Awe

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In the department of dogmatics Richard wrote Emmanuel, a treatise directed to the Jews,1453 and a work on the Incarnation, addressed to St. Bernard, 1454in which, following Augustine, he praised sin as a happy misdemeanor,—felix culpa,—inasmuch as it brought about the incarnation of the Redeemer.1455 His chief theological work was on the Trinity. Here he starts out by deriving all knowledge from experience, ratiocination, and faith. Dialectics are allowed full sweep in the attempt to join knowledge and faith. Richard condemned the pseudo-philosophers who leaned more on Aristotle than on Christ, and thought more of being regarded discoverers of new things than of asserting established truths.1456 Faith is set forth as the essential prerequisite of Christian knowledge. It is its starting-point and foundation.1457 The author proves the Trinity in the godhead from the idea of love, which demands different persons and just three because two persons, loving one another, will desire a third whom they shall love in common. Richard’s distinctively mystical writings won for him the name of the great contemplator, magnus contemplator. In the Preparation of the Mind for Contemplation or Benjamin the Less, the prolonged comparison is made between Leah and Rachel to which reference has already been made. The spiritual significance of their two nurses and their children is brought down to Benjamin. Richard even uses the bold language that Benjamin killed his mother that he might rise above natural reason.1458 In Benjamin the Greater, or the Grace of Contemplation, we have a discussion of the soul’s processes, as the soul rises "through self and above self" to the supernal vision of God. Richard insists upon the soul’s purification of itself from all sin as the condition of knowing God. The heart must be imbued with virtues, which Richard sets forth, before it can rise to the highest things, and he who would attempt to ascend to the height of knowledge must make it his first and chief study to know himself perfectly.1459 Richard repeats Hugo’s classification of cogitatio, meditatio, and contemplatio. Contemplation is the mind’s free, clear, and admiring vision of the wonders of divine wisdom.1460 It includes six stages, the last of them being "contemplation above and aside from reason," whereby the mysteries of the Trinity are apprehended. In transgressing the limits of itself, the soul may pass into a state of ecstasy, seeing visions, enjoying sublimated worship and inexpressible sweetness of experience. This is immediate communion with God. The third heaven, into which Paul was rapt, is above reason and to be reached only by a rapturous transport of the mind—per mentis excessum. It is "above reason and aside from reason."1461 Love is the impelling motive in the entire process of contemplation and "contemplation is a mountain which rises above all worldly philosophy." Aristotle did not find out any such thing, nor did Plato, nor did any of the company of the philosophers.1462

• From How God Became King (2012)

  A Different Way of Reading the Creed So what’s the alternative? What ideas might we “festoon” around this magnificent document, doing justice to the fact that those who framed it undoubtedly intended it to illuminate and to be illuminated by the scriptural witness, rather than closing it down? One could at this point write an entire systematic theology, and this is obviously not the place for that. Let me simply suggest a few pointers in what seems to me the biblical, canonical direction. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth . Here the wise worshipper will celebrate the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, knowing that this confession of him as “father” resonates back to the Jewish scriptures and that the delight in him as maker of all, heaven and earth, puts us on a level not only with the author of Genesis 1, but also with such majestic writings as Psalm 19 (“The heavens are telling the glory of God,” v. 1) and Isaiah 40 (“Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?” v. 26). This is, in particular, the Israelite and Jewish confession of faith, which carried with it an implicit social, cultural, and political edge: the gods of the nations are mere idols, but our God made the heavens (Ps. 96:5; Ps. 96 is one of the great psalms of creation and its renewal). Again and again the plight of Israel, threatened and oppressed by the nations, causes the psalmists to invoke God precisely as creator, as the one who, having made the whole world, is responsible for bringing it back to order when chaos threatens: O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?… How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever?… Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth. You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters…. Yours is the day, yours also the night; you established the luminaries and the sun. You have fixed all the bounds of the earth; you made summer and winter. Remember this, YHWH , how the enemy scoffs, and an impious people reviles your name . (Ps. 74:1, 10, 12–13, 16–18) That is a classic statement in which the pagan nations rage against Israel, but Israel appeals to God precisely as creator and, we note from verse 12, as king. Think back too to “father.” The primal statement of God’s intention to liberate Israel from Egypt came in the form of the fatherly call: “Israel is my firstborn son…. Let my son go, that he may worship me” (Exod. 4:22–23).

