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The Reformed Branch of the Reformation: An Exercise in Tradition Interpretation

Alex Renner

–

There were many powerful insights to arise out of the theological crises and reflections of the Reformation period. Liturgically, theologically, and morally, the Reformation is rightly so called a reform-ation of the Western Christian churches of the Late Medieval period. During the period, the Roman Catholic Church was split asunder as groups within it began perceiving the Roman Church’s priestly abuses and theological missteps. A return to the biblical text, to the Fathers, and to a robust liturgy took place which would forever change the face of the Christian West. The two largest branches to arise out of the Reformation period – the Lutherans and the Reformed – nonetheless stood at odds with each other and fought amongst themselves.

The Reformed branch ended up taking the most ground, since the influence it garnered throughout England, Switzerland, the Dutch lands, and eventually North America (where the early evangelicals fled to from England) bequeathed to it major theological sway over the Western world. Many contemporary evangelical denominations of the Presbyterian and Baptist veins owe their heritage to the thoroughly-Reformed Puritans who split from the hierarchical Church of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Church of England itself was influenced heavily by the theological emphases espoused by the Continental Reformed churches. Their figureheads, however, John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli, did not themselves agree on much and even functioned within largely different liturgical situations. Calvin, in Geneva, largely stayed put, expending his efforts on pastoral, theological, and biblical matters, while Zwingli utilized the authority he gained to wage a bloody war on the surrounding Roman groups which bordered his territory.

As time went on and the Reformed Protestants after Calvin and Zwingli died were tasked with maintaining their Reformed churches, certain further interpretations of their young tradition took place. Roughly one hundred years after the death of Calvin, Reformed theologians of the English churches and the Dutch churches met separately to systematize the work and theology of their respective branches, leaning heavily on the theological writings of their mutual forefather John Calvin. The first document, the Canons of Dort, was written by the Dutch Reformed theologians in the years 1618-19. The second – and much more popular document in the Western world – was the Westminster Catechism, written by the English Reformed theologians in 1646-47. Each document centers its theology on matters like Divine Providence and Election, and makes the enmity between God and Man (and particularly the enmity they believe exists in God towards Man) a focal point of their “theological system.” For the purposes of this post, I will refer to this branch of the Reformed churches – i.e., the branch I am conjoining because of their mutually-agreed-upon foci – as the “Westminster” branch.

*To be transparent, I take my historical-interpretive lead here from theologians like Barth and Torrance, and contemporary theologians like Athanasian Reformed (growrag.wordpress.com).*

I have found that there is another way to be Reformed, however. See, other, better tradition-interpretations took place within just this last century by theologians who were much more in tune with the patristic consensus of the Ancient Catholic Church (to which all orthodox Christians today are heirs). Something which must be emphatically pushed: it is not, not, not a commendable thing to consciously understand one’s Christian faith as consisting of something fundamentally different from that of those Christians living before the time of the Reformation period. So many contemporary Christians today are almost proud of how much more “biblical” their current expression of the faith is compared to those living before Martin Luther, as if the Reformation was only and exclusively some pure renewal movement, as if the Reformation was some divine thing. *For more on this thought, read Jackson Shepard’s new Mere Orthodoxy article.*

The theologian who most influences me in this regard, towards seeing a continuity between the Ancient Catholic Church and contemporary Christian churches of all veins (within the bounds of Nicaea, of course), but particularly of the Reformed tradition, is Thomas F. Torrance. In his lecture, “The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition,” Torrance lays out a better way to interpret and utilize the history of the Reformed tradition and Calvin’s writings, a way which decidedly departs from the branch that developed into the Westminster theology.

Torrance writes:

“Built into the foundations of the Reformed tradition, of course, was the primacy given to the Word of God, which was regarded not as some communication about God detached from God but as God himself speaking to us personally. God is known only through God, on the actual ground of God’s self-revelation and gracious activity toward us, for it is only through Christ and the Spirit that we have access to God… For Calvin the primary question became, Who is God? Who is the One who acts in this merciful and loving way toward us in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit? This is not a question in which the essence and the existence of God are held apart from one another, but one in which God is allowed to disclose who he is in actual relation toward us, and one in which we are cast wholly upon God’s own reality in presenting himself to be known by us.”[1]

The “distinctly Reformed” character of the tradition is the infinite qualitative distinction between God and Man, where God is recognized as the always-initiator of the union between God and Man. The central feature of the Reformed tradition, parallel to Torrance’s description of God’s initiative, is rightly summarized by Francois Wendel:

“No theology is Christian and in conformity with the Scriptures but in the degree to which it respects the infinite distance separating God from his creature and gives up all confusion, all ‘mixing’ that might tend to efface the radical distinction between the Divine and the human.”[2]

I.e., Barth’s term of God as “wholly other.”

