There is no State

Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap him in speech.

They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion, for you do not regard a person's status.

Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?"

The scene must have been one of great anticipation; the Pharisees' "trick" not particularly clever. Jesus had been preaching and working miracles throughout Israel for three years. Many Israelites, longing to be free of Roman rule, had come to believe he might be the Messiah, the king from the line of David who, they believed, would overthrow their oppressors and restore the independent kingdom of Israel. Now Jesus had made his way to Jerusalem, on the eve of the Passover, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, the celebration of God's deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. If ever Jesus would announce his kingship and begin the rebellion against Rome, this would be the time and the place.

Going to Jerusalem at this time was a nearly suicidal act on Jesus' part. Either he would begin the rebellion in a city that hosted a Roman garrison of overwhelming strength, or he would burst the hopes and expectations of the people, whose reaction to the disappointment might be severe. It would, in fact, be Jesus' final journey to Jerusalem; these were the last few days of his ministry before the Passion.

The Pharisees' "trick" was simply to force the issue. "Tell us now," they were saying, "which side you are on. Are we to pay homage to Rome or not?"

Jesus' answer to this question posed in Matthew 22:15ff is one of the most famous quotes of the Bible:

"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

I remember when we covered this passage in Scripture class at Gonzaga. The Jesuit priest who taught the class (now I've forgotten his name) read the passage and said, "So you see how Jesus tricked them."

And I thought, "No." It seemed to me that he gave a straightforward, honest answer, though not the one the Jews wanted to hear. "My kingdom is not of this Earth," he seemed to be saying. "There's no conflict between Caesar's kingdom and mine. Pay your taxes, get along with the State so that your physical needs are met, so that you'll have peace sufficient to let you concentrate on what's really important, which is your relationship to God." Jesus seems to be arguing for a separation of Church and State.

This is in fact the message Jesus wanted his Roman listeners to hear, but this is the "trick" part of Jesus' answer. It's not the answer his Jewish listeners would have heard. It's ironic that many of us today who read this passage continue to hear, as I did when I was a college student, the "trick." We miss the real message Jesus intended for his Jewish listeners.

To understand the rest of Jesus' answer we have to pay attention to the seemingly innocuous verses that precede it:

Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?

Knowing their malice, Jesus said, "Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax." Then they handed him the Roman coin.

He said to them, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?"

They replied, "Caesar's." At that he said to them, "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

"Whose image is this?" To understand the affect these words would have had on Jesus' Jewish listeners we have to remember that the whole history of Israel was one long, life and death struggle with idolatry. The religion of the Jews was not, as we sometimes imagine, safely carried through the ages in the isolated little corner of the near east that they occupied. No, paganism was constantly infiltrating the land of Israel, brought in through intermarriage with the pagans who surrounded Israel, brought in through trade, through the cultural assimilation that was to be expected when a simple nomadic people settled down near far more advanced, cosmopolitan cultures. It was practiced by the people of Israel, it was practiced by the pagan wives of their kings, it was practiced by the kings themselves. We forget that on several occasions the religion of the Jews was in grave danger of being wiped from the face of the Earth, replaced entirely by paganism.

The struggle against paganism resulted in some of the bloodiest scenes of the Old Testament. Think of Jezebel, the pagan queen of Israel who promulgated the worship of her native god Ba'al Melkart throughout Israel. She was thrown out of a window, "and some of her blood spurted against the wall and against the horses," 2 Kings 9:33 prosaically reports. Then they ran over her with a horse, and left her to be eaten by dogs. In Israel, any lapse into idolatry was a serious thing, a matter of national survival. Nothing was more loathsome to a Jew than an idolatrous image.

"Whose image is this?" Jesus asked the Pharisees. The image of Caesar, the emperor of Rome. At the time Jesus asked the question it was only 70 years since Julius Caesar had become the first Roman emperor to declare his own divinity. It must have been particularly galling for the Jews, not only to be ruled by pagan kings, but to be ruled by someone who claimed to be a god himself. It was a wound that was still fresh.

What's most hilarious about this scene is that Jesus did not pull the coin out of his own pocket; he tricked the Pharisees into pulling it out of theirs. By pointing out the image on the coin Jesus is calling attention to the fact that in using Roman money the Pharisees are carrying little idolatrous images around with them every day.

"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar." Having pointed out the idolatrous image on the coin the natural response of any Jew would be to throw it away from them, and Jesus completely agrees. "Give it back to him, give it all back to him," he seems to be saying. Don't just pay the tax, throw all his idolatrous money back in his face.