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Lots of the Judaeans read this notice, because the place where Jesus was crucified was close to the city. It was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. So the chief priests said to Pilate, “Don’t write ‘The king of the Jews’! Write that he said, ‘I am the king of the Jews’!” “What I’ve written,” replied Pilate, “I’ve written.” (19:19–22) The shaping of John’s gospel tells its own story. Jesus has, of course, been disclosed as “Messiah” at various points on the way—when talking with the Samaritan woman, for instance (4:26, 29); and there has been debate and discussion as to whether someone doing and saying the things he is doing and saying can really be the Messiah (7:26–27, 31, 41–42; 10:23; 12:34), with the authorities imposing a ban on the idea (9:22). But, for John, the “title” balances the recognition of Jesus’s kingship offered by his first disciples in chapter 1. The title is, of course, heavily ironic. Pilate knows that Jesus doesn’t conform to any meaning of the word “king” with which he is familiar. Jesus himself, as we saw, had redefined “kingship” in his conversation with the governor, insisting that his kind of kingship meant bearing witness to the truth (18:37). But now readers are invited to join together the two points, which Pilate was never going to do—the two points that, ironically, much Christian interpretation has also found very hard to combine. Readers are invited to join together not simply a Johannine “incarnational” theology with a Johannine “redemption” theology. Both of those are there, but the middle term between them is once again the evangelist’s kingdom theology. As Paul saw, the rulers of this age didn’t understand what they were doing when they crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). As the Irish-American New Testament scholar Dominic Crossan commented on Matthew’s story of Pilate’s wife having bad dreams about Jesus (Matt. 27:19), it was time for the Roman Empire to start having nightmares. Sending Jesus to his death was assisting in the enthronement of the one whose bringing of justice to the nations flowed out of his sovereign, healing love (John 13:1). The point for our present purpose is that, in all four gospels, readers are strongly urged to see Jesus’s death as explicitly “royal,” explicitly “messianic”—in other words, explicitly to do with the coming of the “kingdom.” Jesus has, all along, been announcing that God’s kingdom was coming. His followers might well have expected that this announcement would lead to a march on Jerusalem, where Jesus would do whatever it took to complete what he had begun. And they were right—but not at all in the sense they expected or wanted. That is what the evangelists are saying through this particular moment in the story. This is how the kingdom is to come, the kingdom of God, which Jesus has been announcing and, as Messiah, inaugurating.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  From now on, John is saying, when we think of Jesus in the ancient messianic category of “son of God,” we are to understand that this has been fused together with the idea of Jesus as the father’s incarnate Word. And we are to understand, a deeper mystery still, that this had been the intention from the beginning. The category of messiahship itself was a category established, as it were, for God’s own use. Though this whole passage has, of course, a characteristically Johannine depth and mystery, we should not think of the synoptics’ presentation of Jesus’s baptism as any less theologically profound. In them the baptism scene is dramatic and decisive. The heavenly announcement that Jesus is “my son, my beloved one,” the one with whom God is delighted, indicates for those with biblically attuned ears that Jesus is marked out as the king of Psalm 2 and the servant of Isaiah 42: I will tell of the decree of YHWH: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.... Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. (Ps. 2:7–10) Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.... He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Isa. 42:1–4) Jesus was baptized. All at once, as he came up out of the water, suddenly the heavens were opened, and he saw God’s spirit coming down like a dove and landing on him. Then there came a voice out of the heavens. “This is my son, my beloved one,” said the voice. “I am delighted with him.” (Matt. 3:16–17) Teachers and preachers often put these texts together, bringing out two main themes. First, the echo of Psalm 2 says that Jesus is the Messiah; this, frequently, is short-circuited to mean “the incarnate one.” Second, the echo of Isaiah 42, and with it of the whole Isaianic “servant” theme, says that Jesus is the “suffering servant.” The scriptural echoes of the baptism story thus serve the normal creedal points of incarnation and cross. As I have indicated, there is nothing wrong with this. It is fine as far as it goes. But the two passages in question will simply not allow us to ignore the kingdom theme, which is so prominent in each. Psalm 2 opens with the nations raging and fighting—raging, indeed, against the true God; and the enthronement of God’s “son” is the answer.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  For him, the phrase “God’s son” would normally have meant one person and one person only: Tiberius Caesar, son of the “divine” Augustus. That’s what the coins all said—including the coin they showed Jesus a few days before (12:15–17). This points ahead to our fourth sound speaker (Chapter 7). For Mark, all the signs are that he was thinking, as many other early Christians were in his day, of the term “God’s son” as having at least four meanings. First, in the Old Testament Israel itself is “God’s son” (Exod. 4:22; Jer. 31:9). Second—and this seems to be a primary meaning in the baptism story—it is the messiah, Israel’s anointed king, who is “God’s son” (2 Sam. 7:12–14; Pss. 2:7; 89:26–27). Third, as we just noted, “son of God” was a regular and primary title taken by the Roman emperors from Augustus on. But fourth, looming up behind and beyond all of these was the sense we find in the very earliest Christian documents that all of these pointed to a strange new reality: that, in Jesus, Israel’s God had become present, had become human, had come to live in the midst of his people, to set up his kingdom, to take upon himself the full horror of their plight, and to bring about his long-awaited new world. The phrase “son of God” was ready at hand to express that huge, evocative, frightening possibility, without leaving behind any of its other resonances. We can see this already going on in the writings of Paul. It is highly likely that Mark expected his first readers to have the same combination of themes in mind. Matthew and Luke: Seeing Jesus, Thinking God Once we learn, from Mark, how we might read the story of Jesus as the story of Israel’s God returning at last, we may find it easier to recognize the ways in which Matthew and Luke are doing something very similar. (If, as most scholars still think, they both used Mark as a source, this is of course the more natural.) We begin with Matthew . Matthew makes things very clear in the frame he creates for his story. Look first at the opening of the gospel, right after the genealogy, which we noted in the previous chapter. The angel tells Joseph that Mary’s child is to be called “Jesus,” because “he is the one who will save his people from their sins”; the name “Jesus” is here being interpreted as meaning “ YHWH saves.”

