“The Consistory is for fornicators, and I am no fornicator,” replied the Purse-Maker and former Anabaptist Jane Pignier to a direct question from Consistory member John Calvin in December, 1544 (1). Perhaps she was not, but the Consistory took note of her frequent association with Benoite Jacon, wife of Pierre Amyaux, who admitted adultery to the Consistory exactly one week previous. Benoite claimed that givine charity to one’s Christian brothers included “living with all men and that they are all her husbands,” and that she received by direct revelation from the Holy Spirit himself that fornication is not wrong.(2) When the Consistory summoned Jane Pignier, formerly imprisoned and subsequently banished from Geneva for Anabaptism, to inquire whether she now intends to “live according to the consent and union of the church of Geneva,” they could not pass up the opportunity to question her relationship with the promiscuous Madame Benoite Jacon. Such was their mandate.

The Consistory was the most important institution in Geneva for preservign the family. Prior to the Reformation in Geneva, the lifestyle of merchants resulted in an organized guild of prostitutes whose solicitation, though supervised by the city government, was encouraged.(3) Though Geneva was in decline, its prosperity was largely due to four annual trade fairs which brought merchants from as far away as Northern Italy.(4) Though these visiting merchants fueled the prostitution industry in Geneva, eventually some Saxon merchants began bringing Lutheran pamphlets and other literature which stirred feeling of Reformation and tilled the Genevan soil even before the arrival of William Farel from Bern. With the arrival of the Reformation in Geneva, the only approved lifestyle was the nuclear family: husband, wife, children, and some domestic servants if they could be afforded. Men and women were both strongly encouraged to marry once of appropriate age.(5)

The Consistory oversaw a vast array of cases. In the early years, however, it was primarily concerned with religious practices.(6) It was not until after the Reformation had gained a solid footing in Geneva that the Consistory turned its fullest attention to other matters. Among those important matters was their fervent desire to uphold the institutions of marriage and family. In its attempt to preserve the family and bring reconciliation between husband and wife, reconciliation which was often forced on the couple, the Consistory worked diligently and occasionally used the harshest means at is disposal to emphasize the importance of the family. The Consistory, however, had no power to punish beyond that of excommunication, so it often referred unrepentant cases to the city courts for trial and sentencing if blatant immorality was judged by the Consistory to be the cause of the rift. The Consistory, however, saw its purpose as corrective, not punitive. If punishment was needed, the Council took jurisdiction.(7)

All issues of a sexual nature were particularly important to the Consistory becuase they were all viewed as threats to the family. Fornication, homosexuality, and adultery were especially threatening.(8) Sexual offenses which threatened the institutions of marriage and family were treated quite harshly, sometimes even punished by death.(9) In spite of these harsh responses, the motive was to preserve and nurture the family. In cases where children were involved, the Consistory showed surprising care and compassion for the children, and also for unwed mothers.

[footnotes to follow]

More to come…

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Calvinism, History, Reformation | 2 Comments »

I once had the privilege of taking a seminar with Hughes Oliphant Old, and of all that he has written this is my favorite paraphraph. Consider it this week’s Lord’s Day meditation.

In our evangelistic zeal we are looking for programs that will attract people. We think we have to put honey on the lip of the bitter cup of salvation. It is the story of the wedding of Cana all over again, but with this difference. At the crucial moment when the wine failed, we took matters into our own hands and used those five stone jars to mix up a batch of Kool-Aid instead. It seemed like a good solution in terms of our American culture. Unfortunately, all too soon the guests discovered the fraud. Alas! What are we to do now? How can we possibly minister to those who thirst for the real thing? There is but one thing to do, as Mary, the mother of Jesus understood so very well. You remember how the story goes. After presenting the problem to Jesus, Mary turned to the servants and said to them, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). The servants did just that, and the water was turned to wine, wine rich and mellow beyond anything they had tasted before. [Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship Reformed According to Scripture, p176]

This Lord’s Day refrain from turning the church into a culturally relevant Kool-Aid stand and watch as God creates and forms his people through the unadulterated Gospel.