Should we refuse to pay the tax? Should we rebel against Roman rule? This is the "extreme" position the Pharisees hope to corner Jesus into taking, but Jesus shocks them into seeing that these are insignificant little half-measures, which betray the interior compromise the Israelites have already made with paganism, a compromise brought to light by the little pagan idols each of them carries about with them every day. Jesus demands more than rebellion, he demands that his listeners recognize the creeping idolatry that has developed with in their own hearts, and that they renounce it utterly. He demands that God and Caesar each be given his true and proper due in the hearts and in the lives of his listeners.

And what then, does belong to Caesar, and what belongs to God? How would Jesus' Jewish listeners have answered that question? Based on their training in the Scriptures, this is what they would have thought: "Did Caesar form the Earth or the waters? Does he make the rains fall and the crops grow?" As God says to Job:

Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?

....Who shut within doors the sea?....Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?

....Have you entered into the sources of the sea, or walked about in the depths of the abyss? Have the gates of death been shown to you, or have you seen the gates of darkness?

....Do you give the horse his strength?....Does the eagle fly up at your command?

What Caesar is due, Jesus is saying, is precisely nothing. He has no place in our priorities. God is everything. Separation of Church and State? No. Jesus is saying, like the little boy in The Matrix, "There is no State."

Forgiveness of the Cylon God

I was watching an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica series yesterday. In the episode, a group of people find themselves in desperate need of forgiveness. Many of them are guilty of acts that saved their own lives at the expense of others. Their leader, in fact, through an act of self-centered carelessness, allowed the Cylons to discover defense secrets that led to the deaths of billions of people, effectively the entire human race. Now try living with that on your conscience!

This man, whose name is Gaius Baltar, has come to believe in the one true God, the God of the Cylons, and believes he has figured out the formula by which God will grant him forgiveness. It goes like this: "God loves us all. God is perfect, and God only loves that which is perfect. Therefore we are all perfect, just as we are." Baltar says this with conviction, as one receiving a great epiphany, to a round of weepy applause by all present. The actors are all excellent, and they try very hard to give the scene authenticity, but it doesn't work.

Why doesn't it work? Because people who have committed great sins, and people who have committed small sins who are attentive to their spiritual state, know that they are not perfect. "If we say, 'We have no sin,' we are deceiving ourselves, and truth has no place in us." 1 John 1:8. They will not be satisfied with being told that they're already perfect. They crave forgiveness, a fresh start, a chance to start over. And what's more, they want it to come in a tangible act, clear and visible. What they want, in short, is Baptism.

I am surprised about this. I've been versed in the symbolism of Baptism for some time, but it has remained for me a "not what I would have expected" sacrament: one of the many gifts of God that I would not have thought up myself, if I were designing a world. A rite that John the Baptist came up with many thousands of years ago that, inexplicably, captivated the nation of Israel for a brief time, before being adopted by Christ as the main rite of Christian initiation. But now that I've seen an artist's rendition of a God of Redemption without Baptism, it seems to me to be a much more natural and explicable rite; in fact, it seems to be the perfect response to a people suffering with their own sinfulness.

The symbolism of Baptism includes washing away ones sins; everyone knows that. What is probably less well known is that it also involves rebirth. The ancient Semites thought of water as a symbol of the Abyss, the nothingness that precedes existence. "In the beginning ... the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters," Genesis 1:1-2. In pushing the repentant sinner into the water, all the way in as it was done in the early days, he or she is symbolically being pushed back into pre-existence, only to rise from the waters anew, reborn into a new existence. The ultimate fresh start.

The Apostle Paul likened the descent into the water to a descent into the tomb with Christ, and the rising out of the water to being resurrected with Christ into a new life. "For we are buried together with him by baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life." Romans 6:4. The early Christians referred to Baptism as being "born again."

Thus Baptism gives the sinner exactly what they desire. A repentant sinner has come to a clear-eyed assessment of their own sinfulness, and they do not like what they see. Baptism does not try to sweet talk them out of that assessment. It doesn't tell them that, "If only they could see the big picture, they'd see that their sins are not really sinful." They are in a serious mood, and it treats their sins seriously. It gives them the concreteness of a tangible act, a moment of truth, a metanoia, which Father Nigro, my old Scripture teacher, described as an "I was walking this way, and then I turned, and now I'm walking that way" moment. And it provides the symbolism of death to the old way of life, and rebirth into a new life as a child of the Resurrection, as a child of God.

Final thoughts on Philemon

I began this series of posts with an attempt to look at early Christianity's attitude toward slaves and slavery, not because it's an issue that's been particularly on my mind, or even because it's a topic that catches my eye in the letter to Philemon, but ironically, because it doesn't. Having written these posts, I now realize that I have always skipped over the passages in the Bible that are directed toward slaves. "Doesn't apply to me," was what I was thinking I guess. An issue settled worldwide long ago, a rare example of moral progress in the human race. (There are still slaves in the world, but nowhere does anyone openly try to defend it.) Why would anyone spend any time thinking about the moral arguments surrounding slavery now? Even when reading the letter of Philemon I never gave the issue any thought; it's buried, really, beneath the overpowering personal story of Philemon and Onesimus.