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The title “son of God” expresses both halves of this complex and delicately balanced picture. It was a title, as we have seen, both for Israel and for the anointed king. But it also, in John as in Paul, acquires the associations that John has opened up as a fresh possibility through his prologue. The prologue opens with the “Word” who was God, the one through whom all things were made (1:1, 3), but it closes by telling us that the “Word,” becoming flesh, enabled us to gaze upon his glory, “glory like that of the father’s only son” (1:14). The son, intimately close to the father as he is, has made him known, has “brought him to light” (1:18). From now on, John is saying, when we think of Jesus in the ancient messianic category of “son of God,” we are to understand that this has been fused together with the idea of Jesus as the father’s incarnate Word. And we are to understand, a deeper mystery still, that this had been the intention from the beginning. The category of messiahship itself was a category established, as it were, for God’s own use. Though this whole passage has, of course, a characteristically Johannine depth and mystery, we should not think of the synoptics’ presentation of Jesus’s baptism as any less theologically profound. In them the baptism scene is dramatic and decisive. The heavenly announcement that Jesus is “my son, my beloved one,” the one with whom God is delighted, indicates for those with biblically attuned ears that Jesus is marked out as the king of Psalm 2 and the servant of Isaiah 42: I will tell of the decree of YHWH: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession…. Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. (Ps. 2:7–10) Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations…. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Isa. 42:1–4) Jesus was baptized. All at once, as he came up out of the water, suddenly the heavens were opened, and he saw God’s spirit coming down like a dove and landing on him. Then there came a voice out of the heavens. “This is my son, my beloved one,” said the voice. “I am delighted with him.” (Matt. 3:16–17)

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The more you tell the story of Jesus and pray for his Spirit, the more you discover what the church should be doing in the present time. Because the gospels are the foundational charter for the church’s life, they must be stories primarily about Jesus; otherwise the church would be rooted in itself. Here we find, in fact, the mirror image of the Bultmannian position: unless the church’s life and mission is rooted in the historical accomplishment of Jesus, all Christian life would be either arrogance or folly, or both. (As I write this paragraph, an e-mail comes in from Christian friends working among refugees and trafficked women in one of the toughest corners of the world. Why do we do this unless it’s the work of Jesus?) But perhaps the most mysterious and powerful thing about the way the gospels are written is the way they end. Or do they? The End Is the Beginning The gospels, in fact, do not really “end” in the way many stories do. Or rather, their ending is framed as, in a sense, a new beginning. Even if we suppose (as I do not) that Mark meant his gospel to end with the women saying “nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” (16:8, where our best manuscripts now break off), there are plenty of hints earlier in the story that this would just be the start of a whole new phase of life and work for Jesus’s disciples. Jesus has, after all, already declared that the gospel of the kingdom must be announced to all the nations (13:10) and has repeated the point in relation to the woman who anointed him with ointment in Bethany: Jesus was in Bethany, at the house of Simon (known as “the Leper”). While he was at table, a woman came up with an alabaster pot containing extremely valuable ointment made of pure spikenard. She broke the pot and poured the ointment on Jesus’s head. Some of the people there grumbled to one another. “What’s the point of wasting the ointment?” they asked. “That ointment could have been sold for three hundred dinars, and given to the poor. ” And they were angry with her. “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why make trouble for her? She has done a wonderful thing for me. You have the poor with you always; you can help them whenever you want to. But you won’t always have me. “She has played her part. She has anointed my body for its burial, ahead of time. I’m telling you the truth: wherever the message is announced in all the world, the story of what she has just done will be told. That will be her memorial.” (14:3–9) Clearly Mark did not envisage that 16:8 would be the real and final “end” to the story.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  This reinforces the warning we gave earlier, that it is possible to state the doctrine of Jesus’s “divinity” in such a way as to let it float loose from both kingdom and cross, but this is what the New Testament never does. The “God” who has become human in Jesus is the God who, as he had always promised, was returning to claim his sovereignty over the whole world (note the “other sheep” in John 10:16) and would do so by himself sharing the pain and suffering of his people, “laying down his life for the sheep.” It is all too possible to “believe in the divinity of Jesus” and to couple this with an escapist view of salvation (“Jesus is God and came to snatch us away from this world”) in a way that may preserve an outward form of “Christian orthodoxy,” but that has left out the heart of the matter. God is the creator and redeemer of the world, and Jesus’s launch of the kingdom—God’s worldwide sovereignty on earth as in heaven—is the central aim of his mission, the thing for which he lived and died and rose again. How can we even begin to understand this? Perhaps we should say that, with