The Week Ahead

"We've got problems, we don't know how to solve them, everywhere we go, we've got some skeletons that follow, we've got baggage, you know we're going to drag it where we go for everyone to see"--Good Charlotte, "Broken Hearts Parade"

You must not think I am as gregarious in person as I might appear in electronic print. Then again, I'm not particularly gregarious in this medium either. Someone asked me today about my week. The highlight of my week was a significant improvement to my novel method of processing tree ring width records from individual trees. But I couldn't think of this (and am unsure whether this was a worth a mention), I'm too consumed with quantifying our general ignorance about Martian dust devils. Whenever I'm too frustrated with this particular problem, I go read a novel. Well, at least on the weekends, when I can afford the time. This afternoon, I read The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard, a sweetly romantic tale written in prose so evanescently descriptive that you can't imagine understanding the characters or perceiving the locales even if you knew them in the flesh. The thrust of the novel was something about the maintenance of humanity in an inhumane world or else how jolly interesting it is to be a misfit in a world very soon to eviscerate the very standards by which your oddity was judged, only to find yourself still an oddity. But if you're odd, you might as well have company. Also, the Antipodes are dull and depressing. I'll say this for the last half-century. Whatever the Antipodes were fifty years ago, they are likely anything but boring now. But the novel was a happy relief from the usual space operas for which my local library has good taste. So I guess I just had a pleasant afternoon.

Two events wait in the wings this week in the Anglican Communion (particularly in the United States). The first is more sure. Next Saturday, God willing and the people consenting, Peter Jasper Akinola, Primate of All Nigeria, will install Martyn Minns as Bishop of CANA. The second is entirely the stuff of which dreams are made of and yet maybe not. Fr. Martins has suggested that this just might be the week when some new sheepfold might be erected to gather the reasserters of five Dioceses. One almost feels compelled to switch into Latin when contemplating a nearby future of denuntiantibus titterulibus ex Cantauria or nova Papa Alexandrina .

Whatever this week brings, I point you to Fr. Knisely's words :

But my concern is less that we behaving badly, it’s more about what our behavior is doing to our souls. The long and protracted arguments, the claims of righteousness and charges of unrighteousness, the glee that is felt when one’s opponents misstep is slowly creating a family system that is addicted to this conflict. And this conflict seems to me to fast becoming an idol that we’re focussing our attention on rather than on serving Christ.

And as you well know, I can be as guilty as this as anyone.

The Other Process

One of those enchanting perquisites of having a doorknob exposed to all comers is its ability to act as yet another locus for advertising. No public space can be immune from advertising, after all, lest the economy implode. Of course, the form of doorknob advertising must be a Thai food menu. Someday, I hope to find the form of doorknob advertisements on my doorknob, because I'm betting they serve the form of pad see ew. I believe and trust that the Triune God makes great Thai food and the doorknobs of Paradise shall have menus for this food. Amen.

My door is fortunate or otherwise to possess an additional fixture for advertising. Technically, I believe it is reserved for notices from the authorities of the Imperial University of Science and Technology, Laodicea, but today I found a small green sheet from MTV with the four most ominous words in the English language as presently spoken, "Casting New Reality Series."

I had seen notices like this before on campus. MTV is presently looking to produce the most explicit form of pornography viewable by teens and 18-35 year olds alike. It's a show about guys losing their virginity. I suppose it would be more pornographic if it involved women, but they may be producing that show for all I know.

Now, I don't mean pornographic in the sense that I expect there to be explicit sex scenes (though anything is possible). I mean pornographic in the sense that virginity is associated with the oldest and deepest of the fetishes. Note that fetish in the OED has many definitions, including: (1), "An inanimate object worshipped by primitive peoples on account of its supposed inherent magical powers, or as being animated by a spirit." and (2) "An object, a non-sexual part of the body, or a particular action which abnormally serves as the stimulus to, or the end in itself of, sexual desire." Virginity has been very much a fetish in both of these senses. One of the possible origins for temple prostitution is that the hymen is a boundary and boundaries often gain sanctity, especially if they are associated with fertility. Thus, many cultures had a belief that proper rites were required to cross the boundary (the medievalists still fight about whether the ius primae noctis ever existed, but its proponents argue it was a late survival.) Thus, the virgin would be required copulate with a priest or otherwise ritually chosen male. Eventually, this became a revenue source for temples with permanent staffs etc., but the root idea is virginity has sacral significance.

