What is proven? What is proof?

"If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain." (1 Cor. 15:14)

Enter Blogger, expecting an uninterrupted tenure upon his soapbox

Blogger: In Wednesday’s class, we talked about what it takes to see the resurrection. The answer we landed on, but did not flesh out, is that it takes faith. But how do we get that? Do we just need to see it happen to be convinced? If we do see it, what does that prove? What do we need to believe first in order to believe at all?

     We pointed to the possibility that those whom Christ leads out of Hell believe in the resurrection because they have believed in the same story all along. In the York cycle, Isaiah recognizes Christ as the light he preached; Simeon recognizes the child who was presented to him in the temple; David recognizes the saviour he prophesied in the psalms. [1] Those who believe in a messiah are by no means surprised when he delivers them from Hell.

     We can contrast the attitude of these prophets with the admittedly bizarre response of the devil. It is not even clear what it is he has trouble believing - first he cannot believe that he can be robbed of his kingdom, then he cannot believe that Christ is the son of God, and then, again, he cannot believe that he will be robbed of his kingdom. [2] He never concedes a belief that Jesus is the Christ. Rather, he accepts the fact for the sake of argument: “since thou says God is thy sire…” [3] This is not a profession of faith, but a concession made in order to seek his own advantage - to prove, by reason, that he has a right to hell.
     The sticking point is the incarnation, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Pilate is prepared to accept every explanation except this one. Eclipses and earthquakes happen all the time and if the dead rise, surely one is putting one’s hand into some kind of spooky magic. [4] This sort of accusation is not something that was made up by medieval liturgical dramas. The same doubts are littered throughout the gospels. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” [5] “He casts out demons by Be-el′zebul, the prince of demons.” [6] Proof of Christ’s divinity as asked for on our terms; even those demonstrations of his divinity which he gives are viewed with suspicion. It is no surprise, then that the same sort of doubt pops up about the resurrection itself. Nothing, even the word of God himself, can compel our belief; belief must be a choice.

He's back!

Enter Bultmann, with pipe

Bultman: Yes, now you see! “The resurrection of Jesus cannot be an authenticating miracle on the basis of which a doubter can be secure in believing in Christ.” [7] These historical events and myths can never be the basis of a genuine faith: one can only believe who already recognizes the passion and resurrection, not historical events, but as eschatological reality. Those who are witnesses to the ressurection do not witness to the fact of the event itself, but the gospel by which this event is believed. [8]

Blogger: What is it that you are saying Bultmann? My only claim is that belief cannot be compelled and must be chosen. Does it follow that what we believe through the testimony of witnesses is not their account of the events, but their framework through which the events are interpreted?

Bultmann: It should follow. The gospel is not an account of history because history has nothing to say about the reality of faith. All that history can tell us is that a man died upon the cross. “In fact, faith in the resurrection is nothing other than faith in the cross as the salvation event, as the cross of Christ. Hence, one cannot first believe in Christ and then on that ground believe in his cross.” [9] You do not believe in the cross because Christ, in whom you believed, died upon it. You rather believe first in the cross itself with Christ on it. Why else would the apostles scatter? Even Peter, who expressed his belief in Jesus as the Christ, nonetheless denied him.

The question hangs in the air. Bultmann leaves, blogger shuffles offstage hanging his head. But, realizing that he is not content to give someone else the last word on the internet, runs back out and bursts into an impassioned plea.

Blogger: The point, dear reader, is this: belief is a tricky business. It is readily apparent that two people can see the same thing and believe different things about it. If I see the dead rise I might suppose that it is a hallucination, sorcery, or the grace of God. There is nothing which can force me to believe one of these things over the other. I think that Bultmann and I both agree on this point. Where we disagree is this: Bultmann holds, by my understanding, that because history can be seen differently in light of any number of beliefs, history is an altogether different business from belief. For my part, I hold unwaveringly that God has indeed made himself manifest in the world and for this reason we should take him at his word. Indeed, he assumed human flesh both to restore or nature and so that we could see that God wants to bring us to himself. His manifestation is no less apparent, no less true, simply because one is able to reject it. Though even the creator who assumes human flesh cannot compel the worship of his creatures, the creatures are bound to recognize his authority as God while he walks among them.
     Isn’t it very strange when Christ expels a demon from a man and is accused of being a demon? Isn’t it very strange when Jesus heals a man from his affliction this is taken as a license to kill him? Isn’t it very strange when those who are filled with awe when Jesus announces that the scripture is fulfilled in their hearing change their minds because they remember that they know his mom and dad? [10] These responses are strange because it is clear that Jesus is acting as God would, but those who doubt him seem more ready to accept any other possibility. So too, Bultmann opts to view as the trappings of myth that which God communicates to us as history.
     We think a lack of faith strange, perhaps, when we see it in others. We think it strange when we think that the story is not our own. But who among us has not been moved to worship the creator on account of the beauty of creation, only to turn away and seek a “better explanation”? Who among us has not known the hand of providence in an unexpected encounter, only to chide ourselves into thinking it was just a coincidence? Who among us has not felt the undeniable goad of conscience, only to tell ourselves that what we are doing can’t be all that bad? The point is that God does not keep himself as far away from us as we might think, though he is of course far greater than we could ever imagine. The question is not whether or not he decides to prove himself to us: it is whether or not we will trust him. Perhaps the resurrection cannot prove faith to the skeptic. But for the apostles who denied and abandoned the messiah in whom they already believed, the bodily resurrection is sure proof indeed. They scattered because they did not yet trust in Christ himself, but instead in their own world picture of what they thought a messiah should be. What they did not realize is that, when Christ said he would die, he did this only so that he might rise from the dead.