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Ecclesiology, Quotes | No Comments »

Wyman Richardson over at Communio Sanctorum recently posted Calvin Miller’s poem “My Easy Christ Has Left the Church” from Miller’s The Unfinished Soul.

I’m not sure what I think of it. Some of the indictments ring true, but to say that Christ has left the church? Read it for yourself: 

My easy Christ has left the church.
Who can say why?
Maybe it’s because His video-logged apostles all
read diet-books, travel agency brochures
and Christian fiction thrillers
on how the world should end
But none read books on what the starving ignorant
should do until it does.
He left the church so disappointed that Americans
could all spell “user friendly”
but none of them could spell “Gethsemane”

Can we say for sure he’s quit?
Oh yes, it’s definite, I’m afraid:
He’s canceled his pledge card.
I passed him on the way out of the recreation building
near the incinerator where we burn
the leftover religious quarterlies
and the stained paper doilies
from our Valentine banquets.
“Quo Vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

My easy Christ has left the church,
walking out of town past seminaries where
student scholars could all parse the ancient verbs
but few of them were sure why they had learned the art.
He shook his head counfounded that many
had studied all his ancient words
without much caring why he said them.
He seemed confused that so many
studied to be smart, but so few prayed to be holy.

Some say he left the church
because the part-time missionaries were mostly tourists
on short-term camera safaris,
photographing destitution to show the
pictures to their missionary clubs back home.
I cannot say what all his motives were.
I only know I saw him rummaging through dumpsters
in Djakarta looking for a scrap of bread
that he could multiply.
“Quo vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

He’s gone - the melancholy Messiah’s gone.
I saw him passing by the beltway mega-temple
circled by its multi-acred asphalt lawn,
blanketed with imports and huge fat vehicles
nourished on the hydrocarbons of distant oil fields
where the poor dry rice on public roads
and die without a requiem, in unmarked graves.

Is it certain he is gone?

It is.

We saw him in the slums of Recife,
telling stories of old fools
who kept on building bigger barns,
oddly idealistic tales of widows with small coins
who outgave the richer deacons of the church.

I saw him sitting alone in a fast-food franchise
drinking only bottled water and sorting through
a stack of world-hunger posters.
He couldn’t stay long.
He was on his way to sell his
old books on Calvin and
Arminius to buy a bag of rice for Bangledesh.

My easy Christ has left the church.
I remember now where I last saw him.
He was sitting in one of those new
square, crossless mega-churches
singing 2x choruses and playing bongos
amid the music stands and amplifiers
with anonymous Larrie and Sherrie.
He turned to them in church and said
“I am He! Follow me!”
But they told him not to be so confrontational
and reminded him that they
had only come for the music and the drama,
and frankly were offended that he would dare
to talk to them out loud in church.
After all, they were only seekers, with a right to privacy.

I followed him out through the seven-acre vestibule,
where he passed the tape-duplicating machine
where people could buy the “how to” sermons
of the world’s most famous lecturers.

He left the church and threaded his way
across the crowded parking lot,
laying down those whips and cords
he’d once used to cleanse the temple,
and looked as though he wanted to make
key-scrapes on Lexi and huge white Audis
and family buses filled with infant seats.

He stooped and shed a tear after
and wrote “Ichabod” in the sand.
In a sudden moment I was face to face with him.
“Quo vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

My easy Christ has left the church,
abandoning his all-star role in Easter pageants
to live incognito in a patchwork culture,
weeping for all those people who
cannot afford the pageant tickets.

He picked up an old junk cross,
lugging it into the bookstore
after the great religious rally,
and stood dumfounded
among the towering stacks of books
on how to grow a church.
“Are you conservative or liberal,” I asked him.
But he only mumbled, “Oh Jerusalem…”
and said the oddest thing about a hen
gathering her vicious, selfish chicks under her wings.
He left the room as I yelled out after him,
“Lord, is it true you’ve quit the church?
Quo vadis, Domine?”
“Somewhere else,” he said.