What always noticed most about Philemon was the intense love Paul shows for his disciples, but I found it impossible to put an explanation of Philemon into words without confronting slavery. Not because of any interest in apologetics on my part certainly. Apologetics is a worthy activity, but it's not for me. Always thinking about what other people are saying about you is a distraction from progress in your own discipline, for me at least.

No, the reason I needed to confront slavery was because of a cognitive dissonance that forms when I try to put myself in the scene of the letter. Slavery is a barrier to our understanding the ancients. We feel revulsion at the thought of it; we can't understand how they could live with it in their midst. If we can't put ourselves in the author's place with conviction then there has to be something missing in our understanding of them.

In this instance I don't think I've broken that barrier. When I imagine myself in Paul's place I still see myself thinking, "All people belong to God, but that person owns that person; isn't that stealing?" "No man can serve two masters."

But as a result of these posts I have re-read some passages of the Bible that I'd never paid attention to before, and I have learned some fascinating things about the early Christians. They truly believed that a person's status as slave or free was beneath God's consideration: when people talk about Christianity containing the seed that ultimately destroyed slavery, they aren't just engaging in wishful thinking. I can now understand why Christianity was so popular among slaves. It showed them that in the only sense that really mattered, they were already free. I don't know if this idea was revolutionary at the time, but the fact that Christians really believed it must have been. If we can't put ourselves in Paul's position and understand how he could fail to denounce the institution of slavery, we can put ourselves in the midst a society that accepted slavery as the natural order of things, and understand how revolutionary this idea must have been, and how liberating it must have been for the slaves who accepted it.

Reading Paul's directive to slaves in Ephesians, that they must perform their services their masters as if they were serving Christ, also gave me a much deeper appreciation for the Christian directive to emulate Christ in his service of others. How often have we felt that God asks too much of us: "Sure, we should be humble," we think, "but do I really have to go that low? Do I have to tolerate that person? Perform that job?" Yet Paul felt that even being a slave was not humility enough, unless it were done with the same love Jesus showed for us when he made himself a slave for us. "No," is Paul answer, "You must not just tolerate that person or perform that job, you must make yourself a slave to that person and love them as Jesus loved us, and perform that job as if it were Christ himself that had asked you to do it."

Philemon part 4

This is part 4 of a multi-part post. Here are the links to parts 1, 2 and 3.

In this series of posts I seem to be commenting as much on Ephesians as Philemon. Anyway, to continue with Paul's appeal for Onesimus:

(Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.)

A pun on Onesimus' name, which means "useful." I wonder whether this name tells us anything about Onesimus. It doesn't sound like a name a mother would give to her child; it sounds like a name for a slave. Does this indicate that Onesimus was a slave from childhood? I've never heard an opinion on that one way or another.

In any event, Paul is once again reminding Philemon here that any anger he may have over his loss of Onesimus as a slave should be washed away by his joy over gaining him as a brother in Christ. His value to Philemon as a slave is as nothing when compared to his value as a fellow Christian.

Now before diving into details again, it's good to savor the next few verses as a whole:

I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will. Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

This is an impossible task, commenting on Philemon. Like trying to convince someone of the greatness of a painting by talking about it. If you're not already touched by the incredible example of love that Paul demonstrates in this letter, and by his intense desire that harmony and love should reign among Christians, then no commentary will lead you there. And if you're not touched, well, you're not alone. I've yet to meet anyone else who enjoys this letter as much as I do.

Well anyway, to dive in again:

I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.

A truly moving expression of Paul's love for Onesimus, and a formidable shield for Onesimus against Philemon's anger.

I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel;

Paul's reluctance to part with Onesimus is another expression of his love for him. It's also a strong hint that Paul would like Onesimus to return to him. Paul attempts to blunt any anger Philemon may have toward Onesimus by encouraging him to look upon Onesimus' absence not in terms of labor lost, but as Philemon's opportunity to render service to Paul's mission.

but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will.

Paul won't even let the thought that Philemon might disagree with Paul's assessment of the situation enter into his mind; this is truly an offer Philemon cannot refuse.

In all seriousness though, Paul's motivation for sending Onesimus back is becoming clear. The rift between these two men cannot be healed simply by Paul demanding it. Paul wants these men to be truly reconciled. By returning, Onesimus is throwing himself upon Philemon's mercy. Philemon would be within his rights (legally) to have Onesimus tortured, branded on the forehead with an "F" (for "fugitivus"), fitted with an iron collar, or even killed. To us, looking upon this scene from a distance of two thousand years, Onesimus seems perfectly safe: the terms of Paul's letter render it inconceivable that Philemon would harm Onesimus in any way. But put yourself in Onesimus' shoes for a moment. The weight of all Roman society is against you. None of Philemon's friends or associates would have cared, or even given it any thought at all, if Philemon had treated Onesimus in the cruelest manner. There has to be real trepidation in Onesimus' heart. An act of mercy on Philemon's part will have real weight. It will mean something.

Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Paul hints that Onesimus' escape may have been part of God's plan for Onesimus, because it led him to Paul, who led him to Christ. And in any event, Paul encourages Philemon to realize that he should not want to have Onesimus as a slave, which as we have seen is a distinction God cares nothing about, and which will certainly not follow Philemon into eternity. What he should want for Onesimus is brotherhood in Christ, which matters a great deal to God, and which will last for all time.

Now it's time to savor Paul's final plea to Philemon on Onesimus' behalf:

So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand, I will repay it--to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

Verse by verse:

So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.

Given this instruction, it's hard to imagine Philemon harming Onesimus at all.

If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

Paul sweeps away any final objection Philemon may have to reconciliation and puts himself completely in Onesimus' place by offering to personally pay any debt Philemon feels Onesimus owes him.

There's something jarring about this descent into the concrete, "fleshly" matter of monetary compensation for Philemon, after all of the talk of receiving him in the brotherhood of Christ and the spiritual aspects of Onesimus' return. This is a reminder of the fact that Christianity isn't a religion of fuzz and gauze. Jesus didn't descend to Earth, preach the Sermon on the Mount, and then float off to heaven in a cloud. He lived among us, acted out his ministry here in this world, sweated and bled and felt the pain of this world. And neither are we allowed to try to escape this world in happy, gauzy platitudes. As James says, "If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,' but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?"

I, Paul, write this with my own hand, I will repay it--to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.

It was unusual for Paul to write his letters himself; most were dictated to a secretary. This we know because he points out the exceptions in several letters. E.g. in Galatians 6 he writes, "See with what large letters I am writing to you in my own hand!" Many have speculated that he had poor eyesight, and wasn't able to write for himself regularly.

The fact that Paul writes to Philemon in his own hand reinforces the personal nature of his plea and adds needed emphasis to Paul's offer. He is not making a token gesture; he will repay Philemon for whatever Onesimus owes him, without, we notice, even knowing what that might be.

Of course, there's again the air of an "offer he can't refuse" here. It would be inconceivable for Philemon to send Paul a bill. But just as Philemon's mercy is real, Paul's offer is real. We can have no doubt from reading this that if Philemon had sent Paul a bill, he would, with a heavy heart, have paid it.

Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

If this letter is representative of Paul's powers of persuasion then it's small wonder he was able to almost singlehandedly build a worldwide Church. Philemon really has no choice but to comply with Paul's wishes, and even to do what Paul has not demanded explicitly, which is to grant Onesimus his freedom.

At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be granted to you. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Possibly one last nudge from Paul here in this reminder that Paul and Philemon may meet again one day. A standard farewell from Paul and a job well done.

I'll reserve a few final thoughts on Philemon for one last post before I (mercifully) move on to other topics.

Philemon part 3

This is part three of a multi-part post. See part one here and part two here.

Continuing with the commentary, we pick up the text of the letter just after the greeting:

I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may promote the knowledge of all the good that is ours in Christ. For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.

Paul offers thanks to God for the acts of love and charity that Philemon has performed on behalf of the "saints," i.e. his fellow Christians. What these acts are we don't know, but they must have gone beyond simply lending his house for Sunday services. He must have been a generous man, active in the community, a model for others demonstrating what a Christian should be.

Paul prays that Philemon will continue to be a good role model, that his efforts on behalf of the Christian community will "promote the knowledge of all the good that is ours in Christ." This sets up the appeal Paul is about to make to Philemon. He is about to ask Philemon to make some choices that may be hard for him, but that will be an example of Christian love and charity for all to see.

Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you--I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus--I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment.

As we get into Paul's deeply moving appeal on behalf of Onesimus, I'm again reluctant to interrupt the flow of the text with commentary. This letter is best read start to finish, without interruption. But I have to break in somewhere.

OK, bit by bit again:

Accordingly,

This one word shows that what Paul is about to ask follows directly from his desire that Philemon set an example of Christian love. To refuse would be to fail to live up to the high standards Christ demands of us.

though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required,

Paul makes no bones about his authority over his converts. He has led them to eternal life; there's really no limit on what they owe him in return. It's hard to imagine a priest or bishop these days attempting to exercise this kind of authority over a parishioner; these days the Church is more circumspect when it comes to making demands on individual Christians.