Exit Blogger, still somewhat unsatisfied with his answer to Bultmann, but too tired to carry on, and eager to turn his heart to prayer instead.

He's back!

-TvB

[1] “The Harrowing of Hell”, York Mystery Plays: a Selection in Modern Spelling. Edited by Richard Beadle and Pamela M. King (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Lines 50-60; 61-72; 187-193

[2] Ibid. 185-245

[3] Ibid. 254

[4] “The Resurrection”, York Mystery Plays: a Selection in Modern Spelling. Edited by Richard Beadle and Pamela M. King (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Lines 85-105

[5] Lk. 11:17 RSV

[6] Mt. 4:3

[7] Rudolph Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology”, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings. Translated by Schubert M. Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). 37

[8] Ibid. 37

[9] Ibid. 39

[10] Lk. 11:17; Mk. 3:1-6; Mk. 6:1-6

Image Credit:

Photograph of Bultmann from wikiquote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bultmann#/media/File:Bultmann.JPG

Icon of the Resurrection, Vladimir Krassovsky
https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-resurrection-large-icon/

Wounded Meditations: Blood, Prayer and Gender in the Passion Narrative

Wounded Meditations: Blood, Prayer and Gender in the Passion Narrative

Medieval blood-pages and the cult of wound worship in the later Middle Ages

The concern of our last class seemed to center around a question of what I believe was referenced as the ‘virtuous bounds of the imagination’ in regards to the iconographic/pornographic dichotomy created by hyper-fixation with the wounds, blood and body of the body of Christ. While our discussion centered primarily around the Meditations and on contemporary depictions of the Passion in film, I thought it pertinent to introduce a few more historical examples of medieval wound/blood devotion to further enhance our discussion/alarm concerning the imaginative exploitation of the wounded Body.

The pages from the British Library’s Egerton Manuscript 1821 (from Britain, made between 1480-1490) act as a significant and disturbing representation of blood meditation. The pages - red pigment wounds drawn on vellum - remove the figurative nature from the body of Christ, invite the reader to meditate purely on the literal essence of embodiment - blood. The pages exacerbate a medieval frenzy to meditate on the number of wounds or the objects used to wound - they seek to engage with the materiality of vellum as skin, to subsume the viewer in an experience of fluidity of pain. MS 37049, of the same collection, expands on the imagery of 1821, including images of a the heart of Christ a monk kneeling in prayer, along with the requisite blood droplets [2]. The proliferation of these blood-filled images, along with the ‘Passion imagery...virtually everywhere in England and on the continent’ and the occurrence of Passion plays seems to suggest a deep investment in the imaginative material, to relate to Christ not only through his ‘humanity’ but through the literal fluid/flesh of his form.

 London, British Library Manuscript Egerton 1821, England (Sheen?), 1480- 1490, pigment on vellum, 120 x 180 mm. Folios 6v-7r. Photo © The British Library Board

London, British Library Manuscript Egerton 1821, England (Sheen?),

1480-1490, pigment on vellum and inked woodcut, 120 x 90 mm. Folio 7v. Photo ©The British Library Board

As Thebaut discusses in her examination of these blood pages, wound/blood piety may have been particularly significant to medieval women, whose participation in institutional religious practice was more limited: unable to engage with the Body through the blessing of the Host as priests, and with literal images of the dying body being visually separate from their own by virtue of masculinity, they may have found comfort/exploration in blood, a substance shared through all forms [1]. Blood, of course, and the yonic image of the gaping wound provides a space for specifically feminine engagement: women are tied to pain through the curse of Eve and the pain of birth, through the pain and (likely, in the Middle Ages, humiliation) of menstruation, itself a bloody and bodily experience.

In earlier posts and weeks we discussed Hugh of St. Victor’s fear that members of the Church would regard Christ as separate from the experience of pain, would treat ‘likeness’ to humanity as something either too close or too far from the experience of being-in-body. The extent of embodied-ness is for Hugh and for theology broadly a charged issue - to assume that Christ did not feel pain, or felt pain in some way apart from the human experience, is to  devalue the sacrifice made during the Passion, to in some way underestimate the love and strength of God. Here is something deeply far in the opposite direction, something that draws on a desire for a sadomasochistic, pseudo-erotic imaginative contact with flesh, that purposefully breaches the ‘decency’ of the imagination to engage with the utter humiliation experienced by God on the cross. Is this within some ‘virtuous boundary’? In lives that are brutal, short, humiliating - is pain an intentional, vital medium through which to connect with God? The mystery plays are quasi-liturgical, yet they have their moments of levity, the blending of what might be called the ‘profane’ nature of the everyday with the ‘sacred’ of scripture. In a much broader sense, the extreme focus on pain and wounded-ness in the Meditations and the tradition of blood-piety seems to derive from a kind of ‘wounded imagination’, a desire to stimulate empathy for and from Christ through engagement with this most essential substance and experience.