God commanded the Israelites otherwise, but the Old Testament thereby connected idolatry with loss of virginity outside of one's father's auspices. At present, many commentators are creeped out by the recent rise of "purity balls." I suspect their awkward feelings stem from the sense that certain subcultures can create a weirdly incestuous dynamic by putting the father in charge of a token of his daughter's virginity.

God revealed in Christ Jesus, however, seems to have very strange ideas about virginity. On one hand, the fetishism of virginity depends on it being lost. In patriarchal societies, it can be traded for land, for familial relationships, and other useful goods. But it must be lost at some point under the control of the contracting parties. An aged virgin in Israelite society has a far more uncertain life than a married woman. Note that God repeatedly commands charity to the widows and orphans. "Old maids" were in precarious economic straits, too. But God doesn't mention them specifically, because they were rare. Indeed, polygamous societies, such as non-mainstream Mormons and certain Muslims (Osama Bin Laden being an excellent example, though the theology is older), often develop an ethic where marrying an older virgin (whose marriage prospects are weak) is considered a charitable or even salvific act. Thus, the Lord Jesus lays down a real bombshell in Matthew, when he proclaims, "There are some who are eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom." Virginity not being used for sacral magic or to knit society together? What? I suspect the Lord's message wasn't that sex is overrated (as some present novice Roman Catholic nuns I know were wont to say). I suspect what he meant was that not losing one's virginity was the kind of deeply subversive act that could proclaim the values of the Kingdom, placing the disciple outside of sexual politics and its social relationships, allowing one to take a wider look at human society and cultivate a deeper love for God.

On the other hand, we have to remember that there is one event of Jesus' life that summons up deep imagery of virginity loss. I am talking about John 19:34, "But one of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side, and at once there was a flow of blood and water." No other Gospel speaks of this incident, and John is very insistent about its authenticity. In all the other Gospels, the analogous episode is the tearing of the veil or curtain of the Temple in two. I suspect John's point is that Jesus Himself has become the Temple (common theme of this Gospel after all..."But He was speaking of the temple of His Body." or "You will not worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem..., but the true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth"). And thus as Ezekiel says at 47:1, "I saw water coming out the threshold of the Temple towards the east." And indeed, the drain of the Temple must have contained both water and blood from the sacrifices (and been rather foul). But the spear and the analogy of the veil tearing suggests this is marriage imagery. Christ's Body (i.e., his side) is the spotless virgin Church and both the tearing of the veil and the side piercing are promises of the Consummation. You can see why I have a lot of trouble with Jesus being exclusively and essentially male. It doesn't make sense in the light of the Scriptures.

But back to MTV... This green sheet is a casting call after all. And it's asking such questions as, "Do you get nervous around women?," "Do the girls you meet think of you more like a brother...?", and "Do you find it difficult to pull yourself away from your busy schedule...?" "Everyone has their own unique reasons why they are still a virgin..."

The reasons MTV would prefer to avoid are the religious or patriarchal ones. That would get in the way of their telos after all. The loss of virginity under their control is a means to power for them, particularly in the form of ratings/advertising revenue etc.

There's been some talk scattered around about in the last few years the vocation of singlehood or singleness. I really don't think it's helpful to think about singleness as a vocation. Very few of us are meant to be single. These are solitary hermits. Instead, the singles problematized by the Church at present might be said to be in the other Process, not discernment about ordination but discernment about the relational community in whose midst we best will offer our members to God (including our sexual ones). Indeed, it's like any vocational discernment in that way. Many of my members are strongly devoted to planetary science in service to God. My members are also devoted to regular Office. Prayer, too, is a vocation. For some, it is their main one, though some like to brew alcoholic beverages on the side. But the discernment process about the use of sexuality isn't just about sex. Potential monastics probably focus very little on "Is celibacy a good idea?" but more on "Is the community good for me? Am I good for the community?" And I very much doubt any stable matrimonial/fratrimonial/sororimonial union can be based exclusively or even primarily on the question of "Do I want to have sex with this person for the rest of my life?" I think my father once said, "Look for a good sense of humor. It's the last to go."

