Answering queries from a Protestant friend

Amici,

You write about religious questions, so here's my responses.

First query was what is going on in the Catholic Church? Bergoglio seems a heretic, according to you, but also this Taylor Marshall guy. So, what gives. 

My friend, you write about religious questions, so here's my responses.

Thanks for the Taylor Marshall video about The Beast Bergi at that Candlemass address back in February of this year, where the layman stood up and contradicted Bergoglio. (And got himself escorted out for his efforts.) In his presentation, Marshall early on made a common sense observation, to wit, either Bergoglio is right in 2022 and Pius XII was wrong in 1943, or Pius was right in 1943 and Bergoglio is wrong in 2022. They can't both be right.

Indeed.

In general, one has to wonder just what Bergoglio thinks like, or what he knows, or whether he cares a whit about the Trad Catholics he is trashing out? One can ask the same question about Joe Biden, too. Or any of our governing elites in many countries. Ever listen to Neil Oliver? He discusses just this here. (Neil Oliver, When You Accept That Modern Western Government Considers Citizens Their Enemy, Then All the Outcomes Make Sense.) 

AnP: And this is true in the Churches, too.

This bizarre hated of the followers of the Modernists founders has long roots in the ecclesiastical field. "Modernist" Reformers of the 1960s on, I think, are necessarily damned. Plain and simple. They put their theories before actual people. That's evil. They did not care that the living Hell they were about to unleash would drive most Catholics from the Church. (The Church lost well over half its population of 1960.) Did they think the people would just "suffer through" and "grin and bear it"? Did they think people would just stay stuck in the pews when in the Church of their parents and grandparents sacrificed (back 2,000 years, ultimately), being decomposed into a lame imitation of modern mainstream Anglican or Luthernism.

These 1960s-1970s reformers lied and stole, breaking a number of basic commandments. Certainly, if nothing else, God had commanded them to feed His sheep, but they instead tried experiments on His flock. 

1. Yet by far the nastiest thing they did was use Traditional Catholics' deep-seated sense of duty to obey the Church as a tool they could use against such Trad Catholics. 
2. As they trashed all of Traditional Catholicism, incrementally, the one thing they kept was the traditional duty of obedience. "You have to obey us!" Yeah, right.
3. They essentially said, "You have to obey our orders to tear down the churches your grandparents sacrificed to build." In essence, "You have to obey our order to shoot yourselves." A great many did. But many did not.

This heightened the "cognitive dissonance" that has since remained far, far too strong in the Church.

Some cognitive dissonance examples:

• You're at Mass to begin with to worship God, but the priest faces you over (what's technically called) a Cranmer table. You all look at each other, like a customer and a clerk in a store.
  
• God is vertical, above us; He had to incarnate Himself to be among us, and in all its actions and prayers, the sacred liturgy promotes this – something obvious in the Traditional Latin Mass or the Eastern Liturgies. The veil between earth and heaven is pulled back and we're in the the Divine Presence.
• Yet in the "new" Mass (Novus Ordo), that is not clear at all. We do not face "East" toward God but inward, toward ourselves.
  
• Also, used to be the Incarnate God in the form of consecrated bread and wine was kept in the tabernacle on the altar, center, high, for all to see; but now He is shunted off to the side, or out in the hall. Massive cognitive dissonance. Textbook, really.
  
• The new Mass went to a three-year Biblical reading cycle so that Catholics would hear more of the Bible read at Mass, yet ironically, the new cycles leave out all the Hellfire and Damnation passages!
  
• Ironically too, the new form of the Novus Order in itself took out a HUGE portion of the daily Scripture readings that used to serve throughout the liturgy in every Mass! They took out the variable readings and much of the standing Sunday readings. (N.B. I'm always amazed at how much Holy Writ I can read in the various places it is used in every Sunday TLM Mass. So, therefore, how could they remotely claim to be promoting Bible verses when they intentionally vanished or watered down thousands of already in place Scripture verses?
• In general, nothing in the new Mass is vertical; all is horizontal. The simple message is "We're here to reaffirm ourselves and feel good about ourselves and to socialize by sharing a ceremonial meal together." They even modeled the new Offertory prayers (before the Consecration) on the old Jewish meal prayers!
  
• The sermons are certainly all as though written by some crappy psychology major in the "I'm ok, you're ok" school of psychology.
  
• On and on it goes, all pouring rivers of cognitive dissonance upon us as occurred in Noah's flood.
  

You write about Luther, Martin, doctor of theology

As for the Reformation of the 16th century, sometimes called "The Great Reformation", two things to note that most people raised Protestant don't know.

First, the Church continually cycles through "reformations" historically, about every four or five generations, sometimes more, sometimes less. Before Luther and Calvin in the 16th century, there were Sts Dominic and Francis in the 12th century. That was a very successful "reformation" that swept through the entire 13th century and only began to wane after 1300, where, in the century of the 100 Years War, the Black Death, and the Mongol invasions, and peasant revolts, you begin to see dismal, dour thinkers (William of Occam and Marsilius of Padua to name two) who would eventually lead intellectually to Luther.

