Hope

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 In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  That is not only far earlier than Virgil’s Eclogue 4; it may well be its indirect source. But Isaiah’s animal-to-animal and animal-to-human serenity is prefaced by human-to-human peace. Those preceding verses are but the second half of a prophetic hope whose first half in 11:1–5 imagines a perfect ruler even before that perfect world in 11:6–9. This king will be both ideal ruler and Davidic heir, because “with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth” (11:4). An ideal world demands an ideal ruler. The utopian dream of a perfect earth had three standard and intertwined components: a physical or pastoral world of unlabored fertility, a feral or animal world of vegetarian harmony, and a social or human world of warless peace. Only those last two elements are present in Isaiah 11:1–9, but all three are present, for example, in Sibylline Oracles 3, from Egyptian Judaism between 163 and 145 B.C.E. First, “the all-bearing earth will give the most excellent unlimited fruit to mortals, of grain, wine, and oil” (744–45). Next, based on the above Isaian vision, “wolves and lambs will eat grass together in the mountains” as God “will make the beasts on earth harmless” and “serpents and asps will sleep with babies and will not harm them, for the hand of God will be upon them” (788, 793–95). Finally, There will be no sword on earth or din of battle, and the earth will no longer be shaken, groaning deeply. There will no longer be war…but there will be great peace throughout the whole earth…. Prophets of the great God will take away the sword for they themselves are judges of men and righteous kings. There will also be just wealth among men, for this is the judgment and dominion of the great God. (751–55, 781–84) Furthermore, Israel’s utopian eschatology could be articulated with or without an apocalypsis, or revelation, of its permanent content in heaven or its imminent advent on earth and with or without a messianic protagonist, a transcendental figure through whom the Golden Age would arrive. But here the alternatives multiply. God could also do it without any such help; God alone could do it directly and immediately. And, if there were such a Messiah, it could be an angel or a human, and, if human, it could be a king, a priest, or a prophet. Or some combination of those preceding options. There were even Jews, within Judaism’s long and varied tradition, who could proclaim pagan rulers as God’s Messiah: the Persian monarch Cyrus, by Isaiah (44:28a; 45:1, 13) in 539–530 B.C.E.; the Egyptian pharaoh Neos Philometor, by the Jewish Sibylline Oracles (3:652–56) in 163–145 B.C.E.; or even the Roman emperor Vespasian, by Josephus in his Jewish War (6:312–13) in the 70s C.E.

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

  It may be more useful to the church than an unthinking and unreasoning orthodoxy. One of the ablest and purest sceptical critics of the century (DeWette) made the sad, but honorable confession: "I lived in times of doubt and strife, When childlike faith was forced to yield; I struggled to the end of life, Alas! I did not gain the field." But he did gain the field, after all, at last; for a few months before his death he wrote and published this significant sentence: "I know that in no other name can salvation be found, than in the name of Jesus Christ the Crucified, and there is nothing higher for mankind than the divine humanity (Gottmenschheit) realized in him, and the kingdom of God planted by him." Blessed are those that seek the truth, for they shall find it. The critical and historical rationalism which was born and matured in this century in the land of Luther, and has spread in Switzerland, France, Holland, England, Scotland, and America, surpasses in depth and breadth of learning, as well as in earnestness of spirit, all older forms of infidelity and heresy. It is not superficial and frivolous, as the rationalism of the eighteenth century; it is not indifferent to truth, but intensely interested in ascertaining the real facts, and tracing the origin and development of Christianity, as a great historical phenomenon. But it arrogantly claims to be the criticism par excellence, as the Gnosticism of the ancient church pretended to have the monopoly of knowledge. There is a historical, conservative, and constructive criticism, as well as an unhistorical, radical, and destructive criticism; and the former must win the fight as sure as God’s truth will outlast all error. So there is a believing and Christian Gnosticism as well as an unbelieving and anti- (or pseudo-) Christian Gnosticism. The negative criticism of the present generation has concentrated its forces upon the life of Christ and the apostolic age, and spent an astonishing amount of patient research upon the minutest details of its history. And its labors have not been in vain; on the contrary, it has done a vast amount of good, as well as evil. Its strength lies in the investigation of the human and literary aspect of the Bible; its weakness in the ignoring of its divine and spiritual character. It forms thus the very antipode of the older orthodoxy, which so overstrained the theory of inspiration as to reduce the human agency to the mechanism of the pen. We must look at both aspects. The Bible is the Word of God and the word of holy men of old. It is a revelation of man, as well as of God.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  If you are left profoundly hopeless by your present world of time and place you can go, at least in imagination, to some ecstatically ideal place or to some rhapsodically perfect time. The verbal options are utopia (“no place”), putting the emphasis on ending present place, or eschaton (“last thing”), putting the emphasis on ending present time. And, of course, you can mix and match to your heart’s content or your mind’s limit. If somebody receives a special divine revelation about the precise place or imminent advent of this Golden World, the message is termed an apocalyptic (Greek, “revelatory”) utopia or eschaton. Paul stood astride the line between Judaism and paganism, between Jewish covenantal eschatology and Roman imperial eschatology, between Christian and Augustan utopian visions, each announcing not just the imminent advent of the Golden Age, but proclaiming that it had already begun. It is pointless and inaccurate to exalt Jewish utopianism in its most ideal form against Roman utopianism in its most brutal practice. On the one hand, each tradition can imagine human or divine savagery in establishing that Golden Age. On the other, although they agree closely in imagining the physical and animal world brought to final perfection, they differ profoundly in imagining the social world in its eschatological consummation. That is not a difference between the bad Romans and the good Jews, but between the conquering Romans and the conquered Jews. It is fair to say that, as we saw in Chapter 2, the Roman eschaton was peace through victory while the Jewish utopia was peace through justice. A shalom from the heart of the Jewish tradition opposed a pax from the core of the Roman Empire. Here are two examples from each tradition intended not only to lay out options but also to assess alternatives. Paradise Gained or Paradise Lost AN ESCHATOLOGICAL BIRTH. Virgil’s Eclogue 4 is the voice of ecstatic hope written in the glow of October 40 B.C.E., when Antony married Octavian’s sister Octavia and permanent peace seemed possible. It imagines their soon-to-be-born child (male, of course) growing to adulthood even as the wheel of time brought round once more the Golden Age to Italy and all the world. And in your consulship, Pollio, yes, yours, shall this glorious age begin, and the mighty months commence their march; under your sway any lingering traces of our guilt shall become void and release the earth from its continual dread. He shall have the gift of divine life, shall see heroes mingled with gods, and shall himself be seen by them, and shall rule the world to which his father’s prowess brought peace. (11–17)

