The subtleties blow me away. I think they are more present here than in ‘the big two’ (Brothers K and Crime & Punishment), which is saying a lot. As usual, psychological nuance runs deep but differs from C&P in that we don’t quite get the gratifying/terrifying immediacy of Raskolnikov’s inner monologue (perhaps dialogue would be more appropriate in light of his name’s implications). Rather, Myshkin presents the reader with a paradox: he is candid and chatty in his dealings with others, but for all his chattiness he’s frustratingly enigmatic. And the enigma is only growing now that he’s become more withdrawn and calculating. (I don’t think that sentence merits a ‘spoiler’ warning…sorry if you think it does). Raskolnikov is rather predictable – perhaps more so to the reader than to himself. But who knows what Myshkin is up to. That’s what makes it a page-turner, and that is why I need to stop rambling on here and get back to reading.

Holy Ground

Here (in Dixie, where it is hot),
Alliterative house names
Grey Gables, Colonsay Cottage, Periola Place
breathe history, not kitsch.
Murmuring magnolias exhale memories of
fallen militias, headstrong women,
boozing preachers, the cacophony of King Cotton.
Under every footstep awaits a corroded bullet,
broken china, an intact whiskey jug, and
perhaps, yes, perhaps:
the bones of a forgotten soldier.
Remove your sandals.
You are standing on holy ground.

Ludwig van Beethoven: [in reference to "Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 47" - "Kreutzer"... ] Do you like it?
Anton Felix Schindler: Shh!
Ludwig van Beethoven: I cannot hear them, but I know they are making a hash of it. What do you think? Music is… a dreadful thing. What is it? I don’t understand it. What does it mean?
Anton Felix Schindler: It – it exalts the soul.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Utter nonsense. If you hear a marching band, is your soul exalted? No, you march. If you hear a waltz, you dance. If you hear a mass, you take communion. It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer. The listener has no choice. It is like hypnotism. So, now… What was in my mind when I wrote this? Hmm? A man is trying to reach his lover. His carriage has broken down in the rain. The wheels stuck in the mud. She will only wait so long. This… is the sound of his agitation. “This is how it is… ,” the music is saying. “Not how you are used to being. Not how you are used to thinking. But like this.”

Interestingly, Beethoven is often referred to as the bridge between the classical period and the romantic period of Western music. But here we find no Romantic notions of the nature of music…note Beethoven’s quick denouncement of Schindler’s assertion that “It exalts the soul.”

I felt a bit like a Schindler the other day when I had lunch with an art history professor here at Wheaton. However, this professor is exceedingly more gracious than Herr Beethoven ever was. In my conversation with him, my romantic notions became all too apparent as he set forth his own understanding of art (in the broad sense)…that it’s a conversation between the artist and her world, and at best our creations provide epiphanies (“with a little e”) as to the reality of God’s reconciling the world to himself in Christ. But we must not downplay the creatureliness of our artistic expressions, because after all, we are creatures. Listening to a Beethoven piece will not reveal to you the identity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but that does not negate its significance. We are a relational people, and to listen to Beethoven, to view a Renoir, to read Dostoevsky – in these things we enter into conversation with fellow creatures in our respective contexts. Or as Herman Melville would say, we are all sons of Adam. We are made in the image of God, and though we forgot it and turned our backs on him, he did not forget us.

A favorite scene from the movie: the deaf Beethoven presses the side of his face to the piano in order to ‘hear’ the vibrations as he plays the Moonlight Sonata.

Blame it on Aquinas class, blame it on my penchant for aesthetic loveliness, blame it on my affinity for the Patristics. Or better yet, blame it on my Radical Reformation upbringing in the Missionary Baptist Church (see post below this one for details). Whatever the case, I’ve always been intrigued by the Roman church. In this age where “church splits” have become a trademark of Protestantism, the unity of the Roman church is striking. I envy them for it.

In the recent history of my thought life, my interest in Catholicism was piqued when I stumbled upon the best television program out there today: Mother Angelica on EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network). What a woman. Most of the episodes feature Angelica’s musings upon the day’s Scripture reading. Sometimes she reads a verse, or even a half-verse, and pauses so as to put her two cents in. It’s absolutely charming and infinitely more edifying than all of those televangelists out there (whether of the hellfire insurance breed or the prosperity ‘gospel’ breed, they’re all the same in the end). In short, Mother Angelica loves Jesus Christ. Her candor and devotional anecdotes about His faithfulness have calmed me many a late night.