• They were called Nominalists, and they believed a lot like Muslim philosophers did, such as the amazing 11th-century genius al-Ghazali (Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭūsiyy al-Ġazzālīy) that God was capricious, alien, utterly "Other". (When you think of the dire times they lived it, this isn't so odd a development!)
• They believed God was unknowable, cruel, and damning. Modern-day "Modernists", on the other hand, believe "God" is just as remote, but not because He is Allah, but rather because he is evolving like everything else, and that ultimately we basically make Him up; it is this that would be Bergoglio's true belief if anyone could pry it out of him.)

But before the 11-12th century Reformation, there was a major reformation in the 10th century. The popes of that era (9th-early 10th centuries), made the Renaissance popes ALL look like saints! For example:

1. Popes John X and John XII (both 10th century) had many women and lived dissolute lifestyles, with John XII being known as a rapist, and even infamous for incest!
   
2. They called him "a Christian Caligula". And like that depraved emperor, John XII was knifed to death by an outraged husband in the midst of carnal relations with the husband's wife.
   
3. Or compare John XII with Pope Stephen VI, who, in 897, dug up his predecessor and put the corpse on trial! (Not surprisingly, the corpse lost his case!) This ended up being called the Cadaver Synod! Pope Stephen VI was later strangled to death.
   
4. As Wikipedia puts it, "Between 872 and 965, two dozen popes were appointed, and between 896 and 904 there was a new pope every year. Often, these brief papal reigns were the result of the political machinations of local Roman factions, about which few sources survive."
5. While all that was going on in Rome, in the provinces a great monastic reform was gathering steam – the Clunaic Reform – and it eventually swept into Rome.
   

So the reformation of the 10th century involved cleaning all this insanity up and establishing the College of Cardinals, who would henceforward elect a pope, rather than having him be a product of Italian Mafia-like machinations.

The Great Reformation

Now for the second point I mentioned earlier. You never hear of this stuff because The Great Reformation started in the 16th century, and the reformers of that one were not saints – Luther claimed a Christian "saint" was someone who ate hearty, pleasured the ladies with gusto, and who despite all that felt "saved"! I.e. Saved by faith alone. He boasted he could sin 100 – or was it 1000? – and doing what, exactly) times a day and it would not affect his salvation.

So those reformers harped on the Renaissance popes to justify their actions and ignored the long history of the Church. But those Renaissance popes were not depraved like the 10th century guys. None of them departed from orthodox Christian (Catholic) teachings. Personally lax, they still maintained the Deposit of Faith. They may have fought wars (like Julius II, "the warrior pope") or had long-standing mistresses and fathered children (Alexander VI had about seven kids by two different long-time mistresses, all of whom he openly acknowledged), but they didn't promote heretical teachings, as does Bergoglio today.

• Alexander VI, the second Borgia pope (family from Spain, originally) is probably the most notorious Renaissance pope. Like the other popes of that time, he was very learned and a patron of art and promoted Latin and learning in general. The historically significant writer Machiavelli dedicated his famous political essay "The Prince" to Alexander's son Cesare Borgia, himself a classic Renaissance ruler. The pope's daughter Lucrezia was famous for her blonde beauty and brilliant politics (being a governor of a city for some time) and for her many husbands, important princes. However, some modern scholars have argued that given Alexander's location at the time these were children born, they almost certainly weren't his actual kids. Before you judge him, also consider this. A visitor to Rome asked him if all the rumors about his affairs and political intrigues didn't upset him. And do you know what he said? He said, "Rome is a free city, and the citizens of Rome are free to speak their minds and say what they want." Pretty amazing, isn't it?
  

But Luther did not go the route St. Francis of Assisi went, or Saint Dominic Guzman, Luther had little (or no) patience and instead of getting local problems fixed, he kept pushing ever more extreme positions till he destroyed the Church and replaced it with his Lutheran Church creation, a state church controlled not by churchman (whether good ones or bad) but by secular princes. Mimicking him, Henry VIII did the same in England. John Calvin took over the Swiss town of Geneva and ran it like a Mideastern mullah! NO separation between Church and State.

Keep in mind, too, that the Reformers kept complaining of the Church selling indulgences (something that indeed, needed reformation) and taxing people, but the Medieval Church was the SOLE provider of welfare for the people, maintaining hospitals, old-folk homes (hospices), schools galore, including universities (something the Church created). The Church also provided work to thousands of craftsmen and masons, continually building or rebuilding ecclesiastical buildings. Millions of serfs lived safely on Church lands (treated better than secular rulers treated their own peasants), while non-serfs rented their farms from the Church.

Shakespeare has King Henry V say in Henry V, Act 4, scene 1,

Not to-day, O Lord,

O, not to-day, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown!

I Richard's body have interred anew;

And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears

Than from it issued forced drops of blood:

Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,

Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up

Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built

Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests

Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;

Though all that I can do is nothing worth,

Since that my penitence comes after all,

Imploring pardon.

It was thus the Medieval World was built, the great cathedrals, the endless churchs, the beautiful art, schools endowed, hospitals established, the poor maintained, all indulgences pleading for the penitent giver. 