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I picture myself shifting shapes, molting skin, digging deeply inside myself to unearth the person who was in there all along, but so afraid of not getting things right that she was willing to bury herself until she was nearly impossible to find. As I groped my way through the dark months that followed my learning of Michael’s affair, I fought with the child in me who wanted back the precious item that had been so unceremoniously ripped away, who questioned if I was willing to walk away from Michael, to give up on the notion of the ideal family I had so carefully cultivated over the course of my life. I could have stayed, and the realization of this astounds me. I could have stayed. At a crossroads, I had a choice: go back and salvage what I could, or forge ahead alone. I had been terrified, but I gave myself a chance anyway; I had run headfirst into a wall and decided not to retreat, but to claw my way over it to see what was on the other side. This did not happen to me, I made it happen, and now I know this about myself, that I am a person who can transform and endure. I don’t know if this part of my story is an ending or a beginning, but just as grief has no clear beginning, middle or end, I know that my story is a work in progress. Some days I feel like a warrior, fierce and reawakened; other days like a zen master, serene and grateful to have emerged with a new understanding of myself and determined to take one day at a time; and still other days, I still feel wounded, vulnerable, alone and scared. Yet every day I carry with me a newfound, life-affirming, woman-hear-me-roar knowledge. I gave so much of myself away over the years, gradually disappearing as I put all of my love and energy into my children and maintaining as perfect a home as I could. The fault lines were there all along, but I had been unwilling to acknowledge them until the earthquake erupted and gave me no choice. I embraced motherhood so completely that I neglected the woman beneath the mother, and the worst thing that had ever happened to me – Michael’s betrayal – had set her free. I didn’t lose my sense of self all at once and I won’t find myself all at once either. It’s been a year since I started along this path, clumsily and impatiently stumbling along, desperate to reach the end of it. Now I finally see: there is no end, just forks, detours, hills and valleys, an ever-shifting footpath that I have time, freedom, courage and insatiable curiosity to amble along. Most importantly, I am willing to let whoever is inside me emerge without rushing her along.

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

  "De mortuis nihil nisi bonum." The Christians enjoyed probably from the beginning the privilege of common cemeteries, like the Jews, even without an express enactment. Galienus restored them after their temporary confiscation during the persecution of Valerian (260).522 Being mostly of Jewish and Oriental descent, the Roman Christians naturally followed the Oriental custom of cutting their tombs in rocks, and constructing galleries. Hence the close resemblance of the Jewish and Christian cemeteries in Rome.523 The ancient Greeks and Romans under the empire were in the habit of burning the corpses (crematio) for sanitary reasons, but burial in the earth (humatio), outside of the city near the public roads, or on hills, or in natural grottos, was the older custom; the rich had their own sepulchres (sepulcra). In their catacombs the Christians could assemble for worship and take refuge in times of persecution. Very rarely they were pursued in these silent retreats. Once only it is reported that the Christians were shut up by the heathen in a cemetery and smothered to death. Most of the catacombs were constructed during the first three centuries, a few may be traced almost to the apostolic age.524 After Constantine, when the temporal condition of the Christians improved, and they could bury their dead without any disturbance in the open air, the cemeteries were located above ground, especially above the catacombs, and around the basilicas; or on other land purchased or donated for the purpose. Some catacombs owe their origin to individuals or private families, who granted the use of their own grounds for the burial of their brethren; others belonged to churches. The Christians wrote on the graves appropriate epitaphs and consoling thoughts, and painted on the walls their favorite symbols. At funerals they turned these dark and cheerless abodes into chapels; under the dim light of the terra-cotta lamps they committed dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and amidst the shadows of death they inhaled the breath of the resurrection and life everlasting. But it is an error to suppose that the catacombs served as the usual places of worship in times of persecution; for such a purpose they were entirely unfitted; even the largest could accommodate, at most, only twenty or thirty persons within convenient distance.525 The devotional use of the catacombs began in the Nicene age, and greatly stimulated the worship of martyrs and saints. When they ceased to be used for burial they became resorts of pious pilgrims. Little chapels were built for the celebration of the memory of the martyrs. St. Jerome relates,526 how, while a school-boy, about A.D.