Category: Theological Ideas

02Oct

A “Supernatural” Encounter with Angels

Thanks to my sons, I have come late to a recent popular TV show that dealt with angels, demons, and the occult, namely “Supernatural”.  I have seen reviewers describe the show as underwear models fighting demons, and that makes me chuckle.  I am tempted to join the Christian responses of either avoiding it as clearly heretical, or dismissing it with a wave of the hand and saying something along the lines of, “it’s just fantasy; enjoy it and don’t think too hard.” However, thanks to fielding questions about demons and angels, and for the benefit of my sons, I will engage with some of the ideas raised by “Supernatural”.  

First, I will credit some things that the show gets “right” according to hints from the Bible.  In contrast to popular images of angels as beautiful women with harps, or frivolous babies with wings, the show’s portrayal of angels as powerful warriors of grim determination are, in my view, an improvement.  

Artistic Renditions of angels

Biblical angels are supernatural beings of power, spiritual in nature and therefore generally invisible to mortal eyes; but they are able to take human form.  As an example, men in white were seen at the tomb of Jesus to announce his resurrection, and also on the hilltop after his ascension.  The writer of Hebrews furthermore advises Christians:

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Examples of angels appearing as men from the Old Testament would include the two men who visited Lot prior to destroying Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.  

In the majority of the biblical passages that deal with angels, they are performing the role of emissary or spokesperson, sent from God.  The very word “angel” (ἄγγελος or angelos ) means “messenger”.  But they also are also engaged in executing God’s judgement upon unrighteous people, and in protecting God’s people.

As in the TV show, the Bible also speaks of angels as being engaged in warfare.  For example, in Revelation 17, we get this information from the apocalyptic vision of St. John:

“Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

The Bible speaks of archangels, who are leaders or “princes” among the angelic host. Two are mentioned by name, Gabriel and Michael.  The Book of Daniel mentions Michael twice.  In chapter 10 an unnamed angel visits Daniel, and tells him that he was delayed:

“The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia”

From Chapter 12 of Daniel:

“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.”

Gabriel says this of himself in Luke chapter 1:

“And the angel answered him, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news’.”

As in the show, angels can fall away and betray God.  In the New Testament , the books of Jude, and 2 Peter have nearly identical passages regarding fallen angels being imprisoned. From Jude: 

“And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.”

This brings me now to things the show gets terribly wrong.  In many aspects of its portrayal of angels and demons, “Supernatural” becomes either downright asinine, or simply blasphemous.  Time will not allow me to list all of the sins of this show.  I will gloss over the silliness involving ancient Greek gods and goddesses, Hindu deities and the like—from a Christian perspective these are not real.  I will also set aside the tendency of secular media to mangle the Christian apocalypse, a topic that both fascinates and is woefully misunderstood. The show furthermore has an almost medieval fascination with relics, Latin incantations, holy water, and amulets.

The series depicts angels possessing humans, much like demons do, and using them as “meat suits” or “vessels”.  This is not really Biblical.  

Furthermore, in “Supernatural” even the “good” angels are portrayed as being clueless at best (Castiel) and more often as total jerks (Gabriel and Raphael), and not always much better than the demons they fight.  

In fact, sometimes Sam and Dean must try to kill angels in order to protect themselves or their world from annihilation. An undercurrent of dualism becomes ever more prominent in later seasons.  Rather than good being superior to evil, and evil needing to be vanquished, the idea is that good and evil are merely opposite forces that are both needed for balance, like the Chinese Yin and Yang.  

In Christian theology this would be foolishness.  St Thomas Aquinas described evil as privation.  As one writer describes it, “Evil is not some thing in its own right – like some kind of dark seeping ooze that invades goodness and destroys it. No, evil is not a “thing” at all, but the falling-short, an emptiness or non-functioning, in something else.“ (Dr. Joseph Magee, “Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Problem of Evil”, online at  https://aquinasonline.com/problem-of-evil/)

I find it quite interesting that a show dealing with angels and demons in every episode is nonetheless simultaneously very nearly devoid of God.  The angels are usually portrayed as agnostics who lament that their “Father is absent” and wonder whether God even exists.  This is in stark contrast to the biblical depictions of angels as being in the presence of God. (When God does finally appear in “Supernatural” he is a limited being, bearing little relation to the God of Christianity–This could be a subject for a different essay).  