Luther's doctrine of grace destoryed it all. 

After the Reformation, the secular state took over all this and usually sold it off to rich laymen, who either ejected the free-born tenants or cracked down the serfs who couldn't leave. "Clearances" began, as in England, where the poor farmers and tradesmen where thrown off their estates.  Occasionally, the new state bureaucracies tried to provide schooling and so on, but it was nothing like it had been. Charles I of England tried to push hard for government charity and got beheaded for his troubles. And no new churches were built for a 100 years or more, either, though about half or so of Europe's artistic heritage (most of it ecclesiastical) was destroyed by Protestant mobs acting in a true Islamic spirit.

We saw the same occur after Vatican II, BTW, only with Catholic bureaucrats doing the destroying. It is called "iconoclasm": the intentional destruction of Church-related art. As part of all iconoclasm, churches are simply robbed, not just of their art, but their gold and silver, their lands, their incomes (reduced to state-provided handouts), and so on. Beautiful windows were removed. The Trappists ruling the Kentucky monastery Thomas Merton attended took out the church's windows and stored them away. 

The Reformation-era Catholic churches were truly smashed. What makes me especially angry is the destruction of the old monastic libraries. God only knows what was lost. A good example is the Beowulf Old English epic. It was found in only one manuscript written about the year 1000 (the poem itself could be 200 years older). It came to the attention of the literary world about 1650, when it was found in a private library. No one has ANY idea of where it came from. Apparently the family that had it had no clue. It's a complete mystery. But you can imagine that some Medieval Monastic library had it, and that it was looted. How many more Beowulf's were lost? We know the libraries were scattered when the secular owners who bought them from Henry VIII took them over. They didn't want old books; they wanted the land and the buildings. (Or just the lands; roofs were taken off the churches and they were left to deteriorate.) 

Of course, the big issue in the 16th century Reformation was theology; specifically, just how one is "saved"? How did that work? By "grace" or by "faith" and faith in conjunction (or not at all) with "works".

Luther came up with a novel way of understanding how Faith works, or even what it is. He had a new idea of what grace was, and of course he damned all "works" root and branch. In short, Martin Luther simply rewrote the source code of the Christian Faith. When in public debate, Johann Eck got him to say he, Luther, would trust his own judgement of Scripture over a Church Council, every jaw in the room had to drop open. One guy, a youngish academic with no parochial experience, and with a narrow Nominalist university education in a corner of Germany, claimed to know more than a parliament of Churchman, many of whom were far older and more learned, than he? Many of whom would be from wide-spread countries, too.

But that is Martin Luther in a nutshell. ("Tell them Doctor Martin Luther would have it so!" he would write later.) And when at the imperial Diet in Worms in 1521, the emperor, Kaiser Karl, Charles V himself, the most powerful ruler in all Europe, asked Luther in astonishment, "What of all our ancestors who believed in the old Faith, as it was for centuries?" Luther literally answered, "Who cares!" (Well, literally, he said, "What is that to us?" but the drift was plain as a smack in the face.)

Such was Luther.

Since he was one who started the Reformation (Jan Huss and John Wycliffe tried to do so a generation or so earlier, but the secular princes did not think to use them against the Church, as they would do with Luther), historians have painted him the best they could. But he really was neither wise nor faithful. At one point, he approved of a German prince's committing bigamy! (That got out – of course it did – and has tarnished Luther's reputation ever since.)

The Core Christian Teaching

The core Christian idea is that God incarnated Himself into the human race so that those humans who accepted Him could in turn be incarnated into God. God takes over a person via Grace, a transforming spiritual substance, changing his fundamental nature, and creating a New Creation in Christ.

This teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament. Examples:
•    John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation) And of course the whole "You must be born again" colloquy in John 3.

•    2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12.

In Romans 8, St. Paul talks about receiving the spirit of sonship so that you can call God Himself "Abba", a Hebrew word meaning 'father' but specifically 'my particular father'. Obviously, to be able to do that, one is a new creation indeed.

Or obviously in the Gospel of John, chapter 1:

12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Once you know what to look for, this truly becoming a new creation in Christ, "children of God not of natural descent...but born of God" is everywhere in the New Testament.

For two thousand years, the Church has taught the "infusion" of grace via baptism and the sacraments. Luther and Calvin, etc., taught that God merely "imputed" or "assigned" the grace of His Son to those who professed Faith in Christ. But the Historical Church, East and West, and Further East and Deep South (Egypt and Ethiopia) taught St. Paul's and St. John's New Creation in Christ as the way of salvation. The Greeks have always called it Theosis.

But Martin Luther never felt a "new creation in Christ". He always felt like old sinful Martin Luther. Nothing he did helped, no prayer, no confession, no penance. When he said Mass, he admitted he felt terrified. He hated God for not making him feel a new creation. He hated himself for being so messed up. His confessor, Johann von Staupitz said to him, "Martin, God is not angry with you, you are angry with God." All-in-all, Martin Luther is not really the kind of guy one wants to base Faith in Christ on.