Of course, part of the reason for Paul's boldness is that he is no ordinary priest or bishop, and he knows it. The clarity with which the Church fathers conceived their role in salvation history is astounding. They were standing at the apex of history, the great inflection point, to which all previous history had been pointing, and from which the world would be forever changed. All of God's 2000-plus year journey with Israel had had the single purpose of laying the groundwork for the moment at which the fathers now stood. Revelation had reached fullness. No such moment would ever come again.

Paul in particular, referred to himself as none other than the Apostle to the Gentiles. The Twelve's job was to convert Israel, Paul was to handle the rest of the world. He was God's spokesman on Earth, bearer of the final revelation. He was the guy who finally got to see the rest of God's plan, who got to understand what the prophets of old could only catch fleeting glimpses of, and it was his job to explain it all to the world. He knew that there would never be another like himself, because there would never be another moment like this in all time. As he says in Ephesians 3:

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages and generations in God who created all things; that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and authorities in the heavens. This was according to the eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness of speech and confidence of access through faith in him.

To conceive of this role for yourself you almost have to be insane, a megalomaniac. Yet the fathers never betray any hint of doubt about their mission, and manage to carry it out with a mixture of humility and piety that is, apart from their astonishing success, perhaps the most miraculous aspect of their ministries.

OK that was quite a detour. Back to Philemon:

yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you

A cynical person may see this as a good cop / bad cop act on Paul's part, an "I certainly hope you make the right decision, because I don't want to have to put the hurt on you" sort of thing. There's probably a grain of truth in that; after all the tone of this letter is both solicitous and firm. But I believe it's also true that Paul really does want Philemon to do the right thing for the right reason. He wants this to be an opportunity for Philemon to demonstrate real Christian love; for Philemon and Onesimus to become true brothers in Christ. It isn't enough for Philemon to begrudgingly forgive Onesimus only because he was forced to, and to forever resent him for it.

I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus--I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment.

I just find this infinitely touching. Paul stands before Philemon as a father pleading for his child. Who could listen to this plea, the plea of a man grown old in the service of the Lord, who had suffered as much as any man ever has in God's service, who was even now imprisoned and facing an uncertain future; who could refuse this man's plea on behalf of his child? Because in reading this letter there really can be no doubt about the authenticity of Paul's feelings for Onesimus.

Philemon part 2

This is part two of a multi-part post. See part one here. Part one was the warm-up. Somehow I wound up commenting on Ephesians in order to comment on Philemon. In any case, here's the actual commentary on Philemon.

Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house; Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The ancients really knew how to start a letter. I actually saw a "loose" translation of the Bible once that had this as "Dear Philemon," and had the letter end with "Sincerely, Paul." AAACK! You might as well translate Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 as, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? No, but you're pretty damn good looking." I wanted to comment on some of the text within Paul's greeting, but I couldn't bear to chop it up. Take a moment to savor it before continuing.

OK now bit by bit:

Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus

Obviously this letter was written during one of Paul's many imprisonments for preaching the gospel. This is one of the Pauline letters considered indisputably authentic, i.e., written by the one and only Paul of Tarsus. Despite its brevity scholars have deduced a lot about where it was probably written, where Philemon probably lived, when it was probably written in relation to other letters, what brand of cereal Paul had for breakfast that day, etc. I was raised on the Historical Critical method. It was probably the first lesson I learned at Gonzaga, and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced cheese. I'm still on awe of the fact that the Church has the guts to let the Scriptures undergo the same scientific analysis that would be given to any other ancient text. But I have to agree with the pope, that if you go overboard with it it turns Scripture reading into trivia hour (O.K. the pope didn't quite put it like that). At some point though, you've got to lay off the historicizing and listen to the text.

Back to the text then. Paul mentions his imprisonment here to emphasize the sacrifices he has made for the gospel, because he is about to ask Philemon to make a sacrifice for Paul (a much smaller one by comparison). It's also an opening of stark, poetic beauty.

and Timothy our brother,

One of Paul's companions, and recipient of Paul's Letter to Timothy.

To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier

Philemon is the owner of the slave Onesimus, who hasn't received mention yet. As a slave owner, he must have been a relatively wealthy man. Paul greets him as a "beloved fellow worker," a colleague in the gospel. Apphia was probably his wife, and Archippus possibly a son.

and the church in your house

I recall reading that one possible explanation of this is that Philemon had a large household of servants and slaves, and that the entire household converted to Christianity when he did. But now I can't find any reference to that idea; all the references I can find agree that this indicates that Philemon must have regularly held the Church services that would one day be labeled (somewhat randomly) the "Mass" in his house. In these very early days, the Mass was celebrated in individual homes rather than in dedicated church buildings. See this for a nice description of what the early Mass looked like. This would explain the effusive compliments Paul lavishes on Philemon in this letter. Philemon must have been a leading figure in the Christian community in his city.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

A truly beautiful blessing to start the letter off.

