Good Friday

You cannot mean to forget us for ever?
You cannot mean to abandon us for good?

Make us come back to you, Yahweh, and we will come back.
Renew our days as in times past,

unless you have utterly rejected us,
in an anger that knows no limit.

Lm. 5:20-22

Apocalyptic Imagery

Here's an open question to start off the new year.

Aaron's Christmas Eve post, particularly his description of how the natural world rejoiced at Christ's birth, how the very molecules danced in delight, brought to mind something I have been pondering for a while now. I'm sure one of you literary types out there knows more about this than I do and will be kind enough to enlighten me.

One prominent trait of apocalyptic literature seems to be that key moments in man's history are accompanied by and reflected by similar events in nature. Why is such imagery so powerful?

Here's an example from Lk. 21:24-27, when Jesus speaks about a great persecution; he predicts that

They will fall by the edge of the sword,
and be made captive in all nations,
And Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles
until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

Then, immediately after speaking about the fate of men, he spaks about the signs in nature:

And there will be signs in the sun
and moon and stars,
and distress of nations on the earth in despair
at the roaring of the sea and waves,
Men fainting from fear and foreboding of what
is coming upon the world,
for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
And then they'll see the Son of Man
coming on a cloud with power and great glory.

Another good example comes from the Exsultet sung at the Easter vigil, when the earth is told to rejoice in the splendor of the eternal king. This moment is perhaps not eschatological in the strict sense, since Easter marks not the end of the world but a re-birth in Christ, but the situation is similar, since a great change in man's history has come about. The imagery, then, is also similar:

Gaudeat et tellus, tantis irradiata fulgoribus:
et æterni Regis splendore illustrata,
totius orbis se sentiat amisisse caliginem.

This imagery of nature somehow cooperating, or at least reflecting, the events of man's history is not an exclusively Christian phenomenon either. Here is an example from Virgil's first Georgic (ll. 466-471, translated by David Ferry):

When Caesar's light was quenched, the shining face
Of the sun, in pity for Rome, was covered with darkness,
And that impious generation was in fear
That there would thenceforth be eternal night.
And not only the sun but the earth and the sea gave signs,
And dogs and birds gave signs, of ill to come.

This kind of imagery has great emotional resonance, but I'm not sure exactly why. Any ideas?

Religion as Contract

I was sitting yesterday morning in a review session for one of my law school exams. We were analyzing a hypothetical problem (based on a real-life case) in which a Catholic priest delivers a fire-and-brimstone sermon at the funeral of a young homosexual man who died in a tragic accident. The priest seems to have restated the Catholic Church’s position on the sinfulness of homosexual acts, albeit in rather stark and indelicate terms. The parents then sue the priest for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

I don’t want to discuss the legal issues, because I simply don’t know enough about the 1st Amendment (freedom of speech and free exercise of religion) at this point to give an adequate answer. I also don’t want to discuss the priest’s behavior. Rather, I want to discuss the reactions of some of my classmates for what it reveals about their attitude toward religion. Some of them, in order to find the priest liable, analyzed the case not from the perspective of tort law, but of contract law. Their basic argument was that the family had hired the Catholic Church to hold a funeral Mass for their son and that the priest, the Church’s agent, had breached the contract by delivering a sermon critical of their son’s conduct. My classmates, however, failed to make clear what the essential terms of such a contract are. The contract would look something like the following:

“We, the bereaved parents, pay the Church/priest valuable consideration of X in exchange for the service of saying nice things about our son in front of our friends and family at his funeral Mass. Furthermore, the views of the Church with regard to our son’s conduct are irrelevant and therefore not to be mentioned.”

I find such a contract, and the underlying view of religion, disturbing for two reasons. First, this contract reduces religion to a matter of mere personal choice. Joining the Church (or any other religion, for that matter) has no ontological effect on the individual which would make leaving problematic. Baptism, in this scheme, means just getting wet, and Confirmation is just getting some nasty oil rubbed on one’s forehead.

Second, according to this contract, the Church has absolutely no right to speak on important moral issues. If a member of the Church says he disagrees with certain teachings, no priest could present the Church’s teaching in a forceful manner for fear of a lawsuit. At the same time, the Church would be required to be at the beck and call of all her members. The Church bears all the obligations of the contract, and the individual member bears none.

I think the root problem of this “contractual” view of religion is that it doesn’t even rise to the level of a real contract. Any other contract this one-sided would be voided by a court for unconscionability. The individual demands complete autonomy and freedom, and the Church is told to recognize that. The Church cannot demand anything of the individual, but the individual can demand everything of the church.

Even a real contract, however, between man and Church/God would not be enough. The ancient Romans were said to regard religion as a matter of do ut des: I give so that you give. This at least is a contract; both sides are required to do something for the other party. Such an attitude, though, should strike any Catholic as somehow vulgar, at the very least. Who am I to demand anything from God, if He made me? Can I take Him to court if He doesn’t perform as I expect?

Such a contractual view of religion appears even in the Old Testament, in some misguided understandings of covenant, and still crops up today. It is for some reason extremely hard to avoid. I am referring to the so-called Deuteronomic theory of history, which views all evil as a direct punishment from God for failing to live up to the terms of the covenant. This theory was refuted first in the Book of Job, and later in the death of Jesus. Jesus taught that the sun rises for the just as well as the unjust man. Loving God in this life must be something more than a mere contractual duty, because God makes no guarantee that life will go as we wish, if we love Him.

Some may raise the objection that belief in the afterlife is merely a postponed performance. Yes, it is true that we believe that evil cannot conquer forever. However, the proper response is that we are to love God for His own sake, and not for our sake.

Anyway, I’ve gone on longer than I meant to. Just a few thoughts on contractual views of religion.