What does  a fixation with the wounds of Christ suggest as a lesson for the medieval Christian? The Meditations, in discussing the morbid humiliation of Christ’s body, speak of ‘loving duty’ and ‘perfect obedience’. The user of the Meditations is instructed to ‘enlarge the scene more fully’ and ‘notice every detail as if [they] were present’ [3]. Here we see that blood pages and the Meditations are engaged in a similar struggle: they seek to engage, on a level of detail beyond scriptural narrative, with the suffering of Christ; yet the language is of ‘enlarging’ the scene even as the focus gets smaller. It is strange to think of blood piety or wound meditation as an ‘enlargement’ of the Passion narrative, given the narrowness of meditative focus, yet it undoubtedly is: it invites a contemplation of the visceral, bodily presence of God far beyond what is offered in original text. Wound-meditation seems to give the opportunity to expand beyond one’s own body and own suffering to engage with the broadly suffering body of God, in the Passion narrative and perhaps, compassionately, in the suffering of the Body of God’s people on Earth.

Is there a danger of lostness in this form of meditation? Is this what causes the nausea of a modern reader? St. Augustine writes of a similar fear concerning theater in his Confessions, saying that his obsession with performance as a young (pre-Christian) man was because the ‘plays reflected [his] own unhappy plight and were tinder to [his] fire’ [4]. In both the context of these forms of bodily meditation and in the examination of mystery plays as a phenomenon of scriptural engagement, this old fear seems especially relevant. We, as humans, are attracted to the observation of suffering for the catharsis that observation offers and, perhaps, for the comparative illumination it offers our own struggles - do the mystery plays do this, do the Meditations? And if so - must this be problematic? Could this not be a way of engaging with God? I return again and again to this dichotomy between iconographic and pornographic, between the openness to the profane that meditation of flesh offers and the same opportunity for empathy/compassion.

Peace & blessings,

Joan

[1] Bleeding Pages, Bleeding Bodies: A Gendered Reading of British Library MS Egerton 1821, Nancy Thebaut

[2] Aspects of Blood Piety in a Late Medieval English Manuscript: London, British Library Additional 37049. Marlene Hennessy. 

[3] Meditations On The Life of Christ, John of Caulibus.

[4] The Confessions of St Augustine, St. Augustine, III.1.2.

Only Human

The lights go down, and there is a blue-eyed man gazing somewhere off into the distance over my head. Dark hair falling to his shoulders, a wreath of thorns fixed round his brow—he is instantly identifiable and totally unrecognizable at the same time. Internally, I flinch.

The man is Robert Powell, as seen in the television miniseries Jesus of Nazareth. I’ve never felt comfortable seeing actor portrayals of Jesus, perhaps because I never grew up watching those movies. But when faced with the montage of various movie stills at the beginning of class, I wondered exactly what I was recoiling from: The idea of re-enacting an event of such very real and very divine significance? The notion of God as another character to play, on the same interpretive level as any other fictional character in a summer blockbuster? The thought of Jesus’ humiliating death in the first place?

Medieval Christians would not have been disturbed whatsoever—they yearned for the chance to see God and be part of the story, and this desire holds especially true regarding the events of the crucifixion, as can be seen throughout medieval art, plays, and meditations. In his prayer to Christ, Anselm laments that he “was not able to see / the Lord of Angels humbled to converse with men” (95); and in his Meditations on the Life of Christ, John of Caulibus goes into great depth describing (imagining) the events of the passion to such detail that might render his modern readers (i.e. me) rather uncomfortable:

“You will see a fine young man: very noble, most innocent, and very loving, but thoroughly whipped and splattered with blood and bruises...You will see him, with unmistakable modesty, reverence, and blushing, getting dressed again right in front of them, while they keep on ridiculing him, as if he were the lowest of all creatures, abandoned by God and destitute of all help” (249). 

For medieval Christians, being able to imagine yourself within the scene was an important element of devotional exercise, so what makes this scene so unsettling? John was aware of the disquieting nature of this description of abject humiliation; before the aforementioned passage, he instructs the meditator to think, for a moment, of Jesus only as a man. Then, after processing the image of this shamed and degraded man, we are to “[r]eturn now to his divinity and think of that immense and eternal, incomprehensible and imperial Majesty incarnate, bending humbly to the floor” (249). By briefly separating Jesus’ humanity from his divinity, we are able to better appreciate the significance of the humiliation of God.

But is it really so easy to return to the divinity? The human will always be easier to visualize than the divine, simply because it is part of the visible world. So how does one “return to the divinity”? Perhaps medieval Christians benefited from divine revelation or repeated practice, but I cannot see how, having allowed ourselves to visualize the human to the full extent of his humanity, can we ever hope to “visualize” the divine to an even fuller extent. For me, strongly humanizing Christ has the potential of overshadowing his divinity.

In class, we talked about boundaries in depicting the violence surrounding Christ’s death—do they exist, and if so, where do they lie? From a devotional standpoint, is Mel Gibson’s graphic representation of the crucifixion less appropriate than Zeffirelli’s tamer version? We discussed how violence is a crucial element of Christ’s humanity; depicting it via special effects and movie magic gore may seem gratuitous to some, but the real events were no less tortuous than their on-screen depictions appear. The question we then grappled with was when does movie violence cross the line from historical accuracy (or, in Gibson’s case, reifying the medieval devotions) into audience titillation? But I think there is, perhaps, an even greater danger—just as humiliation and pain humanizes Christ, so cruelty and excessive violence dehumanizes those he came to save.