Torrance then distinguishes what he categorizes as a patristically-informed version of the Reformed tradition (“Athanasian Reformed,” see the website above) from the Westminster Reformed:

“Thus predestination is not to be understood in terms of some timeless decree in God, but as the electing activity of God providentially and savingly at work in what Calvin called ‘the history of redemption’… This identity of eternal election and divine providence in Jesus Christ generated in the Reformed tradition its well-known conjunction of repose in God and active obedience to God in the service of Christ’s kingdom. However, if that repose in God is referred, as has happened only too often in the history of Reformed churches, to an inertial ground in the eternal being of God, then there opens up a split in people’s understanding between predestination and the saving activity of Christ in space and time, e.g., in the notion of election as ‘antecedent to grace.’ That would seem to be the source of a tendency toward a Nestorian view of Christ that keeps cropping up in Calvinist theology. This is very evident in misguided attempts to construe a ‘pre’ in ‘predestination’ in a logical, causal, or temporal way, and then to project it back into an absolute decree behind the back of Jesus and thus to introduce a division into the very person of Christ. It is one of Karl Barth’s prime contributions to Reformed theology that he has decisively exposed and rejected such a damaging way of thought.”[3]

The problem with the Westminster theologians, Torrance notes, is that in their attempts to uphold their prized elucidations of the doctrines of Predestination and Election, they so conceptualize that “‘pre’ in ‘predestination'” as something which is fundamentally detached and hidden “behind the back of Jesus,” i.e., as something not ontologically related to Jesus Christ who is the Son of God (the Son within Triune formula of Father-Son-Spirit), and as something they posit exists in the pre-creation planning of God as some choice of some over others without any reference to Christ’s all-encompassing work. Torrance’s chief critique, then, is that the Westminster theologians introduce a hidden element within the life and revelation of God, which in turn means God does not actually or authentically reveal Himself in Christ, but maintains a separation from humanity such that His lofty holiness is untouched by humanity’s filthy lowness. Such a hidden element then adequately qualifies the God “revealed” by Christ as sharing a fundamental similarity of detachment from humanity with the absolute-power deity espoused as the Muslim god, Allah, the god who is decidedly separate from and unknowable by humanity. To Torrance, any god so conceptualized has no claim to true revealing-of-Self as claimed taking place in Christ by the historic Church catholic. If there is no revealing-of-Self, humanity has no authentic claim to be united to God’s inner, Triune life. The Westminster formulation of Predestination then undermines the entire divine program as acted out, embodied, and completed in Jesus Christ.

Any cursory familiarity with the theological language of Westminster theologians (epitomized in theologians like the late R.C. Sproul and in contemporary pop-theology like the Five Points) makes their prized conception of God’s hiddenness from humanity plain. The sort of put-you-in-your-place theological aggression exemplified by Westminsters is remarkably similar to what you see in the innumerable videos of doctrinally-orthodox Muslim apologists whose primary strategy is intimidation and recourse to the sinfulness of the human race.

Tied to all this is the problem that Westminster theology tends to locate that transcendence of God mentioned earlier (Barth’s “wholly other”) in the moral uprightness and justice of God rather than in His factual ontological status as qualitatively other or categorically different than creation. There is this underlying current in Westminster theology, too, that the reason for the Son’s enflesh-ment has to do primarily with satisfying the anger and wrath God harbors against humanity, and nothing else, as if the life and active obedience of Christ is some means to a further end rather than the means and end of the whole Divine program (i.e., an ontological rather than a moral end). Torrance is on to this when he remarks, finally, that:

“For us to be in Christ or for Christ to be in us has to be understood in an ontological way, and not just in a figurative or spiritual way. It is through a real union with Christ in his vicarious humanity that all that Christ has done for us in himself becomes ours and we are made to share together what Christ is. That was Calvin’s doctrine of the ‘blessed exchange,’ which he took over from the Greek Fathers. It was in that incarnational and atoning way that justification has to be understood, not just in terms of imputed righteousness but in terms of a participation in the righteousness of Christ which is transferred to us through union with him.”[4]

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, “The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition,” The Donnell Lecture delivered at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, October 6, 1988, pgs. 5-6. 

[2] François Wendel, Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet (London, UK: Collins, 1965), 151. 

[3] Thomas F. Torrance, “The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition,” The Donnell Lecture delivered at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, October 6, 1988, pgs 6-7.

[4] Thomas F. Torrance, “The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition,” The Donnell Lecture delivered at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, October 6, 1988, pg 10.

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Theological Knowledge as Originating in God’s Initiative in Karl Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline

Alex Renner

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Karl Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline is an imperfect summarizing of his more layered, theologically-structured work, the Church Dogmatics. The Outline, made up of 24 chapters each covering a portion of the Apostle’s Creed, is a formidable introduction for the Barth-curious. More than a simple introduction, however, Dogmatics in Outline is a rich theological-devotional meditation which Barth gave in the form of a series of lectures immediately following the end of the Second World War. Along with his Evangelical Theology (also a series of lectures he gave, but in America), the Outline is a shiny jewel in the myriad-ly colorful theological crown of Karl Barth. There are too many sizable nuggets of theological goodness to cover here, but chapters 5-10 are especially enriching.