the hindsight the evangelists offer us, God called Israel to be the means of rescuing the world, so that he might himself alone rescue the world by becoming Israel in the person of its representative Messiah. This explains the place of David in the story. He is, in some respects at least, the man after God’s own heart, the man whose Temple-building son would be God’s own son, as God says to David through the prophet Nathan: “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.” (2 Sam. 7:12–14) This text, highlighted elsewhere in first-century Judaism as well, was very important for the early Christians as they struggled to understand the enormous thing that had just happened in their midst. There is a very tight nexus between God, David, the Temple—and the purposes of establishing the kingdom. The early Christians also saw that in the word “I will raise up” there was a hint of something else: resurrection. This rich, dense combination of themes reappears in a passage we looked at a moment ago, namely, Isaiah 53. In the previous section of the book, the prophet has invoked “the arm of YHWH” as a way of talking about YHWH himself, coming in person to do what he had promised, namely, to defeat the enemy and rescue his people: Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of YHWH!

• From How God Became King (2012)

  In each—and each is decisive as a marker for the writers’ meaning—we see exactly the combination of kingdom and cross that has proved so elusive in the history of interpretation. Baptism and Kingdom John doesn’t mention Jesus’s own baptism, but he does describe, through the mouth of John the Baptist, the Spirit descending and remaining on Jesus. Readers hear of this in the context of discovering, in John 1, that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah and also the Lamb of God who takes away the world’s sin: “Look!” said John. “There’s God’s lamb! He’s the one who takes away the world’s sin! He’s the one I was speaking about when I said, ‘There’s a man coming after me who ranks ahead of me, because he was before me!’ I didn’t know who it would be, but this was the reason I came to baptize with water—so that he could be revealed to Israel.” So John gave this evidence: “I saw the spirit coming down like a dove out of heaven and remaining on him. I didn’t know who it would be; but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘When you see the spirit coming down and resting on someone, that’s the person who will baptize with the holy spirit.’ Well, that’s what I saw, and I’ve given you my evidence: he is the son of God.” (1:29–34 ) All this is part of the larger impact of John’s first chapter, which ends with the first disciples recognizing Jesus as Messiah (1:41, 45, 49). This, as much as anything, is where we need the first speaker (the Messiah as the climax of Israel’s story) not to get drowned out by the second one (Jesus as God incarnate). The two belong together. Jesus has not come simply as a “superman” figure, a “divine hero” parachuted into the world to sort out the mess. He has come—and the gospel story only makes sense if we take this very seriously—as the one who will embody Israel’s ultimate vocation in himself. The title “son of God” expresses both halves of this complex and delicately balanced picture. It was a title, as we have seen, both for Israel and for the anointed king.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Clear a straight path for him!” (1:2–3) This is how it happened. Around that time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John in the river Jordan. That very moment, as he was getting out of the water, he saw the heavens open, and the spirit coming down like a dove onto him. Then there came a voice, out of the heavens: “You are my son! You are the one I love! You make me very glad.” (1:9–11 ) Mark picks up, here and throughout his gospel, a major theme from the ancient Hebrew scriptures: that when Israel’s God acts in fulfillment of his ancient promises, he will do so in dramatic and radically new ways. Here, to be sure, is a paradox we meet throughout the New Testament: God acts completely unexpectedly—as he always said he would. Just because the new events are able to be seen as the fulfillment of ancient prophecy (and Mark, like the other evangelists, is clear that this is the only right way to see them), that doesn’t mean that one can see a smooth, easy line from the ancient texts to the modern fulfillment. On the contrary, what is being fulfilled is precisely the promise of drastic, unexpected, and perhaps even unwelcome judgment and mercy. But our proper emphasis on this radical, new breaking in of God’s action in Jesus ought not to diminish the sense that, in Mark, this new thing that God is doing is the new thing he had always promised. “The time is fulfilled!” says Jesus in Mark 1:15. The bridegroom has arrived at last for the wedding party (2:19). The fresh seed is at last being sown, even though plenty of it will go to waste, because most of the hearers are in no condition to receive it (4:1–20). Mark allows the sequence of dramatic events to build up to the central moment in which Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah (8:29) and witnesses this being dramatically confirmed in the transfiguration (9:2–7). Woven into this story, as we shall see in more detail, is the dark strand that warns of Jesus’s impending death; yet this too is seen as part of the shocking and unexpected fulfillment of scriptural promises (10:45, alluding to Dan. 7 and Isa. 53). Jesus is fulfilling the story of Israel, even though this requires readers to understand Israel’s story in a new way. Luke: The Scriptures Must Be Fulfille d That the scriptures must be fulfilled is precisely the point made by Luke at key points in his gospel.