Jesus the Nobody with a Funny Name
Dear all,
If you missed the session (hi, W.!), please watch the video by clicking the link below. (W., I’m especially curious to hear what you think of the photographs!)
The rest of you might find it useful to take another look at the maps and at Circle 3 — our response to the information we’ve received. But everything is OPTIONAL!
This is one of the first videos I ever made, so please forgive its length, my monotone voice, and the other flaws. Today, I would definitely make it shorter and more lively.
I hope you have a blessed day in your own non-important places with funny names!
https://prezi.com/4efyws62sape/ordinary-holiness-a2-a-nobody-from-the-boonies/
I find the description of the Holy Land as a ‘fifth Gospel’ quite interesting, though I question whether interpreting its geography primarily through the Roman imperial framework obscures its theological significance. Christ's emergence within Israel is constitutive of His messianic identity, grounded in a particular covenantal and prophetic history extending centuries before Rome's ascendancy.
ReplyDeleteI'm particularly unconvinced by the geographical counterfactuals. To ask whether Christ might more efficiently have appeared in Rome or Alexandria or some other city seems to presuppose that the Incarnation could be detached from Israel's / Old Testament history without fundamentally altering what Christianity is and claims about its fulfilment. Roman infrastructure certainly facilitated the Gospel's subsequent diffusion, but why should we regard the efficiency of that diffusion as the relevant criterion for God's providential choice? Likewise Muhammad & Mecca or Joseph Smith & Nauvoo. The counterfactual seems to assume precisely what ought first to be established, that the location of the Incarnation was theologically interchangeable, something that seems to me to be false given the prophetic and covenental antecedents upon which the Gospels so fundamentally depend.
First I would like to thank you Fr. Pawel for taking the time to make this material. It was very dynamic and easy to understand. Before answering the essay and questions from the video, I want to address Harry's POV because it seemed very accurate for me. It was already declared, promised and prophesied in the Old Testament that the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem, in Judea. At those times no one knew or imagined how good or "dumb" was that place going to be in the eyes of other people like the Romans. So we should not assume that the place of birth of Jesus was interchangeable, because it was already written and promised. Israel was maybe the only nation at that time with the historical and theological background, guided by God, to understand what was about to come: The Messiah. The Roman Empire just became the perfect moment and background for the Messiah to be born. God allowed Rome to have roads to move over different regions, there were already many jewish synagogues around the area and a common language (Greek) known by most of the people. Additionally, at that time Israel was actually a geopolitical land bridge between the 3 continents, so I may understand why Romans also decided to take place there. Seems to be as Israel being a very strategic point designed by God after all. I think all of this facilitated the conditions for an effective spread of the Gospel by Jesus and later by his apostles. Still, I think that if we put Jesus to be born in Rome or Athens he would have been taken as another philosopher of the era, one more God or someone who is trying to steal the Caesar's throne. However, leaving aside the whole historical thing, I will give a religious reflection I had about what I think was God's intention of Jesus being born in Bethlehem in another comment.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the essay, I believe God chose this place because he chose humility instead of power, he chose the weak and oppressed instead of the oppressors, he chose to show that we just needed a fragile and peaceful Messiah to break all the powers of this world. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:27: "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." We reflected previously on this passage that said "What good can come from Nazareth", but in the end God is showing us that he doesn't need a rich ruler, king or emperor to save the humanity, but is showing us that how a fragile and poor Messiah, coming from a very unknown place by others, could save the whole humanity and teach us so many values. It shows us the majesty and power of God, that even with a Messiah that may will find hard to follow he already won the battle, he already defeated empires and nations. That he is God and he will always have the control of everything. He values more the good and humble hearth, he pays attention also to the oppressed and the ones suffering, he is God and his love can come from anywhere and is everywhere.
ReplyDeleteSo I have been reflecting on our discussion last session concerning the claim that God places no obstacles in the way of salvation and that humanity creates them entirely for itself (something Marcelo originally suggested which was said to be incorrect). After reflection I still think Marcelo was correct. Our access to revelation, moral understanding and opportunities to respond to grace are not entirely matters of individual choice. Job, for example, undergoes severe trials of faith with God's express permission despite his righteousness.
DeleteMore fundamentally, these circumstances exist within an order freely established and governed by divine providence. Aquinas explicitly maintains that God could have created differently, even producing a better universe (and the catechism maintains the Thomist view - cf. CCC 310). It therefore seems metaphysically conceivable that God could have made the conditions for salvation even marginally more favourable without compromising human freedom or divine justice.
My objection is not to God's universal salvific will, but to the implication that every obstacle originates with humanity, or that the existing conditions for salvation must be optimal simply because God ordained them. Divine permission is certainly distinct from direct causation, but this does not remove the difficulties God permits from the scope of providence. Nor does the perfection of divine wisdom entail that the created order is incapable of conceivable improvement.
I therefore maintain the original objection to the unqualified claim made in our previous session. God may will the salvation of all without having established the maximally favourable conditions for its attainment, and human freedom alone cannot account for every difficulty encountered in responding to grace.
Also, in further support of Marcelo’s comment, I would still maintain that Catholic theology allows for God deliberately making salvation more difficult in certain circumstances. Aquinas explicitly identifies the withdrawal of grace as a divine cause of spiritual blindness and hardness of heart, quoting Romans 9:18, and 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12. Aquinas presents that withdrawal as a just consequence of prior human resistance, rather than God causing sin. Nevertheless, the resulting impediment is deliberately permitted by God.
This contradicts the categorical claim that all obstacles to salvation are exclusively of human making. To say that seems semi-Pelagian to me as it would reduce providence to human choice alone, and then grace and salvation would be entirely conditioned on human initiative which is a heresy and so must be false.
I thought this during the session but wanted to take the time to think through the consequences of the position more fully as it’s not one I had properly given thought to before. It was also probably imprecise to reference extra ecclesiam nulla salus as an example to illustrate this point at the time as lumen gentium neatly nuances it around this idea.