All Means All: Thoughts On Good Friday

 First, some scriptures:

“For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ will all be given life.”  1 Cor 15:22

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw everyone to me.”  John 12:32

“For the grace of God has appeared, giving salvation to all human beings.”  Titus 2:11

“So, then, just as through one transgression came condemnation for all human beings, so also through one act of righteousness came redemption for all human beings:”. Romans 5:18

“Our savior God, who intends all human beings to be saved and to come to a full knowledge of truth.”  1 Tim 2:3

“Thus God was in Christ reconciling the cosmos to himself, not counting their trespasses to them, and placing in us the word of reconciliation. “.  2 Cor 5:19

“For I came not that I might judge the world, but that I might save the world”. John 12:47

“For which reason God also exalted him on high and graced him with the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend -of beings heavenly and earthly and subterranean - and every tongue gladly confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, for the glory of the Father.”  Phil 2:9-11

“And he is atonement for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole cosmos.”  1 John 2:2

“For God shut up everyone in obstinacy so that he might show mercy to everyone.”  Romans 11:32

And on and on……

The boundless depth and breadth of the crucifixion and resurrection are captured in the scores of New Testament verses attesting to its all-encompassing nature.  The simple yet profound pronouncement, over and over, is that “all”. - everyone, everything- is emphatically and ultimately reconciled by the work of Christ through the cross. 

Many Christian theologians and church leaders have sought to convince themselves and others that “all” means “many” or “some” or “a few” or “the elect” or just about anything except “all” - the plain and obvious meaning of the texts. 

Those folks amend these scriptures so that they fall in line, doctrinally, with the way they have interpreted other verses; passages that they give preference to.  For myself, I let these verses speak for themselves with their clear and unambiguous message.  I choose an interpretation where “all” actually means “all” because, in my view, the cross of Christ reflects an expansive, universal revelation of God’s eternal love and grace, a decisive act of redemption that redirects the entire cosmos towards its original path, one which leads always and ever Godward. 

 In the cross, the power of sin and death is defeated - obliterated, really - and a radical realignment of the cosmos begins its course, in which God will be “all in all”,  a dynamic recapitulation where the entire universe will ultimately find its purpose in the God who created it.  How, then, could these verses mean other than what they declare?  Anything less than that is unworthy of the God who is the ground of being, whose love never fails, whose mercy has no end, whose justice seeks reconciliation, not retribution, and who cannot, and will not, fail to bring to fruition all of God’s good purposes - for all of God’s creation - in the ages to come. 

The cross finds its culmination when God is truly “all in all”, not conditionally or in a limited sense, where sin and spiritual death continue to reign in a perpetual kingdom of darkness in defiant opposition to the Good, sequestered in a corner of existence.   Rather, when these last enemies are themselves destroyed, then everyone and everything-all- will have finally been made right again.

“Then the end will come, when the Son hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power….(and) when he has done this, the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.”  1 Cor 15:24,28

The Deception Of Hopelessness

Between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday lies an uncanny deceit.  Its yawning chasm of despair is almost palpable, a silence so intense and invasive that it drowns out all sound, especially the voice of hope.  On this Saturday, this Sabbath of meaninglessness, there is no future, only an interminable present that stretches into infinity, a present where dreams and hopes and purpose, having been nailed to a tree, are tossed like so much rubble into a dark and lifeless tomb.

On this day after Good Friday, in the throes of anguish and despondency, this is the deception:

The loss is so great, so intransigent, so immovable, that it cannot be restored or repaired.  Nothing matters.  All hope is lost.  All dreams are shattered.  There is no tomorrow, only an endless today whose borders are defined by pain and misery, by failure and dejection.

Only in retrospect can we know this is a lie.  The deceit is hollow and its shrill voice lacks truth.  But we cannot yet know that this is a lie, since it is not yet Resurrection Sunday.  The dawn has not yet broken into new life, new hope, new purpose. There is only hopelessness and despair.

There is, however, a lifeline before us, a rope to which we can cling even when we believe that we have no strength to hold onto its grip, even when we doubt its veracity.  Here is the truth that the deception of hopelessness would have us ignore:  Saturday will come to an end.  Though it may seem otherwise, Resurrection Sunday is only a day away.  There is hope.  There is purpose.  There are dreams yet to be realized.  The night of despair will give way to a morning like no other.  Sunday is almost here.  Hold on.

To Be Or Not To Be

 A statue of the Titan god Atlas sits on my desk, a gift from a coworker who vacationed in Rome.  In mythology, Atlas was consigned to bear the sky on his shoulders, so my bronze Atlas is shouldering a large sphere representing the twelve constellations of the zodiac.

I like my statue, for the obvious reason that it is a gift, but also because it serves as a reminder of a much larger gift, one given to everyone and everything that exists:  the gift of being. 

As Atlas holds up the sky, so also God upholds all that exists.   Paul writes in Colossians 1:17 that in God all things are held together and Hebrews 1:3 says that God upholds all things by the word of his power.  It is in God that “we live and move and have our being,” Paul told the Athenian philosophers.  The difference between Atlas and God is that one is performing a task, and an endless one at that, while the other is extending a gift.