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  ROMANS 11:1–36. Second, the theme of the remnant then jumps from that frame in 9:1–29 to this frame in 11:1–36; but now the emphasis is on the nonremnant, the vast majority who have refused the gospel. It is important to note that, even from within the exclusivity of his Christian vision, Paul never says that “those others of Israel” are lost, condemned, and abandoned by God. He proceeds with a second emotional, personal statement: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew” (11:1–2). “At the present time there is,” he repeats, “a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (11:5–6). That theme of grace versus works refers back to the section on human causality in 9:30–10:21, and we will return to it below. The eschatological vision of earliest Christianity was for Jews and pagans in one ultimate community or, as Paul wrote in Romans 1:16, the Jew first and only then the Greek. But now, announces Paul, God has changed that final program, not to the Greek only or even to the Greek and some Jews but to a complete reversal, to the Greek first and only then the Jew (11:11–12). Next, Paul gives a direct warning to Christian pagans about non-Christian Jews at Rome in a preview of Romans 12–16. “Now,” he says, in an unusually explicit separation, “I am speaking to you Gentiles” (11:13) and then introduces the image of the olive tree. He does not say that God has planted a new gentile olive tree, but that certain branches of the Jewish olive have been broken off to allow the ingrafting of a new, pagan, “wild olive shoot” (11:17). In other words, the rootstock of Christianity is Judaism and Rome’s Christian pagans are sternly warned not to “boast over the branches” they have replaced and “so all Israel will be saved” (11:18–25). He does not say explicitly saved in Christ, but he certainly presumes it. Still, he at least admits it is a divine mystery rather than just a human failure and today, after two thousand years and counting, it is even more mysterious than Paul could ever have imagined. He said then, “As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (11:28–29). We now say what Paul never imagined. There are twin covenants, one Jewish and one Christian, both free gifts of divine grace, both accepted initially and lived fully by faith. That is the only way, by now, to reread what Paul called God’s plan before the face of continuing history. Human Causality

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Unlike Brianne and Chickenhorse, Claire was firmly instructed that she should not be dating until she’d done some work on herself. She called this “a load of shite.” “Lucy, I’d like to suggest the same for you,” said Dr. Jude. “No dating, no sex, no contact with Jamie for the next ninety days. You’ll likely experience a period of withdrawal, if you haven’t begun to already. But it will be worth it in the end.” “Withdrawal?” “Yes, you’re detoxing from him…from a whole way of life really. A life defined by the pursuit of others to complete you.” “What does withdrawal entail?” “People in withdrawal describe symptoms of depression, despair, insomnia, a feeling of emptiness.” “Oh, so just life,” I said. “Other symptoms can include nausea, anxiety, irrational thoughts, and even cognitive distortions.” “Great, more to look forward to.” “One more thing. You mentioned spending money on psychics, astrologers, love potions. I would urge you to abandon these pursuits, as they only prolong your inability to find intimacy with yourself. And that’s the real treasure here.” “Ah,” I said. “Can’t wait for that.” 8.There was one place on Abbot Kinney that gave me solace, and that was the Mystic Journeys bookstore. I looked in the window and saw the rows of rose quartz crystals. I knew from Googling that rose quartz was said to bring love. Actually, it seemed like most crystals brought something that you wanted. If crystals really did what they said they did, there would probably be no problems in the world. Everyone would have everything they desired, and all would be peaceful, or at least, all the people who sold crystals would be rich, famous, and well-loved. They probably wouldn’t be selling crystals anymore, because they wouldn’t have to. Still, I liked to believe that magic was real. I had to go in. I wasn’t really a hippie, per se. But having grown up with Annika as an older sister, I could get down with the New Age vibes. She followed the Grateful Dead around in college and would send me little items that she bought in the parking lot: Nag Champa incense, a malachite pendulum necklace, a blue glass talisman to keep the evil eye away. Annika had been the only maternal figure in my life since my mother died when I was eleven—totemic maternal and from a distance, but all I had—so I always found New Age culture comforting. This store with its cabinets and shelves of crystals and minerals—amethyst, rose quartz, smoky quartz, pyrite, onyx, apophyllite, rock salt, aqua aura—definitely made magic seem real. The air smelled of sandalwood and amber. You could buy enlightenment from a range of Eastern texts: the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. You could buy healing in a white jasmine pillar candle or protection in a black votive. Capitalist magic.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  This [“dissident”] attitude is and must be fundamentally hostile towards the notion of violent change—simply because it places its faith in violence…. An attitude that turns away from abstract political visions of the future towards concrete human beings and ways of defending them effectively in the here and now is quite naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of violence carried out in the name of “a better future” and by a profound belief that a future secured by violence might actually be worse than what exists now; in other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it…. The “dissident movements” do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems too radical, but on the contrary, because it does not seem radical enough. (1978: 92–93) That neither advocates pure pacifism in all cases nor accepts violence as perfectly normal in all instances. It simply recognizes that violence should always be the last, not the first, option and that it is ultimately the last enemy. Third, Havel concludes that the “responsibility is ours, that we must accept it and grasp it here, now, in this place and space where the Lord has set us down…. Christianity…is a point of departure for me here and now—but only because anyone, anywhere, at any time, may avail themselves of it” (1978: 104). That might seem to imply that anyone can find that responsibility—but only within Christianity. Any ambiguity is clarified in the second essay from six years later: At the basis of this world are values which are simply there, perennially, before we ever speak of them, before we reflect upon them and inquire about them. It owes its internal coherence to something like a “pre-speculative” assumption that the world functions and is generally possible at all only because there is something beyond its horizon, something beyond or above it that might escape our understanding and our grasp but, for just that reason, firmly grounds this world, bestows upon it its order and measure, and is the hidden source of all the rules, customs, commandments, prohibitions and norms that hold within it. The natural world, in virtue of its very being, bears within it the presupposition of the absolute which grounds, delimits, animates and directs it, without which it would be unthinkable, absurd and superfluous, and which we can only quietly respect. Any attempt to spurn it, master it, or replace it with something else, appears, within the framework of the natural world, as an expression of hubris for which humans must pay a heavy price…. We must honor with the humility of the wise the bounds of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which exceeds all our competence; relating ever again to the absolute horizon of our existence which, if we but will, we shall constantly rediscover and experience. (1984: 137–38, 153).

