hierophany

In a term coined by Romanian historian of religions Mircea Eliade (meer-CHAY-uh ell-YAH-dih), a hierophany is an eruption of the sacred into the realm of the profane (i.e., the ordinary, not the vulgar/obscene). One suddenly finds oneself standing in the presence of the holy, a fact that disrupts the normal, mundane continuity of human existence.

I'm fascinated by theistic fiction, i.e., fiction about the presence of the holy in our midst. A great example of this sort of fiction is the short story titled "The Visitation," by sci-fi author Greg Bear. You can read a truncated version of the story for yourself here.


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high and low christology

The term christology is analogous to theology: it refers to ordered discourse about the Christ.* Who was Jesus? Was he truly the son of God, or just a particularly talented teacher? Did Jesus even exist? What does it mean when Christians declare that Jesus is the Christ? What is the significance of the crucifixion and resurrection events? What scriptural, historical, philosophical, and psychological arguments can be made regarding who this Christ was? Christology deals with all these matters.

Two other terms are in common use among biblical scholars: low christology and high christology, sometimes also called low, ascending christology and high, descending christology. These terms refer, in the main, to the attitudes taken by the New Testament writers toward Jesus's role and significance: low christology emphasizes Jesus' humanity; high christology emphasizes Jesus divinity, his cosmic nature.

Since it's Good Friday, I thought it might be appropriate to focus on these varying christologies for a moment. One of my favorite approaches to this topic is to ask people to compare the four gospel accounts at the moment of Jesus' death on the cross. In each case, what are Jesus' final utterances?

Mark is, according to most biblical scholarship, the first of the four gospels (Matthew was written later). How does Mark portray Jesus' final moments?

Mark 15:33-37

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.

Let's move on to Matthew.

Matthew 27:45-50

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”

Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.

Now Luke:

Luke 23:44-46

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.

Finally, the Fourth Gospel:

John 19:28-30

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Note that, in Mark and Matthew, Jesus' final utterance is a scream-- this coming after a lorn cry of abandonment. Mark and Matthew's depiction of Jesus constitutes a low christology: the emphasis, here, is on Jesus' humanity. Luke, meanwhile, seems to offer us a slightly loftier perspective, but it's in John's gospel that we see a radical shift to high christology: John's version of Jesus proclaims, "It is finished" (some render this as "It is accomplished."). That's the sort of utterance you'd hear from someone who has orchestrated events to turn out as they did. This gospel moment, then, is an example of high christology: Jesus is exalted in death.

None of this is to say that Mark and Matthew are entirely low-christological works, or that John is entirely high-christological. I chose the above passages because they illustrate, quite clearly, what the terms mean. The exercise for the budding biblical scholar is to see whether he or she can spot high- and low-christological moments throughout each respective gospel, and to form an opinion, after doing such research, as to which gospels lean more one way or the other. (You can probably guess which way John leans!)

For those who are celebrating Easter: a mindful Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and a Happy Easter. For my Jewish friends, who begin their own celebrations at sundown today: a mindful Pesach to you and yours.

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*Another term used in Christian scholarship is pneumatology: ordered discourse about the Holy Spirit. The three terms together form a trinitarian set: theology (theos), christology (christos), and pneumatology (pneuma).


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sonnet 109

In honor of yesterday, which was Valentine's Day, I give you Shakespeare's Sonnet 109:

O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,
As easy might I from my self depart
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again;
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe though in my nature reigned,
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
     For nothing this wide universe I call,
     Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

Found here, with commentary.


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a famous soliloquy

One of the most famous of Shakespeare's soliloquies comes from the tragedy Macbeth. This particular meditation, on the futility of life given the crushing inevitability of death, has come to mind lately thanks to a friend's having posted some YouTube clips of Ian McKellen's, Patrick Stewart's, and Nicol Williamson's respective performances of these lines.

The play is nearing its end, and Macbeth has just learned of the death of his wife:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28

Is life meaningless? Is living a futile act, like a bad play in which we're all players who "strut and fret"? I occasionally ask my students this question: Why do anything? The question itself is vitally important, I think, because if you seriously believe that nothing is worth doing, then life becomes either a long wait for death or a preparation for suicide.

So I ask you: why do anything? What makes life worth living?


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