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The bishop of Norwich preached a sermon on the occasion and, at a later date, Robert Grosseteste preached another in which he defended the genuineness of the relic, giving a memorable exhibition of scholastic ingenuity.2049 The true cross was found more than once and fragments of it were numerous, so numerous that the fiction had to be invented that the true cross had the singular property of multiplying itself indefinitely. A choice must be made between the stories. The first Crusaders beheld the cross in Jerusalem. Richard I., during the Third Crusade, was directed to a piece of it by an aged man, the abbot of St. Elie, who had buried it in the ground and refused to deliver it up to Saladin, even though that prince put him in bonds to force him to do so. Richard and the army kissed it with pious devotion.2050 Among the objects which the abbot, Martin, secured in Constantinople were a piece of the true cross and a drop of the Lord’s blood. The true cross, however, was still entire, and in 1241 it reached Paris. It had originally been bought by the Venetians from the king of Jerusalem for £20,000 and was purchased from the Emperor Baldwin by Louis IX. The relic was received with great ceremony and carried into the French capital by the king, with feet and head bare, and accompanied by his mother, Blanche, the queen, the king’s brothers, and a great concourse of nobles and clergy.2051 The crown of thorns was carried in the same procession. At a later time these relics were placed in the new and beautiful chapel which Louis built, a supposed holy coat of Christ, the iron head of the lance which pierced his side, and the sponge offered to him on the cross, together with other relics. The English chronicler’s enthusiasm for this event seems not to have been in the least dampened by the fact that the English abbey of Bromholm also possessed the true cross. It reached England in 1247, through a monk who had found it among the effects of the Emperor Baldwin, after he had fallen in

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  When Julius came to die, he was not yet 70. No man of his time had been an actor in so many stirring scenes. On his death-bed he called for Paris de Grassis, his master of ceremonies, and reminded him how little respect had been paid to the bodies of deceased popes within his recollection. Some of them had been left indecently nude. He then made him promise to see to it that he should have decent care and burial.840 The cardinals were summoned. The dying pontiff addressed them first in Latin, and implored them to avoid all simony in the coming election, and reminded them that it was for them and not for the council to choose his successor. He pardoned the schismatic cardinals, but excluded them from the conclave to follow his death. And then, as if to emphasize the tie of birth, he changed to Italian and besought them to confirm his nephew, the duke of Urbino, in the possession of Pesaro, and then he bade them farewell. A last remedy, fluid gold, was administered, but in vain. He died Feb. 20, 1513.841 The scenes which ensued were very different from those which followed upon the death of Alexander VI. A sense of awe and reverence filled the city. The dead pontiff was looked upon as a patriot, and his services to civil order in Rome and its glory counterbalanced his deficiencies as a priest of God.842 It was of vast profit that the Vatican had been free from the domestic scandals which had filled it so long. From a worldly standpoint, Julius had exalted the papal throne to the eminence of the national thrones of Europe. In the terrific convulsion which Luther’s onslaughts produced, the institution of the papacy might have fallen in ruins had not Julius re-established it by force of arms. But in vain will the student look for signs that Julius II. had any intimation of the new religious reforms which the times called for and Luther began. What measures this pope, strong in will and bold in execution, might have employed if the movement in the North had begun in his day, no one can surmise. The monk of Erfurt walked the streets of Rome during this pontificate for the first and only time. While Luther was ascending the scala santa on his knees and running about to the churches, wishing his parents were in purgatory that he might pray them out, Julius was having perfected a magnificently jewelled tiara costing 200,000 ducats, which he put on for the first time on the anniversary of his coronation, 1511. These two men, both of humble beginnings, would have been more a match for each other than Luther and Julius’ successor, the Medici, the man of luxurious culture.843 Under Julius II. the papal finances flourished. Great as were the expenditures of his campaigns, he left plate and coin estimated to be worth 400,000 ducats.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The arrival of some of Christ’s blood in England, Oct. 13, 1247, was solemnized by royalty and furnishes one of the strange and picturesque religious scenes of English mediaeval history. The detailed description of Matthew Paris speaks of it as "a holy benefit from heaven."2048 Its genuineness was vouched for by the Masters of the Templars and the Hospitallers, and by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem, and the archbishops and other prelates of the Holy Land. After fasting and keeping watch the night before, the king, Henry III., accompanied by the priests of London in full canonicals and with tapers burning, carried the vase containing the holy liquid from St. Paul’s to Westminster, and made a circuit of the church, the palace, and the king’s own apartments. The king proceeded on foot, holding the sacred vessel above his head. The bishop of Norwich preached a sermon on the occasion and, at a later date, Robert Grosseteste preached another in which he defended the genuineness of the relic, giving a memorable exhibition of scholastic ingenuity.2049 The true cross was found more than once and fragments of it were numerous, so numerous that the fiction had to be invented that the true cross had