rings for a moment without looking too closely at them. Try to picture in your mind three separate rings, none of them interlocking like a chain. But image at the same time those three rings being completely interlocked among the three. Now look at the rings on the right, and you will witness exactly that. At first glance it may appear that some of the rings interlock. But no. These interlocking rings would be impossible to construct using planar (flat) rings. They must be constructed with bendable material or in two dimensions. (I have made some with cardboard.) Similar patterns were created by the Vikings, the French, the Africans, and the Japanese. And learned men have found this same idea in other areas of study like mathematics, geometry, physics, chemistry, and even psychology.
Individually, the rings would remain completely separate from each other. In interlocking pairs, the rings lose their individual identity. But when the three combine as one, they become inseperable and create a new reality greater than what each ring would be alone or in pairs. Break any one ring, and the whole creation falls apart. Such a wonderful picture showing the relationship of threeness and unity.
I don't demonstrate this unique design merely to find an illustration of Trinity as an abstract idea. Let’s think for a moment about the Trinity. In the Father, we have the most transcendent of the three persons. No one has seen Him at any time. Those who did hear His voice were stricken with fear and awe. On the other hand, we have the Son, Jesus. He lived right here on this earth. John, one of His own disciples, testifies that though He existed from the beginning, He is one “whom we have heard, whom we have seen with our eyes, whom we looked upon and have touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1). Thus, we have two, shall we say, extremes: One who is completely spirit, who has always lived in heaven; and One who is human, who sneezed, who had body odor, who felt pain, who cried tears and sweat blood.
At times men have been tempted to see two different Gods completely because of these (and other) seemingly opposing and irreconcilable views of God. But we know that such is not the case. Rather, Jesus is the exact representation of God the Father. And the Spirit is present to guarantee the exact correspondence between the Father and the Son. He is the bond of love that moves back and forth between the two. Without the Spirit, we indeed have two gods, two irreconcilable opposites. The Spirit is the binding arbiter who completes the Trinity. But as God cannot need anything outside of Himself and as He is totally complete within Himself, so the Spirit must Himself be fully God. He is not merely a force that interlocks two rings. He is the third ring. Thus, by not being interlocked with any other ring, each one maintains His full and individual identity. But because there are three rings, the identity of each one is inseparable from the other two. There must be three, no more, no less.
Posted by jhyink at 08:19 PM | Comments (1)
December 05, 2005
Modern Astrology
"Life is a phenomenon. Its production is due to the influence of the dynamics of the cosmos on a passive subject. It lives due to dynamics, each oscillation of organic pulsation is coordinated with the cosmic heart in a grandiose whole of nebulas, stars, the sun and the planet."
Alexander Chizhevsky (1897-1964), the author of the preceding words, spent years of his life building a case that extra-terrestrial influences (especially sun spots) correspond greatly to periods of scientific discovery, rare historical events (like influenza pandemics), and a revolutionary mentality (resulting in political upheavals, revolts, and civil wars). He is the father of a science called heliobiology, which one author says "verifies that the angular position of the moon and planets does affect the electromagnetic and cosmic radiation which impact with the earth, and in turn these field fluctuations affect many biological processes." Studies that have ocurred in this area of science find that times of cultural advances in the ancient Western civilizations correspond to those same times in the Eastern civilizations. I find it interesting that so many beliefs held by "superstitious" Medieval men are now being "verified" by "modern science." It seems that their Christian foundation compensated greatly for their lack of modern instruments of science.
It is also interesting to note that these findings of modern science give us another perspective from which to understand the relationship between the motions of the heavens and the activites of earth. The account of the maji, which we read during the advent season, has always facinated me. Certainly, those men knew divine revelation, which had reached those eastern civilizations from the exilic Jews. But they combined their understanding of that revelation with their correct interpretations of the heavens to guide them to the One who was born King of the Jews. The heavens are a pattern for the earth because they are an image of the highest heaven, God's abode. Thus, we must take the truths we understand from the heavens and impress them on the earth. And we must recognize that God's world is not composed merely of unrelated and atomized individualities. But all truth and all reality are connected to everything else.
Confused rambling, sure, but much food for thought and study.
Posted by jhyink at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)