Love That Lectionary

In church every Sunday, my ears are blessed to receive three Scripture readings before the sermon. There is first an Old Testament reading, then there is a reading from one of the Epistles (Romans through Revelation), and finally we all stand for the reading of the holy gospel according to one of the four evangelists.

The readings for each Sunday of the Church Year are compiled into something called the Lectionary. There is a One-year Lectionary and a Three-year Lectionary. Since the churches I attend use the Three-year, I'll tell you about that one in particular. For all 52 Sundays of the first year (Year A), there are three readings. Then Year B comes around and there is a new set of readings for 52 different Sundays. Finally, in Year C (which the Church is about to end and move into Year A again), a fresh set of passages are arranged to be read in church every Sunday. This is a great system for a number of reasons. First, I get to hear God's precious Word from three different Books of Scripture every week. Second, I know my pastor won't just read his favorite passages Sunday after Sunday. And also, since the Lectionary is cross-denominational, I know that I'm hearing the same Scripture readings that millions of other Christians around the globe are hearing every Sunday.

Each reading in the Lectionary is called a pericope (per-i-kuh-pee). And every Monday here at Westfield House, the entire seminary meets for an hour and a half to study one of the pericopes we will be reading on an upcoming Sunday.

Since I am one of two people at this entire school who does not know Greek, I'm lost some of the time, but I still get something out of it. We meet in the fantastic Westfield House library, which is home to practically every useful theological text in print. Some of my favorites in the library are the Concordia Commentaries, Francis Pieper's Christian Dogmatics, and CFW Walther's Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel. It's helpful to really slow down and look at a handful of different aspects of a reading that you would otherwise just hear once on a Sunday morning.

Yes, I love the Lectionary. I enjoy studying it in Westfield House Pericope in our grand library, too. But my favorite part will always be closing my eyes during the readings in church and letting the Word of Christ wash over my ears and strengthen my faith, bestowing God's grace upon me with every pericope.

To Whom the Scepter Belongs

I have finished my fourth research paper! 5,432 words on the Early Church fathers and Judah's blessing.
For Christianity in Late Antiquity, I chose to write my paper on what eleven different Early Church fathers had to say about Genesis 49:8-12, in which Jacob blesses his fourth-born (fourth-borns are always the best) by giving his lineage the promise of the Messiah. Several Early Church fathers had a great deal to say about this short but meaningful text, which is what I spent my paper discussing.
The church fathers who commentated or preached on this passage, in chronological order, were Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Origen, Novatian, Ephrem the Syrian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, Rufinus, and Cyril of Alexandria. Justin Martyr (the earliest) was born around 100AD, and Cyril of Alexandria lived in the early 400's.
Some of these men were from the Alexandrian school of biblical interpretation, and others were from the Antiochene school. Alexandrian theologians tended to interpret the Bible allegorically, and thought that Scripture had many layers of meaning. Most conservative Christians today differ from this tradition, because we believe that a given text has just one meaning, but many different modes of application. Antiochene theologians, on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, took Scripture literally wherever they could. One downfall to their interpretive approach (or "exegesis") is that they often came to moralistic conclusions, seeing the Bible as a Book that tells us how to live, and not foremost how we are saved.
With the many differences and controversies surrounding the two traditions in Late Antiquity, I was interested to see what they all had to say about Genesis 49:8-12.
Verse 10 of this passage says that the scepter will not depart from Judah until the one comes to whom the scepter belongs. Most of the church fathers, regardless of their tradition, recognized this to be a messianic prophecy. It proclaims that Judah's descendants will rule God's people until the Messiah, the one to whom the ruler's scepter truly belongs, takes on flesh to be our Savior. This is truly a great blessing for Judah, someone who is a true failure. If you are unfamiliar with Judah's story, I encourage you to read Genesis 38, one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. But after his many trespasses, Judah repents, and even though he is a wretched sinner, God chooses to use his bloodline from which to carry on the genealogy of Christ.
There are many disagreements regarding the interpretation of certain symbols in these five verses. For example, the lion's whelp, the foal, the colt, the choice vine, and the blood of grapes are symbols about which the church fathers had very different views. But one thing I noticed, which became the thesis for my paper, is that they were all looking for Christ in this passage. Jesus is on every page of the Old Testament, and while the Early Church fathers came to slightly different conclusions about what these verses tell us about Jesus, they all recognized that this passage... that this entire Book... is about Jesus Christ. And that is a mighty fine way to read the Holy Bible.