Genesis 3

So much packed into so few words, and so difficult to interpret! We seem to love nothing more than to project our vision of the ideal man on primitive peoples. As we saw already with Harrison Ford's old movie The Mosquito Coast, so also with Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series, we can't depict primitive Man without imbuing him with our vision of how we ought to be, how we were before society encrusted us with its crippling notions of right and wrong. In Auel's case, those encrustations prevent us from having lots of freewheeling, well, if you've read the books you know what I mean. But the first to do so was the Bible, and no one has ever done it better. Here's the text:

Now, the snake was the most subtle of all the wild animals that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, 'Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?'

There's a real chicken-and-egg problem here. God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit. If they've never sinned, how can they feel tempted to disobey? The serpent breaks the cycle.

The woman answered the snake, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden.
But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, "You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death." '
Then the snake said to the woman, 'No! You will not die!
God knows in fact that the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil.'

Here we have the basic temptation of mankind, to make gods of ourselves, to put ourselves in a position that only God can occupy. Whether it's the sin of pride, where we claim credit for the gifts God has given us as if we had invented them ourselves; or the sin of passing judgment on others, where we place ourselves on the throne of God as if we were qualified to judge the hearts of others; this is the sin that underlies all the others. It's been discussed so much elsewhere that it hardly needs expansion.

The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was enticing for the wisdom that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

Again, the paradox of a complete innocent succumbing to temptation is mind-bending, but we mustn't tarry.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realised that they were naked. So they sewed fig-leaves together to make themselves loin-cloths

Shame, self-consciousness, etc.... This is another of the most commonly commented-on verses.

The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

Now this is wonderful. What was the state of mankind before the Fall? What was his true, uncorrupted nature? He walked with God in the garden of Eden, "in the cool of the day." It is sin that prevents us from meeting God face to face. People wonder why God doesn't show himself more clearly. Rather, they should ask why they place the barrier of sin between themselves and God. The experience of the saints bears this out.

But Yahweh God called to the man. 'Where are you?' he asked.
'I heard the sound of you in the garden,' he replied. 'I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'
'Who told you that you were naked?' he asked. 'Have you been eating from the tree I forbade you to eat?'
The man replied, 'It was the woman you put with me; she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.'

Love this; they've only just started sinning and they've already learned how to pass the buck.

Then Yahweh God said to the woman, 'Why did you do that?' The woman replied, 'The snake tempted me and I ate.'
Then Yahweh God said to the snake, 'Because you have done this, Accursed be you of all animals wild and tame! On your belly you will go and on dust you will feed as long as you live.

There's a bit of How the Rabbit Lost His Tail fairy tale charm here, but since the serpent represents Satan it also contains a real curse for the fallen angels.

I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel.

This is the verse that is always said to be a foreshadowing of Christ, the woman a type of Mary and her offspring Jesus. I guess because of Paul's use of Adam as an anti-type of Christ (if that's the correct word). Thus Jesus crushes the head the Satan the serpent.

To the woman he said: I shall give you intense pain in childbearing, you will give birth to your children in pain. Your yearning will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.

To the man he said, 'Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, Accursed be the soil because of you! Painfully will you get your food from it as long as you live.
It will yield you brambles and thistles, as you eat the produce of the land.
By the sweat of your face will you earn your food, until you return to the ground, as you were taken from it.'

To our modern ears whenever Scripture speaks of men dominating women the verses fairly shout at us off the page. But this author isn't saying that the true nature of women is to be dominated by men. Rather, he's saying that the state of powerlessness of women in this ancient pastoral community is one of the curses resulting from the Fall. It's part of the suffering introduced into the world by the sins of mankind.

I hesitate to raise the subject, in the event that someone someday actually reads this post, but it seems to me that those who claim the Genesis story is sexist because it blames the woman Eve for the Fall more than the man Adam have it backward. It seems to me that the author of Genesis looked at the state of women in his society and concluded that their suffering was somewhat greater than the suffering of men, and so gave them a 'first among equals' status in the story of the origin of sin.

Overall, we see here that pain and suffering are the results of sin. As we saw in the post on Buddhism and Original Sin, this is similar to the conclusion that Buddhists have come to with their concept of dukkha, that suffering in the world is the result of a human nature that is out-of-joint, that is not aligned with its true self.

For dust you are and to dust you shall return.'

This is a verse of breathtaking poetic beauty.

The man named his wife 'Eve' because she was the mother of all those who live.
Yahweh God made tunics of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them.

This is touching. God doesn't just toss Adam and Eve out on their ears, yell 'Good riddance,' and slam the door. He clothes them - prepares them for live in the outer world - before expelling them.

Then Yahweh God said, 'Now that the man has become like one of us in knowing good from evil, he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and pick from the tree of life too, and eat and live for ever!'
So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken.
He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the great winged creatures and the fiery flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.

Obviously Christians see in the tree of life a type of Christ, who mankind cannot now access until properly prepared.