What we call existence, the sum of all realities that can be said to have being or becoming, isn’t grounded on necessity, as an ontological determination that could not be otherwise.  It is entirely within the range of possibility that we should never have existed at all.  Nor is being a manifestation which completes what is lacking in God’s nature or fulfills a need in God’s being.  The existence of contingent beings is not required to make God “whole” or “complete”.  Rather, creation is a continual and utterly free expression  of the inexhaustible God who is Love.

The transcendent God of theology and the Christian understanding of God as Trinity, has no deficiencies.  God lacks nothing.  God is complete, and within the Christian understanding of a Trinitarian God, there is nothing lacking even as relatedness and as manifestation of difference.  God’s “identity” has no need of the world and is not completed by an order of contingent existence.  The event of being - for beings - is pure gift.

Our existence arises not from necessity, but from choice.   We were not.  And then we are.  The language of creation is the language of freedom, not the narrow and limited freedom of created beings but the radical and infinite freedom of transcendent Being.  Only in this kind of unhindered liberty is the beauty and majesty of creation, as gift, revealed.

God extends to us the gift of existence itself, the gift of participating in the sublime mystery that awaits us every day, the gift of being.  

Civil Authority and Moral Order

On Civil Authority

Excerpt from the Encyclical of Pope John XXIII, Pacem In Terris (Peace On Earth):

Highlights and underlines are mine, not in the original.

Human society can be neither well-ordered nor prosperous without the presence of those who, invested with legal authority, preserve its institutions and do all that is necessary to sponsor actively the interests of all its members. And they derive their authority from God, for, as St. Paul teaches, "there is no power but from God".

In his commentary on this passage, St. John Chrysostom writes: "What are you saying? Is every ruler appointed by God? No, that is not what I mean, he says, for I am not now talking about individual rulers, but about authority as such. My contention is that the existence of a ruling authority—the fact that some should command and others obey, and that all things not come about as the result of blind chance—this is a provision of divine wisdom."

God has created men social by nature, and a society cannot "hold together unless someone is in command to give effective direction and unity of purpose. Hence every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and consequently has God for its author."

But it must not be imagined that authority knows no bounds. Since its starting point is the permission to govern in accordance with right reason, there is no escaping the conclusion that it derives its binding force from the moral order, which in turn has God as its origin and end.

 Hence, a regime which governs solely or mainly by means of threats and intimidation or promises of reward, provides men with no effective incentive to work for the common good. And even if it did, it would certainly be offensive to the dignity of free and rational human beings. Authority is before all else a moral force. For this reason the appeal of rulers should be to the individual conscience, to the duty which every man has of voluntarily contributing to the common good. But since all men are equal in natural dignity, no man has the capacity to force internal compliance on another. Only God can do that, for He alone scrutinizes and judges the secret counsels of the heart.

Hence, representatives of the State have no power to bind men in conscience, unless their own authority is tied to God's authority, and is a participation in it.

The application of this principle likewise safeguards the dignity of citizens. Their obedience to civil authorities is never an obedience paid to them as men. It is in reality an act of homage paid to God, the provident Creator of the universe, who has decreed that men's dealings with one another be regulated in accordance with that order which He Himself has established. And we men do not demean ourselves in showing due reverence to God. On the contrary, we are lifted up and ennobled in spirit, for to serve God is to reign.

Governmental authority, therefore, is a postulate of the moral order and derives from God. Consequently, laws and decrees passed in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience, since "it is right to obey God rather than men ".

Indeed, the passing of such laws undermines the very nature of authority and results in shameful abuse. As St. Thomas teaches, "In regard to the second proposition, we maintain that human law has the rationale of law in so far as it is in accordance with right reason, and as such it obviously derives from eternal law. A law which is at variance with reason is to that extent unjust and has no longer the rationale of law. It is rather an act of violence."

A Few Thoughts On Easter

Shortly, Christians will once again celebrate Easter, an annual affirmation of the faith's central tenet that Jesus was resurrected from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion.  This singularly important belief is so essential to the Christian faith that the apostle Paul wrote "if Christ as not been raised, your faith is futile and we are of all people most to be pitied."


The resurrection is central to Christianity because it signals a new paradigm where the power of death has been destroyed, where the temporary is subsumed in the imperishable, where life triumphs over death.  Paul writes that "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.  For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive".

Death had been the victor, the inevitable conqueror, the vanquisher of life from whose grasp no one could escape.  Jesus' resurrection obliterated the status quo, creating a new spiritual reality for humanity.  "He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent," Paul writes.  "For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."

 The old dynamic was estrangement and death.  The new dynamic is reconciliation and life. 

Through Jesus' resurrection, death becomes impotent, its power erased, relegated to a mere passageway between the temporal and the eternal.  Within the paradigm created by Jesus' resurrection, even that passageway will one day be unnecessary.  "He (will) reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death." 