Humans are the bad guys in the story of the passion, vilified by their despicable acts of cruelty. But I would never do such things, and I’m human, so they couldn’t possibly have been human as well. And thus I end up identifying most with Jesus as I visualize him before me; he is a human surrounded by monsters, and I am not a monster. Which I suppose was the point of the meditations in the first place—to feel compassion for Christ and thus nourish our spirit. But we are not God. We are human. And while we might find it impossible to imagine a whip fitting into our hands, the mocking words of the soldiers and crowd could easily find their way into our mouths and hearts.

Perhaps this is why, while I originally thought myself opposed to all depictions of Jesus, I was moved by his representation in play form. In the York Mystery plays, Christ’s physical ordeal is narrated by the Roman soldiers, who describe their every action as they torture, and then crucify, Christ. In “Christ before Pilate: The Judgement,” soldiers “waken [Christ] with wind of our whips” and “fling to this flatterer with flaps” (205). These soldiers are as equally cruel as their cinematic counterparts, but if not for the content, the presentation in alliterative verse could almost be called whimsical. Perhaps the soldiers are cruel, but they are still human. As they mock Jesus, they speak not in the monstrous ravings of blood-thirsty, gore-splattering sadists, but the misguided bluster of humanity:

“1 SOLDIER:...Hail, comely king that no kingdom has kenned.

Hail, undoughty duke, thy deeds are dumb,

Hail, man unmighty thy meinie to mend

3 SOLDIER: Hail, lord without land for to lend,

Hail king, hail, knave uncanned” (207).

This passage expands on the soldiers’ mocking “Hail, king of the Jews” which takes place after Jesus has been sentenced to crucifixion (Douay-Rheims, Mt. 27.29, Mk 15.18, Jn 19.3). In the gospel narratives, the actual violence against Jesus is summarized in brief while longer description is given to his mocking by soldiers, chief priests, passerby, and the crucified thieves.

Why are the gospel accounts so lacking in gore and physical suffering, in comparison to the medieval devotional visualizations? Perhaps the original gospel readers were already aware of the brutality inherent to the act of crucifixion; or perhaps the gospel writers intended to focus more on other aspects of the cross—when we focus less on Christ's physical suffering and more on the mocking nature of humanity in the face of our God, we realize the reality of the rejection that God endured (still endures) without demonizing the Romans as strange monsters from another world, sadistically torturing and slaughtering their victim in the grossest, most repulsive way possible. No, they were all human, just as I am human.

So should we really wish we had been there at the cross? Would we really have believed Jesus? Anselm seems to think he would, and John of Caulibus’s meditation places the meditator alongside Mary, John, and their companions: “...Sister, if you would like to know how to console and comfort [Mary], busy yourself in preparing and serving them something to eat” (265). But for me at least, the more realistic the visualization, the harder it is to see the divinity. And now imagine seeing the crucifixion in real life—how can we be certain that we would have seen Christ for who he truly is, and not just a suffering, disfigured, utterly humiliated and utterly mortal human dangling from a tree? How do I know I wouldn’t have been just another mocker amidst the crowd?

KY

Works Cited:

Anselm of Canterbury. The Prayers and Meditations, with the Proslogion. Translated by Sister

Benedicta Ward, Penguin Classics, 1973.

Douay-Rheims The Holy Bible, Loreto Publications, 2007.

John of Caulibus. Meditations on the Life of Christ. Translated by Francis X. Taney et al., Pegasus Press, 1999.

York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling. Edited by Richard Beadle and Pamela M. King, Oxford University Press, 1995.

Voyeurism and Violence

Something that was touched on in Monday’s class that I would like to expand upon further is the importance of an emotional connection in interpreting and dealing with our reactions to depicted violence, specifically in the image of the Passion. As I’ve said before, I am not particularly religious. Loath as I am to say it, I’ve found that I don’t really have an emotional connection to the Passion, or at least not something that I can describe in any sort of religious way. I don’t like to see anyone suffer, and although I can appreciate the logical argument for why Christ must suffer, I don’t feel the sense of beauty in the suffering that I believe some of us in class described experiencing.

In class, I mostly agreed with Professor Fulton-Brown’s remarks that the way the Passion can be presented, especially in Passion of the Christ, seems obscene. There is a very particular kind of voyeurism that is present when watching someone suffer, something that I think is aroused most of all by depictions of gore and torture and, most of all, pain. There is a reason, after all, that movies like Hostel or the Saw sequels exist.

Now, I’m not trying to entirely equate The Passion of the Christ with an anonymous horror sequel. I accept that the former is a devotional exercise, and was meant as a way to connect with the suffering rather than relish in the watching of it. I also think, however, that to do so requires an emotional investment in the material. If you watch and don’t really have that, as in my case, then it is just a kind of very uncomfortable voyeurism. I don’t have any interest in watching The Passion of the Christ, but it’s for the same reason that I don’t want to see something like Antichrist, directed by Lars Von Trier. Arguments can be made for religious or artistic merit, and I’m certainly not going to try to dispute them, but to me, these films seem to offer the prospect of nothing but gazing at profound pain and misery for two hours-- and I don’t want to do that.

Everything that I’ve mentioned so far has been a movie, and I think that’s because there is a major visual component to this reaction. That is, I don’t get the same uncomfortable feeling of voyeurism or peering in on someone’s suffering from written accounts, as in the Meditations of John of Caulibus or from the accounts in the Gospels. A large part of this, I believe, is attributable to the opportunity for discretion I have as a reader-- a chance to determine how it is that I’m visualizing something disturbing. When Matthew, for instance, writes that “spitting upon him, they took the reed, and struck his head,” (Matthew 27:30, Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition) the level of detail with which I envision this is left as my choice. I can choose to ascribe great detail to it, to imagine “bruise upon bruise, cut upon cut” (John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, pg. 247); or, I can choose to simply pass over the description, to not dwell on the gory details. I can choose, in other words, to avert my mental eyes.