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

  Their affinity with the Protestant idea of the universal priesthood is more apparent than real; they go on altogether different principles. 3. Another of the essential and prominent traits of Montanism was a visionary millennarianism, founded indeed on the Apocalypse and on the apostolic expectation of the speedy return of Christ, but giving it extravagant weight and a materialistic coloring. The Montanists were the warmest millennarians in the ancient church, and held fast to the speedy return of Christ in glory, all the more as this hope began to give way to the feeling of a long settlement of the church on earth, and to a corresponding zeal for a compact, solid episcopal organization. In praying, "Thy kingdom come," they prayed for the end of the world. They lived under a vivid impression of the great final catastrophe, and looked therefore with contempt upon the present order of things, and directed all their desires to the second advent of Christ. Maximilla says: "After me there is no more prophecy, but only the end of the world."770 The failure of these predictions weakened, of course, all the other pretensions of the system. But, on the other hand, the abatement of faith in the near approach of the Lord was certainly accompanied with an increase of worldliness in the Catholic church. The millennarianism of the Montanists has reappeared again and again in widely differing forms. 4. Finally, the Montanistic sect was characterized by fanatical severity in asceticism and church discipline. It raised a zealous protest against the growing looseness of the Catholic penitential discipline, which in Rome particularly, under Zephyrinus and Callistus, to the great grief of earnest minds, established a scheme of indulgence for the grossest sins, and began, long before Constantine, to obscure the line between the church and the world. Tertullian makes the restoration of a rigorous discipline the chief office of the new prophecy.771 But Montanism certainly went to the opposite extreme, and fell from evangelical freedom into Jewish legalism; while the Catholic church in rejecting the new laws and burdens defended the cause of freedom. Montanism turned with horror from all the enjoyments of life, and held even art to be incompatible with Christian soberness and humility. It forbade women all ornamental clothing, and required virgins to be veiled. It courted the blood-baptism of martyrdom, and condemned concealment or flight in persecution as a denial of Christ. It multiplied fasts and other ascetic exercises, and carried them to extreme severity, as the best preparation for the millennium. It prohibited second marriage as adultery, for laity as well as clergy, and inclined even to regard a single marriage as a mere concession on the part of God to the sensuous infirmity of man. It taught the impossibility of a second repentance, and refused to restore the lapsed to the fellowship of the church.

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

  theological statement by patristic quotations, or statements taken from Aristotle. The movement arose like a root out of a dry ground at a time of great corruption and distraction in the Church, and it arose where it might have been least expected to arise. Its field was the territory along the Rhine where the heretical sects had had representation. It was a fresh outburst of piety, an earnest seeking after God by other paths than the religious externalism fostered by sacerdotal prescriptions and scholastic dialectics. The mystics led the people back from the clangor and tinkling of ecclesiastical symbolisms to the refreshing springs of water which spring up into everlasting life. Compared with the mysticism of the earlier Middle Ages and the French quietism of the seventeenth century, represented by Madame Guyon, Fénelon and their predecessor the Spaniard Miguel de Molinos, German mysticism likewise has its own distinctive features. The religion of Bernard expressed itself in passionate and rapturous love for Jesus. Madame Guyon and Fénelon set up as the goal of religion a state of disinterested love, which was to be reached chiefly by prayer, an end which Bernard felt it scarcely possible to reach in this world. The mystics along the Rhine agreed with all genuine mystics in striving after the direct union of the soul with God. They sought, as did Eckart, the loss of our being in the ocean of the Godhead, or with Tauler the undisturbed peace of the soul, or with Ruysbroeck the impact of the divine nature upon our nature at its innermost point, kindling with divine love as fire kindles. With this aspiration after the complete apprehension of God, they combined a practical tendency. Their silent devotion and meditation were not final exercises. They were moved by warm human sympathies, and looked with almost reverential regard upon the usual pursuits and toil of men. They approached close to the idea that in the faithful devotion to daily tasks man may realize the highest type of religious experience. By preaching, by writing and circulating devotional works, and especially by their own examples, they made known the secret and the peace of the inner life. In the regions along the lower Rhine, the movement manifested itself also in the care of the sick, and notably in schools for the education of the young. These schools proved to be preparatory for the German Reformation by training a body of men of wider outlook and larger sympathies than the mediaeval convent was adapted to rear. For the understanding of the spirit and meaning of German mysticism, no help is so close at hand as the comparison between it and mediaeval scholasticism. This religious movement was the antithesis of the theology of the Schoolmen; Eckart and Tauler of Thomas Aquinas, the German Theology of the endless argumentation of Duns Scotus, the Imitation of Christ of the cumbersome exhaustiveness of Albertus Magnus.