For Christians, Easter is a time of reflection for what Jesus has accomplished for the creation that God has loved into existence but also forward-looking, to a day of unimaginable joy, when the words of Isaiah will be fulfilled:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Wain

Years ago when my grandson, Damian, was a toddler, he and I were enjoying a nice spring day in the yard.  Superficially, we were planting annuals in the flowerbeds.  More importantly, we were doing what granddads and grandkids are ought to do, the important work of play.  That day our work, our play, was among the dirt, the earthworms, and the little packets of begonias.

The mild, inviting warmth of a springtime sun added to our enjoyment.  It bathed the backyard with a bright welcome, urging renewal and rebirth from winter's dreariness.  As we turned the warm soil and decided how to arrange the flowers, I noticed a cool breeze sweep across the yard.  Looking to the sky, I saw distant clouds, heavy with the dark gray of moisture, beginning to move in our direction.  We continued sharing time and task and in a short while the heavens above us began to darken.

"We'd better finish up, buddy," I said.  "It's about to rain."  No sooner had I spoken than I felt a drop of water hit my arm.  Then another.  And another. 

"Wain, pawpaw."  Damian blinked as drops began to wet his face.

"Yep, rain," I answered.  I hurried to pat the soil around the few remaining begonias and then the skies let loose.  Rain.  Buckets of water poured from the sky, and even as I rushed to close the bag of potting soil in a furtive attempt at utility, we were soaked.  I reached around to scoop Damian into my arms and rush to the shelter of the awning on the back stoop, but he was already on his feet.  Laughing, jumping up and down as if the deluge had been planned for our personal amusement, he held his wet palms outward to show me what I was missing.

"Wain, pawpaw," he explained.  He clapped his hands and splashed his shoes in the tiny puddles forming on the lawn.  Innocent, twinkling eyes looked at me for confirmation.  It took a second, but I understood.

A big smile crossed my face and I held my palms outward in response. "Yep, rain," I said.

Prudence and wisdom might dictate that I pick up the little fellow and head to the house.  But in the absence of thunder or lightning or truly threatening weather, standing there in the midst of a refreshing, renewing spring shower, the shelter of the stoop no longer seemed to matter.  I marched goofily across the backyard with Damian in tow, stomping puddles along the way, our water-logged clothes and squishy sneakers paying homage to the peculiar site of a man and child sloshing about like ducks. 

Shortly, Luci appeared at the back door, disappeared, and returned with an armful of towels.  As quickly as it arrived, the rain left, and the sun smiled brightly in its wake. We headed indoors.  Wrapping the towels around us, I hugged Damian close to my chest and walked into the kitchen.

"We're soaked," I said.

"Wain good," he answered.

Kissing his forehead, I carried him upstairs to change clothes.  Yes, I thought, wain good.

                              ******************************************

There is important work to be done as we make our way through life. There are seeds to plant, soil to cultivate, weeds to pull.  Gardens of life need tending and renewing as surely as beds of flowers in our yards.  And just as certainly, we can expect that dark clouds may gather at seemingly inopportune times.  Rain will most likely follow.  When it does, it is sometimes wise to seek shelter.  The awning on the stoop is only a few feet away.  Other times, though, there's nothing wrong with splashing in the puddles and getting yourself completely drenched.  If you do, you might find, like Damian, that the deluge was just the kind of thing that seemed planned to give you joy.

America First

For a long time I’ve suspected that many American Christians are decidedly Americans first, Christians second.  For these individuals, in the hierarchy of personal identification, being an American comes before being a Christian.  A recent poll by the Washington Post/ABC seems to support this suspicion.  In this poll, taken after the CIA documents relating to prisoner torture were released, a substantial majority of respondents identifying as Catholics and an overwhelming majority of those identifying as Protestants answered that CIA torture tactics to obtain information from prisoners were justified.

 

 As Americans, I can understand why a majority believe that torture is justified.  If torturing a few terrorists can prevent a future attack that could potentially kill hundreds or thousands of fellow citizens, the utility of these tactics can readily be justified.  The invocation that “the end justifies the means” may be considered ethically appropriate where terrorist activities are concerned.

But the teachings of Christ don’t follow a utilitarian ethic.  

Even if one discounts Jesus’ entire teaching on how to treat one’s enemies……”turn the other cheek”,  “do not recompense evil for evil”, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, “do good to those who hate you”…. it can hardly be disputed that at the very least – the lowest possible bar for a Christian to set as  treatment of enemies – is not to demean their essential humanity. It is a Christian concept that we are made in the image of God, that we are a reflection of deity in some essential way.  Torture, by its very nature, is designed to degrade and devalue what is human in the one being tortured and by extension profanes the image of God itself.

Given that government policy supports torture and Christian principles prohibit it, polls should indicate a decidedly negative response from Christians when asked if torture tactics are justified.  The fact that just the opposite occurs is indicative that between two ideological identifiers – American citizen and Christian believer – American citizen overwhelmingly wins out.