A few mornings ago, my dear friend Alison and I went to St. Michael Catholic Church in downtown Wheaton for a time of silent prayer in their chapel. At first we felt a little out of place, but the moment after crossing ourselves with the holy water, signifying the seal of the Holy Spirit and reminding us of our baptismal vows, we fell quiet and knelt on the two ‘prayer stools’ before the tiny altar. Sometimes there is a need to physically acknowledge our humble estate before the Lord, a time to enter into a space so filled with reverence that it seems you could reach out and touch it. For most of our time there we were alone, but near the end, a group of about 15 catholic school-children filed into the adjacent sanctuary to practice their Christmas play. Their little feet running down the aisles and into the pews were accompanied by loud whispering. The teacher’s remedy for the bustling? “Children, shhhhh! This is Jesus’ house!”

She’s right, you know. There are several significant theological differences between Catholics and Protestants, but who are we to orchestrate God’s presence? “Let the little children come to me,” our Lord said. On a Tuesday morning in a Roman Catholic church, I watched and listened as the boys and girls sang Away in a Manger and Happy Birthday (to Jesus) and Give Thanks, and nearly laughed with joy, remembering John Webster’s all-too-true declaration: “The Gospel will take care of itself.” These little ones, re-enacting the wondrous drama of the Incarnation, were preaching the Gospel anew to me, a twenty year old Protestant girl. And that is no small thing.

The Mourner’s Bench

There was a time when I was instructed to mistrust anyone who called herself a Christian but did not attend the right kind of church; that is, the Missionary Baptist kind of church. The kind of church where more than eighty members was nearly unheard of, where the mourner’s bench was the most important facet of the church building, where old time religion was properly preached and preserved in generations of sweat, tears, and shouts. That time is nearly a decade past now, but I lived it for more than a decade. Give me the signal and there I am, a seven year old in the pew of Landmark Missionary Baptist Church, listening as Sally, the sweet teenage girl with red hair and freckles, approaches me and does everything in her power to see whether I’m resisting the convicting power of the Holy Ghost, whether I’m resisting that walk up to the mourner’s bench.

What Sally didn’t know was that I had made a deal with God long before she walked over to me. In no way did I desire to be cajoled up to that altar to pray. I had witnessed too many frightened children and teenagers silently slide out of the pew and make that terrible walk to the mourner’s bench, the mother and father and various concerned believers gathering around the poor thing in the manner of a funeral procession. A lower percentage began crying incessantly the moment they stepped foot into the aisle and dashed to the altar, apparently being pursued by the sharp prod of the devil’s trident. The preacher liked these the most, and the rest of the church did, too. Usually this breed of mourner prayed more intensely, as if the quantity of tears was directly proportional to the realization of one’s sin. Most Sundays the altar was bereft of mourners, and as much as I distrusted the preacher, I always kind of felt sorry for the fellow. He preached hard, he shouted hard, and he certainly cried hard; but alas, all for nothing (or so it would seem). As people left the church house and shook his hand, they’d console him with “You planted so many seeds today, Brother Tim,” and “All in the Lord’s time.”

When the “Lord’s time” arrived on my heart soil, I probably did what Sally and the preacher and all those other church-folk denounced as “resisting the convicting power.” The Missionary Baptist Church holds that each person is accorded an age of accountability; that is, the first moment you understand the consequences of unbelief and therefore experience an overwhelming need to pray. To this day I do not remember my own age of accountability, and I wonder how many cradle Missionary Baptist children went to the altar at the exact moment. Indeed, some people got saved not at the altar but in the home.