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  3The Golden Age, or As Golden as It GetsThe Augustan age is often called the Golden Age, aurea aetas or saeculum aureum…. We are dealing, once more, with a notion that was evolving during this period. It was based, as always, on previous traditions that led to new adaptations and departures…. One of the most significant changes in the Golden Age concept at Augustus’ time is that the Golden Age comes to connote a social order rather than a paradisiac state of indolence…. The Secular [i.e., Saeculum] Games of 17 B.C…. did not celebrate the advent of millennial, passive bliss but took place only after one of the cornerstones of the Augustan program, the legislation on marriage and morals, had been passed in 18 B.C…. The notion of the Golden Age or saeculum at Augustus’ time was distinctive and specific in the sense that it involved ongoing labor and moral effort rather than being a celebration of easy fulfillment…. Tranquility is made possible only through war, victory, and dominance…. No specific iconography exists that would point to a “Golden Age” of easy bliss. The reason is simple enough: there was no intention to convey such an impression. —Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (1996) Seneca’s essay On Clemency…is the first work to articulate the Golden Age ideology systematically as a whole. The essay was written early in Nero’s reign [mid-50s C.E.], at a time of renewed interest in the Golden Age theme…. Given Seneca’s position as the emperor’s mentor, it may in some sense be taken as an expression of the “official line.”…Seneca assumes the basic sinfulness of mankind, its scelus…. Secondly, the presence of the emperor provides the only possible hope of escape…. Thirdly, however, for the emperor to succeed as saviour he must practice clemency…. Fourthly, Nero has already demonstrated his natural predisposition towards mercy by his unwillingness to execute criminals; the preconditions are thus fulfilled for the Golden Age to return…. In Pauline Christianity…it is Christ, not the emperor, who acts as the mediator between heaven and sinful mankind. It is Christ not the emperor who has the power to undo scelus, sin, by his grace or clementia, forgiveness. It is faith, allegiance, voluntary submission to Christ that will bring about or make ready for the return of Paradise, original innocence. —Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “The Golden Age and Sin in Augustan Ideology” (1982) The Divinity of a World Conqueror Overture It is dawn in Paul’s Thessalonica, today’s Thessaloniki, then the Roman provincial capital of Macedonia, now the second-largest city in Greece, but then as now named for the sister of Alexander the Great and then as now climbing from the northeast corner of the Thermaic Gulf up the circling slopes of Mt. Khortiatis.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “He’s been staying with me for the past two days. And I know what you’re thinking! Bad idea, he’s just going to hurt me again. But this time something truly seems different. He still isn’t ready for marriage or an engagement or even to call me his girlfriend or commit to monogamy, but he’s showing up for me in a way that he never has before. He’s truly present.” “I see,” said Dr. Jude. She was wearing what looked like a pair of silk pajamas. “What do you think was the impetus for the change?” “I think he realized I was serious this time. That I wasn’t going to take him back.” “But you did take him back,” said Chickenhorse. “No, I know. I mean before that. I think he realized the gravity of his error,” she said. “Also, he lost his job at the hospital and has nowhere else to go. He’s been living in his car.” “What?” We all balked. I struggled to keep from laughing. Compared to the rest of them I was actually doing well. “I can’t forbid you from seeing him,” said Dr. Jude. “But I want you to remember the state you were in when you came in here, how much you were suffering. In my experience these sorts of relationships only get worse, never better.” “I know.” Sara sniffed. “And I know you’re all going to judge me. And Dr. Jude, I know I broke our deal. But he needs me. At the ‘Opening the Heart’ workshop they said that we can only recover from the past by coming to terms with our core truths. Well, he’s been sleeping on a mat in the resting area of the Korean spa. And I’m a compassionate person. And I want him to be with me. So that’s my core truth.”

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  It invites comment, interpretation, elaboration and constructive argument, and is the starting point for rival, though compatible, lines of inquiry. It is not a summa theologica, or indeed ethica, but the basis from which an endless series of summae can be assembled. It inaugurates a religion of dialogue, exploration and experiment. Its radical elements are balanced by conservative qualifications, there is a constant mixture of legalism and antinomianism, and the emphasis repeatedly switches from rigour and militancy to acquiescence and the acceptance of suffering. Some of this variety reflects the genuine bewilderment of the disciples, and the confusion of the evangelical editors to whom their memories descended. But a great deal is essentially part of Jesus’s universalist posture: the wonder is that the personality behind the mission is in no way fragmented but is always integrated and true to character. Jesus contrives to be all things to all men while remaining faithful to himself. This complex and delicate operation was conducted against a politico-religious background full of perils and traps. Jesus had a new doctrine to deliver – salvation through love, sacrifice and faith – but to some extent he had to present it in the guise of a reformation of the old. He was preaching to Jews, introducing new concepts through traditional Jewish forms. He was anxious to carry the orthodox with him, without compromising his universalism. He confronted the establishment on their own territory, while including all the outcast elements in his mission; thus he had to carry on the process of disassociation from the Temple and the law while trying to avoid accusations of blasphemy. Then, too, there was the revelation of his own position. This had to be a gradual process. It was always to some extent ambiguous. He radiated authority – it was, from the very start, the most conspicuous thing about him. But of what kind? He was anxious to show that he was not a priest-general, performing a military role against a foreign oppressor. He was not the Messiah in that sense. On the other hand, he was not just the articulator of suffering and sacrifice: he had come to found a new kind of kingdom and to bring a message of joy and hope. How to convey that his triumph had to be achieved through his death? It was not an idea which appealed to the ancient world; or any world. Then, too, there was the central paradox that the mission had to be vindicated by its failure. A great many people found Jesus impossible to accept or follow. He was repudiated by his family, at least for a time. His native district did not accept him. There were certain towns where his teaching made no impact. In some places he could not work miracles. In others they caused little stir or were soon forgotten. He made many enemies and at all times there were a large number of people who ridiculed his claims and simply brushed aside his religious ideas.