Even harder to find than God is any trace of the Son of God.  The series has an “Antichrist” but no “Christ”.  Jesus is mostly a nonentity in “Supernatural”.  In an episode in season 6, a diabolical being named “Eve” tells a Christian truck driver “you do know that Jesus was just a man” before brutally killing him.  Of course, in Christianity, Jesus is more than just a man.  He is at the center of it all. He is the God-man who after triumphing over death and evil, has been exalted to the heavenly throne, to “the right hand of God”, where he is surrounded by hosts of angels.  

Jesus tells his disciples in John 1:51, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”  

The final role for angels listed in the Bible is that of choir.  As in the old hymn, “Crown Him with Many Crowns”, the heavenly anthem of the angels ultimately will drown out all other music, including the cacophony of this world.  In Revelation 5, John has the vision of an innumerable throng of angels “numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand” encircling the throne and singing songs of praise to Jesus.  Let us now take up their anthem:

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

04Jun

Divine Communication

I recall seeing a photo of a priest giving communion to a boy, with the caption announcing “Father M. communicates members of the choir.”  This is one of those anachronisms, along with “bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness” and “we are very members incorporate in the mystical body” that endeared me to old style Anglicanism.  

I find it most interesting that an archaic use of the word “communicate” is to participate in communion.  The Latin root “communicare” means to “make common”, something that can be applied both to disseminating information and to disseminating the sacramental bread and wine.

In communion God does indeed speak to us. When we communicate, or eat the body and blood of Christ, God speaks into our hearts.  He tells us of His great love—of His “goodness and favor towards us” (another great phrase from the old prayer book).  

Communion is like an appointment.  Whenever people of faith gather in Jesus’ name, he comes to us and is in our midst.  Jail cell visits are an image that comes to mind.  We leave the prison yard of this world, go to the booth (a church or fellowship group), and God sits down at the other side of the barrier.  The bread and wine are like an intercom.  

Someday we will be sprung from prison into a life of true freedom—freedom from death, fear, sorrow, and all other mortal travails.  For now, though, we are happy to receive the message from the other side.  

God indeed communicates with us, and what a message it is!  As St. John gasps in his first epistle, “Behold what manner of love is this! That we’ve been allowed to be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1, my own slight paraphrase)

02Apr

Ugh, That Devil Baby!


An Image from “Passion of the Christ”

I have watched again as a kind of Holy Week devotion, the grisly Mel Gibson film “The Passion of the Christ”.  This movie takes viewers deep into the horrors experienced by Jesus in his final hours. (Too deep, say some critics—A reviewer writing in Slate called it a “two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie” and asks “What does this protracted exercise in sadomasochism have to do with Christian faith?” Roger Ebert on the other hand answered this question; “This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it”).

As if the biblical subject matter weren’t gut rending enough, a disturbing image is inserted into the flogging scene.  As the Roman whips rip chunks out of Jesus’ flesh, our messianic torture victim looks up and sees a vision of the oddly androgynous Satan holding a creepy looking baby that has the face of a leering middle aged man.

This image has confused many.  Of course, none of the Satan appearances are exactly biblical, though it may be supposed that the forces of darkness were fully arrayed in Jesus’ last moments.  Mr. Gibson gave an explanation that sounds as though this scene might have been thrown in merely for its weirdness effect.  “It’s evil distorting what’s good,” Gibson told Christianity Today. “What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a child? So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little bit. Instead of a normal mother and child you have an androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old ‘baby’ with hair on his back. It is weird, it is shocking, it’s almost too much — just like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes place.”