Of course, in the context of observing the Passion as a religious experience, to avert my eyes and turn my head is to entirely miss the point. For John of Caulibus, his unflinching portrayal of what he imagines to be the details of the Passion is the truest way in which he can meditate upon Christ’s sacrifice. It truly is a test of faith, I think, to be able to look at these violent, gory details and to not flinch away, but instead to find affirmation.

As I’ve already said, I lack that faith. I will choose to glance away, either literally or metaphorically, from these gory details every time. It is evident to me, however, while reading John’s Meditations or looking at treatments of the scene in Medieval art, that the creators of these works are able to find their own truth and beauty in this suffering through their faith. I’m not going to go so far as to say I envy them, but I certainly appreciate their ability to find beauty in Christ’s pain.

As a visual conclusion, I’ve attached an image of the Bocholt cross, a 14th Century object. In it, Christ appears broken and defeated-- he is, one can assume, at the moment of death. Whether or not one views this as a final triumph, in which humanity is saved, or simply as a needless, painful death, is a question that, I think, depends entirely on one’s faith.

    OK

The Brutality of the Passion

I would like to continue the conversation we had in class yesterday about the potentially pornographic nature of meditating on the crucifixion. The Passion of Christ (the event, not the movie) has always been fascinating to me throughout the oscillations in my Christian faith because of its historicity. In other words, no matter how much science seemed to explain away, or skeptics called into question, there was still more or less a historical consensus that a man named Jesus started a religious movement and was executed by the Romans [1]. Even in my most extreme moments of doubt, I could cling to the event of the crucifixion. Combined with the wisdom in the teachings of Christ I could believe that even if Christ was not divine, he existed and was worth following. While these struggles are my own and probably not appropriate to litigate in a university course, I do think they point to some value in meditating on the full terror of the Passion.

If the goal of Christianity, especially medieval Christianity, is to see and know Christ, then understanding His sacrifice should be paramount. While I understand the concern that showing and considering Christ as beaten and humiliated and disgusting could make Christ seem ridiculous and thus be blasphemous, it also may be the best way to meditate on His dual nature. God became a man—is that not a form of degradation and humiliation? Compared to the perfection of God, men are vile and disgusting. We cannot truly comprehend this sacrifice because we cannot truly comprehend the splendor and glory of the Lord. This act of love, however, is mirrored in Christ the man’s degradation from perfect and beautiful to unrecognizable at the hands of his torturers. Meditating on the physical brutality helps understand the spiritual brutality at the core of the incarnation. How else can we understand the fact that a perfect God was brought so low? As the first meditation on The Passion asks, “How can we even think about the fact that this Lord of ours, the blessed God of all (Rom 9:5), from the time he was arrested that night, right up to the next noontime, which was the hour of his crucifixion, was caught up in ongoing warfare, replete with piercing pains, insults, mocking, and torments?” [2] We have talked in class before about what precisely is the moment of our salvation. Mary’s consent or the incarnation are both candidates, but to me it seems that in the Passion Christ’s sacrifice becomes fully realized and we become truly saved and understanding the true extent of that sacrifice is a key act of worship to be capable of full gratitude. In some sense, then, the more brutal we consider the passion, the better.

I still think there is a point at which artistic depictions can go too far. I started to think after class yesterday that a meditation is different than a movie or a painting. Meditation is a literary and emotional exercise wherein the practitioner is supposed to empathetically contemplate the pain of Christ. A movie or a painting can seem voyeuristic at some level—it does not require the same level of engagement. So, in the case of the Passion of the Christ (the movie, not the event) I can understand it seeming grotesque. I’d like to propose my own cinematic depiction of crucifixion: Monty Python’s the Life of Bryan. It does not depict Christ’s death, but Bryan's, in a tragic case of mistaken identity. It ends with Eric Idle and Graham Chapman’s Bryan on the cross singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” For Christians, Christ’s execution is good news; it is a reason to look on the bright side of life. Even in the meditations we read for class, I think the good news of the gospel may get lost in all the blood and gore. I do not find them too pornographic, but I find them awfully pessimistic. Its hard to get into the weeds of something so horrible as the death of a loving God and find joy; Monty Python finds joy in the big picture. 

--CHM

[1]  Tacitus, Annals 15.44, cited in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 82.

[2] John of Caulibus, Taney, F. Miller, A, and Stallings-Taney, C. Meditations on the Life of                      Christ. Asheville: Pegasus 200. 237

[3] Image found at https://cinema1544.wordpress.com/cinema-1544/life-of-brian/

Magic or Miracle?

One thing that was brought up (but in my opinion never quite answered) was the question of why exactly the consecration of the Eucharist is not a magical event.  After all, it certainly seems magical.  Bread becomes a man's flesh while continuing to look at taste like bread?  This claim of "transubstantiation" certainly sounds very much like the "transfiguration" from Harry Potter or something similar.