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  From time to time only did he break into words; but as he played on he rocked his body: ‘Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground. Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground.’ Once started they seemed unable to stop; carried away they were by their music, drunk with that desperate hope of the hopeless—far drunker than Henry would get on neat whisky. They went from one spiritual into another, while their listeners sat motionless, scarcely breathing. While Jamie’s eyes ached from unshed tears quite as much as from her unsuitable glasses; while Adolphe Blanc, the gentle, the learned, grasped his knees and pondered many things deeply; while Pat remembered her Arabella and found but small consolation in beetles; while Brockett thought of certain brave deeds that he, even he had done out in Mespot—deeds that were not recorded in dispatches, unless in those of the recording angel; while Wanda evolved an enormous canvas depicting the wrongs of all mankind; while Stephen suddenly found Mary’s hand and held it in hers with a painful pressure; while Barbara’s tired and childish brown eyes turned to rest rather anxiously on her Jamie. Not one of them all but was stirred to the depths by that queer, half defiant, half supplicating music. And now there rang out a kind of challenge; imperious, loud, almost terrifying. They sang it together, those two black brethren, and their voices suggested a multitude shouting. They seemed to be shouting a challenge to the world on behalf of themselves and of all the afflicted: ‘Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, Daniel, Daniel! Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, Then why not every man?’ The eternal question, as yet unanswered for those who sat there spellbound and listened. . . . ‘Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, then why not every man?’ Why not? . . . Yes, but how long, O Lord, how long? Lincoln got up from the piano abruptly, and he made a small bow which seemed strangely foolish, murmuring some stilted words of thanks on behalf of himself and his brother Henry: ‘We are greatly obliged to you for your patience; we trust that we have satisfied you;’ he murmured. It was over. They were just two men with black skins and foreheads beaded with perspiration. Henry sidled away to the whisky, while Lincoln rubbed his pinkish palms on an elegant white silk handkerchief. Every one started to talk at once, to light cigarettes, to move about the studio. Jamie said: ‘Come on, people, it’s time for supper,’ and she swallowed a small glass of crème-de-menthe; but Wanda poured herself out some more brandy. Quite suddenly they had all become merry, laughing at nothing, teasing each other; even Valérie unbent more than was her wont and did not look bored when Brockett chaffed her.

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

  in the eucharist. Declaring that the judges had not been able to break down his arguments, Wyclif went on preaching and lecturing at the university. But in the king’s council, to which he made appeal, the duke of Lancaster took sides against him and forbade him to speak any more on the subject at Oxford. This prohibition Wyclif met with a still more positive avowal of his views in his Confession, which closes with the noble words, "I believe that in the end the truth will conquer." The same year, the Peasants’ Revolt broke out, but there is no evidence that Wyclif had any more sympathy with the movement than Luther had with the Peasants’ Rising of 1525. After the revolt was over, he proposed that Church property be given to the upper classes, not to the poor.564 The principles, however, which he enunciated were germs which might easily spring up into open rebellion against oppression. Had he not written, "There is no moral obligation to pay tax or tithe to bad rulers either in Church or state. It is permitted to punish or depose them and to reclaim the wealth which the clergy have diverted from the poor?" One hundred and fifty years after this time, Tyndale said, "They said it in Wyclif’s day, and the hypocrites say now, that God’s Word arouseth insurrection."565 Courtenay’s elevation to the see of Canterbury boded no good to the Reformer. In 1382, he convoked the synod which is known in English history as the Earthquake synod, from the shock felt during its meetings. The primate was supported by 9 bishops, and when the earth began to tremble, he showed admirable courage by interpreting it as a favorable omen. The earth, in trying to rid itself of its winds and humors, was manifesting its sympathy with the body ecclesiastic.566 Wyclif, who was not present, made another use of the occurrence, and declared that the Lord sent the earthquake "because the friars had put heresy upon Christ in the matter of the sacrament, and the earth trembled as it did when Christ was damned to bodily death."567 The council condemned 24 articles, ascribed to the Reformer, 10 of which were pronounced heretical, and the remainder to be against the decisions of the Church.568 The 4 main subjects condemned as heresy were that Christ is not corporally present in the sacrament, that oral confession is not necessary for a soul prepared to die, that after Urban VI.’s death the English Church should acknowledge no pope but, like the Greeks, govern itself, and that it is contrary to Scripture for ecclesiastics to hold temporal possessions. Courtenay followed up the synod’s decisions by summoning Rygge, then chancellor of Oxford, to suppress the heretical teachings and teachers.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  This presented the Church with a unique opportunity to capture society by its roots. It had the chance not merely to establish a stranglehold on education, but to recreate the whole process and content and purpose of education in a Christian setting. In a way, Augustine had foreseen and prepared for this. Lacking Greek, he had sketched the outline of a Latin-Christian system of knowledge in which every aspect of human creativity and intellectual endeavour was related to Christian belief. He produced the matrix which continued to be elaborated throughout the Middle Ages. But how was this knowledge to be transmitted? It is curious that during the fifth century, when Roman institutions were crumbling, no attempt appears to have been made to create Christian schools. The first such suggestion was made in 536, when Cassiodorus, a prominent Catholic layman who was secretary to the Ostrogothic king, Theodoric, asked Pope Agapetus to found a Christian university in Rome: ‘Seeing that the schools were swarming with students with a great longing for secular letters’, he urged the pope ‘to collect subscriptions and to have Christian rather than secular schools in the