I rather liked the image, extra-biblical though it is, as a metaphor for lost humanity. Before God rescues us from sin, humans both collectively and individually are like that stunted disgusting thing that sucks at the teat of evil, drawing a form of power but ultimately being kept from growing into what we were intended to become.  

Spiritually speaking we begin life like rather like those miserable Orcs in Tolkien’s famous tale, of whom Saruman the wizard says: “Do you know how the Orcs first came into being? They were elves once, taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life.”

Somehow, by what Jesus went through on that otherwise horrible occasion, we have the chance to be reconciled to God and brought back into glory.  Another writer concurs: “And there in the background is Christ, on the path to the cross, to break those “maternal” bonds to Satan and replace them with bonds to our true father in heaven.” (in All about Jesus Christ)

We get a second chance to shed our debased orc nature, and become elves again. That is why this day is “Good Friday”. 

17Feb

Lent Begins: Jesus is the Answer, and Ash Wednesday Tells us the Question (Repost)

“Jesus is the answer!” So proclaims numerous road signs, Facebook posts, and bumper stickers. For those posting such things, it is an expression of their faith, of their confidence in Jesus. It a touchstone of peace and happiness for them and perhaps also for many who see it–but not for everyone. To a great many others, this statement provokes rather a sense of bewilderment, and begs a follow up question: “If Jesus is the answer, then what is the question?”

This thought brings to my lips a smile as I recall the analogous situation in Douglas Adams’ humorous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which a planet-sized super computer named “Deep Thought” was constructed and directed to come up with “the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything”. The program ran for millions of years, and finally returned an answer: “42”. Unfortunately neither the Deep Thought nor his designers knew what the ultimate question happened to be. The pan-dimensional beings seeking this answer were then forced to construct another planet-sized super computer to figure out the ultimate question.

Ash Wednesday is a Christian celebration that reminds us of the question for which Jesus is the answer. Or, more accurately, we are reminded of the problem for which Jesus is the solution; That is, the problem of death:

“Remember, o man, dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.”

Thus intones the priest in many a ceremony as ashes are imposed upon the foreheads of penitent Christians, these words echoing God’s curse in Genesis 3, pronounced upon humankind as punishment for sin.

Death is literally the bane of our existence. It destroys all that we hold dear. Try as we might to banish it from our thoughts, death catches us all. We recoil from it as we simultaneously yearn for permanence and significance. The idea of the extinction of our consciousness into an eternal nothing is difficult for us to fully grasp, for “God has set eternity in the hearts of men.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Death is universal. We all die, because of our sin. Death is universal because sin is universal.

Fortunately, Ash Wednesday is merely the prelude to Easter. Whereas Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality, in essence saying, “Ye are dead”, Easter tells us: “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

The good news of Christianity is that God has set eternity in our hearts for a reason. It isn’t a dreadful taunt, or a meaningless musing. Jesus, the Christ, has died our death, in order that we might live his life. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

As the old Easter canticle proclaims:
“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.”
(This comes from 1 Corinthians 15)

Jesus’ resurrection from death foretells our own liberation from it, and not only in the future, in an eternity after physical death. We may be liberated from its shadow, and its dread, and its power over us even in this life.

In the light of this good news, St Paul exults in his first letter to the Corinthians: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

As John Donne, the 16th century poet we recently profiled, elaborated so eloquently:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
(Sonnet X)

29Jan

Dangers of Prayer

“Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us.” (Shadowlands)

Some of you may recall Anthony Hopkins intoning that line in the movie version of “Shadowlands”, as he portrayed beloved author and oxford don C.S. Lewis.  This idea was articulated also directly by the danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. 

Does this mean that prayer is pointless? A one way street? Merely talking to the air or a cosmic brick wall?  No, for we are instructed to pray by Jesus himself.  “Ask and it shall be given unto you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.”

Prayer takes us into God’s presence.  In fact, people often get more than they bargain for.  Pop culture has sometimes cheapened prayer or tempted us to use it as a kind of gumball machine in the sky.  People think of it as a way of attaining health and wealth.  Church people sometimes admit to praying over the most mundane stuff, like finding a parking spot.  This has made me think that an essay is in order to remind us of the dangers of prayer.