the singular property of multiplying itself indefinitely. A choice must be made between the stories. The first Crusaders beheld the cross in Jerusalem. Richard I., during the Third Crusade, was directed to a piece of it by an aged man, the abbot of St. Elie, who had buried it in the ground and refused to deliver it up to Saladin, even though that prince put him in bonds to force him to do so. Richard and the army kissed it with pious devotion.2050 Among the objects which the abbot, Martin, secured in Constantinople were a piece of the true cross and a drop of the Lord’s blood. The true cross, however, was still entire, and in 1241 it reached Paris. It had originally been bought by the Venetians from the king of Jerusalem for £20,000 and was purchased from the Emperor Baldwin by Louis IX. The relic was received with great ceremony and carried into the French capital by the king, with feet and head bare, and accompanied by his mother, Blanche, the queen, the king’s brothers, and a great concourse of nobles and clergy.2051 The crown of thorns was carried in the same procession. At a later time these relics were placed in the new and beautiful chapel which Louis built, a supposed holy coat of Christ, the iron head of the lance which pierced his side, and the sponge offered to him on the cross, together with other relics.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Now, if we confine ourselves to these five books, which the most exacting and rigorous criticism admits to be apostolic—the four Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse—they alone are sufficient to establish the foundation of historical faith; for they confirm by direct statement or allusion every important fact and doctrine in the gospel history, without referring to the written Gospels. The memory and personal experience of the writers—Paul and John—goes back to the vision of Damascus, to the scenes of the Resurrection and Crucifixion, and the first call of the disciples on the banks of the Jordan and the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Criticism must first reason Paul and John out of history, or deny that they ever wrote a line, before it can expect sensible men to surrender a single chapter of the Gospels. Strong as the external evidence is, the internal evidence of the truth and credibility of the apostolic writings is still stronger, and may be felt to this day by the unlearned as well as the scholar. They widely differ in style and spirit from all post-apostolic productions, and occupy a conspicuous isolation even among the best of books. This position they have occupied for eighteen centuries among the most civilized nations of the globe; and from this position they are not likely to be deposed. We must interpret persons and events not only by themselves, but also in the light of subsequent history. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Christianity can stand this test better than any other religion, and better than any system of philosophy. Taking our position at the close of the apostolic age, and looking back to its fountain-head and forward to succeeding generations, we cannot but be amazed

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Andrew, the first called of the Twelve, hailed with his blessing long beforehand the destined introduction of Christianity into our country. Ascending up and penetrating by the Dniepr into the deserts of Scythia, he planted the first cross on the hills of Kieff, and ’See you,’ said he to his disciples, ’those hills? On those hills shall shine the light of divine grace. There shall be here a great city, and God shall have in it many churches to His name.’ Such are the words of the holy Nestor that point from whence Christian Russia has sprung." This tradition is an expansion of the report that Andrew labored and died a martyr in Scythia,134 and nothing more. In the ninth century the Russian tribes, inhabiting the Eastern part of Europe, were gathered together under the rule of Ruric, a Varangian prince,135 who from the coasts of the Baltic penetrated into the centre of the present Russia, and was voluntarily accepted, if not actually chosen by the tribes as their chief. He is regarded as the founder of the Russian empire, A.D. 862, which in 1862 celebrated its millennial anniversary. About the same time or a little later the Russians became somewhat acquainted with Christianity through their connections with the Byzantine empire. The Eastern church, however, never developed any great missionary activity, and when Photius, the patriarch of Constantinople, in his circular letter against the Roman see, speaks of the Russians as already converted at his time (867), a few years after the founding of the empire, he certainly exaggerates. When, in 945, peace was concluded between the Russian grand-duke, Igor, and the Byzantine emperor, some of the Russian soldiers took the oath in the name of Christ, but by far the greatest number swore by Perun, the old Russian god. In Kieff, on the Dniepr, the capital of the Russian realm, there was at that time a Christian church, dedicated to Elijah, and in 955 the grand-duchess, Olga, went to Constantinople and was baptized. She did not succeed, however, in persuading her son, Svatoslav, to embrace the Christian faith. The progress of Christianity among the Russians was slow until the grand-duke Vladimir (980–1015), a grandson of Olga, and revered as Isapostolos ("Equal to an Apostle") with one sweep established it as the religion of the country. The narrative of this event by Nestor is very dramatic. Envoys from the Greek and the Roman churches, from the Mohammedans and the Jews (settled among the Chazares) came to Vladimir to persuade him to leave his old gods. He hesitated and did not know which of the new religions he should choose. Finally he determined to send wise men from among his own people to the various places to investigate the matter. The envoys were so powerfully impressed by a picture of the last judgment and by the service in the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, that the question at once was settled in favor of the religion of the Byzantine court.