Romans 3:28: "The verse that launched the Reformation"

Finally, one more bit of detail Biblical reading and we're done. Reading Roman 3, specifically verse 28: "For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law," Luther took this "works of the law" set phrase to mean doing any good thing, whatsoever. None of it helps or is necessary for salvation. Therefore, one did not have to do good things to be saved. Indeed, one could "sin a 1000 times a day" and it not affect one's salvation. (Isn't that an example of cognitive dissonance in itself, though?)

The phrase "works of the law" had been debated before, however, by no one less than St. Augustine back in the Fifth Century, who argued it meant all moral law (10 Commandments or whatever). St. Jerome, his contemporary but who had wider experience and who had lived and studied with Jews at one point in his long career, said no, "works of the law" meant Jewish temple ceremony, eating kosher, being circumcised, and so on. As the phrase only appeared in St. Paul, there was no way to get a handle on it until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of which, dealing with ceremonial law, uses the exact phrase! This is 4QMMT, (Miqsat Ma'asei ha-Torah: Some of the Works of the Law). It was a letter written by the Essenes (a very strict Jewish sect) to the Pharisees, in order to correct the Pharisees in some of their teaching. In the title and in the letter, "works of the law" definitely means ceremonial law. So, St. Jerome was right and Augustine wrong! And of course, therefore Martin Luther was wrong. Flat out.

We also know he was wrong because of how he read New Testament authors who quoted from Old Testament writings. Luther interpreted the Romans 3:28 in light of his reading of the earlier part of Romans 3, where a succession of verses lament, "(10) There is no one righteous, not even one; (11) there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. (12) All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (This is only a partial quote.)

Luther took these to mean no ONE PERSON in the all world was worthy, all fallen and failed. No one had sufficient grace from God! But each of these verses are from the Psalms (with one from Isaiah) and when a New Testament writer quotes an Old Testament verse, one is expected to recall the entire psalm or chapter it is in. A startling example is Our Lord on the Cross, reciting the first line from Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The idea is He recited the entire psalm, or a goodly portion of it (it is long). St. John expects his readers to know this detail. Sts Matthew and Mark do not have to explain it. That's how they wrote in those days. Everything is important. (And anyway, no chapter numbers or verse numbers existed until much later.)

And thus it is that the first lines above from St. Paul's chapter 3 lament originated from Psalm 14, the one that starts, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." But if you read the whole psalm (it isn't long), you get to this startling verse:

"(4) Do all these evildoers know nothing? They devour my people as though eating bread; they never call on the Lord. (5) But there they are, overwhelmed with dread, for God is present in the company of the righteous."

Whoa! If everyone is fallen and no good, who are these "company of the righteous"? Who are "my people"? Well, they're the good guys who keep the Faith! Not everyone everywhere is no good, then. That was in no way what old St. Paul meant. God has His righteous! (Actually, note that He always does. Remember First Kings, 19:18? "I have kept 7,000 in Israel who have not bent the knee to Ba'al".) And if you take the time and trouble to look up each psalm verse St. Paul quotes, and read the psalms they come from (and Isaiah), you'll find the SAME thing. Luther read chapter 3 COMPLETELY wrong and Protestantism was founded on a profound misunderstanding.

Now, I could go on, and will, upon request, but this is pretty long. For right now, then, Luther (and Calvin, who had in many ways a VERY different take on the Faith than Luther did, but isn't nearly as colorful or dramatic a character) were quite wrong in their Biblical exegesis.

Their sola scriptura doctrine soon split the Church into major pieces, and after the American Constitution of 1787, thousands of denominations have appeared and metastasized across the world. (The U.S. Constitution was the first to regulate religion to limbo, a personal eccentricity. The Iroquois told Ben Franklin – I read somewhere long ago – that the Founders were crazy to do this, but of course who listened to Indians?)

Hopes this helps set things in perspective.

An Préachán

A Christmastide Contemplation on the Incarnation

A Christmas meditation on the Incarnation

Amici,

A Blessed and one hopes Merry Christmas 2019 to everyone.

In lieu of an online card, I offer a Christmas-tide reflection on the Incarnation, if wanted. FWIW. I know people don't seem too keen or either philosophy or theology today, certainly you're unlikely to hear any such from a pulpit. (And remember, "back in the day" Presbyterians were supposed to preach at least 45 minutes, all theology! Those were the days!) But human beings are thinkers  – or should be. Aristotle's "rational animals." So here's a little of both philosophy and theology, just because it is Christmas.

Premise: The Incarnation is the fulcrum, the centerpiece, the raison d'être of Christianity.

"...For through the Mystery of the Word made flesh, new radiance from Thy glory hath so shone on the eye of the soul that the recognition of our God made visible draweth us to love what is invisible." From the preface of the Nativity, Proper Prefaces

That's a wonderful, holy insight into the profound power of the Incarnation, but alas, not much understood today. For some would say it is the Crucifixion and Resurrection that is the heart of the Faith, what the Faith is about. Perhaps most would say so. It is curious that while you hear in popular Christianity that "Jesus died for you," you don't hear too much on the Incarnation, not as a subject in itself and what it entails, and can mean, to "the eye of the soul".