Your thoughts?

 

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Poetry, Quotes, Theology | 6 Comments »

I recently read (but didn’t understand) much of Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music and Time. I have many questions and comments to make about this book, but you really don’t need to be subjected to that. Begbie (BLOKE #1) is Vice Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge University, where he teaches systematic theology. He is also an ordained Anglican minister and a member of the Doctrine Commission for the Church of England. And a musician.

He addresses many musical features such as rhythm, meter, resolution, repetition and improvisation and attempts to show how these aspects of music can inform theology. He specifically addresses creation, salvation, eschatology, time and eternity, eucharist, election and ecclesiology. He makes some quite interesting points, several of which he reiterates in the conclusion.

One paragraph in particular really set my thinking on a strange trajectory which ended with a re-reading of ‘Ainulindale‘ in Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Begbie writes:

The second matter concerns the danger of deifying the dynamic patterns of creation and culture. At an early stage in writing, I considered calling this book ‘The Sound of God’. I quickly grew dissatisfied with that title. For if the creaturely rationality of music is to be given due weight, it is more accurate to speak of music, at its best, as the sound of the created order praising God, in its contingency, finitude and non-divinity. (This, as we have seen, was the heart of Barth’s theological appropriation of Mozart.) To say this is not to question either the reality or the created goodness of the world, or its power to glorify God; precisely the opposite, it is an attempt to ‘allow room’ for created reality to perform its true vocation in praising the Creator, refusing to assimilate what is properly creaturely to the divine. –p277.

He is, of course, right. Especially given his additional remarks on the impact of the fall on music in general. If music can help form theology by helping to form the theologian, as Begbie argues, then it can indeed occupy a substantive (and heretofore largely ignored) place in the dialogue of theology.

Enter the Oxford don, J. R. R. Tolkien (BLOKE #2).

One of the most beautiful pieces of English prose I have ever read is Tolkien’s Aunulindale — the creation myth in the fictional world of his “Middle Earth.” The Silmarillion is less well known than his Lord of the Rings trilogy (plus The Hobbit, which was even better), but the Silmarillion is the creation story of how the world in which Bilbo, Frodo and the gang came to be. It is a beautiful analogy of the Biblical creation story and the subsequent Fall (but don’t press the analogy too far — it is, after all, fiction). Tolkien tells of the Ainur (the Holy Ones), the music which Iluvatar (God) creates for them to perform for his good pleasure, and the discord that Melkor (Satan) creates by interjecting his own melody. Tolkien writes:

And it came to pass that Iluvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed; and the glory of its beginning and the spendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Iluvatar and were silent.

Then Iluvatar said to them: ‘Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song.’

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Iluvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void…

But now Iluvatar sat and hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws. But as the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor [interpretation:Satan] to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Iluvatar; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself…

Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and , and straighway discord arose about him, and many that sang high him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered; but some began to attune their music to his rather than to the thought which they had at first. Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider…

Then Iluvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them in Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’

I am sure that my relative ignorance of the academic study of music and its relation to theology and philosophy has led me to oversimplify this issue, but it seems to me that music is more unique and objectively substantive than theologians are usually willing to admit. Its mathematical complexity, its ability to convey emotion, its clear analogical relationship to creation ex nihilo by God, and, of course, the biblical presence of music before and after the eschatological realization of the kingdom of God all argue for more attention from theologians — especially from conservative, Reformed evangelical theologians.

We are quick to enter the discussion when it comes to music and worship style. We are quick to condemn the abuse of music’s ability to evoke emotional responses. We are quick to condemn the use of specific musical styles in corporate worship. And indeed we should continue to be vocal in these discussions. But implicit in these responses is the recognition that music must have a proper place in church life, and therefore in ecclesiology proper. If ecclesiology, then theology.