I think the difference may be more clearly seen with a consideration of what "magic" was believed to be.  Modern depictions of witches and wizards like Harry Potter, Wizards of Waverly Place, and the Lord of the Rings makes them humans who have extra inherent abilities beyond the ordinary (admittedly, LOTR has wizards that aren't human, but the extra inherent abilities remain).  Essentially, they are superheroes who all happen to have the same general powers.  The older understanding however, dealt with sympathetic (and also antipathetic) magic, as was briefly mentioned in class.  Essentially, things in the universe are connected to one another by a series of complex relationships that link together stars, animals, plants, minerals, emotions, etc.  By combining together objections with positive (sympathetic) relationships, one could "amplify" the associated emotions, attributes, etc.

What was the purpose of this practice and how was it understood to relate to God?  In the 16th century Heinrich Agrippa writes in Three Books on Occult Philosophy that,

"Magicians teach that celestial gifts may... be drawn down by opportune influences of the heavens; and so, also, by these celestial gifts, the celestial angels... may be procured and conveyed to us... For this is the harmony of the world, that things supercelestial be drawn down by the celestial, and the supernatural by the natural." [1]

This is the central understanding of sympathetic magic, that it is a way by which humans can pull down supernatural beings to do their will and liking.  It is an attempt to pull down the heavenly to the earthly.

Contrast this with the Mass.  The Mass, as we said, is the way that God becomes visible to mankind and if we remember what St. Anselm wrote about seeing God, "I will never find you unless you show yourself to me," [2] then a major difference becomes unavoidable.  The Mass is operating as a way for God to bend down to mankind as he did in the Incarnation because his Incarnate self is becoming present.  It is a way for God to bend to man and pull him up rather than a way for the person to pull God (or other celestial beings, like angels) to the human level.  Independent of any ideas of whether sympathetic magic truly has effects or whether Christ is bodily present in the Eucharist, the two practitioners are going to be working from different understandings of how they relate to God and this alone differentiates the Mass from magic (it also doesn't hurt that some versions of sympathetic magic are thought to involve the help of demons).

This differentiation is made clear by the idea that it is not chiefly the priest on Earth who is celebrating the Mass but rather is Christ in Heaven, the, "high priest according to the order of Melchisedech." [3]  Christ the Eternal Priest acts through the priest as he consecrates the bread and the wine, and Christ the Paschal Lamb is made present in this action.  Thus, it is apparent that God is understood to be entirely the one making present and becoming present at the Mass.

Hold on.  What's the relationship to the earthly priest?  If that priest is conjuring Christ to act in this way, isn't that just a more elaborate form of the same sympathetic magic?  Agrippa even says, "the countenance, gesture, motion, setting and figure of the body, being accidental to us, conduce to the receiving of celestial gifts and expose us to the superior bodies, which produce certain effects in us." [4]  That sounds an awful lot like the motions of the priest at Mass, producing the effect of Christ acting with him by his gestures.  But the account of the Last Supper from the Gospel of John sheds light on this exact question.  Immediately before John's brief account of the distribution of the bread, Christ says to the Twelve, "Amen, amen I say to you, he that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth him who sent me." [5]  Christ then goes on a long discourse after the meal in which he says, "Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me." [6]  These two passages (in addition to many others throughout John's Gospel) show that Christ is mystically present and acting with the Apostles, and the fact that this occurs around the Last Supper and thus in conjunction with the narratives of the other Gospels shows that these have a special relationship to the Eucharist.  Christ goes so far as to say that his Apostles, "cannot bear fruit... unless you abide in me."  Thus, the reenactment of the Last Supper in the Mass would not even be possible without the presence of Christ and this presence is one that is promised by Christ of his own freewill.  He isn't forced to do anything, he simply promises to do something consistently.

So where does this leave the Mass?  It doesn't seem to be using sympathetic magic in an attempt to drag divinity to humanity.  Rather, it is a way in which divinity bends down to humanity through its own freewill.  Not only that, but it is done so in a promise that humanity may participate, like a parent promising to come to the assistance of a child.  There is no coercion or irresistible relationships being invoked, there is only voluntary love.  The Mass then is an act in which God chooses to do something spectacular through otherwise ordinary means.  The Mass is a miracle.

-Sam Landon (I feel the need to say that the book by Heinrich Agrippa that I cite was required reading for another class I'm currently taking and not something I voluntarily read on my own)

[1] Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, and Donald Tyson. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Minneapolis: Llewellyn Publications, 2018, 121

[2] Anselm, Benedicta Ward, R. W. Southern, and Anselm. The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979, 243

[3] Hebrews 5:10 (Douay-Rheims)

[4] Agrippa, 155

[5] John 13:20 (Douay-Rheims)

[6] John 15:5 (Douay-Rheims)

The Magic Power of the Eucharist and Judas

Judas’ role in the Last Supper has always rubbed me the wrong way. I never could place if he betrayed Jesus willingly or was induced to do so. His role as the ultimate betrayer in Dante’s Inferno reflected that he was both willingly sold out Jesus and was coerced into doing it. His betrayal has always seemed cosmic and unchangeable to me. This is strongly influenced by Jesus’ prophecy of his own death and betrayal at Judas’ hands. However, is someone who is compelled to betray Jesus by forces beyond his control guilty of that betrayal, or is what controlled him guilty? A closer reading of the gospels can help clarify who really was behind Judas’ betrayal and why. With this closer understanding of Judas’ actions, the bread and wine he receives takes on a new meaning that furthers the understanding of what the Eucharist is. 