One hears a lot about "Jesus, meek and mild," Who died for our sins. But the Incarnation? St. Matthew in 1:22-23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 about a virgin conceiving a son: Matt 22: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means “God with us”. God with us. Great name. But what does it mean?

(You haven't lived till you've read modern Jewish commentary on how "virgin" there in 7:14 isn't the word for "virgin" but just a "young woman" and the child so born was just another king of Judah, and so on; it is glaring aspect of the massive change in Judaism post the three great 1st/2nd century Jewish Revolts, the first of which destroyed Jerusalem and killed about a million Jews, and the third killed almost another million and saw the expulsion of the Jews from the ancient Land of Israel altogether. After all that Messianic-fever inspired slaughter, the survivors – those who hadn't converted to Christianity along the way – decided Judaism had had enough of Messiahism, and they downplayed passages formerly seen as heralding the Messiah, such as Isaiah 7:14, which Jewish scholars in Alexandria themselves had translated as "parthenos" in the century or so before the advent of Christ.)

But at Christmas one does sometimes hear it commented upon ironically that Easter, which is a superior feast to Christmas, gets less attention than Christmas. Our Lord died on Good Friday and Rose Again on Easter Sunday, after all. Right? Usually, it is chalked up to the commercialization of Christmas as opposed to Easter, which is mostly about bunnies and brightly colored bunny eggs (who knew bunnies laid eggs?).

However, Christmas – as one of the Feasts of the Incarnation – is on par with Easter, for without the Incarnation, we wouldn't have the Resurrection. They are two sides of Christianity's single Incarnational coin. To split that coin is to engage in counterfeit.

Christmas is one of the major Incarnational Feasts, the others being: The Solemnity (these are all Solemnities and require the Solemn High Mass) of the Annunciation, traditionally "Lady Day" in old Catholic England, is celebrated on March 25. It's also known as the Feast of the Incarnation (or Festum Incarnationis). Then there's the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated on December 8 (her birth is celebrated on September 8.) The Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity became a human being through his Mother's freely willed participation in his Incarnation; hence, her importance to His Incarnation. It would not have happened at all had Mary declined God's offer.

One can say Easter is an Incarnational feast as well, for the Incarnated God is bodily offered up as food for eternal life, mirroring the Pascal Lamb's far more humble, and temporary, sacrifice. (Protestantism was one of those attempts to simplify the Faith, and it deleted the Eucharistic feast as the Real Presence of God in the Flesh, thus leaving its adherents a sort of spiritual junk food, à la carte.)

Christianity is all about the Incarnation, actually, if you consider it a moment. The point of it is to transform us, actually. Hence its necessity. But even as a basic notion, the Incarnation is a radical one, and many reject it. That God became a human being in order to save those of the human race whom He called, and who would choose to turn to Him – that's a Mysterium Fidei, but also a theological puzzle. Why would such an Act be a necessity?

First, consider, this God of ours is not a Supreme Being God (Zeus, Indra, The Dagda) but the Absolute Being God, Being as such, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, who told Moses that His name is "I AM" and thus identifies as the Absolute Being God, the God the great philosophers of later times would define (Aristotle, Aquinas, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Maimonides, and various others over the centuries, down to today, such as Edward Feser).

Although the great philosophers of the past were able to deduce the existence of Absolute Being, and many of His attributes, only Revelation could reveal that that God (the only God worth the title "God"), became a human being. Obviously, this teaching separates Christianity from both Judaism and Islam, which cannot accept of the Most Holy Trinity. The Most Holy Trinity is a revelation which, if nothing else, introduces the highest love: charity, charitas / agapé, into the very Essence and Being of the Creator. (Absolute Being as absolutely singular, such as described by the Muslim teaching "Tawhid" about Allah, could not have such an interior dynamic within Itself. And Allah doesn't. He's a paroxysm of will, and never described as a lover, but a "willer".)

Yet why the necessity of the Incarnation? There's a question worth pondering, for how you answer it will define how you understand Christianity and how thus you comprehend and interact with God. Why the necessity of becoming a human being and suffering and dying? God is Absolute; if God says something, that something exists. Period. He doesn't need therefore to do anything but to choose of His own will, to accept the prayers of those who turn to Him, surely (sort of like Allah does, according to Muslim teaching, when he's in the mood to be merciful). God sustains all being in being, in existence. If He stops doing that, it all stops – or whatever particular part of it He wants stopped. (Curiously, Islam teaches Allah destroys everything and recreates it all every split second, almost always the way it was before – yet Allah keeps everything going not out of love – which is not exactly an attribute of Allah's to begin with, but rather habit; the Arabic theological term for Allah's habit of keeping things as they are is 'ada).

In contrast, Christianity's God made a Covenant with all Creation, that it was good and real, and blessed in itself (see Genesis 2, the first few verses). Christianity's god is a God of love, as in self-sacrificing love, but also boundless, giving love. Even contractual love, such as in a marriage, for God has made Seven Covenants from the beginning, the last being the Holy Eucharist by which we are transformed in Christ.

