The Eucatastrophic God (as explained by an orthodox rebel)

"The wilderness and the solitary places shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing...." Is. 35:1-2

Our God is a loving God. He is love (I John 4:8), a fighting love; not shallow and inconsequential toleration, but a love that kills and is killed for the Beloved. A love that cannot be boxed in or limited, because it is the love of God, and God will not be boxed in or limited except by Himself in covenant (Heb. 6:13-14) and Incarnation (Phil. 2:5-8), in short, in love. It is the paradoxes of God's love that make Him frustrating to a pure rationalist. God is rational, in that all that He does is consistent with Himself; but He is also more than merely rational, and often His consistencies are hidden from our eyes. They are too big for us to see.

This is not simply a matter of accepting God's "bigness," but rather realizing (wondrously, gladly) that He is a "big" person, and as a person He is not reducible to some analytical system of propositions. Of course, such systems are useful as tools, especially certain systems of philosophy or theology. Nevertheless, we must remember (as often as we forget) that our faith, hope, and love is neither in nor directed towards systems that make sense. Rather, they are in and directed towards a Person who loves and thus is full of surprises, for love is full of surprises. To desire and demand (as we often do) an answer for everything, an answer that is neat and tidy and merely rational, is to love some system more than a person, to worship philosophy and theology rather than God.

Many of the hardest "problems" leveled against the Christian Faith could be handle much more magnificently if we would just remember this one fundamental Christian assertion: God is great (i.e., is bigger and thus more inscrutable and unfathomable than we can imagine), God is good (i.e., He loves, and thus is a person who loves, and thus is full of unguessable surprises of goodness and love). Just look at the mind-boggling character and quality of His grace (viz., in redemption). It is logical, in that it flows logically from who God is; and yet logic could never have discovered it on its own, for it is a product of divine revelation rather than logical deduction. It is a surprise that makes sense; glorious, wonderful sense.

Look at Isaiah. In chapter 34, God left utterly desolate the city that injured His beloved. Now, in chapter 35, a new chord is struck: "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them." The "them" in this verse (KJV) is referring back to the animals and wild beasts that have taken up residence in the desolate city and thus confirming its desolation (Is. 34:11-15). Why be glad at such a sad picture? Because it signaled the beginning of glory, the "glory" and "excellency" of the Lord (Is. 35:2b), full of happy turns and sudden surprises: the desert will blossom into a garden (vs. 1-2), weak hands and knees will be strengthened (vs. 3-4), and the blind will see and deaf hear and lame walk and dumb speak (vs. 5-6) as the wilderness and parched, thirsty grounds become filled with water and grass lands (vs. 6-7). At every point, God is turning the world upside-down, turning the vain, prideful beauties of the world into ash and the poor, desolate places of the world into things of beauty and paths of holiness (vs. 8-9).

This is an absolute turn around. This is redemption. This is resurrection. This is the awesome and inscrutable activity of a God who loves and thus is full of surprises, and there is no greater surprises than this: God has chosen the foolish things to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty. He has chosen base and despised things and things that are not to bring to naught things that are, for the foolishness of God is wiser than man, and the weakness of God is stronger than man, so that all flesh may glory in nothing but Him (I Cor. 1:25-29), the Great-Good God whose unpredictable grace cuts deeper than we know and does exceedingly, abundantly more than we can ever imagine. That is who we worship: not principles, not propositions, not deductions, but the personal-infinite God of love whose grace is greater than all our systems as well as our sin.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Death and Rebirth (some Advent thoughts by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is an excerpt from "The Grand Miracle," a chapter in C.S. Lewis' book Miracles.

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He created. But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift; he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.

Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both colored now that they have come up into the light; down below, where it lay colorless in the dark, he lost his color too.

In this descent to reascent everyone will recognize a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of vegetable life. It must belittle itself into something hard, small and deathlike. It must fall into the ground; thence the new life reascends. It is the pattern of all animal generation too. There is a descent from the full and perfect organisms into the spermatozoon and ovum, and in the dark womb a life at first inferior in kind to that of the species which is being reproduced; then the slow ascent to the perfect embryo, to the living, conscious baby, and finally to the adult. So it is also in our moral and emotional life. The first innocent and spontaneous desires have to submit to the deathlike process of control or total denial; but from that there is a reascent to fully formed character in which the strength of the original material all operates but in a new way. Death and Rebirth--go down to go up--it is a key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.