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His Madonnas represent the perfection of human loveliness and purity. In the Madonna di San Sisto at Dresden, so called because Sixtus IV. is introduced into the picture, the eye is divided between the sad yet half-jubilant face of the Virgin Mother, the contemplative gaze of the cherubs and the pensive and sympathetic expression of the divine child. Grimm says, Raphael’s Madonnas are not Italian faces but women who are lifted above national characteristics. The Madonnas of da Vinci, Correggio, Titian, Murillo and Rubens contain the features of the nationality to which these painters belonged. Raphael alone has been able to give us feminine beauty which belongs to the European type as such.1030 The last, the greatest, and the purest of Raphael’s works is the Transfiguration in the Vatican. While engaged on it, he died, on Good Friday, his birthday. It was suspended over his coffin and carried to the church of the Pantheon, where his remains repose in his chosen spot near those of his betrothed bride, Maria di Bibbiena. In that picture we behold the divinest figure that ever appeared on earth, soaring high in the air, in garments of transparent light, and with arms outspread, adored by Moses on the right hand and by Elijah on the left, who represent the Old Covenant of law and promise. The three favorite disciples are lying on the ground, unable to face the dazzling splendor from heaven. Beneath this celestial scene we see, in striking contrast, the epileptic boy with rolling eyes, distorted features, and spasmodic limbs, held by his agonized father and supported by his sister; while the mother imploringly appeals to the nine disciples who, in their helplessness, twitted by scribes, point up to the mountain where Jesus had gone. In connecting the two scenes, the painter followed the narrative of the Gospels, Matt. xvii. 1–14; Mark ix. 2–14; Luke ix. 28–37. The connection is being continually repeated in Christian experience. Descending from the Mount of Transfiguration, we are confronted with the misery of earth and, helpless in human strength, we look to heaven as the only source of help. Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. Michelangelo Buonarroti was 10 years older than Raphael, and survived him 44 years. He drew the inspiration for his sculptures and pictures from the Old Testament, from Dante and from Savonarola. He praised Dante in two sublime sonnets and heard Savonarola’s thrilling sermons against wickedness and vice, and witnessed his martyrdom. Vasari and Condivi both bear witness to his spotless morality. He deplored the corruptions of the papal court. For Rome still slays and sells Christ at the court, Where paths are closed to virtue’s fair increase.1031 The artist’s works have colossal proportions, and refuse to be judged by ordinary rules. They are divided between painting, as the frescos in the Sistine chapel of St. Peter’s, architecture as in St. Peter’s dome, and works of statuary, as Moses in Rome and David in Florence. His Pietà in St.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Daniel has a dream of four monsters trampling the earth in great wickedness and violence. Then a court scene develops in heaven: “Thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne” (7:9). This is clearly God himself, calling the world to account at last. The last great monster speaks its final arrogant words and is then put to death. Then something quite different takes place: As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being [Aramaic kebar enash, “like a son of man”] coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One [Aramaic ‘atiq yomaya, “Ancient of Days”] and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship [Aramaic malkutheh] is one that shall never be destroyed. (7:13–14) Daniel, as is common in such literature, asks an attendant to interpret the vision. This is the first response: As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever. (7:17–18) It is already clear. As regularly in “apocalyptic” writing, the elements of the vision are symbolic and need decoding. The monsters represent human empires, but the “one like a son of man” represents Israel, or at least the righteous within Israel. They have suffered long under the rule of the monsters, but they are to be rescued—and not only rescued, but given sovereignty over the world. Then Daniel, still curious, asks his question again, describing the crucial element in the scene once more: As I looked, this horn made war with the holy ones and was prevailing over them, until the Ancient One came; then judgment was given for the holy ones of the Most High, and the time arrived when the holy ones gained possession of the kingdom. (7:21–22) This makes it even clearer. It is indeed a court scene, with the “holy ones”—God’s true people—in the position of vindicated defendant, while the “horn”—the final king of the fourth great empire—is condemned. What is most interesting here, for the secure interpretation of the whole passage as it stands, is that in repeating his description of the scene Daniel does not speak, this time, of “the coming of the son of man” to the “Ancient One,” but already interprets that as “the holy ones gaining possession of the kingdom.” We are then prepared for the restated and amplified interpretation at the end of the chapter: Then the court shall sit in judgment, and [the horn’s] dominion shall be taken away, to be consumed and totally destroyed.