I do remember the first time I knelt down and prayed to get saved. I was nine, it was Vacation Bible School at Ranny and Papa’s church, it was the front pew, it was the corner, it was the afternoon preaching session, it was our former pastor with a white hanky and a red face and cadence of old time religion in his voice. Incidentally, the mourner’s benches flanking the pulpit were filled to a gospel brim of children at various ages of accountability and the mostly female adult bible school leaders. “Barbara, do you feel the need to pray?” he asked. I nodded and sunk to the floor, the preacher moving on to the petrified kid in the pew behind mine. That day I had donned a rather short (though not scandalous) sundress, and I expended most of my efforts assuring that no one could see my underwear. There were lots of boys around, and indeed, many of them caught my pew-to-floor move and descended on me in one fell swoop. Even the unsaved kids came along my side for support. People knew I was the shy one, so I doubt any of them were surprised to find my mourning to be empty of tears. As much as I detested crying, I found myself begging God not for mercy and forgiveness, but for visible tears. By the believers’ estimations, it went like this: No tears, no God. I needed tears so that I would get saved, so that I would never have to make that dreadful walk to the altar. The tears did not come, so I resigned myself to praying for salvation – what novelty. Soon the surrounding shouting and sobs died down, soon I felt my grandmother whispering that it was time to go home, but if I really needed to keep praying then I could stay. We left. My prayers weren’t sincere enough. And so God didn’t save me that day.

+ + + + +

The next eight months went by as Sunday after Sunday I went to the altar at my home church. Sometimes I would go to the bathroom when the sermon was winding down, so I wouldn’t have to endure the obligation to honor my status as a seeker by answering the altar call. Still the tears would not come and still my soul remained unsaved, hanging over the precipice of damnation. At lunch my knees and elbows betrayed the signs of kneeling at the altar – indentations from my head resting facedown on the bench, the rest of my body on the floor in an elongated fetal position. I felt a strange comfort knowing that an older girl in the other local missionary Baptist church had been going to the altar for over a year. But at my church I was the only unbeliever who had arrived at the age of accountability. It was hard, and it was long. A long hardness, marked by the scratchy maroon weave of the altar material and a burning envy of my non-Missionary Baptist father who made a habit of staying on the road every Sunday.

Officially, I got saved on the night of April 10, 1997 at the age of ten. I told my mother and the preacher first, as they were by my side. It was a revival at Old Paths Missionary Baptist, and a few other unsaved souls had come to the altar with me. I announced the happy event just after the congregation began to sing “Somebody Touched Me.” Since it was a Saturday night, when they got to

It was on a Saturday somebody touched me
It was on a Saturday somebody touched me
It was on a Saturday somebody touched me
It must have been the hand of the Lord,

I got to stand up with all the others who got saved on a Saturday. Everyone was very excited, and they all came around to shake my hand and hug my neck and cry all over me. I smiled and thank you’d for minutes on end, until that older girl from the other congregation decided to pray at the altar, and all the saved folk made a pilgrimage to that side of the church house. I awkwardly joined in, this being a new role for me. It was such a relief to be out of the mourner’s bench spotlight. Soon after, I joined the church and got baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. I was a good Missionary Baptist girl who read only the King James Version of the Bible and felt sorry for people who had gone astray and joined another denomination – a lesser denomination, one further from the Truth.

+ + + + +

One Easter Sunday, Mom decided that she wanted us to worship as a family, and since a former pastor had already alienated Dad from the M.B.C., we drove downtown for a Love Thy Neighbor service in which a predominantly white Methodist church and a predominantly black Disciples of Christ church came together to celebrate the Resurrection. As far as I was concerned, it was a restored Eden. The choir members wore robes, there was an order of service, and though the Gospel was preached, there was no altar call. Even previous to that Easter, Mom had joined an inter-denominational Bible study. She made friends there who were more gracious and more learned in the Scriptures than most Missionary Baptist preachers combined. The Gardener was planting seeds. All in the Lord’s time.

And He blessed those seeds and caused them to spring out of the ground on a September Sunday when Mom toted my brother and me to a non-denominational church. Not unlike that Easter Sunday service downtown, the choir members wore robes, there was an order of service, and no altar call. Best of all, the sermon was not only Biblically sound, but also intelligent, humble, and theologically-informed. Dad came with us the following Sunday. We worshipped as a family, and for the first time I was able to use an NIV Bible and be charitable toward other denominations and engage with the sermon on an intellectual level. Suddenly names like Luther and Calvin and Edwards were no longer foreign to my ears; suddenly terms like mercy and atonement and justification carried a tangible weight that granted me a holistic glimpse into the mysteries of the faith. Suddenly, Jesus Christ was not just my Savior, but in truth: the Lord of my life – emotions and intellect.