This leads to the question of how we go about fixing the state of brokenness in which we find ourselves. As Huston Smith says in World's Religions, "For the rift to be healed we need to know its cause, and the Second Noble Truth identifies it. The cause of life's dislocation is tanha....Tanha is a specific kind of desire, the desire for private fulfillment." Therefore a project of finding disciplines that will enable the annihilation of desire is the answer.

This is not the conclusion one would draw from the Genesis story however. Genesis tells us that the fallen nature of Man is a result of sin, and sin came about because of the loss of innocence - the knowledge of what is good and what is evil. That is a jinn that cannot be put back in its bottle; there's no point trying to unlearn the difference between good and evil. The only direction we can go from here is forward, which is why Christ had to come into the world. Only God himself could pull off the impossible task at hand: to lead us out of our current state of brokenness and into an even greater destiny than we would have had in our previous state of innocence, that of true adopted children of God.

What is original sin?

As part of preparing for the last post on Buddhism and original sin I re-read some material on original sin, particularly this and this. I was surprised to find that many people in the Judeo-Christian tradition have and still do deny the existence of original sin. I'm especially surprised by Wikipedia's claim that original sin is not part of Jewish doctrine, since it appears to me to be nothing more than a commentary on Genesis 3, which is certainly part of Judaism.

I guess I'm as surprised to find that there are people in our tradition who deny original sin as I was to find that Buddhism embraces it, because if we disagree on such a fundamental aspect of our natures how can we agree on anything? And if we and Buddhists do agree at this level, then we must agree on many other things as well, because a lot must follow from the way we view ourselves.

But it's clear especially from this that the 670 or so words of Genesis 3 have spawned a lot of additional explanation, and I suspect that when people of the Judeo-Christian tradition reject the doctrine of original sin they are really rejecting one aspect or another of that explanation, and not the central ideas themselves.

So what are the central ideas of original sin? I'm sure I'm not qualified to begin to describe them. But I can describe what the central ideas are to me. To me, original sin is an attempt to explain the mystery of the predicament in which we find ourselves. Again, Paul says it best in Romans 7:15ff:

I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things that I hate.
....
so it is not myself acting, but the sin which lives in me.
And really, I know of nothing good living in me -- in my natural self, that is -- for though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want -- that is what I do.

There is something not quite right about us. We know the kind of people we should be, but we are incapable of being that person. We do evil even though we know it does us harm. Somewhere along the way something went terribly wrong; we have been broken. How did this come about?

The term "original sin" comes from the act that led to this condition, but if we move on to that we've already skipped past the fundamental point. Because what original sin really refers to is this mysterious state of "brokenness" that we recognize in ourselves. I think I'm not alone in this assessment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes original sin this way (CCC 417):

Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called "original sin."

(emphasis mine). It's the state of deprivation, the brokenness itself, that original sin primarily refers to, and not the act that led to it. How could any Christian reject this basic diagnosis of the human condition? After all, what need is there for a savior if we're not in a state of needing to be saved? Again, I suspect the beef is with some particular of the doctrine, and not with this basic idea.

Incidentally, an alternative view is presented by the old Harrison Ford movie, The Mosquito Coast. The protagonist in the movie, Allie Fox, believes that evil is learned, and that if you could just roll back the clock far enough and start society over you could create a perfect society without sin. So he leads his family on a series of expeditions, each one traveling deeper into the jungles of Central America in search of ever more primitive societies on which to build his perfect community, and each time finding that sin is already present there. He ends by saying he wishes he could evolve backward into animal form, because only there will a truly pure spirit be found.

One could imagine the question being empirically resolved. If sin is learned then one of the so-called "wolf children" who are lost in the woods as infants and raised by wolves, if there really are such things, would be free of it. You could imagine a psychologist examining such a child to resolve the issue once and for all.

Original sin and Buddhism

What I know about Buddhism would fit on the back of an envelope, with room to spare. I've heard that it is a religion oriented entirely around the elimination of suffering. No doubt I picked this up from long ago reading C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. The Buddha was a rich man who lived a pampered life, and when he finally encountered disease, poverty and death, he was shocked and disillusioned into spending the rest of his life in pursuit of techniques for training the mind and body in ways that would eliminate pain, by detaching oneself from this world that is the cause of pain. It sounds like a religion of escapism, but it's exactly the kind of religion I'd expect people to come up with "on their own," without the benefit of revelation. We either fear the unseen gods, and as pagans do attempt to placate them with elaborate rituals of sacrifice, or (better) we focus on what we see, that this is a world of pain, and we do our best to escape it.