At the beginning of chapter five, Barth begins an offensive against the unnamed specter of his theologically liberal forefather Friedrich Schleiermacher. He contrasts the faith found in the Apostles Creed with that espoused by the preeminent theological Romantic, who represents (still, sadly) much of modern hermeneutics and biblical theology of both “liberal” and “conservative” veins. He starts:

“In the sense of Christian faith, God is not to be found in the series of gods. He is not to be found in the pantheon of human piety and religious inventive skill. So it is not that there is in humanity something like a universal natural disposition, a general concept of the divine, which at some particular point involves the thing which we Christians call God and as such believe in and confess; so that Christian faith would be one among many, an instance within a general rule… The God of the Christian Confession is, in distinction from all gods, not a found or invented God or one at last and at the end discovered by man; He is not a fulfillment, perhaps the last, supreme and best fulfillment, of what man was in course of seeking and finding.”[1]

In other words, the classical method of “proving God’s existence,” of analyzing God just as one would analyze the theological pronouncements of any other deity originating in the sinful creativity of mankind, is a fools errand; it does not and cannot get you to the God revealed and disclosed in the Christian Scriptures. Further, God is not something which can be, has been, or will ever be “found out” by man, period. Man, in his lowly and corrupted estate, is incapable of finding his way to the God who is, and all attempts have ended up creating language structures and conceptions of a god which are in fundamental disagreement with who God tells us He is in such Scriptures (and the Tradition which interprets those Scriptures). The only way in which such a God-to-Man relationship can be established is if God breaks forth into our limited reality and establishes such a relationship. Theologically and existentially, we are in need of God’s help.

“What is involved [i.e., revealed in the Apostles Creed] is man’s meeting with the Reality which he has never of himself sought out or first of all discovered. ‘What no eye hath seen nor ear heard, what hath not entered into the heart of any man, God hath given to those who love Him’… God in the sense of the Christian Confession is and exists in a completely different way from that which is elsewhere called divine.”[2]

So. Barth has helped us establish that the “infinite qualitative distinction” which Christian history has affirmed of the ontological divide between God and creation is indeed true, and is the sword which splits in two every idea of divinity originating in Man’s mind. How, then, is theology established? How is it that humanity can speak of God (which is an ability Barth must believe we now have, however that works out, since he has written what he has written), if humanity cannot then “ascend” to true knowledge of God?

As he gives his answer about how theology is allowed, he also sets out to distinguish his theological project from most “systematic” theologians of the past five centuries or so. He writes:

“It is this God in the highest who has turned as such to man, given Himself to man, made Himself knowable to him… God in the highest, in the sense of the Christian Confession, means He who from on high has condescended to us, has come to us, has become ours… By this definition something fundamentally different is taking place from what would happen, if I should try and set before you conceptually arranged ideas of an infinite, supreme Being. In such a case I would be speculating. But I am not inviting you to speculate. I maintain that this is a radically wrong road which can never lead to God, but to a reality called so only in a false sense… When our talk is of Him and we speak of Him as about a familiar entity, who is more familiar and real than any other reality and who is nearer us than we are to ourselves, it is not because there may have been particularly pious people who were successful in investigating this Being, but because He who was hidden from us has disclosed Himself.”[3]

Theology can only be established on the foundation of God’s initiative to reveal Himself to Man. Without such a divine initiative, Man is doomed (but also revels in being doomed) to forever theorize and imagine a god who fits Man’s fancies and passions. Ten times out of ten, Man creates idols of the world he exists in, and without divine illumination is stuck in such a degrading, self-chosen pattern of destruction. Though his doctrine of the Word of God is be similar yet distinct from mine, Barth’s focus on Jesus Christ as the center of that divine initiative on the part of God to break through Man’s faulty thought-world is summed up well when Barth writes,

“The whole work of God lives and moves in this one Person. He who says God in the sense of Holy Scripture will necessarily have to say Jesus Christ over and over again… From this work we must make no abstractions, if we would know God’s nature and existence. Here, in this work, God is the Person who expounds Himself, and is thus the subject of this work.”[4]

Jesus Christ is the place where God breaks through to us and screams, smiling, “Here I am!”

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, 1959), 36.

[2] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, 1959), 36.

[3] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, 1959), 37-38.

[4] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, 1959), 39.