And so my virginity chiefly stems from my continued discernment. While I'm leaning toward the married state, being a monastic has its temptations, though I wonder if the climate is right for a monk whose labor is science funded by NASA and the NSF (I'd garden, too, or wash dishes to fulfill the Rule). I happily will admit that I am sizing up almost every eligible single woman I meet, not as a sexual partner, but as a friend and every likewise eligible good friend as a potential wife. And while I have a wishlist in my mind, I'm fairly sure that God will help me find someone for whom I will be good and who will be good for me. And if I don't ever find the right relational community (look how long it took Bishop Wolf of Rhode Island), I shall find my true union in the Body in the end. Let's see MTV make a reality show about that.

Creator and Redeemer of All the Worlds

He is the Creator and Sustainer of all the worlds, whether those worlds are known or unknown to mankind. -sample that serves as an antiphon to J-Tron, "Via Media", My Apologies , Celtic Cross Productions, 2006.

Some interesting conversation started on Dean Knisely's blog . I have my own take on this question, because while I am not an astrobiologist per se , I do have very close interactions with them. In fact, I was accepted to a graduate program in astrobiology not too long ago. So I've had to reflect for some time on the implications of our continually growing knowledge about the conditions under which life evolved in this stellar system and on this planet and the increasing possibility that we are not so very unique in the scheme of things. What follows here is an exercise in the long view of affairs. Unless I am much mistaken, we will not confront the problem of extrasolar evangelism for a few centuries yet.

And in those centuries, the Church faces a crisis of affairs more potent than even the destruction of the western Roman Empire. I'm not sure what form it will take. On one hand, it could be an event of near human extinction in which our manipulations of the climate and planetary biogeochemistry finally reduce much of the planet to marginal human habitability for an extended period without the prospect of quick recovery. In that case, the Church may have to return to its role after the failure of Pax Romana victoriis Romanis to twist Augustus' odd phrase in the Res Gestae . But we must remember that the Church in that period was not just a caretaker of knowledge, but it was also a caretaker of values. Respect for innocent life and meum et tuum may not be upheld by law in future ages. Nor might there be much concern for the guilty. This is why it is so important for Christendom to maintain a modicum of its social teaching in the midst of regional disorders such as Zimbabwe and the military adventures of our own government. To where shall we look if it fails globally?

Alternately, our problems may be technologically soluble. Just this week, I was talking with a gentleman who raises funds for and otherwise promotes private experiments in nuclear fusion for power generation. While he admits the low likelihood of success of what he is doing, we might just get lucky. A new source of abundant energy, if properly distributed and used, would go a long way to mitigate the effects of the toxic mix of economic inequality and environmental degradation that is the wind in our door. But if technology pushes the limits of plasticity once more, we likely face another and epistemologically stranger outcome by the end of the century. Advances in biotechnology and computer science may present us with options for modifying ourselves and our children or just push us further into electronic intimacy, in which our presence to one another becomes more and more mediated by machine. C.S. Lewis envisioned that the Moon is constantly embroiled in civil war between the barren side that faces us and the fertile garden that he imagined on the other side. Of course, the "dark side" of the Moon is nothing like this. But his veiled talk of "cold marriages," where lovers construct robots with artificial gonads rather than accept in their own bodies physical intimacy and reproduction, may not be a lunatic fantasy in the world of 2090 (see the movie Demolition Man for another example). In the era which the futurists call the Singularity, I see the Church's witness to the Incarnation could be crucial. A God with us is a God who encourages us to be present and engaged with one another and with the raw physicality of the created order, even when we do not want to face them.

But in a few hundred years time, provided we are equipped for it, it will be quite easy for us to put a large transmitter array in orbit of Mercury or elsewhere and listen and look very carefully for the signs of other civilizations. Even within my lifetime, I will not be surprised to have seen evidence for the existence of a planet like our own. Three months or so of the Iraq war would pay for such a search (as it would pay for other, more fungible things). What should the Church's witness be to another sentient species? With what should we evangelize the stars?

