way out west

Merton and Brendan

An interesting article titled "Celtic Monasticism as a Metaphor for Thomas Merton's Journey" by Paul M Pearson. on the Thomas Merton Society's site...

Merton found in Celtic Monasticism and in The Voyage of St. Brendan, in particular, a way of understanding monastic life and his own monastic life and this was why he was so fascinated by this subject and saw in it, as he says in a letter to Dame Hildelith Cumming, a "symbolic tract on the monastic life."

The metaphor of journey is widely used in understanding the Christian life and it is also a metaphor frequently used by and about Merton. It is a metaphor that covered his physical travels of his early life before entering the monastery and his final pilgrimage to the East, it covered his continuing conversion of life as a monk, his conversion to compassion and his conversion to his fellow human beings. Journey was also the metaphor he used to understand his search for God and for his true self.

Alongside such metaphors as solitary explorer, guilty bystander, stranger, wanderer, marginal person, Merton also used the metaphor of pilgrim of himself. In his Asian Journal Merton refered to himself as a pilgrim - "I have left my monastery to come here not just as a research scholar or even as an author. I come as a pilgrim...to drink from ancient sources of monastic vision and experience."

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Atonement - victor, co-sufferer and example?

I've been exploring ideas around the atonement (as you do on a Monday evening!)-

Christus Victor (the term coined by Gustav Aulen in 1931 to describe the common theology of the purpose and process of Christ's death on the cross in the early Church, "that God, in order to redeem humanity, sent Christ as a "ransom" or "bait" so that the Devil, not knowing Christ couldn't die permanently, would kill him, and thus lose all right to humanity following the Resurrection." - written about by Gregory of Nyssa), Substitutionary Atonement (which develops from the writing of Anselm in the 11th Century - Christ died on the cross as a full payment for sins, which satisfied both the wrath and the righteousness of God, so that He could forgive sinners without compromising His own holy standard.) and Subjective (Moral) atonement (Abelard) which suggests that Christs act of love was primarliy intended to inspire us to love in the same way...

Instinctively I find myself in more sympathy with Christus Victor than I do with (at least) Penal Substitution -  Theopedia describes Christus Victor thus

As the term Christus Victor indicates, the idea of “ransom” should not be seen in terms (as Anselm did) of a business transaction, but more of a rescue or liberation of humanity from the slavery of sin. Unlike the Satisfaction or Penal-substitution views of the atonement rooted in the idea of Christ paying the penalty of sin to satisfy [God's] demands of justice, the Christus Victor view is rooted in the incarnation and how Christ entered into human misery and wickedness and thus redeemed it.

(I came across this old article from Jason Clarke - Christus Victor: Atonement for the Postmodern World? - in which Jason asks some very good and important questions.)

I also sense a creative tension (from which truth may spring?) between Christus Victor and Moltmann's "Crucified God",

Anyone who suffers without cause first thinks that he has been forsaken by God.  God seems to him to be the mysterious, incomprehensible God who destroys the good fortune that he gave.  But anyone who cries out to God in his suffering echoes the death-cry of the dying Christ, the Son of God.  In that case it is not just a hidden someone set over against him, to whom he cries, but in a profound sense the human God, who cries with him and intercedes for him with his cross, where man in his torment is dumb.

God heals the sicknesses and the griefs by making the sicknesses and the griefs his suffering and his grief. In the image of the crucified God the sick and dying can see themselves, because in them the crucified God recognizes himself

Moltmann seems to me to speak of a deep trinitarian experience of the atonement, one in which the whole of God suffers in and with creation... I have to say this seems to make more sense to me and of my experience/understanding of God and is consistent with both the Trinity and the Incarnation... which leads us to respond and follow a la Abelard!  I guess the reality is rich and deep and may even contain some sense of penal substitution, though like many my sense it is has to be far far more than the simple substitutionary account I grew up with and is the 'received wisdom' in the church.

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When does a symbol cease to be a symbol?

Today is Maundy Thursday, today is the day when many rituals take place supposedly pointing back in time to the festival of Pesach (passover), the seven day Jewish festival.  Of course for many of us it points to a specific years celebration, the last Pesach celebrated by Jesus. 

On the news today there is much coverage of the Queen performing the traditional symbolic service... well some of it!  Historically this would have included the Monarch washing the feet of her subjects - a sign of her service to them - but of course this has been abandoned.  One has to question then if this symbol (A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention.) has been abandoned, why has it?  Of course there will be voices crying "Security" etc. etc. but has it been abandoned because in our world it's message is simply unpalatable?  The idea of the Monarch (or anyone else in power) so visibly declaring an attitude of humility may simply be so counter cultural that it is impossible to even symbolise!?  Our society has been so infected with individualism and ideas about personal security - looking after number 1! - that washing feet is deeply uncomfortable for all of us, not just those with visible power! 
There is one symbol the Queen will do, she will give 84 (her age) bags of money to pensioners - the purpose of the money is of course intended to be 'symbolic' and not to be spent by the recipients, but is it really symbolic?  I'm not sure it is, it is an act which has replaced a real act - the Monarch giving real help to the poorest in society - and as such it represents something which no longer happens, one could even say it assuages tradition but enables the removal of real responsibility to act!  It makes one feel secure in the believe that the act is/has been done but in reality it hasn't.  So in effect it becomes an excuse for the avoidance of the real meaning, not a symbolic representation of an actual truth.  A symbol is not a tradition it is a representation of something real, it points to something bigger, marks it's reality, communicates it.  A symbol ceases to be a symbol when it replaces the thing it is intended to represent, when it becomes the act itself.

Note, though I am not a monarchist this is not specifically a dig at the Royals, it is more a reflection of how we all can use the language of symbolism to hide our avoidance of uncomfortable reality.  Easter is full of symbols, many of them make uncomfortable demands on us; for sacrifice, for humility, for forgiveness, to allow God to do God's work as God intends not as we want, to become imitators of Christ - living for others and giving our life for others, becoming a servant - a living sacrifice!  Not simply making symbolic representations of the above, excusing us from real change, but actually living the reality of Easter.  Referring to my previous post, it seems that the last supper was a far more public act than I previously thought, it wasn't a private, personal act, likewise "religion" is not a private affair, nor simply a weekly symbolic celebration, Easter calls us to live our faith & hope in a certain way but it also calls us to live it openly and in public and for it to make a real and radical difference to the world we live in.

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