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The Incarnation of Christ as True Union with Fallen Humanity (and Some Mariological Sidebars) in T.F. Torrance

Alex Renner

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One of the few essential patristic principles which we receive from our older brothers and sisters in the historic Church catholic is the principle that “What has not been assumed [by Christ, in the incarnation] has not been healed.” Such was the implicit assumption of Sts. Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, and such was the explicit argument of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, against whom all of the myriad voices who would contradict and drown out the Chalcedonian, Nicene faith that had been handed down by the Apostles to the subsequent spiritual offspring of the One-Springing-Triad God were casting their stones. In a very real sense, an attack on the Christological principle of His assumption of all that is human is an attack on the core of the Christian faith, a fact the fathers rightly and consistently perceived (but one which unfortunately leaves many Christians today, particularly evangelicals, scratching their heads). What does such a principle say, and why is it central (“essential”) to the whole of the Divine Program?

The Apollarian heresy, named after its chief proponent – a common feature of historic heresies – Apollinaris, claimed that Jesus Christ’s incarnation consisted of God the Son taking on all of what was human, a body and a soul, except the mind of a human. In simpler words, Christ became physically a man, but retained his divine mind in such a way as to “leave out” the assumption of a human mind. To Apollinaris, Jesus wore the body of a man but left out the mind; i.e., Jesus was less than truly and fully human. After an examination of such a position, contemporaries of Apollinaris began to contend that such an incarnational formula was out of step with the Nicene faith. To many of the Nicene/orthodox bishops, Apollinaris was spreading lies about what Christ accomplished for humanity in His incarnation.

Queue the Christological principle mentioned before: What has not been assumed has not been healed. The reason why these orthodox bishops rejected Apollinaris’s argument was because if Christ had not truly and completely become all that we are in our humanity, Christ was not redeeming us by uniting himself to humanity, but only “part” of us (in this case the fleshly part), i.e., only a part of what we are is redeemed. You can start to see the problem here. Such a conception of the incarnation puts down a major roadblock against much of the theological language we inherit from the historic Church catholic; we can no longer say with St. John that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” if he did not truly “become flesh.”

Let’s turn to T.F. Torrance’s Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ. Torrance writes:

“In becoming flesh the Word penetrated into hostile territory, into our human alienation and estrangement from God. When the Word became flesh, he became all that we are in our opposition to God in our bondage under law – that is the amazing act of gracious condescension in the incarnation, that God the Son should assume our flesh, should enter a human existence under divine judgment, enter into the situation where the psalmist cried Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, so that the Word or Son of God himself gave out the same cry when overwhelmed with the divine judgment upon our flesh… He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and was even made a curse for us.”[1]

Here, Torrance expounds on just the same topic. However, his further claim that “he became all that we are in our opposition to God in our bondage under the law” deserves to be specially treated, since there are many whose main beef with Torrance on this point is that they don’t deem it appropriate to claim that Christ assumed “sinful flesh”; to them, for Christ to assume sinful flesh implicates a corrupting sinfulness on behalf of the Son of God who assumes that flesh. Although I won’t say these critics are outright heretics, it is interesting that in their attempt to safeguard some aspect of the Son’s holiness and uprightness (arguably the exact motivation of Apollinaris and many other heretics of the same vein) they put a limit on what Christ assumed in his assumption of our human nature.

Torrance goes on, meeting these critics’ claims:

“One thing should be abundantly clear, that if Jesus Christ did not assume our fallen flesh, our fallen humanity, then our fallen humanity is untouched by his work – for ‘the unassumed is the unredeemed’, as Gregory Nazianzen put it. Patristic theology, especially as we see it expounded by the great Athanasius, makes a great deal of the fact that he who knew no sin became sin for us, exchanging his riches for our poverty, his perfection for our imperfection, his incorruption for our corruption, his eternal life for our mortality.”[2]

And then:

“If the Word of God did not really come into our fallen existence, if the Son of God did not actually come where we are, and join himself to us and range himself with us where we are in sin and under judgment, how could it be said that Christ really took our place, took our cause upon himself in order to redeem us? What could we then have to do with him? We stand before God as flesh of sin under God’s judgment, and it is into this concrete form of our sin-laden, corruptible and mortal humanity in which we are damned and lost that Christ came, without ceasing to be the holy Son of God. He entered into complete solidarity with us in our sinful existence in order to save us, without becoming himself a sinner [emphasis added].”[3]

–

Torrance makes his point well. See, much of theological history in the past millennium has tended to argue that – although it is completely true that Christ assumed all that we are – Christ took on a humanity that in a very real sense was already healed, especially if such humanity was bestowed on him by being birthed from the Mother of God, the Theotokos, whom many theologians consider to have been conceived in an “immaculate” way as well. Well, if the Mother of God holds a humanity which is already cleansed, then what Christ assumes by being born of the Theotokos is a humanity which is foreign to the rest of us, right? This seems, to me, to be an impasse at which a Mariology or Christology which disallows any talk of Christ or Mary holding sinful flesh (not that they themselves are sinful or engage in any sort of sin) contradicts the patristic principle we receive from the historic Church catholic. What do we do about this?