In the words of Get Religion, astrobiology has a very strong religion ghost attached to it. Many trace the beginnings of the scientific investigation of life beyond the Earth to Giordano Bruno, who was condemned for heresy and burned at the stake in the Campo de Fiori in Rome on that account. Bruno speculated on limited evidence that the fixed stars were like the Sun and that there were an infinity of worlds orbiting their own stars. Descartes comes very close to admitting this, too, in his slightly later Treatise on Light , which remained unpublished until his death on that account. It's not clear what the nature of Bruno's heresy was, since the official record of the trial likely was suppressed and lost. A contemporary (Luigi Firpo) claimed the charges were:

"Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation.
Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
Dealing in magics and divination.
Denying the Virginity of Mary.

The charge of interest to this work is "claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity." Considering the nature of Bruno's other theological opinions, this was a penny compared to the pound. The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests his heresies veered toward Gnostic fantasies of various sorts including various beliefs anathematized by the Fifth Ecumenical Council concerning the Holy Spirit as anima mundi . But Bruno's celebrity is not the creature of anyone who cares about these matters, so I long had the impression that it was the plurality of worlds that so dismayed the Inquisition. After all, if there were intelligent life, would it be necessary for Christ to be incarnate on all of those worlds and die over and over again? C.S. Lewis may have had Bruno at the back of his mind when he orders the universe in his Space Trilogy to be ruled by Archons, angels of God that do act like animae mundorum . However, most planets including all of those outside the Solar System do not have life, regarding it as a burden or a humiliation. Venus has human life, thanks to the Incarnation, but they do not fall thanks to the assistance of a Christian Earthman. Martians apparently don't quite have free will. And if the Venusians had fallen, God would have had to come up with some new plan. They could not be justified by faith in God in Christ. Fortunately, we do not live in Lewis' modified Neoplatonic fantasy world or Tolkien's passingly similar Arda (Old Solar and Valinorean are practically the same language, after all. If you like the Lord of the Rings , you really should read The Space Trilogy).

To this soteriological puzzle, I propose an alternate solution to Lewis'. My first inspiration for this idea is that great hymn of Athenagoras many of us sing in the evening, "O gracious light...you are worthy at all times to be praised, o Son of God, o Giver of Life, and to be glorified throughout all the worlds." The 1979 BCP translates the Greek kosmos as "all the worlds." What is interesting about this translation is that it is perhaps the most accurate of all the translations I can read. The Latin has saecula , which is ridiculous, suggesting an extent of time usually signified by the Greek aion , though "aion" in the sense of "world to come" or "age to come" is a known use. Everyone else generally translates it as "world." The New Testament speaks of three kinds of worlds, oikoumene , which I take to mean the world of the secular powers, for this is the world of "and the decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." This is the world of our limited imagination and the world of our conceits about power. There is ge , the word for soil expanded to all the inhabited land. It's very important. John, who generally does not use it as much as the other Evangelists, uses it in places such as 12:24 and 12:32, where it has soteriological relevance, connecting Christ's death to curse of the ground and evil power of the air. But otherwise, John uses kosmos , famously at the words of John the Baptist, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." Τῇ ἐπαύριον βλέπει τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐρχόμενον πρὸς αὐτόν, καὶ λέγει, Ἴδε ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τοῦ κόσμου. . The world of John's Gospel is primarily the cosmos, a word best understood in English as "order" in the sense of the "created order." Thus, if we take John 3:16 literally, for instance, we must admit that salvation is through Christ's Incarnation on earth.

Moreover, the linguistics of the Great Commissions can be read to suggest the importance of humans to the economy of salvation generally. Matthew's version commands us to evangelize every ethnos . Mark's version tells us to go through the kosmos and preach the gospel to every ktisis or created being, which is a wide commission that only St. Francis and a few others have taken seriously. In the Song of the Three Young Men, the authors encourage the whole created order to praise the Lord, matching the scope of the Markan commission. The Acts commission speaks of the ge , but an alternate translation of eschatos ge might be "end of the world" as opposed to "furthermost part of the world." For God, time and space must be quite interchangeable, so it is quite interesting how terms about space and time are quite interchangeable in the Scriptures.

But these linguistic arguments matter very little if the Evangelists operated under a limited worldview and vision of the cosmos . If in their view, we were alone, their use of cosmos really might be restricted to the Earth. Although, as we will see later, I believe in the power of prophecy to put into words visions beyond the prophetic imagination, the argument from usage has been warned against since at least Augustine's treatment of the linguistic arguments about love in City of God that still stimulate the theological imagination (see Pope Benedict's Deus Caritas est . However, in the same way that love is one, I argue that salvation is one, through Jesus Christ, and chiefly but not exclusively mediated through the missionary efforts of His Church.