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Perhaps the most remarkable case related by the chronicler of Heisterbach is that of the bloody host of St. Trond, Belgium. This he had himself seen, and he speaks of it as a miracle which should be recorded for the benefit of many after generations. In 1223 a woman in Harbais, in the diocese of Liège, kissed her lover with the host in her mouth, in the hope that it would inflame his love for her. She then found she could not swallow the host and carefully wrapped it up in a napkin. In her agony, she finally revealed her experience to a priest who called in the bishop of Livland who happened to be in the town. Together they went to the place where the host was concealed and lo! there were three drops of fresh blood on the cloth. The abbot of Trond was called in and it was then found that half of the host was flesh and half bread. The bishop thought so highly of the relic that he attempted to carry off two of the drops of blood, but sixty armed men interfered. The sacred blood was then put in a vase and deposited among the relics of the church of St. Trond.1708 This case was fully believed by Caesar, and he expresses no doubt about the many other cases he reports. Another case related by Etienne of Bourbon1709 is of a farmer who, wanting to be rich, followed the advice of a friend and placed the host in one of his beehives. The bees with great reverence made a miniature church, containing an altar, on which they placed the sacred morsel. All the bees from the neighborhood were attracted and sang beautiful melodies. The rustic went out, expecting to find the hives overflowing with honey but, to his amazement, found them all empty except the one in which the host had been deposited. The bees attacked him fiercely. He repaired to the priest, who, after consulting with the bishop, went in procession to the hive and found the miniature church with the altar and carried it back to the village church while the bees, singing songs, flew away. These stories, which might be greatly multiplied, attest the profound veneration in which the host was held and the crude superstitions which grew up around it in the convent and among the people. The simple and edifying communion meal of the New Testament was set aside by mediaeval theology and practice for an unreasonable ecclesiastical prodigy. § 117. Penance and Indulgences.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The only difference is that Luke more clearly distinguishes the two events by dividing the prophetical discourses and assigning them to different occasions (Luke 17:20–37 and 21:5–33); and here, as in other cases, he is probably more exact and in harmony with several hints of our Lord that a considerable interval must elapse between the catastrophe of Jerusalem and the final catastrophe of the world. Place of Composition. The third Gospel gives no hint as to the place of composition. Ancient tradition is uncertain, and modern critics are divided between Greece,1031 Alexandria,1032 Ephesus,1033 Caesarea, 1034 Rome.1035 It was probably written in sections during the longer residence of the author at Philippi, Caesarea, and Rome, but we cannot tell where it was completed and published.1036 § 83. John. See Literature on John, § 40, of this vol.; Life and Character of John, §§ 41–43, of this vol.; Theology of John, § 72, pp. 549 sqq. The best comes last. The fourth Gospel is the Gospel of Gospels, the holy of holies in the New Testament. The favorite disciple and bosom friend of Christ, the protector of his mother, the survivor of the apostolic age was pre-eminently qualified by nature and grace to give to the church the inside view of that most wonderful person that ever walked on earth. In his early youth he had absorbed the deepest words of his Master, and treasured them in a faithful heart; in extreme old age, yet with the fire and vigor of manhood, he reproduced them under the influence of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him and led him, as well as the other disciples, into "the whole truth." His Gospel is the golden sunset of the age of inspiration, and sheds its lustre into the second and all succeeding centuries of the church. It was written at Ephesus when Jerusalem lay in ruins, when the church had finally separated from the synagogue, when "the Jews" and the Christians were two distinct races, when Jewish and Gentile believers had melted into a homogeneous Christian community, a little band in a hostile world, yet strong in faith, full of hope and joy, and certain of victory. For a satisfactory discussion of the difficult problems involved in this Gospel and its striking contrast with the Synoptic Gospels, we must keep in view the fact that Christ communed with the apostles after as well as before his visible departure, and spoke to them through that "other Advocate" whom he sent to them from the Father, and who brought to remembrance all things he had said unto them.1037 Here lies the guarantee of the truthfulness of a picture which no human artist could have drawn without divine inspiration. Under any other view the fourth Gospel, and indeed the whole New Testament, becomes the strangest enigma in the history of literature and incapable of any rational solution. John and the Synoptists.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The motto of his policy is well symbolized in his military standard with the inscription: "Hoc signo vinces."58 What a contrast between Nero, the first imperial persecutor, riding in a chariot among Christian martyrs as burning torches in his gardens, and Constantine, seated in the Council of Nicaea among three hundred and eighteen bishops (some of whom—as the blinded Confessor Paphnutius, Paul of Neocaesarea, and the ascetics from Upper Egypt clothed in wild raiment—wore the insignia of torture on their maimed and crippled bodies), and giving the highest sanction of civil authority to the decree of the eternal deity of the once crucified Jesus of Nazareth! Such a revolution the world has never seen before or since, except the silent, spiritual, and moral reformation wrought by Christianity itself at its introduction in the first, and at its revival in the sixteenth century.