Well, as someone who holds a high reverence for the Theotokos and who even affirms (with the fathers) that she very well can be said to be sinless, I think the way forward for all catholic Christians is to hold to a sort of dual affirmation: that, just as Torrance emphasizes, Christ (and Mary) are completely sinless and spotless but in order to be in step with the Christological principle that “all that is unashamed is unredeemed” we must also say that Christ (and Mary) had corrupted flesh, at least in their earthly, pre-ascension, salvific lives.

Such it seems to me. Torrance ends, saying:

“Christ the Word did not sin. He did not become flesh of our flesh in a sinful way, by sinning in the flesh. If God the Word became flesh, God the Word is the subject of the incarnation, and how could God sin? How could God deny God, be against himself, divest himself of his holiness and purity?… By remaining holy and sinless in our flesh, he condemned sin in the flesh he assumed and judged it by his very sinlessness.”[4]

Our Lord Jesus Christ assumed all that we are in order that we may be all that he is in his restored, redeemed, ascended humanity. We truly do not have a great high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 61.

[2] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 62.

[3] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 62.

[4] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 63.

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Maximus the Confessor on Deification in His Two Hundred Chapters on Theology

Alex Renner

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Maximus the Confessor is quickly becoming one of my favorite historical theologians. His characteristic Christocentrism, his healthy balance of apophatic and kataphatic theology, and his descriptions of the Christian life all lift up the soul to heights of love and peace which few contemporary Christian paperbacks have the ability to do. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s insistence, in his famous preface to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, that, nine times out of ten it is the time-tested, ancient theological treatises which offer more spiritual encouragement than anything coming out in print today (with a few exceptions). I find the same to be true when reading Maximus; you can tell the man loved God, loved people, and found much growth in the contemplation of divine things. I myself benefit by allowing my soul to be lifted up by his theological movements.

When my wife and I were perusing the humungous Oxford book store, Blackwells, I came across a Patristics section which took up most of my time that day. While there, I purchased SVS Press’s copy of Maximus’s Two Hundred Chapters on Theology. It is turning out, in only the first few pages, to be enormously rich and spiritually and theologically precious to me. There is much gold to be dug up, here.

Maximus begins his work by setting up a few guard rails about God’s absolute otherness, using terms I have only ever read Dionysius use (i.e., “super-substantial” and “absolutely above/beyond essence or substance”). He then goes on to describe the inner life of the one whose spiritual/thought life is continually disciplined to draw itself up to God:

“1.13 He who has dazzled the intellect with divine thoughts, and has accustomed his rationality unceasingly to celebrate the creator with divine hymns, and has hallowed his sensory perception with unadulterated mental representations – such a one has added to the natural beauty in accordance with the image, the deliberate good in accordance with the likeness.”[1]

You can see here the patristic conception of image/likeness in Maximus, as well as a definition of deification as a mystical union or sharing, an unutterable love-relationship which God and Man continually keep up with one another (based on both God’s and Man’s dual initiative). Reading 1.13 reminded me of a similar statement of Maximus’s in his Ambiguum, where his explanation of mystical union revolves around something like the idea of being fully encompassed by the Other. To Maximus, our union with Christ is a full-encompassing, where, though we keep our essential humanity intact, we are known and are seeking to be more known only in line with those characteristics and particularities as filtered through God’s gifting of them. In other words, we refuse to be known or encompassed apart from our own total-identification and encompassing by Christ. Glorious.

Three “chapters” later, Maximus illustrates a provocative picture of salvation which further attempts an elucidation of deification. He writes,

“And he who has been purified, is illuminated; and he who has been illuminated is made worthy to lie with the bridegroom Word in the chamber of the mysteries.”[2]

Maximus chooses to relate our union with God to the sexual union which a husband and wife share on their wedding night. He caveats that image, though, with the “mysteries” as the place wherein that sexual union takes place. Now, by “mysteries” he means the sacraments of the Church: the Eucharist and Baptism. So, the sacramental mysteries are the means through which God unites himself, continually, to his people. Without a consistent participation on the part of the Bride (the Church) in the mysteries (the Eucharist), the Bride and Groom (the Word, Christ) are not in full union and their relationship is not initiated or brought to completion. Again, glorious.

In case you thought Maximus the Pelagian, however, he insists, later on in the first forty or so chapters, that:

“1.31 Never can a soul reach out towards the knowledge of God if God himself does not, having condescended, lay hold of it and lead it up to himself. For a human mind is not strong enough to ascend such a distance – as if to seize for its part some divine illumination, if God himself did not draw it upward, as far as is possible for a human mind to be drawn upward, and enlighten it with divine radiances.”[3]

Such union, mediated to the Bride in the mysteries, is more rightly said to be initiated and brought to its end by the Groom, i.e., Christ. It is Christ who reaches toward the Christian and pulls him up to union with Himself. Christ gets the credit and the glory for the Triune work he completes in us, using the mysteries, to do such work.