For indeed, the Evangelists likely did not have a limited vision of the created order and the importance of Christ's saving work to it. Their contemporary, the Apostle Paul, stretched the limits of the Hellenistic worldview when he wrote:

The created universe is waiting with eager expectation for God's sons to be revealed. It was made subject to frustration, not of its own choice but by the will of him who subjected it, yet with the hope that the universe itself is to be freed from the shackles of mortality and is to enter upon the glorious liberty of the children of God. Up to the present, as we know, the whole created universe in all its parts groans as if in the pangs of childbirth." (Romans 8:19-22).

And so there is to be no doubt about Paul's meaning (he isn't just talking about the natural environment on Earth), you can read Ephesians 1 or this famous line closing the book:

"Our struggle is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers, against the authorities and potentates of this dark age, against the superhuman forces of evil in the celestial spheres."

Yes, I realize there is nothing particularly obvious in these passages. But put into a more modern context, I suggest that we take them more seriously as encouragement to think about how Church can fulfill its commission to bring the fullness of Christ to all things in anticipation of the eschaton when we all shall be free.

Why Now?

One key mythos of science is that it constantly leads us to consider how small and insignificant we are before the infinity of the cosmos. While I admit the utility of this mythos for inculcating in us humility, I think there is a strong possibility that there is a happy medium between our insignificance and our centrality to the universe. I would argue that the human species arose at an opportune moment in the history of the universe. The primary evidence for this is chemical. The observations over the last decade of extrasolar planets have demonstrated something quite important about planets, they very much tend to form around stars with high amounts of heavy elements observed in their atmosphere, things like iron and magnesium (or carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen for that matter), which are essential for our enzymatic systems. Stellar evolution models suggest that the heavy element concentration of the stars (their metallicity) has increased over time, as the nuclear fusion processes that power the stars and their fiery destruction in supernovas gradually produce more and more heavy elements from the primal hydrogen and helium of the early Universe. These heavy elements also form the nuclei of the cores of the giant planets in our Solar System.

The Sun is a later generation star. Its initial heavy element reservoir, which condensed out to form the planets and similar bodies we know today, is a legacy of at least 500 stars by last count. Evidence for this inheritance comes from relics of these stars in the form of silicon carbide and diamond grains that formed from these stars and were blown out into the nebula out of which the Sun formed with different chemical properties than the meteorites in which they are typically found. It's possible that the Sun may be among the first generation of stars with enough heavy elements to form terrestrial planets, though that particular idea is controversial. But what if it is true? At this point, our planet had a variety of advantages:

It orbits a G-type star, which produces a significant flux of photons with energies between those necessary for electronic and vibrational transitions (tending toward low atmospheric absorption of incoming radiation). A planet orbiting a G type star at a distance at which it is generally warm enough to have water probably will not become tidally locked to its star (as Mercury and Venus in some sense have). Moreover, G-type stars have an early phase of strong UV flux followed by a period of gradual brightening, which may have been necessary for early organic synthesis and the development of photosynthesis. Although I would not go as far as James Lovelock in arguing for biological regulation of the Earth's climate, the possibility that the rate of evolution is optimized by a slowly changing radiation budget is intriguing. Moreover, if Lovelock is right, timing is crucial. Carbon dioxide (despite our hiccups) has been declining over the history of the Earth as the Sun has brightened. However, if carbon dioxide falls below 150 ppm, photosynthesis is greatly reduced. Thus in a few hundred million years, the Earth either will be too warm or too carbon-deficient for plant life.

In a few centuries, I suspect we will have a far better idea of how special we are and how early we are in the general scheme of intelligent life. One possibility is that we are among the first fruits of a brief flowering of intelligent life. In that case, the Scriptures give us hope of an eschaton in which Christ will recreate the universe and bring us into union with him. As the universe expands and we wonder if the rate of stellar enrichment in heavy elements will outpace the reduction in density, this is hope indeed. The era of the terrestial planets may be quite brief. To any civilization with our sophistication, the news we bring may be good indeed if we still hold it in sincerity.