The doctrine of the Incarnation, if accepted, puts this principle even more emphatically at the center. The pattern is there in Nature because it was first there in God. All the instances of it which I have mentioned turn out to be but transpositions of the Divine theme into a minor key. I am not now referring simply to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The total pattern, of which they are only the turning point, is the real Death and Rebirth; for certainly no seed ever fell from so fair a tree into so dark and cold a soil as would furnish more than a faint analogy to this huge descent and reascension in which God dredged the salt and oozy bottom of Creation.

Homily Magnus: Ends and Means (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"O Lord, Thou art my God. I will exalt Thee, I will praise Thy name, for Thou hast done wonderful things.... For Thou hast made a heap of the city, a ruin of the fortified city...." Is. 25:1-2

In the previous chapter, Isaiah had been going on and on about the desolations of God. Then, without missing a beat, he praises God for the "wonderful things" that He has done, and those "wonderful things" are those desolations. This reasoning would seem mad at best and masochistic at worst if not for the fact that the desolations of God are never about themselves. They are not the temper tantrums of the divine, but rather the purging out of imperfection in His people (Is. 1:25). In short, God's desolations are always leading towards glory; specifically in Isaiah's case, the glory of God's coming kingdom (Is. 24:23), the deliverance of the weak (Is. 25:4), and the death of death (Is. 25:8). These glories are ours as well, for the desolations of the Lord are always working towards greater and greater glory (Rom. 11:25-36).

In light of this, it would seem that the ends do in fact justify the means, but only if those ends so greatly outweigh and outshine those means that the latter fade into insignificance. Such thinking is radical (and surely offensive), but it is also apparent within the New Testament: "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:18). In view of the "exceeding and eternal weight of glory" that is waiting for us, all of our afflictions are deemed "light" by comparison (II Cor. 4:17). This is shocking language, but it is the language of the Bible. We, whose lives are consistently shaped by tragedy, are told that those tragedies are moving us towards something so magnificent, so unspeakable wonderful, that before it all our tragedies will shrink and shrivel away into the smallness beyond thought. To some, this understandably may seem to be an insensitivity to our condition as humans; for me, I see it as a beautiful hope for our condition.

Yet that hope is even greater than I have stated, and that in two ways. The first is in the nature of that glory, viz., it is "Christ in us, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). This glory is not some vague mystical abstraction but a concrete identity. We are to be "conformed into the image" of Christ (Rom. 8:29), who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), and in whom "the fullness of the Godhead" dwell (Col. 2:9). The glory that we are moving towards is the very glory of God Himself. We are moving closer and closer, and deeper and deeper, into a oneness with Him (John 14:20; 17:3, 23), so that "when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (I John 3:2). Thus will begin the "manifestation" and "glorious liberty" of the children of God, where God's glory will rain through His children to the redemption of all things (Rom. 8:19-21). And we and all creation will dance in that glory as lover with lover, for it is Love that bade us come and Love that brought us in and Love that keeps us in (Rom. 8:31-39).

The second way that our hope is even greater than I have said is in this: I actually misspoke earlier when I said that our tragedies and pains will fade to insignificance in the light of our coming glory. It is not quite right to say that, for "all things work together for good" for those who are called to God's purpose of glory (Rom. 8:28-30), and "all things" includes our tragedies as well. It is still true to say that the ends justify the means, but it is because the means will be gloriously justified before our eyes. They will find their significance. They will not fade, for they too will find their place in the infinite goodness of God. When the grey rain curtain of this world rolls away, and our eyes see the good country all hearts long to have, we will see that our pain and sorrow has infused every blade of grass and ray of sunshine, making them even more glorious. When the tapestry of God turns to us at last, so that we move from its back to its front and what was once a gibberish of stitches reveals itself to be a glorious pattern of color and beauty, we will also see our pains, our broken hearts and broken bodies, woven into the whole, adding to the pattern, accentuating the colors, and bringing more beauty than it had before. When we see Him, and are like Him, and watch His glory unfold and unfurl like a banner of victory across the stars, then we will find the words of Job on our lips: "Oh! Now I see."