Yet one has to respond to that love by transforming one's life, and doing so through participation in God, via entering into the ancient Covenants through Baptism and then the Holy Eucharist. It is in that Sacramental life that we "enter in" to Salvation, our natures changed, ourselves uplifted. In short, orthodox, full-Catholic Christianity is a complex religion. That's a problem for us orthodox Christians, perhaps the biggest. It takes a lot of study, reflection, and prayerful contemplation to understand even initial aspects of the Faith, and because of all that there's been an endless attempt to simplify it, to "boil it down to the basics". Protestantism, on a basic level, was one such attempt; Vatican II another. But one can't "boil it down". Too much is always and ever left out, and the Baby Jesus gets tossed out with the manger hay. Why should it be simple? The Faith is itself a Mysterium Fidei that we'll spend Eternity in contemplation of, after all – we'll never exhaust its beauty; or, if we're in Hell, we'll spend Eternity in repudiation of it.

But the urge to simplify is ever-present. The current pope himself is notorious for how he "doesn't get it", as he clearly gives basically a Lutheran understanding of salvation, with heavy doses of German-originated moral-relativistic "Modernism" as a side dish, and a very sulfuric horderves of Socialism, a political theory which purports to be motivated by Christian charity but in reality is based on and conjures endless envy, the nastiest of the Seven Deadly Sins. However, any reading of the Gospels, especially but not necessarily in conjunction with the rest of the New Testament, clearly shows Our Lord Christ requires superhuman efforts at true, profound moral perfection. "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48 (This idea appears in Deuteronomy 18:13 and Leviticus 19:2, or in St. Paul 2 Corinthians 7:1, and a host of other verses – Philippians 3:15 has an interesting way of putting it.)

Protestants as a whole don't get it, either. They are descendants – of a sort – of St. Augustine, the "Doctor of Grace" and they focus on Christ dying for our sins, as Augustine did. (Augustine is why Western Orthodoxy – Catholicism – has the Crucifix as the most ubiquitous symbol of our Lord, unlike the Christos Pantokrator in the Eastern iconography.) But God is greater than any sin, and could overturn the Fall of Adam and Eve in a second – since it happened in time, and Adam and Eve didn't have a full understanding of what they were getting themselves into. When the Angels fell, on the other hand, being outside of time as we understand it – existing in Eternity, in short – their Fall was made in full knowledge of what they were doing, and it was permanent (being in Eternity, how could it be anything else?).

Yet Historical Christianity teaches that God became Man, while fully remaining God, 100 percent of both, and not inheriting the Fallen Nature of human beings (thus his Mother had to be conceived immaculately, obviously, since He received His human nature fully and solely from His Mother.) And He wants us to be like Him, as the verses quoted above indicate. We obviously can't do that, unless we're fundamentally changed. Now we're on the trail of why the Incarnation was a necessity.

St. Augustine, a dour, reformed hedonist, stressed that Fallen Nature because he had wallowed in it for much of his life, a lot like Martin Luther wallowed in it 1100 years later; yet Saint A felt the full impact of the infusion of grace from God that transformed the moral pagan lout Augustine's nature. So, Saint Augustine stressed ever this so-relevant-to-him personal insight, how it was an unmerited grace that saved him. (Grace ultimately derives from the Greek χᾰ́ρῐς, (kháris), meaning "gift." Also prevalent was the idea of Atonement: that Our Lord Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, suffered the Passion and Crucifixion as a vicarious punishment for our sins and a redemption from them.

Yet Augustine was a Catholic, believing in the Real Presence and the infusion of grace necessary to change our nature, and the necessity of a changed nature, which along with the rest of the Sacraments all involving an ordained priesthood and hierarchy – himself being a bishop; Protestantism differs from Augustine in many ways, but an important one is that it sees no transformation of the sinner, no infused grace, but rather an imputed grace that, in Luther's famous image, is like snow covering a manure pile. For the Catholics and Orthodox, that idea never passed the smell test.

But prior to and encompassing the whole Passion and Crucifixion and Resurrection is the Incarnation, the latter the necessary foundation of the former – but again, why? Why were all these needed? Incarnation, Passion, Crucifixion, Resurrection?

At Christmas we should perhaps ponder the core of the Christian Faith isn't quite only that "God died for your sins" but rather that we are transformed in Christ via His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection. The Easterners (whether in Communion with Rome or not) have always stressed this transformation, and they call it Theosis. It is why the main iconography of Our Lord in the East is Christos Pantokrator, Christ the Ruler of All. In short, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity had to become a human being in order to take on human nature in order to change it, to uplift it, to make us New Creations in Christ.

Simply: God Incarnated into the human race in order to Incarnate the human race into God. The Incarnation was necessary not only for God "to empty himself" (Philippians 2:7) but for God to give us "participation in Himself" (2 Peter 1:4). This is the significance of Christmas; it is the reason for the Incarnation. It is what Salvation is.