Why Us?

The challenge of extrasolar evangelism, no doubt, will vex future theologians. After all, it's far easier for Jesus to be an "astral traveler" from the practical perspective. It would absolve us of responsibility if Jesus became incarnate for each fallen intelligent species. But my heart cries against this on several grounds. First, the universality of Christ and his sacrifice is limited by his "dying over and over again." The preacher of the Hebrews was insistent on one death alone to cleanse our conscience.

Second, the idea that Christ would have to become incarnate for each species presents problems for the principle of our equality before God. The kingdom of our God is one for every language, tribe, people, and nation. While the Creed we say today speaks of Christ becoming a human being, our future Creed may speak of the Creator becoming a creature. We have founded our principles of equality on us all being created in the image of God. Is the image of God to be found in our particular form? Or does it lie in our creative powers, truly iconic of the Creator? I won't pretend that this presents an evangelical challenge. But it will be best for our future relations with our extraterrestrial brothers and sisters if we are insistent that we are like them in the most fundamental way, that God created them in His image, and died for their sins in our common vulnerability. To argue otherwise will raise questions of superior and inferior and the spectre of exploitation. This is not to say that I am certain of this, and I think we will have to listen carefully to their stories and be prepared to have our minds changed. But I think our default assumption should be that we share the Kingdom with them through Jesus Christ, first revealed in the flesh in Bethlehem Ephrata.

Third, I fear there may be additional objections on the grounds that it will take a long time to evangelize the universe. What will happen to those who never hear the Word? In the first place, every other species will have the same opportunity as we do to know God through the order of his creation, which is evidence of the Son and therefore the Father. Those who live in this light have excuse on the day of judgment as Paul suggests. The larger problem lies in the harrowing of Hell, when Jesus supposedly preached to the "souls in prison." I still don't know how this is supposed to work with aliens.

Some also might wonder why should we be the only evangelists? If the acts of God were seen by all, it would be more efficient. But if we are among the first intelligent species, this makes some sense. We should realize these issues have arisen before. For the LORD made distinction between Israel and the nations, while proclaiming that the nations should have salvation in the seed of Abraham. At Morning Prayer lately, I have been reading the Story of the Three Young Men and the Fiery Furnace from Daniel. In this story, King Nebuchadnezzar learns of the power of the one true God through the faith in the face of death and deliverance of three of his court officials, who are Jewish. In this sense, humanity may be special, but it is an obligation. The maintenance of our habits and our faith in the darker corners of space will be a proclamation of Christ.

FutureScripture/LoveSounds

Let us conclude this fanciful set of speculations by considering a key question: if we are meant to evangelize space, how will the Scriptures speak to us if they are written from a worldview in which our present limits are very much the limits of the important universe. I would suggest that the Scriptures were revealed in such a way that this problem could be evaded by creating an analogy between outer space and the sea. Best of all, this analogy is at the very beginning of the Old Testament, where the Spirit hovers over the face of the waters. Other creation accounts suggest that God created the universe by killing the primal sea monster. Thus in the Scriptures, I think many references to the sea also could refer to outer space in the same way that many of the events of the history of Israel and Judah and the rituals of the Law also refer to life of Christ. The other planets then become islands and coastline. Think of what the Psalmist says, "The LORD is king. Let the earth rejoice and the multitude of the isles be glad!" (Psalm 97). It seems a tad redundant, but it might signify to us a wider view of creation. Or think on the words of Isaiah, "A bruised read he shall not break and a smoldering wick he shall not quench until he establishes justice on Earth and the coastlands wait for his teaching...Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the end of the earth: Let the sea and what fills it resound, the coastlands, and those who dwell in them" (Isaiah 42:3-4,10). Indeed, Isaiah is clearly referring to Earth as he knows it with Kedar and Sela giving glory. But as the Church has made a practice of Christological reading, She may in future have to practice cosmological reading. The coastlands indeed may be waiting for His teaching, groaning aloud for the revelation of the children of God. Amen.

Updates

Item the First: Back in February, I posted an order of service for Evening Prayer without the music that made it so special. Well, gaudete populi , Julian has updated it.