Books and Books

The Cambridge University Library is one of the five biggest libraries in the UK. Before yesterday, I had only used it to get a library card and see an exhibit called “Wrongdoing in Spain and England in the Long Nineteenth Century.” So I decided to explore it. I knew before I walked in that I could spend all day there, so I disciplined myself and resolved only to spend an hour.

Not only is that building massive, but it is packed to the gills with books and periodicals. You barely have enough room to walk between the shelves to pick out a book. And if it’s not on that shelf, it very well may be six stories above you.

My favorite part of the library was the reference room. It contained rows of reference books on the sides and ends of the room, and in the middle were traditional-style desks with lamps above them. Dozens of Cambridge scholars were reading or working on papers as I walked around the room, reminding me that I still have to finish my fourth paper.

On the fourth floor of the North Front wing were the archives of the Cambridge University Examiner, the campus newspaper. I looked in the 1992 archive, and found that on the day of my birth, the Student Senate met to discuss matters regarding cancer research in their genetics program and a change in their law program. To think all that was happening right here when I was in a hospital on the banks of the Missouri River…

When my hour was up, I contentedly exited and gazed up at the enormous structure that is the biggest library in which I have ever set foot.

The Year of Their Revolution

My final class and lecture to blog about is English Reformation. The lecture I attend weekly at Cambridge is called Christianity and the Transformation of Culture. My lecturer is Dr. Richard Rex, and my supervisor here at Westfield House for this class is Dr. Jonathan Mumme. In addition to my lecture every Thursday for English Reformation, I wrote a research paper under the guidance of my supervisor which I blogged about last month. It's a true privilege to learn about one of the defining moments in English history in England from an Englishman at England's finest university.
In short, the English Reformation was far more political than religious. The Reformations of both Luther and Calvin were religious ones, honestly seeking a change in the corrupted doctrine or practice of the Roman Catholic Church. One cannot say this about England's Reformation.
Henry VIII became King of England in the year 1509, when Martin Luther was still a lowly monk, struggling to find peace in his conscience wracked with guilt and uncertainty. Throughout the course of the German Reformation, Henry adamantly opposed Luther's teachings from his throne in London. Henry wrote tractates supporting Catholic doctrine and papal authority. It wasn't until Henry's wife Catherine continuously failed to give him a son that he desired a Reformation. As King of England, he felt that he needed a male heir in order to preserve peace in his kingdom. He was also infatuated with a number of women who he wasn't married to. For these reasons, he sought an annulment from the Pope. The Pope said no. Henry didn't take kindly to being told "no," so he broke with Rome, and made himself the supreme head of the Church of England.
Now he could do whatever he wanted. And believe me, he did. He divorced Catherine, married one of his lovers named Anne Boleyn, and when she failed to give him a son, he had her executed.
He then married his next mistress, Jane Seymour, who finally bore the son Henry desired. Three additional divorces and marriages later, Henry died and his eight-year-old son Edward VI assumed the English throne. Edward, a sickly child, only lived to be sixteen, but during his reign he did a great deal. He did not have six wives like his daddy, but he "purged" the land of Catholic images, altars, and Masses, along with establishing a new Protestant prayer book and statement of faith called the 42 Articles. After Edward's death in 1553, his half-sister Mary took the throne. Mary I (known as "Bloody Mary") was a Catholic, and reversed the actions of Edward, brought back the images and altars, and made Catholicism the religion of England once more, along with burning 278 Protestant "heretics" at the stake in five years.
Once her short reign was over (1558), Elizabeth I became Queen and brought about a middle ground of sorts, making England a Protestant nation that clung to many Catholic customs.
I find it difficult to understand how 21st-century Anglicans can justify their Reformation in hindsight. It was political. It came about not from a re-discovering of the gospel like Luther's, or from a re-construction of doctrine like Calvin's, but from a power-hungry sex-addict who wanted a divorce. And that's no Reformation I wish to be a part of.

Depth Perception

The fourth class on my list to blog about is called Christianity in Late Antiquity. For this class, I go down to Cambridge for a lecture once a week, and I have a supervisor here at Westfield House who I meet with periodically to discuss the research paper I will be completing for this class.
My lecturer's name is Dr. Thomas Graumann and my supervisor here is Dr. Boris Gunjevic. Both of these men are very knowledgeable about the Early Church and I have a great deal to learn from both of them.
The eight lectures compiling Christianity in Late Antiquity cover the years from 306AD to 430AD. In 306AD, Constantine the Great was proclaimed supreme ruler of the Roman Empire. He was proclaimed emperor in York, England, which is where I saw his statue in front of York Minster Cathedral. The West belonged to Constantine.
What made this emperor so special was his conversion to Christianity. For the first time, Rome had a Christian emperor, which stopped the previously ongoing persecutions of Christians in the Empire. When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, it paved the way for important government-sanctioned councils such as the Councils of Nicaea (in the year 325) and Constantinople (381), at which men compiled the biblical canon and composed the Nicene Creed.
Many controversies ensued during this time, perhaps the most famous of which was the Arian controversy. Arius claimed that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are creations of the Father and not one in nature with him. This was combated by Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, after whom the Athanasian Creed was titled.
This era of Late Antiquity also encompassed the lives of the four principal church fathers of the Western Church: Ambrose of Milan, Gregory, Jerome, and St. Augustine of Hippo. You might remember Augustine from one of my past blogs.
He was the Bishop of Hippo, which is in North Africa, toward the beginning of the fifth century. He fought Arianism and other heresies in North Africa and Italy during his life. Among his most influential works are Confessions, which describes his conversion to Christianity as a young man, and The City of God. He died in 430AD, which is where my lectures will end as well.
I have attended the first five of my eight lectures for Christianity in Late Antiquity thus far, and I have begun the first draft of my paper for it. It is a pleasure to learn about the Ancient Christian Church so close to where all the events took place. And I'm honored to live in a region that was once under the rule of Constantine the Great.

It's a Slow Climb Headed Back to the Sky

In Scotland yesterday, I bought a checkered tie made from 100% Scottish wool. Today, I'm pleased to wear it to church on my birthday.
I turn 21 today, in a country where the drinking age is 18. Good thing I’m not much of a drinker, or I’d feel as if I’d missed out on something. But I don't.
I'm fighting the temptation to be one of those people who, the second they turn 21, complain about how they're getting so old, and then once they're in their 40's are like, "Don't call me sir! I'm still young!" No use in denying your youth or your age as far as I can tell. So with a smile on my face, I conclude the first 10% of my 20's. I never thought I'd celebrate my 21st in Great Britain, but such is the nature of life I suppose. You never know what's coming... and time won't slow down.
My song of the summer "Collapsible Lung" is taking on more meaning for me every day. I'm getting by with my collapsible lung... I'm getting older. 21 is a big jump from 20, and I'm closer to my last years than ever before. But it's a good time 100% of the time. I wouldn't want things to stay the same forever. We were designed to move; to move through space (backpacking in Europe?) and through time (every new birthday). I'm like a ladder with a missing rung, and it's a slow climb headed back to the sky.
Life can be challenging, to say the least. Sometimes we feel as if everything useful in us is somehow damaged. Like we're ladders with missing rungs. But with every year that goes by as my age creeps up the graph, I see more and more that the climb to the sky, while painfully slow for us, has already been scaled by Christ.
On the last day, he will raise our aged and decaying bodies to life, making them perfect and new. This gives me special hope these days when my hairline seems to be receding faster than ever.
21 is a special year that I'm happy to begin here in Europe. And while it's a slow climb headed back to the sky, it can be a memorable and enjoyable climb as well. Time won't slow down... And while I'm still a young man by all means, that won't always be the case. Someday, Lord willing, I'll be breathing deep with my collapsible lung, thinking of the places I've been and the people I've met. And I'm certain, if and when that distant day comes, I'll think back on my times in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and all the people who I shared this special semester with as a part of this slow and unsteady climb headed back to the sky.

At World's End

I just got back from a trip to the end of the world... Scotland, that is. My roommate Jean and I decided to make a weekend trip up to the capital city of Edinburgh since neither of us had ever been to Scotland.
Scotland, to this American, is simply more interesting than England. Perhaps because it's so far away from everything, but also because I've always been rather exposed to English culture with movies, books, and history classes. Scotland just seems like a different world. And it really is. It's much more similar to Ireland than it is to England, probably since they are both celtic.
On the train ride up to Edinburgh, we rode along the English coastline once we passed Newcastle; and from Berwick-upon-Tweed (the border city) it was a straight ride up the Scottish coast. While I'd put the all three Irish coasts that I saw just one notch above it, the coast of Scotland it breathtaking.
Upon arrival in Edinburgh, we immediately heard bagpipe music. We exited the train station and saw a bagpiper playing right outside Scott Monument, a massive structure built in honor of Sir Walter Scott, the poet.
From there, we hiked up to Calton Hill, the highest point in Edinburgh. We were able to see the entire city from here, including the coast it rests upon.
My buddy Jean (who is quite the shutter-bug, might I add) loved the view, especially looking down at the "lovely city," in his words.
St. Giles Cathedral was a quick stop, but a fantastic building nonetheless. Next to this church was a statue of Adam Smith, the father of modern economics. I had forgotten that he was from Scotland. He is on the British 20-pound note.
Our next and biggest attraction (along with being my favorite) was Edinburgh Castle. Cardiff Castle looked magnificent from the outside, but I didn't go in. Here, I chose to fork over the quid and tour this historic attraction.
This was the home of the famous Mary Queen of Scots, and the birthplace of her son James VI of Scotland, who, after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, became James I of England. Ever heard of the King James Bible? Yeah, it's that King James.
On our tour, we learned that this castle is first and foremost a military base that is still in use today. In fact, it is the Royal Army's headquarters in Scotland. There were three military museums in the castle that we enjoyed perusing, along with a Scottish whiskey shop. Our red-headed tour guide showed us all around this historic castle, even toward the nineteenth-century jail cells where they kept the Americans.
Another thing about Scotland worth mentioning is the sun. I have never seen the sun so low and bright in my life. Since we were dangerously close to the Arctic circle, the sun was close to the horizon at "high noon" and was set around 4:00! The sun's lowness and blazing luminosity made it terribly difficult to take satisfactory pictures that weren't full of squints or shadows, but we managed to take a few good ones.
If you ever find yourself in Edinburgh overnight, I recommend staying at the Castle Rock Hostel. Of the three hostels I've stayed at (New York, London, and here), it was by far the best.
After our full night's sleep, we stepped out into the 100-foot shadows outside and walked down the "Royal Mile." This, the most famous street in Edinburgh, starts at the Castle, goes down past St. Giles Cathedral, Scottish Parliament, and many other important cites (all the buildings look the same in this city!), and ends at the Palace of Holyrood House. This is where the royal family stays when they visit this end of Britain.
Holyrood Park was quite a sight as well, with grassy knolls that turn into clefts as your eyes travel upward.
Leaving the Royal Mile behind us, we boarded the train back to Cambridge. This train, however, took us a different route. Instead of descending down the same coast, we cut through the interior of southern Scotland, and saw pastoral sheep farms, small mountains, and gorgeous glens. This route took us much longer to get back to Cambridge, but it was definitely worth it.
I've never been to the end of the world before, and you know what? It's not a bad place to be! It's far enough away to get London out of your lungs, but not far enough away that the air freezes said lungs. It's amazing how different Scots are from Englishman. They're friendlier and more talkative, so long as they're not talking to an Englishman.Scotland has a rich history, a beautiful landscape, and is worth exploring. And the bagpipers? They're starting to grow on me.