1. You may have the misfortune to get what you ask for.  

Remember the haunting tale of the Monkey’s Paw? That is the danger of prayer as talisman. God doesn’t actually work like the evil talisman, but be aware that an answer to prayer may be something that comes with unseen consequences.  Maybe you get the promotion you wanted, only to have to face new struggles with colleagues and stress in the marriage.  Maybe the thing you wanted turned out to be a source of trial and testing.  God can use the very thing you want to humble you, and teach you the art of surrender to His will.  Which brings me to a major point.

2. Prayer means a surrender of the will.

When we pray, we bow before our maker, and if we are rational, His greatness and beauty overpowers us with a sense of our limitations.  We gasp “Thy will be done, Lord.”  Kierkegaard again writes of prayer as a struggle, “The righteous strives in prayer with God and conquers, in that God conquers.” (From Edifying Discourses, vol 4)

3. You may be forced to look at some hard truths about yourself.

Facing who God is, encountering His living presence, means discovering who we aren’t.  We are not deities.  We are more like little toddlers pretending to drive the big car. And we soon see that we need to give up the driver’s seat.  (Or as a nurse acquaintance used to say, “Jesus take the wheel!”)

God is love. We aren’t—we are often selfish, petty, jealous, and eager at other’s losses. 

God is holy.  We realize that we are sinful; we have addictions that are unhealthy, habits that are shameful, relationships that lead us astray.  

God cares about injustice, making us realize that we suffer a lack of passion about the woes of the less fortunate—we “care” but usually not enough to do anything much.

4. Your view of the world may change in ways that are uncomfortable.

I mentioned the injustices.  A will informed by God is more awake to the misery of sin in the lives of others.  You are more awake to injustice.  You care more about inequalities.  You care more about nature itself.  

5. You may be led to go somewhere you don’t want to go.

I recall a lecture by the theologian R. C. Sproul on discerning God’s will. He recounted how he was deciding between two job offers after seminary, one at his beloved bucolic institution in Pennsylvania, and another position in Boston. At the end he felt God’s clear guidance, and ended up moving and having a couple of unhappy years in Boston.  Years later he mused “I have no earthly idea why God led me there except maybe to get me out of my comfortable environment.”

Dr. Jerry Rankin, president of the Southern Baptist International Mission board reflects on some who heeded the call of Christ to leave behind their comforts and proclaim the Gospel in foreign lands.

“During my seventeen years as president of the International Mission Board, I never got used to the funerals. Death wasn’t necessarily the result of violence or because of a missionary’s Christian witness. Missionaries succumb to disease, are killed in a carjacking, or in an accident while traveling a dangerous highway. Some were in the wrong place when a terrorist bomb exploded in a shopping mall or got caught in a mob of anti-American demonstrators. But there were those who were targeted because they dared to proclaim the truth of the gospel in a hostile environment.” (You may read more here)

Prayer doesn’t necessarily lead to riches and health, as some have erroneously supposed.  Sometimes it is rather the very way of the cross, as it was for Jesus himself at Gethsemane.  After Jesus went through his passion and resurrection, he predicted to his disciple Peter, “when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” John the gospel writer further elaborates this, that “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.”

Jesus’ early followers were men whose prayers were effective They healed people who were sick, and transformed lives.  They “turned the world upside down” (in the complaint of their enemies).  Yet for all their spiritual success (or rather because of it), they nearly all died as martyrs to the cause of Christ.