Item the Second: *Christopher asked me some time ago to see what I could do with certain proposed revisions of Article VI of the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. I have major writer's block on another front, so I'll get to that fairly soon. I also will have a post on theology and space aliens, which has nothing to do with this item.

Item the Third: Anthropax paid me the high compliment of contrasting my Maundy Thursday piece with the Telegraph .

Item the Fourth: That was the week that was, wasn't it?

The Triduum in Review

The last few days have been busy. Worst of all, I have no idea when I am going to bed tonight due to a couple of analyses I need to do in order to finish my second conference paper. On the other hand, I am enjoying various things that I wasn't doing during Lent. For instance, I am listening to DJ Panda presently.

But let's review what I did this week.

1. Thursday morning Eucharist. I basically had to teach a class on Thursday evening, so I wandered to Eucharist at 7 AM in the morning. Good sermon.

2. Friday Tenebrae. I love this service. It's one of the few services of the year that is entirely run by non-clergy staff, in this case, mainly by a gentleman I like to call "the lay clerk," who I love dearly. It's basically a mix of Scripture readings, Psalm and canticle chanting, and an amazing meditation on shadow that exemplified my favorite kind of preaching. And, of course, we have an earthquake that while technologically simple probably was designed by a Hollywood sound effects artist.

3. After Tenebrae, I stuck around for the Friday-Saturday portion of the Holy Week vigils. It was an opportunity for me to do a bit of reading. I read Bede's Holy Week sermons, Donne's Essays on Divinity (which have some long-winded but fascinating prayers), and some favorite parts of the Bible. Every hour, those watching gather for prayer. About 11 PM, one of my friends came to me, pointed at her watch, and said, "What should we do?" So we gathered and read the great Hallel , Psalm 136. I officiated at Compline at midnight, went to sleep, sang very quietly Psalm 104 as a first office (can anyone guess why?), and then officiated at the Holy Saturday Office in the form of Morning Prayer. It is always good to pray with other people, but I really need to be careful to mention page numbers at all times.

4. I then returned home and ended up getting a fauxhawk, since I really don't have enough hair for a decent mohawk at present. I apparently now have the hairstyle of a fashionable actor my age.

5. Then I returned to church for Easter Vigil. The Liturgy of the Word was done in an odd way. Each section began with one of the traditional readings concerning God's saving deeds in history, then followed a psalm or canticle, then there was a reading from some source outside of the Holy Scriptures (not the Acts of Phillip the Fair, though ;) ) about some sort of political issue related to the subject of the Scripture reading. For instance, the first section was Genesis on the creation of the world, then Magna et mirabilia (confusing me no end, because that's an apocalyptic canticle), and then we heard a portion of a speech by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth (possibly explaining Magna et mirabilia ). Father Haller likely will be dismayed (or not, I could be wrong) to hear that an excerpt from an old sermon of his, "Nothing Will Be Lost" was read to complement "Salvation Freely Offered to All." The complement to "the Valley of the Dry Bones" was a very powerful and very Scripturally infused speech by one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. The baptismal creed was the Creed of John Sentamu. (5 adult baptism, 47 new previously baptized members.)

6. Finally I returned to church on Easter morning. It was packed. The church was full for the late morning service with an overflow of 300. I think that's ~1500 people, making more than 3000 people for all four services. The subject of the sermon was how evil substitutionary atonement is. I kid you not. There were two very funny jokes at the beginning that had nothing to do with the subject of the sermon. I really don't understand it. You have a congregation at each principal service of Easter Sunday on the order of your ASA and you proclaim that "Jesus didn't die for our sins, He died because of them?" Quidem propter iniquitates et quoque pro iniquitatibus, sed resurrexit tertia die secundum Scripturas. . There was no Creed on this day, per normal .

He is risen! Alleluia!

Article XXXI: Of the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross

The Offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.

It's that time of year again. I'm not quite sure when I will receive the first question but some time between now and Easter Sunday, someone will ask me that most ticklish of soteriological questions. How did Jesus save us on the Cross? For the last week, The Dean of St. Alban's, Very Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Johns, has been receiving all kinds of flack from conservative evangelicals before they even read the transcript of his attack on the pet soteriological theory of the post-Reformation Protestant church, penal atonement/substitution. I thought this would be a good time for me to review what the bounds of Anglican orthodoxy might be on this question.