+ + + + +

Whenever I hear the word Inquisition, I think not of fifteenth century Spain, but of twentieth century suburbia. In Hendersonville, we broke the ‘new church’ news to our former pastor and his family. Mom was the picture of grace as they hurled condemnations and insults at her over the kitchen table. I was in their daughter’s bedroom playing games. I could hear her parents shouting and crying, which came as no surprise. That was all they did at church, so it seemed logical enough that they’d do it at home, too.
“Are y’all going to a new church or something?” my friend Tiff asked.
“Yeah…” I replied.
“Oh, okay.”

+ + + + +

While I was still in the Missionary Baptist Church, I didn’t know what Presbyterian or Methodist or Episcopalian meant. The church leaders were too busy denouncing various practices of the Southern Baptist Convention that they had not the time for the other denominations. They sneered at the Billy Graham Crusades, because too many people were getting saved too quickly at those events. Today I’m a Presbyterian who graduated from an Episcopalian high school and who attends the same college Billy Graham attended. Karl Barth said that laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. I think the dear old theologian was on to something.

The school of divine grace reminds me each morning that there is no justification for bitterness, especially nine years removed from my early experiences in that peculiar church. I did hear the Gospel there, however muffled by the cacophony of rampant emotionalism. Indeed, as John Webster would have us remember, the Gospel will take care of itself. And someday, when the Eternal One calls my grandmother and grandfather into his presence, I will step foot into their Missionary Baptist Church and give thanks that God wills to make himself known in spite of ourselves, in spite of denominational rifts, in spite of the hermeneutics of fear that so drench those walls and tear-stained pews. For better or worse, thick Baptist blood runs through my veins. But I refuse to victimize myself or to claim some kind of irrefragable psychological trauma because I sat under their teaching for twelve or so years. On the other side of the family tree, I have plenty of Methodist and Episcopal blood to aid in easing various pains I endured from the Baptists. And in the end, only one Blood holds any claim upon us.

Who Am I?
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, June 1944

Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I would talk to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself,
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends and an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

from Letters & Papers From Prison: The Enlarged Edition, ed. Eberhard Bethge, p. 347.

The following is what I presented in my Aquinas class yesterday, to “introduce the day’s reading.” Sadly I didn’t have much time to throw this one together, but oh well. Such is life.

Secunda Secundae, Questions 6 & 7
The Cause of Faith and The Effect of Faith

With only two articles each, questions six and seven of the Secunda Secundae complete Aquinas’ conception of faith in a concise yet cohesive manner. Question Six, “The Cause of Faith,” addresses two issues: Whether faith is infused into man by God, and Whether unformed faith is a gift of God. Drawing upon readings of Augustine and Holy Scripture for the objections to Article One, Aquinas concentrates these objections on the assertion that faith is a thing acquired rather than a thing infused. As is not uncommon in the Summa, Aquinas simply cites Scripture (Ephesians 2:8-9) for the sed contra and begins the I answer with his trademark bifurcation of the issue at hand. Note well that approximately halfway through the I answer Thomas undermines the argument of objection two, long before he arrives at the reply to the objection. Discussing the twofold “cause of the believer’s assent to the things of faith,” Aquinas claims that the external cause, such as witnessing a miracle, is itself insufficient for faith. Rather, he explains, there must be an inward cause. Thus, his formal reply to the second point is simply a restatement of the argument he explores in more detail within the general I answer.

In addition, Article One finds Aquinas drawing upon the Pelagian heresy in order to disprove the objections. As we have seen throughout the Summa, Aquinas’ extensive reading of St. Augustine informs much of his theological arguments. No doubt he was well acquainted with Augustine’s dealings with the Pelagians and finds in this article an occasion to employ their theological error for the benefit of his own argument. Contra Pelagius and his followers, Aquinas qualifies the “inward cause” of faith as originating in God alone, quite apart from “man’s own free will” (p. 287). Faith requires the act of one’s will, but this is made possible solely through God’s grace in preparing the will, “in order that he may be raised to things which are above nature” (p. 287). The history of the post-Reformation Church is marked by countless Protestant critiques of the Roman Catholic “tendency” to fall into Semi-Pelagian or even Pelagian territory. How might a well-informed Catholic armed with the Summa (indeed, a frightening image) respond to these critiques?