Begbie is right that music can help inform theology by helping to form the theologian. I’m sure Begbie goes astray at many points. But I’m also sure that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

So the result of all this is that I am longing all the more for the day when I join the real Ainur in an even more glorious melody in which God finds perfect pleasure and in which I find perfect satisfaction. A more glorious song that is not tainted by sin and the Fall. A more glorious orchestration of God in which my redemption is not only complete, but realized — and I finally see that God has made something beautiful of my life.

---

And then, to complicate things even further, I read Carl Zimmer’s article on musical hallucinosis, the brain disorder that causes people to literally hear music all the time. Great. Musical hallucinations. I’ve been walking around for two weaks with the jingle from a 1980s television ad campaign stuck in my head — “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the Great Music which Tolkien imagined.

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Literature, Music, Quotes, Theology | No Comments »

The pope is on vacation. Evidently he is at the papal equivalent of Camp David, or maybe Kennebunkport, the papal digs in the Italian Alps region of Castel Gandolfo. Here’s a picture:

He is apparently enjoying his vacation very much, and good for him. The Catholic World News reported on his remarks last Sunday:

The Pontiff had devoted most of his remarks at the Angelus audience to summer vacations. The break from work, he said, should provide not only “simple amusement and diversion,” but allow for true refreshment “in body and in spirit.”

Vacation time is important as an antidote to “daily wear and tear in the frenetic course of modern life,” the Pope said. He suggested that the time away from work could afford opportunities for visiting friends and relatives, reviving “those human contacts that the pace of our daily lives keeps us from cultivating.” He added that the time would be ideal for visiting the sick and the elderly, helping to break their loneliness.

Free time also provides room for cultural pursuits, the Pope continued. And he strongly encouraged vacationers to spend some time in quiet prayer and contemplation, reading of the Scriptures, and visits to monasteries or shrines.

It reminded me of a recent book that crossed my desk: Patricia Ranft, The Theology of Work: Peter Damian and the Medieval Religious Renewal Movement (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006). In the Introduction, Ranft cites John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens. So I looked it up.

Here is part of what John Paul II had to say about work (incidentally, he also wrote about while on retreat at Castel Gandolfo — it would seem it is a place conducive to reflecting on what to do):

And yet in spite of all this toil — perhaps, in a sense, because of it — work is a good thing for man. Even though it bears the mark of a bonum arduum, in the Terminology of St. Thomas, this does not take away the fact that, as such, it is a good thing for man. It is not only good in the sense that it is useful or something to enjoy it is also good as being something worthy, that is to say, something that corresponds to man’s dignity, that expresses this dignity and increases it. If one wishes to define more clearly the ethical meaning of work, it is this truth that one must particularly keep in mind .Work is a good thing for man — a good thing for his humanity — because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being and indeed in a sense becomes “more a human being.” [Paragraph 40]

I agree with Benedict that time away from work to devote to reflection and the cultivation of relationships is a good and needed thing. I guess my question is this: in an ideal world, would vacations still be necessary?

JP2 said that work has wrongly been viewed as “a sort of merchandise that the worker … sells to the employer” and that this “danger of treating work as a special kind of ‘merchandise’ or as an impersonal ‘force’ needed for production … always exists, especially when the whole way of looking at the question of economics is marked by the premises of materialistic economism.” [Paragraph 29]

Did JP2 think that capitalism is possible without such a degeneration, and if so, would Benedict argue that vacations are still as necessary for the reasons he outlined last Sunday?

Oh, and don’t forget about the Opus Dei — that group within RCC founded by Josemaria Escriva in 1928 that exists to change the “human work of our usual working day into the work of God: something that will last forever.” Aside from all of their mystery and lore, is the Opus Dei on to something? Would Benedict speak differently about needing a vacation from that? By the way, JP2 canonized Escriva in 2002.

Oy, I need a vacation.

So what do you think? In an ideal world where work is a spiritual and not just economic commodity, would vacations be necessary?

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Catholicism | No Comments »