So, is Judas at fault? In the gospels of Saint Luke and Saint John, the adversary enters into Judas and causes his betrayal. Luke claims that “Satan entered into Judas…” (Luke 22:3 Douay Rheims Version) and John writes “the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray him” (John 13:2). John makes the explicit connection between the devil and the betrayal, making it appear that Judas is a victim in this story. John continues this by placing Satan into Judas at the moment of betrayal (John 13:27). Yet, the gospels of Matthew and Mark condemn Judas to the worst of punishments. Both claim of the traitor “it would be better for him, if that man had not been born” (Matthew, 26:24 and Mark 14:21). Both of these stories lack the claim that the devil or Satan had anything to do with Judas whatsoever. The crime of betrayal is placed on the human Judas Iscariot. 

So, if Judas, as in the case of the gospels of Matthew and Mark, chose to betray Jesus, we have to ask why? In the gospels of Matthew and Mark there is a story of the woman who gives Jesus precious ointment, lacking from both Luke and John. In it, the disciples witness the woman pour the expensive mixture on Jesus and “had indignation, saying: To what purpose is this waste? For this might have been sold for much and given to the poor (Matthew, 26:8-9). To assuage the ire of his disciples, Jesus explains that he will soon die and he is being prepared for burial. This expense is worthwhile since Jesus will only be present for a short time, while the poor will always exist to be helped. The disciples seem pleased with this explanation. However, immediately after this story, Judas “went to the chief priests, to betray him to them” (Mark, 14:10). This event and explanation leads to Judas’ personal decision to betray Jesus Christ. Judas Iscariot, after witnessing the woman with the ointment, lost his faith in Jesus.

However, Judas still receives the Body and Blood of Christ. This is a problem. The power of Jesus’ Body and Blood is that it is “the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). Judas took part in this ceremony, so shouldn't his debt of sin be cancelled, or at least quelled? However, the act of betrayal changed the nature of the Eucharist. Hugh of Saint Victor describes what Judas received as a “dipped morsel,” referencing that Judas’ own bread was the sole piece that was dipped (Hugh of Saint Victor, On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, 307). Hugh of Saint Victor claims that this dipping is what prevented Judas from taking the body of Christ in its full potential. Judas did eat the body of Christ as the rest of the disciples did, but he did not gain the same benefits that the disciples received.

What is the substance of Eucharist, and why was Judas unable to receive the substance? Hugh of Saint Victor argues that the purpose of the Eucharist is that through the act of consuming the body and blood of Christ “He might incorporate us with Him” (Hugh, 307). By this, he means that participating in the Eucharist brings the participant closer to the Lord. Combined with the explanation of the sacrament given in Matthew, the Eucharist takes those who are close to the Lord and aids in clearing the debt of sin. The sacrament of the Eucharist cannot have any affect on those who do not believe. This is why Hugh says “it is better for him who believes and loves, even if he cannot take and eat, than for him takes and eats and does not believe nor love” (Hugh, 307). The substance of Eucharist is centered around the belief: one who holds that the bread and wine are not the blood and body of Christ can gain no benefit from the Sacrament.

The Eucharist, the presence of the body of God, never drives out Judas’ desire for betrayal. This makes the human betrayal undertaken by Judas a more compelling narrative than a possession. This is because Judas has lost his faith in Jesus, he was not able nor willing to understand why He needed the ointment. As a result, the Eucharist which manumitted the disciples from sin did nothing for Judas. The Eucharist is an affirmation of faith. It is the affirmation that the Lord incarnated as a human through his own power. It is the affirmation that the Lord continues to be present physically in the lives of believes. It is the affirmation that by being close to the Lord one can be free of sin. Judas apostatized, and so the sacrament of the Eucharist did nothing to save him. 

—Peter Hillary

“a mystic signification”: Liturgical Interpretation and Eucharistic Pedagogy in Hugh of St. Victor and Guido of Monte Rochen

Carthusian monks debating during weekly recreation.

Philip Gröning, Into Great Silence, DVD (Zeitgeist Films, 2007).

In the 2005 documentary, Into Great Silence, a group of Carthusian monks enjoy a debate during their weekly recreation. They’re discussing what some brothers argue is a trivial ritual: on their way to meals, they wash their hands with a few perfunctory drops of water that fall sparsely from a spigot. Certainly, there’s not enough water there to really clean anything, so some of the brothers think that the community would be better off without this useless ritual. But then one of the older monks steps in and says, “The symbols are not to be questioned; we are.”[1]

While this statement could be read in an authoritarian way (“shut up, believe, and behave”), it also suggests that as much as we like to interrogate rituals for their meanings, they also interrogate our own subjectivity, asking us questions about the ways our perceptions and beliefs interact with the divine.

Put another way, rituals aren’t just there for us to unlock their significance through a decoding interpretation: the ritual changes the very subjectivity that would like to forward those interpretations. In what follows, I’d like to turn to Hugh of St. Victor and Guido of Monte Rochen in order to discover the ways that they conceive of the Mass as a dialogic space, both an object for interpretation and, in its consecrated host, as a subject who instructs.

The mass as an object for our decoding interpretation fits well with certain approaches to religion in modernity—perhaps even across confessional boundaries. Thus, a liturgically conservative Catholic like Martin Mosebach mourns the loss of symbolic action in the Novus Ordo mass because he feels that essential meanings have been lost through the disuse of liturgical gesture; his book interprets the lost gestures—the joining of the priest’s thumb and index finger after the consecration, the bishop’s use of gloves—in order to show how they are theologically necessary and not needlessly cryptic. He interprets the symbol so that its meaning becomes evident.[2]

From an academic perspective, we might point to the anthropologist of religion Clifford Geertz as exemplary in his approach to the symbol; for him the symbol is “any object, act, event, quality, or relation which serves as a vehicle for a conception—the conception is the symbol’s meaning.”[3] Geertz’s approach to the symbol places the act of interpretation front and center: it is precisely interpretation that allows us to peer into the symbol and divine its “meaning.”