We shall see. We shall see the significance, the consummation, the great and glorious meaning behind it all. We shall behold the King in His Beauty, and all action and activity will converge in Him and through us like a myriad of mirrors all reflecting back the light of the Sun. And in the light of that glory and grace, every part will find its place, even the ones that hurt the most. That is hope. Live in that hope. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

The Desolating Law (The Gospel According to Isaiah, Part 2)

"Then said I, 'Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips! For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.'" Is. 6:5

Herein is the meaning behind those mysterious phrases about how "the letter kills" and works "the ministry of death" (II Cor. 3:6-7). When we catch sight of the Law, of God's holy standard, which is the substance of His quality and character, there can be no other response but despair and desolation. That standard is not simply beyond us; it is completely outside of our categories. We could not even approach such a venture, and all of our tools and plans fall from our hands as useless things. The perfections of God shatter all of our vanities and unravel all of our tightly woven self-delusions, bringing us face to face with the truth: Who then can be saved? There are none righteous. No, not one. There are none that understand. There are none who seek after God. We have all gone astray and become unprofitable. There is none that does good. No, not one. Our end is everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might, and we will cry to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us! And hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne!" (Luke 18:26; Rom. 3:10-12; II Thess. 1:9; Rev. 6:16).

If you would find salvation, then there is no way past this dark night of the soul. The horror of great darkness must fall upon you, for your confidences are your failures, and your strengths are your weaknesses. The foundations must be destroyed if new ones are to be laid, and is not God's word "like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces" (Jer. 23:29) and "a sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit" (Heb. 4:12)? Is not the Word Himself like a great stone, and "whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, and on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder" (Matt. 21:42-44)? So you see, destruction and desolation are tied up into the nature of salvation, for we are not in need of rehabilitation but a revolution, a great upheaval of our being, uprooting and unknotting the fabric of our corrupt constitutions so that they made be made new. In short, when we catch sight of the heavenly vision, we are undone. We must be undone, for there can be no beginning of the new if there is not first an end to the old (II Cor. 5:17).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

 

"In the day of desolation...." (the first Theophilus letter)

In my long days of scholarship and study, I have stumbled across a collection of writings that I found stuffed in some old book encrusted with much dust and neglect. These miscellaneous scribblings were in some sort of Latin/Greek hybrid language that confounded my peers, and I have taken great pains to translate them. So far, they appear to be a collection of letters. The identity of the sender and receiver is unknown at the moment. However, for the time being, I have taken to name them "The Theophilus Letters," based on the pen name of the sender. Here is the translation of the first one. I hope to have more translated soon, if (and when) I find a moment to breath between my other pending scholastic projects. (-Prof. Douglas Ulysses Hightower)

"In that day, the Branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious...." Is. 4:2

Theos,

May it be the real Thou to whom I speak, and may it be the real I who speaks. There is a wonder I must tell and a joy that I must express.

In the day of desolation, Your glory and beauty shine brighter, shine fairer, fiercer, faster. Without pause or hesitation, for fire feeds every soil in which You plant Yourself. In the furnace You spring forth like a tree, a tree of might, whose fruits feed thousands, and whose canopy will cover the world. The sun will make Your leaves glorious with light: they will shimmer like an emerald sky, and every flower in bloom will flair like jewels housing hidden flames.

The roots of Your glory will grasp the earth with a strong hand. They shall grip the very heart of the world, and dig deep and deeper still, filling all hollowed-out holes with Your infinite substance. Neither crack nor crevice will remain unfilled. All shall be filled, and all manner of things shall be filled with fire and fruit and life and song. There will be shade without night and warmth without day. There will be neither cowering nor withering but growing, a growing of all souls made fat on Your fullness.

Your branches shall grow throughout the universe, stretching forth like fierce fingers, full of terrible kindness, and every world and corner of creation will know Your fruits and feast. What ear has only heard, eye will now see. We shall all see You. In the day of fire You will rise. On the wings of desolation Your glory rides. On the wings of a storm, You unfurl Your purposes: after the thunder and the terror comes the rain and the inevitable, unstoppable harvest that shall show forth Your goodness. In that day, the last day, a day tremors and quakings and unspeakable violence, we will taste and see that You are good.

This is the victory of Your ultimate love. May my life sing it back to Thee.

Love (with sincerity),

Theophilus

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

 

Desolation and Glory (words of wisdom and whimsy from an original brit)

The following is the first two stanza's from Matthew Arnold's poem "Morality":

"We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides;
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
But tasks in hours of insight will'd
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.

"With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern."