Another Look at the Divinization of our World: Anticipating Life after Life after Death!!

[[Hi Sister, I wondered if you had noticed that Joyful Hermit is beginning to talk about "spiritualizing the temporal" (see: Spiritualizing the Temporal). . . . Is "spiritualizing the temporal" a good way of talking about the Christian mission to help bring the Kingdom of God? My own SD reminds me that no reality is ordinary in light of Christ's death and resurrection. What you wrote in your response to my two other emails reminds me of the same insight.]]

Hi, and thanks for connecting again! No, sorry, I haven't seen the video you noted here, though I am interested in hearing if its maker has made the fundamental theological change involved in the title you referenced. I sincerely hope she has! As I noted in my earlier post, an absolute dichotomy or antithesis between the temporal and the spiritual is a dualism typical of Gnosticism, a movement alive since before and certainly during Jesus' time. Scholars note that traces of it can be found in the Gospel of John (written around the end of the first century), though this may have more to do with John's countering Gnosticism through the Incarnation and all implied by that.

A shift to the idea of the spiritualizing of the temporal is absolutely foundational to Christianity and is a dynamic captured in sayings like, [[God became man so that man (human beings) could become gods!]] so, if she has made this shift, good on your videographer!! The Eastern Church's theology of "divinization" or "theosis," is a wellspring of Christianity's rejection of Gnostic Dualism. The same shift is critical to our own theology of the Incarnation including the way the Cross works to destroy sin and godless death as well. (If God is implicated by Christ in these realities, they cannot be godless any longer, can they? That is part of the radical shift in the whole of reality we know in light of the Christ Event.) It is also part of "the scandal of Christianity" because our God is found in places where religion often says God does not belong --- in the spatiotemporal, for instance. But in the Christ Event, our God reveals himself fully in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place (like a sinful world or on a criminal's Cross and in Jesus' "godless" death).

 In a piece I put up just last night on the dual context of eremitical life the last line from DICLSAL, noted, [[Thus, hermits are aware that the present and eternity no longer follow one upon the other but are intimately connected.]] This is the same theology once again; it reminds us that the reality of space-time and eternity interpenetrate one another leaving neither of them unchanged. The temporal is precisely where the eternal has taken up residence, and, as noted earlier this is why we call God in Christ, Emmanuel (God with us). As you say, it is very much part of speaking of the coming of God's Kingdom both in the way some commentators refer today as the Kin-dom or extended family of God, and in the more original Sovereignty or Reign of God right here on earth in space and time. Personally, I think hermits are especially called to affirm the world around us in this way -- another reason the piece I put up last night speaks of the world as a significant (and positive) context in eremitical life.

Your SD is definitely on the same page with his/her observation about ordinary vs extraordinary. In New Testament terms we say we are part of a new creation and of course, what we mean is that we are now part of an extraordinary reality where God has revealed his will to become all in all, and where that project is well underway!! When we speak of the world around us as sacramental, or celebrate the presence of the Holy Spirit within ourselves and in our midst, when we recognize that we are adopted Daughters and Sons of God and Imago Dei and Imago Christi, when we recognize that despite the limitations and even the distortions in our world, it is shot through with the power, presence, and glory of God, we are saying what your spiritual director says. There is nothing ordinary in our world, it is all extraordinary and becoming more extraordinary as time goes on -- not because of some sort of natural progress or evolution, for instance, (though we do believe in an evolutionary and unfinished universe) but because God is at work within us and in the whole of reality making it God's very own!

I am reminded that in our Bible class, we decided to use the Summer to read something a little different before we begin Galatians sometime in the Fall. We are now working our way through Tom Wright's Surprised by Hope, Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church. NT Wright reminds us that heaven is not our final or ultimate destination, but rather, what we truly anticipate is the new heaven and earth that will come in fullness with final judgment when God becomes All in All. (Tom Wright calls this, "not life after death, but life after life after death!") He teaches powerfully about the job of Christians to work towards this reality -- even beyond death as part of the Communion of Saints (in part, this is what he is referring to by the phrase "the mission of the church").  He captures this idea by calling us Christians, "Citizens of heaven, colonizing the earth."

In the piece I put up last night, the Church in Ponam in Deserto Viam recognizes hermits similarly as "sentinels of hope," precisely because hermits see this intimate relation between heaven and earth that exists everywhere we look! I love that characterization of the hermit's vocation!! We do not write off the spatial-temporal world, nor condemn it categorically, nor do we flee it as though our destiny is a disembodied heaven. Instead, we love it into wholeness in the power of the Holy Spirit. Or, we help make of it the new Temple of God in Christ by allowing and assisting God, in the language of your videographer, to "spiritualize the temporal!" 

The Crucified God: Emmanuel Fully Revealed in the Unexpected and Even the Unacceptable Place (Reprise)

Several years ago I did a reflection for my parish. I noted that all through Advent we sing Veni, Veni, Emmanuel and pray that God will come and really reveal Godself as Emmanuel, the God who is with us. I also noted that we may not always realize the depth of meaning captured in the name Emmanuel. We may not realize the degree of solidarity with us and the whole of creation it points to. There are several reasons here. 

          + First, we tend to use Emmanuel only during Advent and Christmastide so we stop reflecting on the meaning or theological implications of the name. 

          + Secondly, we are used to thinking of a relatively impersonal God borrowed from Greek philosophy; he is omnipresent -- rather like air is present in our lives and he is impassible, incapable of suffering in any way at all. Because he is omnipresent, God seems already to be "Emmanuel" so we are unclear what is really being added to what we know (and what is now true!!) of God.  Something is similarly true because of God's impassibility which seems to make God incapable of suffering with us or feeling compassionate toward us. (We could say something similar regarding God's immutability, etc. Greek categories are inadequate for understanding a living God who wills to be Emmanuel with all that implies.) 

          +  And thirdly, we tend to forget that the word "reveal" does not only mean "to make known," but also "to make real in space and time." The eternal and transcendent God who is revealed in space and time as Emmanuel is the God who, in Christ, enters exhaustively into the most profoundly historical and personal lives and circumstances of his Creation and makes these part of his own life in the process.

Thus, just as the Incarnation of the Word of God happens over the whole of Jesus' life and death and not merely with Jesus' conception or nativity, so too does God require the entire life and death of Jesus (that is, his entire living into death) to achieve the degree of solidarity with us that makes him the Emmanuel he wills to be. There is a double "movement" involved here, the movement of descent and ascent, kenosis and theosis. Not only does God-in-Christ become implicated in the whole of human experience and the realm of human history but in that same Christ God takes the whole of the human situation and experience into Godself. We talk about this by saying that through the Christ Event heaven and earth interpenetrate one another and one day God will be all in all or, again, that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." John the Evangelist says it again and again with the language of mutual indwelling and union: "I am in him and he is in me," "he who sees me sees the one who sent me", "the Father and I are One." Paul affirms dimensions of it in Romans 8 when he exults, "Nothing [at all in heaven or on earth] can separate us from the Love of God."

And so, in Jesus' life and active ministry, the presence of God is made real in space and time in an unprecedented way --- that is, with unprecedented authority, compassion, and intimacy. He companions and heals us; he exorcises our demons, teaches, feeds, forgives and sanctifies us. He is mentor and brother and Lord. He bears our stupidities and fear, our misunderstandings, resistance, and even our hostility and betrayals. But the revelation of God as Emmanuel means much more besides; as we move into the Triduum we begin to celebrate the exhaustive revelation, the exhaustive realization of an eternally-willed solidarity with us whose extent we can hardly imagine. In Christ and especially in his passion and death God comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Three dimensions of the cross especially allow us to see the depth of solidarity with us our God embraces in Christ: failure, suffering unto death, and lostness or godforsakenness. Together they reveal our God as Emmanuel --- the one who is with us as the one from whom nothing can ever ultimately separate us because in Christ those things become part of God's own life.

Jesus comes to the cross having apparently failed in his mission and shown his God to be a fraud. (From one perspective we could say that had he succeeded completely there would have been no betrayal, no trial, no torture and no crucifixion.) Jesus had spoken truth to power all throughout his ministry. On the cross this comes to a climax and in the events of Jesus' passion, the powers and principalities of this world appear to swallow him up. But even as this occurs and Jesus embraces the weight of the world's darkness and deathliness, Jesus remains open to God and trusts in his capacity to redeem any failure; thus even failure, but especially this one, can serve the Kingdom of God. Jesus suffers to the point of death and suffers more profoundly than any person in history we can name --- not because he hurt more profoundly than others but because he was more vulnerable to it and chose to embrace that vulnerability and all the world threw at him without mitigation. Suffering per se is not salvific, but Jesus' openness and responsiveness to God (that is, his obedience) in the face of suffering is. Thus, suffering even unto death is transformed into a potential sacrament of God's presence. Finally, Jesus suffers the lostness of godforsakenness or abandonment by God --- the ultimate separation from God due to sin. This is the meaning of not just death but death on a cross. In this death Jesus again remains open (obedient) to the God who reveals himself most exhaustively as Emmanuel and takes even the lostness of sin and death into himself and makes these his own. After all, as the NT reminds us, it is the sick and lost for whom God in Christ comes.

In perhaps the most powerful passage I have ever read on the paradox of the cross of Christ, John Dwyer (my major professor until doctoral work) speaks about God's reconciling work in Jesus --- the exhaustive coming of God as Emmanuel to transform everything --- in this way:

[[Through Jesus, the broken being of the world enters the personal life of the everlasting God, and this God shares in the broken being of the world. God is eternally committed to this world, and this commitment becomes full and final in his personal presence within this weak and broken man on the cross. In him the eternal One takes our destiny upon himself --- a destiny of estrangement, separation, meaninglessness, and despair. But at this moment the emptiness and alienation that mar and mark the human situation become once and for all, in time and eternity, the ways of God. God is with this broken man in suffering and in failure, in darkness and at the edge of despair, and for this reason suffering and failure, darkness and hopelessness will never again be signs of the separation of man from God. God identifies himself with the man on the cross, and for this reason everything we think of as manifesting the absence of God will, for the rest of time, be capable of manifesting his presence --- up to and including death itself.]]

He continues,

[[Jesus is rejected and his mission fails, but God participates in this failure, so that failure itself can become a vehicle of his presence, his being here for us. Jesus is weak, but his weakness is God's own, and so weakness itself can be something to glory in. Jesus' death exposes the weakness and insecurity of our situation, but God made them his own; at the end of the road, where abandonment is total and all the props are gone, he is there. At the moment when an abyss yawns beneath the shaken foundations of the world and self, God is there in the depths, and the abyss becomes a ground. Because God was in this broken man who died on the cross, although our hold on existence is fragile, and although we walk in the shadow of death all the days of our lives, and although we live under the spell of a nameless dread against which we can do nothing, the message of the cross is good news indeed: rejoice in your fragility and weakness; rejoice even in that nameless dread because God has been there and nothing can separate you from him. It has all been conquered, not by any power in the world or in yourself, but by God. When God takes death into himself it means not the end of God but the end of death.]] Dwyer, John C., Son of Man Son of God, a New Language for Faith, p 182-183.