5. Prayer changes your will, but your own will needed it.  You will be transformed in a positive way:

Richard J. Foster in his great book Prayer, wrote:

“The death of my own will”—strong language. But all of the great devotional masters have found it so. Soren Kierkegaard echoes Woolman’s experience when he notes, “God creates everything out of nothing—and everything which God is to use he first reduces to nothing.”4

Do you know what a great freedom this crucifixion of the Will is? It means freedom from what A. W. Tozer called “the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit.”5 It means freedom from the self—sins: self-sufficiency, self-pity, self-absorption, self-abuse, self-aggrandizement, self-castigation, self-deception, self-exaltation, self-depreciation, self-indulgence, self-hatred, and a host of others just like them. It means freedom from the everlasting burden of always having to get our own way. It means freedom to care for others, to genuinely put their needs first, to give joyfully and freely.

Little by little we are changed by this daily crucifixion of the Will. Changed, not like a tornado changes things, but like a grain of sand in an oyster changes things. New graces emerge: new ability to cast all our care upon God, new joy at the success of others, new hope in a God who is good.

Please remember, we are dealing with the crucifixion of the will, not the obliteration of the will. Crucifixion always has resurrection tied to it. God is not destroying the will but transforming it so that over a process of time we can freely will what God wills.”

Amen.

23Aug

Spurgeon Reflection on Romans 12:2

Spurgeon on Romans 12:2

The following reading is from a collection of devotions entitled Morning and Evening, Daily Readings, and have been made into a set of public domain audio files by Librivox. The texts are widely available for free; A useful searchable version is online at The Blue Letter Bible. The Revised Common Lectionary, used by many Christian groups, appoints Romans 12:1-8 as a reading for this week.

17Aug

“Today We Remember Our Manners”

The “Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary” or “The Falling Asleep of Mary” is kept on August 15, in some fashion, by many churches. The Roman Catholics celebrate the “Assumption of Mary”, the Orthodox communities honor the “Dormition of Mary”. Much could be said about the various ideas surrounding the departure of Mary from her earthly life. However, when Aug 15 rolls around, the primary thing that leaps to my mind is an old sermon that was delivered by the late Canon John Andrew, in his retirement from the position of rector of St. Thomas Church in New York City. The message instilled in me, a Protestant, a greater appreciation for Marian devotion.

“Today we remember our manners” He intoned. “We pay our dues. We thank God for the gift to the world of the Mother of Christ whose departure for God we celebrate.”

I recall Father Andrew urging Christians to avoid two errors. On the one hand, it is “stingy” to pay her no respect at all: “She gave Christ birth, and bore him into the world of you and me. She taught him to talk. She taught him to say his prayers. I wonder if it was she who first taught him the ‘Our Father’? There was no thought in the early Church that by honoring Mary, spite would be done to her Son and Savior. Christ would lose no iota of worship for having his Mother honored in this way and it a gross begrudging to think otherwise.”

On the other hand, “What can make you uncomfortable, and rightly so, are the sentimental flights of fancy and the sugarcoating of the enthusiasts who took her role out of all proportion to her human state of creatureliness, and tinseled her with quasi-divinity. She must shudder at the attempt.”

“All we celebrate today is Heaven’s welcome of her when her earthly life was over.”

Amen. 

(A transcript of this sermon from August 2013 is available at St Thomas’ sermon archive).

27Jul

Five Meditations by Charles Spurgeon on Romans 8

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was an influential preacher and orator of the 19th century, whose powerful sermons remain influential to this day among Christians of many denominations. The following readings are from a collection of devotions entitled Morning and Evening, Daily Readings, and have been made into a set of public domain audio files by Librivox. The texts are widely available for free; A useful searchable version is online at The Blue Letter Bible. The Revised Common Lectionary, used by many Christian groups, appoints Romans 8:26-39 as a reading for this week.

Spurgeon on Romans 8:28
Spurgeon on Romans 8:30
Spurgeon on Romans 8:33
Spurgeon on Romans 8:34
Spurgeon on Romans 8:37

05Jul

Spurgeon on Matthew 11:28

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was an influential preacher of the 19th century, whose powerful oratory remains influential to this day among Christians of many denominations. The following readings are from a collection of devotions entitled Morning and Evening, Daily Readings, and have been made into a set of public domain audio files by Librivox.

Spurgeon on Matthew 11:28