Amen, amen, and amen!

For those who want a deep spiritual nourishment beyond the steady flow of contemporary, popular Christian literature (much of which misses the point), turn to the ancient fathers for the golden honey of biblical wisdom. Turn to the Tradition, and be satiated.

[1] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 51.

[2] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 53.

[3] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 61.

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Europe Trip: Day Nine (Rome Pt. 2)

Alex Renner

Today was similar to yesterday. We got up, did the Italian breakfast thing at the caffe immediately next to the caffe from yesterday (near the Trevi fountain), and set off for the nearby Pantheon. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

My journal entry this morning:

“Sitting outside at a caffe next to Trevi fountain (the caffe directly beside the one from yesterday morning). The food/drink is not as good, but to sit outside is a European delight. I love my wife. She is my best friend… Glory to thee, our God, glory to thee.”

We saw the Colosseum today, and had a great time listening to our Italian guide who lives in Japan named David (?). He was a character, and looked right in our eyes the entire tour, spouting off Roman history facts (much of which contrasted directly with what is found in the Russell Crowe movie ‘Gladiator’) as he looked at us with a hawk-stare. We met a few Aussies from our group, had some delicious fettuccini for lunch directly across the street from the Colosseum – a wicked, in a good way, meal – and found that we were in a ready mood to return to the States regardless of all of the delicacies we have enjoyed these past ten days.

Tonight, we reserve our Uber ride to the airport for the morning, list off all of the souvenirs we bought on the trip, and write a thank you note to our Airbnb host (who just had a child).

–

–

Journaling this morning at the adjoining caffe. We sat outside with our cappuccino and caffe lattes (and our croissants) and felt like real Europeans.

–

–

Next to the Kaiser himself. Behind me are Roman ruins and to my right, off in the distance, is the “Colosseo.”

–

–

The Colosseum. Neither Kristen nor I have been to such an old place.

–

We fly back tomorrow. We have loved Roma. We are ready to be back in the home country. For all its faults (no country escapes faults), we appreciate our homeland and all of the opportunities it provides us.

Blessings and peace.

Signing off, Europe.

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Europe Trip: Day Eight (Rome)

Alex Renner

Yesterday was just exhausting, and today was similarly exhausting but in a different way.

Yesterday morning, Kristen and I said goodbye to Santorini and all of the fantastic views, memories, and food we enjoyed while there. We took a flight – which got delayed – to Athens, Greece, where we stayed for five hours before taking another flight – which also got delayed – to the final place on our Europe itinerary: the Eternal City, Rome. We had a pleasant conversation with our Romanian taxi driver as he drove us to our Airbnb on the outskirts of the city late at night, and we settled in.

Today was Vatican City day. Since we felt rested and energized this morning we decided to make the walking trek into the central part of Rome, stopping at the Trevi Fountain and a nearby caffe where we got pictures and breakfast. I got an Italian espresso, and our waiter promptly instructed me on the proper use of the cup of water he placed in front of me as he delivered the rest of our meal: first eat, then sip water to clean your palate, then drink espresso, then sip more water to clean your mouth a second time (imagine all of those instructions coming from a heavily-accented Italian waiter). It was a pleasant, picturesque, Italian breakfast. We then set off for the Vatican.

We found ourselves really enjoying Roma – its centuries old architecture, its pleasant streets, its wonderful music – as we made our way towards the Church-State. As newly-minted Bachelor degrees, Kristen and I have our fair share of knowledge about worldwide Roman influence, and we consistently found touch points where that knowledge came to the fore. More than anything today, though, we realized how much we appreciate the love of life epitomized by the Italian culture we breathed in so deeply today; the music, the cuisine, even the architecture emphasizes the Italian heart-beat message that life is meant to be enjoyed and appreciated, even while a full knowledge of the reality of evil and suffering should temper such enjoyment and full-bodied appreciation. Being in the Eternal City makes one think Eternal things.

Unfortunately, a few weeks ago we had tried to send in a request to secure some Papal Audience tickets which gives the user access to a general audience with the Pope where he speaks on some issue in front of a select crowd, but we weren’t able to secure them. No matter, we saw his face and heard his voice everywhere: his likeness is plastered on thousands of postcards, merchandise, and iconography scattered across the vicinity of Vatican City. Since we had a few hours before we had to meet our entrance guide to get into the City, we stopped in to a few souvenir shops and bought some knick-knacks.

I won’t describe how being inside the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Vatican Museums made us feel: they were literally unspeakable experiences which are most fully appreciated by being in front of the art and artifacts. That’s all I will say there. If it gives any indication how much we enjoyed today, just know while Kristen and I were ranking our favorite trip days, Rome was vying for one of the top two spots in all our different rankings.