These are the dots I connected in my mind, based on the few bits of information I had. But our understanding of others is always both clear, and incorrect, in inverse proportion to the amount of information that we base it on. So I expected to be found wrong when I picked up Huston Smith's The World's Religions, a nice little book that gives a 100,000 foot view of the world's major religions. Even so, what I found threw me for a loop:

The First Noble Truth [of Buddhism] is that life is dukkha, usually translated 'suffering'....Dukkha, then, names the pain that to some degree colors all finite existence. The word's constructive implications come to light when we discover that it was used in Pali to refer to wheels whose axes were off-center, or bones that had slipped from their sockets...The exact meaning of the First Noble Truth is this: Life (in the condition it has got itself into) is dislocated. Something has gone wrong. It is out of joint. As its pivot is not true, friction (interpersonal conflict) is excessive, movement (creativity) is blocked, and it hurts.

This assessment of affairs is what Christians call "original sin!" It's not just that we're living in a cruel world in which terrible things are constantly happening to us, we're living in a world in which something has gone fundamentally wrong with us. We're not fulfilling our true nature, and it hurts. Paul says it best in Romans 7:15ff:

I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things that I hate.
....
so it is not myself acting, but the sin which lives in me.
And really, I know of nothing good living in me -- in my natural self, that is -- for though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want -- that is what I do.

Every Christian has felt the pain of the situation that Paul so eloquently describes. We know that we can be so much more than we are. We desire with our entire being to do good, and yet we don't. We know that we were destined to be better than we are, and that by doing evil we are constantly acting against our own true nature, but we can't help ourselves.

This worldview doesn't produce an escapist religion, but an aspirational one. Because if there's something about us that's not quite right, if something has gone wrong and it's preventing us from living up to our true potential, then the obvious question is, "How do we fix it?" If I was surprised to find that Buddhism and Christianity agree on the diagnosis, I was even more surprised to find that they offer similar cures:

For the rift to be healed we need to know its cause, and the Second Noble Truth identifies it. The cause of life's dislocation is tanha....Tanha is a specific kind of desire, the desire for private fulfilment. When we are selfless we are free, but that is precisely the difficulty--to maintain that state. Tanha is the force that ruptures it, pulling us back from the freedom of the all to seek fulfilment in our egos, which ooze like secret sores. Tanha consists of all 'those inclinations which tend to continue or increase separateness, the separate existence of the subject of desire; in fact, all forms of selfishness, the essence of which is desire for self at the expense, if necessary, of all other forms of life. Life being one, all that tends to separate one aspect from another must cause suffering to the unit which even unconsciously works against the Law. Our duties to our fellows is to understand them as extensions, other aspects, of ourselves--fellow facets of the same Reality.'

Smith's quote is from Humphreys, Buddhism, p91. Obviously this quote touches on areas where Buddhism is very different than Christianity. I know of nothing in Christianity that parallels Buddhism's idea of "Life being one." Paul's doctrine of the unity of the Church as the Body of Christ may come closest, but that still seems very different. But analyzing differences in religions is much more difficult than finding similarities, especially where Buddhism is involved, which is a religion that tries very hard to avoid dogmas that could be used for comparison, so I won't attempt it.

What does strike me though is that Buddhism posits self-centeredness as the most basic flaw in human nature, as does Christianity, and I imagine, Judaism, and denial of self as the cure. In Luke 9:23ff Jesus says:

'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.
Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, will save it.
What benefit is it to anyone to win the whole world and forfeit or lose his very self?

We see this also in the parable of the pearl of great price, in which the merchant sells all that he has to acquire the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 13). And in the story of the rich man who asked Jesus what he must do to have eternal life, and is told by Jesus, 'If you wish to be perfect, go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me' (Matthew 19).

An obvious difference jumps out: the Christian's self-denial is an act of turning toward God, and in particular Jesus Christ, while the Buddhist's self-denial appears to be more of a turning toward his or her fellow creature. The Buddhist appears to have the "You must love your neighbor as yourself" half of the Jewish Law, but not "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37ff), much less Jesus' "new commandment" to "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34). This says it well:

Christian enlightenment, based on the gospel, remains irreducibly different from Zen or any other form of Buddhism.

[William Johnston, S.J.,] underscores the radical transcendence of God for Christians, including Christian mystics who use the language of nonduality. The climax of the Christian mystical journey is identifying with the Son and being filled with the Spirit and crying out: "Abba, Father!" At least on the level of expression and religious self-understanding, this is very different from Buddhist perspectives on nonduality, which do not address a transcendent in personal terms.

But again, analyzing differences in religions in difficult, and I know that many Christians have wondered if the Buddhist's nirvana isn't a vision of God of sorts, perhaps as clear a vision as the human mind can perceive without the aid of revelation. For me it's a great surprise, and a great comfort, to know that the Christian and the Buddhist have come to similar conclusions about the state of humanity, and spend the greatest part of their time responding to it in a similar manner: in the attempt to annihilate the self.