city of Rome, with professors, just as there had been for so long in Alexandria’. The project was started but collapsed in the Gothic-Byzantine wars, which finally put paid to the state system of education, and indeed to what remained of Roman civilization in Italy. By the time Gregory the Great came to the papal throne, the West had descended to an altogether lower level of culture. Yet something had been saved. Boethius, another sixth-century Catholic layman and minister at the Gothic court, had contrived – before he was executed in a Gothic-Arian persecution – to translate into Latin the complete works of Plato and Aristotle. His manuscripts were copied, and re-copied, and slowly proliferated. Cassiodorus himself, during the darkest days, created a Christian institution at Squillace in Calabria, at which learned laymen or monks copied manuscripts of standard texts. Developing the ideas of Augustine, he prepared an encyclopaedic course of study, both secular and divine, for Christian ascetics. Thus, for the first time, a great portion of available knowledge was assembled for a Christian purpose and in a monastic context. In the next two generations, the Cassiodoran system was taken up in Seville, under Bishop Leander, a friend of Gregory the Great, and his successor, Bishop Isidore. Seville had already become a gathering place for scholarly Christian refugees, and with the conversion of the Arian court it became possible to build up a centre of Christian culture. Over a period of twenty years Isidore and his helpers compiled a vast survey of human knowledge, arranged etymologically and incorporating the works and transmissions of Boethius and Cassiodorus, and much else. His object was partly to assist the Visigothic kings, partly to instruct his own priests and monks. Almost by accident he founded a civilization, or at any rate an educational system.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  To Ralegh, the true evidence of God was in nature itself which, as he pointed out in his History of the World, spectacularly reinforced the revelation of the scriptures: ‘By his own word, and by this Visible world, is God perceived of men, which is also the understood language of the Almighty, vouchsafed to all his creatures, whose Hieroglyphical Characters are the unnumbered stars, the sun and moon, written on these large volumes of the firmament: written also on the earth and the seas, by the letters of all those living creatures, and plants, which inhabit and reside therein’. This splendid metaphor of the natural world, governed by laws ascertainable to reason, acting as a permanent if silent witness to God’s Christian truth, established itself firmly in the minds of many western intellectuals by the end of the seventeenth century as the basis of a new system of apologetics. In England, such men were often members of the Royal Society. They did not bring their religious debates into science, but they were eager to select from science evidence for religion. Many were in orders, steering a sensible middle road between strict Calvinism and the High Church. In university circles, especially at Cambridge, they were characterized as neo-Platonists; within the Church, as Latitudinarians. Gilbert Burnet, one of them, sums up the Cambridge group thus: ‘They declared against superstition on the one hand and enthusiasm on the other. They loved the constitution of the church and the liturgy, and could live well under them. But they did not think it unlawful to live under another form. They wished that things might have been carried out with more moderation. And they continued to keep a good correspondence with those who had differed from them in opinion, and allowed a great freedom in philosophy and in divinity.’ For these men, educated, urbane, up-to-date, constitutionalists in politics, religion was common sense. The days of persecution were over. All men would come to God in the natural way, if only the shouting and killing stopped, and the voice of reason was heard. Reason reinforced faith. The best ally of theology was natural philosophy. God could be seen in and through his creation. As John Smith put it: ‘God made the universe and all the creatures contained therein as so many glasses wherein he might reflect his own glory... in this outward world we may read the lovely characters of Divine goodness, power and wisdom.’ Joseph Glanvill, Rector of Bath, thought that the power and wisdom and goodness of the Creator is displayed in the admirable order and workmanship of the creation.’ God’s existence could thus be demonstrated; they constructed a reasonable pattern of belief, then showed that scriptural revelation coincided with it – for instance Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, proved that Mosaic history conformed to the canons of reason.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  And he was too much of a historian to suppose that reason alone was likely to prove a reliable guide for mankind – he had no need of Pascal’s admonitions – or that optimism was a sensible posture for a philosopher. What makes Voltaire a really great man, and an important figure in the history of Christianity, is that in this and other respects he swam against the prevailing tide of the Enlightenment. He found both the underlying notions behind Leibniz’s Theodicée (1710), that everything was for the best in this world, and that in any event the Christian should resign himself and submit, quite misguided: the first fallacious, the second morally repugnant. He rejected Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (1733): Safe in the hand of one disposing power, Or in the natal, or the mortal hour... One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. He thought this was tempting Providence, and was delighted when Providence, tempted, produced the spectacular Lisbon earthquake of 1755. It was as though Voltaire had been waiting for this catastrophe to attack the received wisdom of the age, whether Christian or rationalist: ‘My dear sir, nature is very cruel. One would find it hard to imagine how the laws of movement caused such frightful disasters in the best of possible worlds . . . I flatter myself that at least the reverend fathers Inquisitors have been crushed like the others. That ought to teach men not to persecute each other, for while a few holy scoundrels burn a few fanatics, the earth swallows up one and all.’ Voltaire used the occasion of the earthquake, which aroused a European interest quite disproportionate to its magnitude, to rush out a didactic poem, which went through a score of editions in 1756: Un jour tout sera bien, voilà notre espérance, Tout est bien aujourd’hui, voilà I’illusion ... The poem was a challenge to the European intelligentsia, sceptical or Christian, to explain natural disasters in terms of moral assumptions. Pamphlets poured out by the hundred. Christian theodicy proved particularly feeble. Rousseau, trying to blend rationalism with emotion, was no better: men were responsible, he reasoned, since the casualties would have been less if men did not huddle together unnaturally in cities. Young Emmanuel Kant was another respondent. He was already moving towards a post-rational and romantic solution: insight is really more important than exact scientific knowledge, and moral experience carries us further than the truths revealed by phenomena: ‘I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to leave room for faith.’ The lesson of the earthquake, Kant argued, was that in the world of phenomena man was subject to the necessities of natural law, but in the world of the spirit he is free – nature was subordinate to the realm of ends governed by purpose, and spirit was superior to matter. The process of reasoning thus ended in God.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The idea seems to have been to create a liberal corridor running through central Europe, from England through Holland, Germany, Austria to Venice, which would cut the Counter-Reformation extremists in two, and ultimately with the help of France impose an eirenic religious settlement on Europe. The marriage between Elizabeth and Frederick was part of this plan, and it was to be followed by Frederick’s establishment as the king of Bohemia and ultimately as emperor of a reunified, liberal Germany. These hopes were reflected in the publication of a number of Hermetic or Rosicrucian manifestos. Their theme was as follows: The Protestant Reformation has lost its strength, and the Catholic Counter-Reformation is driving in the wrong direction. A new reformation of the whole world is called for, and this third reformation will find its strength in Christian evangelism, with its emphasis on brotherly love, in the Hermetic and cabalist traditions, and in a turning towards the works of God in nature in a scientific spirit of exploration. To the third force in England, the heroine, of course, was their princess, Elizabeth, who was seen as both an ecumenical talisman and a patroness of the sciences. Wotton wrote a poem to her, On his Mistress the Queen of Bohemia, and John Donne addressed her prophetically: Be thou a new star that to us portends Ends of great wonder; and be thou those ends. Donne, Dean of St Paul’s, was in many ways the outstanding figure of the English third force during this brief, illusory period. He had changed from Catholicism to Anglicanism without acquiring enmity to his old faith. Writing to his Catholic friend, Toby Matthew, he admitted men could go to heaven by different routes: ‘Men go to China both by the Straits and by the Cape.’ His library included many works of Catholic theology, most of them printed in Spain, and he made no bones about his ecumenicalism: ‘I never fettered nor imprisoned the word Religion, not... immuring it in a Rome, or a Wittenberg or a Geneva; they are all virtual beams of one sun.... They are not so contrary as the North and South poles.’ In 1619, when hopes were still high, James I sent Lord Doncaster on a peace-mission to the Palatinate and Bohemia, and Donne was senior member of the suite. At Heidelberg he preached a sermon to the Elector and the Princess Elizabeth, soon to be the ‘Winter Queen’ of Bohemia. The text has not survived; but we can imagine it, probably with truth, as an eloquent manifesto of the third force. The ecumenical dream collapsed with the great Catholic victory at the White Mountain; Frederick was driven from Bohemia and his Palatinate, and his fine library was carted off to Rome; his princess spent a long exile in Holland, where scholarly remnants of the third force gathered round her. Among her later admirers, by an astonishing irony, was Descartes.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  In 1529, the reforming princes delivered their ‘protest’ against the Catholic powers at the Diet of Speier; two years later the Protestant movement was placed on a military footing by the formation of the Schmalkaldic League, extended in 1539 to include a vast area of Germany. From this point, there was no real chance that the Lutheran movement would be exterminated; the papacy and its secular allies were faced with the choice of compromise or permanent schism.1 The overwhelming consensus among secular statesmen was that a compromise, and reconciliation, was possible; and that a universal council should be summoned to bring it about. From the start of the controversy this remained the Emperor Charles v’s policy. His salient object was the reunification of Germany, and he saw this could only be realized by the restoration of religious unity. For the French crown, however, the salient object was the continued division of Germany, and France’s influence was consistently deployed to make a satisfactory council impossible. Clement VII and his successor Paul III were similarly determined to avoid a council which they realized must end in the destruction of papal power; and their procrastinations were successful. By 1539, Luther and his Church were secure, and he had lost interest in compromise; or, rather, he did not believe that the papacy could be brought to entertain one in any circumstances. The principals, as it were, had opted out of the dialogue. But there were many on both sides who still believed the gap could be bridged. In some ways Luther, as they appreciated, was more Catholic than many of his Roman Catholic opponents. At the beginning of the controversy, Johan Eck had chosen deliberately to argue with him on the issue of papal authority rather than on grace, the sacraments and the nature of the Church. Some pious laymen, such as his patron Frederick the Wise, said they could not see where he had been refuted on the basis of scripture. It was the same with Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith. Quite independently of Luther, Cardinal Contarini had reached the same conclusions as early as 1511. There were other instances of Catholic theologians adopting this position as a result of reconsidering St Paul. One example was Cardinal Pole, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in the attempt by Queen Mary Tudor to restore Catholicism in England in the 1550s. Other eirenicists on the Catholic side included Pierre Favre of Savoy, the first Jesuit to go to Germany and one of Ignatius Loyola’s earliest companions. He advocated a policy of love and friendship to heretics and the search of doctrinal harmony. On the Protestant side, Melanchthon and Bucer consistently looked for intermediary positions.