Before we took a taxi back to our Airbnb, we had an absolutely delicious dinner at one of the many alley-street Ristorantes. Kristen got spaghetti and I got gnocchi. Once again: Dee-lish-uss. American “spaghetti” does not compare.

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The eternally iconic painting of the gathering of the philosophers, with Plato and Aristotle taking center stage. The two figures’ poses demonstrate their respective philosophies: Plato’s pointing to the sky speaks of his Eternal Ideas as explanatory of reality and Aristotle’s horizontal hand gesture emphasizes the reality of the material world set against the Eternal Ideas espoused by his master. My finger pointing to the sky is my sign of appreciation for the Platonic tradition, which Eastern Christianity has always favored (over against the West).

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In Vatican City square; behind me is St. Peter’s Basilica, and blocked by my head is the chimney where the order of Cardinals indicates when they have chosen a new Pope (shown by which color smoke they let out of the chimney).

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Inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Stunning amount of gold went into the construction of this place.

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Kristen and I set out to see the Pantheon and the Colosseum tomorrow, which will be our final full day in Europe before we go back to the States the next day. We plan to eat tiramisu, gelato, and maybe buy some authentic spaghetti before the day is done.

Blessings and…

Ciao!

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Europe Trip: Day Six (Oia Pt. 2)

Alex Renner

We had the most relaxing day, but we sweat like dogs. Our tentative schedule for today consisted of revisiting the antique shop in which we found the icons, surveying all of the local blue-domed churches in the area, and broadening our Greek cuisine options.

Last night I had planned on doing a short-length run through the streets early this morning. I got up at six and did just that; it was hands down the best view I have ever had during a jog (and there was hardly anyone awake, so it was me, the town, and the fantastic island view). When I had returned to our Airbnb and we got ready for the day, Kristen and I walked a few hundred feet down the road to a bakery owned by some Santorini natives who fixed us some croissants and espresso. We sat, munched on some butter bread, and sipped some Greek coffee. A few hours later, once all of the shops had opened (it seems a Greek custom to slowly begin the day), we met up with our host once more to take him up on another round of coffee which he told us yesterday could be provided free of charge. My journal entry paints a bright picture of how we felt:

“This is the most picturesque, most stunning place I have ever been. Our host made us cold Greek Frappes this morning on request and told us about his history in Santorini (he has lived here since a young man)… We are tasting the Greek culture here, and we love it. It makes me want to have a sort of tea or coffee time before and after meals once we get back to the U.S. It also makes me want to watch less TV and have more people over for such tea/coffee time (with snacks of course)… Glory to thee, our God, glory to thee.”

Another thing happened today which I didn’t record in my journal: I bought a hand painted Greek icon! There were many to choose from in the antique store next to the Epilekton Cathedral, but I decided to choose one of the cheaper (but still magnificently impressive) ones so as to save a bit of financial leg room for Rome. Also related to iconography is the opportunity we had today to go inside the Epilekton Cathedral itself. For only about five minutes, Kristen and I went inside of the reverent space in the middle of the town and lit wax prayer candles at the back of the sanctuary before swiftly exiting out of reverence for the sanctity of the place. We felt like true Greek Orthodox; it was dope.

Our final noteworthy experience of the day has to do with Greek cuisine. Kristen reminded me around midday that we had planned, while in Kamari, to taste authentic Greek gyros while here. Well, we couldn’t have been more surprised at how delicious they could be (“American gyros” got nothing on these)! For a fraction of the cost of the expensive meal we had yesterday – which was nonetheless delicious – we got to eat pork and lamb gyros at a gyro stand about a mile down the road from our stay, and we both instantly agreed it was the best meal we shared not only during our stay in Greece but during our entire trip. If in Greece, get the gyros.

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Our lunch destination today. I am holding peach juice. I had a smoked salmon and cream cheese sub sandwich, and Kristen had a classic turkey, cheese, mayo, and veggies sub sandwich. They were better than you probably think they were.

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In front of one of the famous blue domes sprinkled across the Oia landscape. It was a beautiful day today in Santorini, and these are beautiful churches.

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The authentic, hand painted and hand carved Greek Orthodox icon I secured today near Epilekton Cathedral. It portrays Christ’s salvific death on the cross, complete with the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove above Christ, and Death below, broken and defeated by Christ’s propitiation. If you look closely, you can see the trademark Greek letters on either side of Christ which spell out “IC XC” (pronounced “Ee-soos Kree-stoos,” i.e., Jesus Christ); in some icons, there will be an additional set of Greek letters which spell “NI KA” (pronounced “Nee-Kah”), which means “victory.” When combined, they proclaim, “Jesus Christ: Victory.” Amen to that!

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A pretty awesome day today.

Blessings and peace.

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Europe Trip: Day Five (Oia)

Alex Renner

“Wow, just wow. I have no words.”