We see both Hugh and Guido approaching the mass in a similar way: their interpretative skills show that every gesture is, in fact, saturated with divine intent. To take just one example from Guido, he writes that, after the fraction of the consecrated host into three portions, “the priest puts one part of the host into the chalice, and this signifies…those who are in paradise.”[4]

Hugh also devotes his interpretative energies to explaining the fraction. He argues that one of the fragments “is placed in the chalice signifying those who still live in suffering until they themselves go out of this life…”[5]

I choose these two examples from Guido and Hugh because, as you’ll no doubt have noticed, the two interpretations contradict one another—for Guido, the chalice is the place of inebriating divinization, while, for Hugh, it is the place of earthly suffering. Yet the very incoherence of interpretation—rather than pointing merely to the constructed falsity of all analysis—may instead point to a semiotic superabundance, a pedagogical paradox meant to rend the faculties of the mind into a state of astonished contemplation. To take one explanation without the other would impoverish the communicants’ interpretative intelligence, leaving them poorly prepared to receive in the sacrament the Christ whose very nature plays on precisely these fault-lines of interpretive paradox.

Which brings us to the second aspect of the mass: for here is not only an object for interpretation but, in the consecrated host, a subject who instructs.

In Hugh, the appearance of bread and wine is central to the eucharist’s pedagogical program: by showing us earthly food, we are taught that our spiritual hunger is satisfied by Christ. He writes, “the appearance of bread and wine is proposed, that the full and perfect refection may be taught to be in the taking of the body and blood of Christ, by reason of the divinity of Christ.”[6] Importantly, Christ’s appearing in visible food is a function of God’s loving condescension; as Hugh argues elsewhere, since we have lost the ability to “know the invisible,” we “could by no means have recognized divine things unless stimulated by the human.”[7] This is to say the sacrament beckons us through its visibility towards interpretative acts that ultimately result, through a play of paradox, in invisible knowledge. Even our physical eating of the sacrament is an act of interpretation: we treat God as food and thereby recognize God’s nourishing love. To speak in paradoxical terms, we are taught through visible means to see that which cannot be seen.

Guido, borrowing from St. Ambrose, likewise conceives of the sacrament as a subject offering instruction to our perceptions; he writes that the sacrament forms us “in the catholic faith” by washing “the spiritual eyes of the soul” with the “blood of Christ” so that those “things that belong to the faith” become available through physical means.[8] This seems to indicate that one’s participation in the sacrament ultimately clarifies one’s perception of the sacrament, so that a dialogic pattern is established in which we are able to ascend to the Word through our perceptive and interpretive words, words that falter and dissolve in paradox at every point so that we are sustained only by the silent eating of that “viaticum,” that “journey provision” which “strengthens the recipient lest he grow faint on the path of this world.”[9]

Again, we can point to a consonance between these medieval writers and modern scholars of religion, especially Geertz, who notes that we don’t simply interpret symbols: they, in turn, are capable of “establish[ing] powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by…formulating conceptions of a general order of existence…”[10] Here is an echo of Guido’s assertion that, through the sacrament, “we are formed…”[11]

By placing Geertz in dialogue with Hugh and Guido, I don’t intend to fabricate a simple historical continuity in the interpretation of religious symbols. But the fact that their approaches to interpretation of “mystic signification” seem to have at least points of consonance calls for further investigation and research. Why does medieval interpretation of the mass map so easily onto Geertz’s symbolic anthropology? And what are the places of difference—when do their interpretive projects cease to align? Perhaps most importantly: how have the eucharistic debates of the last millennium effected the way the academic study of religion encounters religious cultures that didn’t play a part in those debates?

As Talal Asad points out, “Geertz’s treatment of religious belief…is a modern, privatized Christian one…”[12] This is to say that his academic approach to religion results from “a particular history of knowledge and power…”[13] Ultimately, the mass isn't just there for our interpretation; it has already formed many of us as we undertake interpretive endeavors outside of Christianity. For this reason, the historical study of sacramental interpretation proves itself helpful not only for those whose personal beliefs arise from the Christian tradition but also for those who want to engage both with other religious traditions and with recent theorists of the academic study of religion.

-Dawn Treader

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[1] Philip Gröning, Into Great Silence, DVD (Zeitgeist Films, 2007).

[2] See Martin Mosebach, The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy, trans. Harrison Graham (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006).

[3] Qtd. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), 30.

[4] Guido of Monte Rochen, Handbook for Curates: A Late Medieval Manual on Pastoral Ministry, trans. Anne T. Thayer, Medieval Texts in Translation (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 99.

[5] Hugh of St. Victor, On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, ed. Joseph Saint-George, trans. Roy Deferrari (Ex Fontibus Company, n.d.), 311–12.

[6] Hugh of St. Victor, 310.

[7] Hugh of St. Victor, 157.

[8] Guido of Monte Rochen, Handbook for Curates, 60–61.

[9] Guido of Monte Rochen, 51.

[10] Qtd. Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 29.

[11] Guido of Monte Rochen, Handbook for Curates, 60.

[12] Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 47.

[13] Asad, 54.