This Christmas, therefore, I myself want to contemplate the following, and pass it on to you, for what it is worth:

•    The Incarnation: Absolutely necessary and central to salvation, wherein God becomes a human person, Jesus / Yeshu'a (Yehoshu'a: "Yahweh is salvation").
•    God’s Incarnation didn’t lower God so much as elevate human nature, in Christ, enabling…

•    "Theosis" (Divinization) which by grace χᾰ́ρῐς / kháris); a word originally meaning just "gift") – not by nature – is our incorporation into Christ, raising us up to participate in His Divinity (as St. Peter teaches in 2 Peter 1.4). Usually described in the Western Church as an Infusion of Grace, it means our natures are changed. (Compare to Protestantism's Imputation of Grace: God assigns grace to us but doesn’t actually divinize or change our nature; i.e. Luther's manure pile.)

•    St. Athanasius the Great (296-373): "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God" (i.e., participate in the inner life of the Trinity). (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460]

•    St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274): "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]
•    This teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament, and is heavy in St. John:

•    John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation.) Reread the first three chapters of St. John's Gospel, and then chapter 6, for a powerful meditation on what the Incarnation means.

•    This teaching is also central to St. Paul: 2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also St. Paul in Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12. (Protestants, the Biblical literalists, somehow see all these passages, especially the extended Eucharistic discussion in John 6, as being merely metaphorical; literary devices, basically.)

•    And note how Theosis makes sense of Our Lord's teachings. In general, Our Lord Jesus seems to demand the impossible of “ordinary” humans. In Matthew 5, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives the Beatitudes, then says we are “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, discusses how He has come not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them – and the point of both Law and Prophets was to perfect us. Our Lord discusses elevated behavior regarding anger, adultery, divorce, making oaths and not retaliating (“turn the other cheek”) and love our enemies. He ends with "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) That is something manifestly impossible for “normal” human beings to do.

There it is, a mere suggestion of the complexity and profundity of Historical Christianity, of the East and West. John Paul II used to like to say he wanted the Church to "breathe with both lungs", which of course the 14 separate,  Autocephalous Orthodox Churches not in Communion with Rome just laughed off. But the first thousand years of Eastern theology was just as Catholic as Saint Augustine's theology was, and it is worth dwelling a bit on it.

A Blessed Christmas and Excellent New Year to all.

An Préachán

Christmas and Incarnation: What Does It Mean? Christmas readings and thoughts

Christmas is about the Incarnation, the central mystery and most profound revelation of Christianity. God becomes a human person, Jesus / Joshua: Yeshu'a (Yehoshu'a: "Yahweh is salvation").

Stunning. We who grew up with it are too used to it, perhaps, and "pop" religion brings Jesus down to a magical free-escape ticket from Hell, an nonjudgmental hippie or guru figure offering the certainty of "rapture" or even a Pentecostal nirvana-state in which to lose one's self in here and now. But Christianity is not a "get out of jail card" for a Narcissistic self, and the Incarnation is the most stunning revelation – in any religion anywhere. If you don't "get" the Incarnation, you won't truly grasp the significance of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, both of which are dependent on the Incarnation.

The Incarnation is the most radical idea revealed to the world since Moses asked God His Name. The Incarnation is a teaching that stood Judaism on its head and split it in pieces from the moment Jewish leaders understood what Jesus of Nazareth was claiming, while Islam has ceaselessly – ceaselessly – fought against it with fire and sword and slavery and slaughter.

Christianity is unique to the three Monotheistic religions because it insists on the Incarnation, on God becoming Man. Judaism rejects this teaching with horror, as does Islam, to such an extent that Islam can be said to exist in order to deny the Incarnation. Islam exists on many levels, of course: politically as a Herrenvolk religion, designed to enable a few to rule masses of subjected peoples; it is an economy, too – and originally a slave economy: it emptied cites through slavery and closed trade in the Mediterranean except for slavery, in the process destroying the Late Ancient/Early Medieval European world, funding the Viking Age and reducing the Cradle of Civilization to a vast dustbowl; and finally Islam exists as a political and juridical system. But as a religion per se, from its oldest existent writings on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem down to its latest murder, Islam's main point is to deny the Incarnation.

Historical Christianity, traditional Catholicism and the Orthodoxies, teach that the Incarnation was necessary to transform our human nature by the Infusion of Grace the Incarnation made possible, for in taking on human Nature, God elevated it. God changed our natures. Transformed us – "pro multis", those of us participating in this Salvation through Baptism and the other Sacraments. In the process, the world itself and all that's in it is also transformed. The Lord God, through His Incarnation, is still creating, He is Re-creating. As St. Anselm (see further below) put it, Creation's "lost beauty [is] endowed with inexpressible new grace." Christians are re-created. This is Salvation. Faith isn't a "leap in the dark" of fevered belief, especially not belief against evidence, but one's conscious intellectual acceptance of the truths that the Universal Church, East and West, has taught from the beginning.

Christmas should not therefore be merely the celebration of "God's birthday", the birth of Yeshu'a in Bethlehem. It's nothing less than the source-point of Yahweh Is Salvation, the Re-Creation of Creation. As the 1962 Missal translates part of the Offertory from the Latin: "O God, who in creating human nature, didst wonderfully dignify it, and hast still more wonderfully restored it, grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, we may become partakers of His divine nature, who deigned to become partaker of our human nature."