Such was our reaction as Kristen and I ascended the mountainous, rocky slope on our way to Oia (Ee-yah). As our Uber driver Christos (“Christ” in Greek) drove us up towards Oia, we looked to the left of the car down the hundreds of feet of beautiful white, blue, and orange stone which constitutes most of the buildings of the town and ooed and awed at the grandeur of the Pinterest-esque scene.

Before we checked out of Kamari this morning, though, we decided to get up real early and watch the sunrise at 6:20 this morning. As my journal entry will soon indicate, we were met with annoyance by the owner of the beach seats we were sitting on (which we had not paid for, but other people were doing it!). No matter, our morning was wonderful; we were watching the sunrise on a Santorini beach.

I had a two part journal entry today, one before and one after getting to Oia. Parts of both are worthy of quotation:

Part One: “Watching the sunrise this morning on Kamari beach… We got kicked off our seats in between this sentence and the last… Glory to thee, our God, glory to thee.”

Part Two: “We made it to Oia and checked in. I have never been to such a place as this. Our Uber driver told us of his spiritual experiences and his road back to the Orthodox Church, and said the meaning of the [three] bells – constructed beside [most] Orthodox Church[es] on Santorini – represents the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What a cool time we have already had today. I am having vivid flashbacks to my trip to Europe with Grandpa when I was a teen; the trip I realize now precipitated my love for contemplation, reading, and exploring. I thank God for his many graces. Glory to thee, our God, glory to thee.”

We struggled to find our Oia Airbnb earlier today, and texted our host a flurry of worried texts. Once we found it, though, we were met by a relaxed, easy-going Greek guy who showed us to our room and let us loose upon the town. We bought a few trinkets, ate an expensive meal, and saw some beautiful churches. To my elation, we even found a workshop for icon painting! The man inside was a humble, reclusive artist who you could tell took pride in creating beautiful heavenly images. Unfortunately, he did not sell anything smaller than a TV screen so I was not his customer. To experience his iconography up close was a gift in itself, though.

Another shop down the road, however, does sell smaller, handprinted icons which I am scoping out for a midday purchase tomorrow. Will post pictures once the package is secured.

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Our view – only feet from our Airbnb – overlooking the town of Oia. To my right is a vast expanse of water with a volcano in the distance.

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Standing in front of the Epilekton Cathedral, with an icon of the Theotokos (“God-bearer” in Greek, a term used for the Virgin Mary) and Jesus Christ as a child. Gorgeous church within walking distance of our place, and right next to the shop from which I will hopefully secure my icon.

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To finish off the day, Kristen and I got some single-scoop ice creams and watched the wildly rich and powerful walk in front of us as we sat, talked, and enjoyed the view.

Blessings and peace.

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Europe Trip: Day Four (Kamari)

Alex Renner

Today marked Kristen’s and my first full day in Kamari, Santorini. As I wrote yesterday, today was a recuperative day where we swam, ate, and rested. Other than the daily rundown, there is not much to report other than to say that our Greek breakfast this morning was possibly the best meal I had ever eaten, and the moment I had today of peering through the crystal clear waters of Kamari beach while laughing with my spouse and best friend will be implanted in my mind forever. If your vacation funds allow, devote Santorini, Greece to your number-one-priority vacation destination. Amidst the heavy flow of tourism and criss-crossing linguistic streams, Santorini presents an unsurpassable pleasure to the responsible traveler who gets well-placed Airbnbs and knows where to go for a delicious meal. I say this, though, only having visited half the island. We will see if my suggestion proves to be right. Nevertheless, highly recommended.

Still on the hunt for a Greek Orthodox handpainted icon while I am here. I have yet to find one, but I am confident my search will prove fruitful. I’ll let you know if the time comes.

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The beachfront restaurant Kristen and I dined at this morning called Elixir. We paid 30 euros total for a near six course meal. Ab-so-lute-lee dee-lish-uss, and a fair price too.

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We travel upstream tomorrow to spend the rest of our Santorini time in supposedly the most beautiful and rich portion of the island, Oia (pronounced Ee-yah, we found out yesterday).

Blessings and peace.

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Europe Trip: Day Three (England-Santorini, Greece)

Alex Renner

Kristen and I flew to Santorini, Greece today by British Airways. We checked in to our Airbnb/hotel in Santorini after a fun Uber drive from the airport – the driver could hardly speak English and played Greek trap music the entire time. We decided to spend the end of our relatively smooth day by walking over to a nearby beachfront restaurant where we enjoyed a savory Greek pizza. Tomorrow will be possibly the chillest day of the whole trip, since the whole day will be dedicated to bathing ourselves in the gentle shores of Kamari beach and recuperating from the hustle and bustle of London life.

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Our immediate view of the island as we exited our British Airways flight. Just outside of the picture, on the right, are the gorgeous Santorini mountains which overlook the entire island.

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Our view looking out at Kamari beach from the restaurant where we ate dinner tonight.

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Blessings.