In the second article of Q.6 Thomas affirms that unformed faith is a gift of God. Whereas the objections contend that all work of God must be perfect and complete, Aquinas answers by appealing to the concept of privation. By making a twofold distinction between the kinds of privation (that which is inherent to the nature of a thing vs. that which is added), he is then able to make the move toward upholding the claim in article one and previous questions that God is the cause of faith while simultaneously upholding the point of this article, namely, that unformed faith is a gift of God. In order to maintain the coherence of the article, Thomas makes a direct correlation between the first type of privation and unformed faith, so that no deformity can be attributed to God. In fact, Aquinas works out the implications of unformed faith, claiming that God has the prerogative to give faith to and yet withhold charity from someone, hence the use of the term “unformed.” My reading of this statement (reply to the third point, p. 289) brought to mind Thomas’ discussion of predestination in Q. 23 of part one. I would be interested to hear your views as to whether this is an appropriate link to a previous argument of the Summa.

The two articles in Q. 7 pertain to the effect of faith. I find it interesting that Thomas entitles the question “The Effect of Faith,” though clearly the presence of two articles would seem to occasion the title “The Effects of Faith.” Is there any significance to this observation? Did Thomas intend to correlate the fear and purification elements in order to reaffirm his constant referral to the “first truth” as being the formal object of faith?
Aquinas’ definition of fear as “the movement of the appetitive power” is at the heart of the I answer in article one. Having already made the delineation between formed and unformed faith, he notes that this delineation has implications for the resulting types of fear: that of filial and servile, respectively. In his reply to the second point, Thomas inserts hope as another effect of faith. As we shall see in upcoming readings, this brief reference to hope is a foreshadowing of an extended discussion in questions 17-21.

In article two of Q.7, Aquinas identifies purification of the heart as an effect of faith. At first glance, this move is surprising in light of his continual insistence upon the epistemological nature of faith, its formal object being the first truth. However, the sed contra appeals to Acts 15:9, where purification of the heart is said to be by faith. In usual fashion, Thomas elaborates upon this point rather extensively in the I answer, re-affirming the argument found in article three of Q. 4, that charity is the form of faith which also perfects faith.

Having covered the particulars of Aquinas’ arguments in questions six and seven, I would like to pose some concluding questions regarding the overall shape of Aquinas’ treatment of faith. What do you make of his decision to end his discussion on faith with its cause and effect? What informed his logic on this point, and does this logic reveal any noteworthy indicators of the larger scheme of his treatise on the theological virtues? Hopefully our considerations of these questions will prove fruitful not only for the present discussion but also for the impending discussions on hope.

Friends, this is some stellar musicianship. As any avid Alison fan would do, I stopped by Border’s on Tuesday afternoon to snag this one. I encourage you to do the same, or you could swing by amazon.com and order it there. Last I checked they’re offering free shipping, plus there’s a special “Making Of” video featured on the page.

Rumors of an upcoming Plant/Krauss tour are circulating throughout the web. I saw Alison + her band Union Station last June, and it was the best concert experience of my life. I’d love to see her again in a different musical setting (though not without her fiddle!).

Has anyone else purchased or listened to this album? Thoughts?

I have added a feature on this page that imports some songs I like (over on the right toolbar area), and you can listen to them as you read whatever I end up writing here. Unfortunately the song website does not list many of my favorite artists, so this is but a small sampling of my eclectic musical fascinations. Speaking of music, the title of my blog – Why It Matters – is taken from one of Sara Groves’ songs from her 2005 album Add to the Beauty. Highly recommended.

This weekend I am going home to Memphis for my fall break, so I should have some time to write some things on here, and perhaps import some of my personal essays, etc.

Thanks for stopping by. I’ll leave you with some Karl Barth (that name will be featured on this blog quite often – beware!). As a “budding” theologian, I find myself challenged anew each day by these words:

“While the theologian reads the newspaper, he cannot forget that he has just read Isaiah 40 or John 1 or Romans 8. He, at any rate, cannot suppress the knowledge that the Word of God speaks not only of an infinitely deeper need but also of an infinitely higher promise than the sum total of all the needs and promises characteristic of his time and place.”

(from Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, p.78)