Thesis 1: The life of the Lord perfected in death is salvific, not merely the life, nor merely the death.

After the Nicene Creed describes the creation of the world through Christ, it says of Him, "for us and our salvation, he came down from heaven and became incarnate..." That is, His work toward our salvation is prior to his death and indeed prior to his birth. As de la Taille says, "He placed himself in the order of signs." His life proclaimed Him as the Messiah, the restorer of God's favor to Israel and the bringer of the Gentiles to the worship of the true God. I read on one of the regular blogs recently that His testing by the devil veiled the truth of his being from the Adversary. Sounds good to me. Other points could be made about the necessity of the proclamation of the Kingdom, the instruction of the disciples, the institution of the Sacraments etc.

But the Creed reminds us that the salvific work of life was nothing without the death by repeating (added by the First Council of Constantinople) that He was "crucified for us." And indeed, the Athanasian Creed likewise says, "He suffered for our salvation."

Thesis 2: The "perfect redemption" of which the Article speaks is redemption unto eternal life, analogous to the life of our foreparents Adam and Eve before the Fall, though not homologous.

The Psalmist in Psalm 49 says to those who put their trust in their wealth that they cannot buy their way out of death and live forever and ever. The price is entirely too high. I propose this can be traced to two decrees of God: (1) that by eating of the tree of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve would die, which in itself only puts Adam and Eve under the sway of natural death in sensu strictu; (2) the ground is cursed from whom humans now eat food, eventually mixing more and more of them with a curse and diluting their divine essence, sapping their lifespans as time went on. (2) is directly challenged by Christ. First, He institutes the Eucharist, whereby his divine Body and Blood are given to us as food that we may be restored to the fullness of our humanity by reconciliation with our primal bit of divinity. Second, He is crucified, thereby hanging on a piece of wood and bearing the curse of the ground for us, "Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree" says the Law. Thus, Christ redeems us in part in this life from the curse that will destroy our humanity and alienate us from our Creator, redeems us at our first death through our incorporation into his Body, and redeems many who died before his coming by his harrowing of hell.

Thesis 3: The "perfect propitiation" of which the Article speaks was required because justice is fundamental to the universe but its form was the forebearance of God to our fallen desires.

In Romans 3:25, the Apostle says of the Lord Jesus, "that God hath set [him] forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;" But why was it necessary for this to be done by ther death of Him who was very God and very man. In the beginning, God legislated mercifully, only putting Cain into exile. But Cain, fearing that his fellows would not be so merciful, asked God's protection. And so at the covenant of Noah, God established the basic form of the Lex Talionis by allusion to the primal order, but surely if it were primal, it would apply to Cain? But indeed it was primal in the sense that retributive justice follows from the natural law. Yet we were not meant to be subject to the fullness of the natural law, i.e. death. But as we mixed more and more with the creation that was good (and likely is good) but became accursed for us, we embraced retributive justice. We embraced scapegoating. We embraced collective punishment. And God could endure it no longer, so the Lord Jesus died in a way that finally could cleanse our consciences, for there is no propitiation of natural justice ("nature red in tooth and claw") so great as offering the Creator. Penal substitution is so sick and twisted as to be supremely fitting, not as a sign to us of God's wrath but to us of our great wickedness to one another and our desire for vengeance. But we also must remember that this is a reciprocal act of love for us. For indeed Abraham gave his son willingly as a sacrifice to God. So should we not feel so beloved by the reciprocal gift?

Thesis 4: The "perfect satisfaction" of which the Article speaks has the same character as the propitiation.

For as Latimer preached in a Homily on Repentance, "For he alone dyd with the sacrifice of his body and blod make satisfaction vnto the Iustice of god for our sinnes." Note further the use of satisfaction in Numbers 35 (KJV) in the context of the treatment of murder and manslaughter, where, on one hand, our desire for vengeance is recognized in the kinship role of the "revenger of blood" but the mercy of God is recognized in the idea of the city of sanctuary. This was to signify Christ, who left the sanctuary of the holy city, Jerusalem, and met death, the revenger of the blood of us all. And likewise we also know that the Lord was the true high priest and thus by his death, he has restored all us miserable offenders, destroyers of ourselves unawares by our disobedience, to the land of our possession.