And the Incarnation must necessarily be about Mary, too, whose fiat made the Incarnation possible. Mother and Child are inseparable. Then, and now, at Christmas. And the Cross.

The God Whom earth, and sea, and sky
Adore, and laud, and magnify,
Whose might they own, whose praise they tell,
In Mary’s body deigned to dwell.

O Mother blest! The chosen shrine
Wherein the Architect divine,
Whose hand contains the earth and sky,
Vouchsafed in hidden guise to lie.

Blest in the message Gabriel brought;
Blest in the work the Spirit wrought;
Most blest, to bring to human birth

The long desired of all the earth.

O Lord, the Virgin-born, to Thee
Eternal praise and glory be,
Whom with the Father we adore

And Holy Ghost for ever more.

Text: Venantius Fortunatus 530-609 (As found in my Little Office of the Blessing Virgin Mary; see also: https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/god_whom_earth_and_sea_and_s.htm for sheet music, etc.)

A few of the Incarnation's meanings as found in the New Testament: The Elevation of the human race, Theosis as the Greeks call it, is what Saint Paul calls being made a new creation in Christ. More than a metaphor, it is absolutely necessary and central to salvation.
•    God’s Incarnation didn’t lower God but rather elevates human nature, enabling…
•    "Theosis" (Divinization) which by grace – not by nature – is our incorporation into Christ, raising us up to participate in His Divinity (as St. Peter teaches in 2 Peter 1.4). Usually described in the Western Church as an Infusion of Grace, our natures are changed, whereas Protestantism teaches Imputation of Grace: i.e., God assigns or imputes grace to us but doesn’t actually divinize or change our nature. (Luther explained the Protestant teaching via his famous "manure pile covered in snow" metaphor. C.S. Lewis carefully disagrees with this central Protestant idea in the 10th of his Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer.)

This Theosis teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament. Examples:

•    John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation)
•    2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12.

•    St. John refers to it explicitly. Gospel of John 3:3-8, the famous "born again" passages, read from the Historical Church's understanding instead of the Protestant one. One is born anew in Baptism, via the water and the Spirit, a new creation, born of the Spirit.

•    Two Old Testament examples: Isaiah 65:17; Ezekiel 36:25-26

•    Much is asked of this New Man, this New Creation. In general, note how Our Lord seems to demand the impossible of “ordinary” humans. In Matthew 5, during the Sermon on the Mount, Our Lord gives the Beatitudes, then says we are “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, discusses how He has come not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. Christ discusses elevated behavior regarding anger, adultery, divorce, making oaths and not retaliating (“turn the other cheek”) and love our enemies. He ends with "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (5:48) That is something manifestly impossible for “normal” human beings to do.

•   We are not "normal"; as St Paul puts it "And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God." (1 Cor 6:11; note the order: baptism first, then the work of sanctification/moral living, then justification.)

The New Testament shows what the first generation of Believers preached of this New Creation, while the Medievals repeatedly give a strong sense of the stunning quality of the Incarnation.

•    St. Athanasius: "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460]

•    St. Thomas Aquinas: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]

From a sermon by Saint Anselm, bishop (1033/4–1109)

Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth an rivers, day and night – everything that is subject to the power or use of man—rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace. All creatures were dead, as it were, useless for human beings or for the praise of God, who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by the acts of human beings who served idols. Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices that it is controlled and given splendor by those who believe in God.

The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God Himself, its Creator, it sees him openly working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.

Through the fullness of the grace that was given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.

Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation received new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator Himself has been blessed by creation.

To Mary God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.

God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s son, nothing could be redeemed.

Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself.

And from Saint Lawrence Justinian, bishop (Lorenzo Giustiniani, 1 July 1381 – 8 January 1456)

While Mary contemplated all she had come to know through reading, listening and observing, she grew faith, increased in merits, and was more illuminated by wisdom and more consumed by the fire of charity. The heavenly mysteries were opened to her, and she was filled with joy; she became fruitful by the Spirit, was being directed toward God, and watched over protectively while on earth.

So remarkable are the divine graces that they elevate one from the lowest depths to the highest summit, and transform on to a great holiness. How entirely blessed was the mind of the Virgin which, through the indwelling and guidance of the Spirit, was always and in every way open to the power of the Word of God. She was not led by her own senses, nor by her own will; thus she accomplished outwardly through her body what wisdom from within gave to her faith.

It was fitting for divine Wisdom, which created itself a home in the Church, to use the intervention of the most blessed Mary in guarding the law, purifying the mind, giving an example of humility and providing a spiritual sacrifice.

Imitate her, O faithful soul. Enter into the deep recesses of your heart so that you may be purified spiritually and cleansed from your sins. God places more value on good will in all we do than on the works themselves.

Therefore, whether we give ourselves to God in the work of contemplation or whether we serve the needs of our neighbor by good works, we accomplish these things because the love of Christ urges us on. The acceptable offering of the spiritual purification is accomplished not in a man-made temple but in the recesses of the heart where the Lord Jesus freely enters.

"Imitate her, O faithful soul." Indeed.

Christmas. As with so much else that is from God, it is a bit more than perhaps we bargained for. Merry Christmas to all.

An Préachán