The Year of Our Revolution

Aside from my papers that have filled up my past three blogs, I have blogged about 2 of my 5 classes thus far: Readings in Luther and Lutheran Dogmatics I. My next class is called Continental Reformation. This is a history class about mainland European religion in the sixteenth century.
My tutor (or professor, as they're called in America) for this class is the same one who teaches Readings in Luther: Dr. Rosin. It meets twice a week here at Westfield House, and I have one weekly lecture at Cambridge to supplement my learning for this class. It's called Reform and Renewal with Richard Rex. Of my three Cambridge lectures, I like this one the most.
In Dr. Rosin's lectures, we have mainly focused on the powers at work in Germany on the eve of the Reformation, including scholasticism and humanism. In Dr. Rex's lectures, he has brought us through Luther's life and theology, and the Reformation as it occurred outside of Wittenberg, specifically in Augsburg, Zurich, and Cologne. For our lecture on Martin Luther's theology, Dr. Rex declared from the outset that he probably knows more about Luther's theology than anyone else at Cambridge. Of course, as he readily admitted, that's not saying a great deal in this highly secular country.
Another thing Rex claimed was that not many people in the world really understand the doctrine of justification through faith alone, and that he is one of them. He added to this slightly prideful, highly humorous comment by saying that there are even fewer people in the world who understand it and don't believe it, and he is one of them as well. While I disagree with Rex about a great deal, he's a brilliant man. I've never been taught the Reformation from a Roman Catholic, which is an experience in and of itself. I thoroughly enjoy attending his lectures and Dr. Rosin's. I agree with Rosin's view of the Reformation and largely disagree with Rex's, but it's fascinating to hear about it from two competing academic perspectives.
I especially liked Rex's comment on Philip Melanchthon: "An extremely talented man, but alas, not a genius like Luther." You can't say he's uninformed. And for an Englishman, he really does know a great deal about the Lutheran faith.
Today was my 4th of 8 lectures for Reform and Renewal, marking the halfway point. I haven't written my paper yet for this class, but I'm learning loads. There's something special about learning the Reformation on the continent in which it happened.

Augustine vs. Luther

My third research paper of five is now complete. This one was for Lutheran Dogmatics I. For this class, we got to choose one topic of systematic theology to analyze and write 3,000 words on. I chose to write on two different views of the word "day" in the Genesis 1 creation account: St. Augustine's position and Martin Luther's.
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was an incredibly influential church father. He was particularly influential to sixteenth-century reformer Martin Luther. In fact, Luther was a monk of the Augustinian order before the Reformation. And the two theologians concurred on most matters of the faith, which makes it all the more curious and intriguing when one finds a stark disagreement.
Augustine believed that God created all things in a single instant instead of in six days. He was convinced that since God doesn't need time in order to create, therefore he didn't use it. To explain why Genesis 1 speaks of creation over six orderly and sequential periods of time, Augustine asserts that God used this story instead of plainly describing creation like it was, in order to accommodate human terms to our feeble intellects. Without this allegory, Augustine says, humans would not be able to comprehend or appreciate God's creation.
1,100 years later, Martin Luther studied this position of his highly-revered church father and declared that he smelled a rat. In his lecture on Genesis 1, he sought to discredit Augustine on this matter. Luther claims that, given this straightforward historical account, Augustine resorted to "extraordinary trifling in his treatment of the six days." Since Dr. Luther can explain his view of what "six days" actually meant much better than I can, I will give you the primary source: "Although these subjects are debated with keen reasoning, the result is no real contribution. For what need is there of setting up a twofold knowledge? Nor does it serve any useful purpose to make Moses at the outset so mystical and allegorical. His purpose is to teach us, not about allegorical creatures and an allegorical world but about real creatures and a visible world apprehended by the senses. Therefore, as the proverb has it, [Moses] calls 'a spade a spade,' i.e., he employs the terms 'day' and 'evening' without allegory, just as we customarily do... Therefore so far as this opinion of Augustine is concerned, we assert that Moses spoke in the literal sense, not allegorically or figurative, i.e., that the world, with all its creatures, was created within six days, as the words read."
Given these very different views from two highly respected theologians, I concluded that, with regard to this matter, Luther had the more biblical view of God as Creator. After all, if we applied Augustine's logic that God didn't use time because he didn't need to, then that leads us into very dangerous territory.
Throughout Scripture, we see God using earthly means to accomplish his work for us. He uses water in order to baptize us into his name. He uses his spoken Word to create faith in us; and Jesus makes bread his body, and wine his blood to forgive our sins and strengthen our faith. If Augustine’s logic of necessity is carried over into these realms, it would lead to one of two conclusions: either God needs these means in order to accomplish his work for us, or he does not really use these means, but only illustrates his grace to us in these means in order to describe the salvific work he actually does in a way our feeble intellects can grasp. Neither of these conclusions is biblical in how they view God as Redeemer and Sanctifier, so why would we ascribe the same line of thinking to our view of God as Creator?
Martin Luther, defended by Martin Chemnitz in Loci Theologici, realizes that we do not have a tricky God. Our Creator is one who desires to teach us about himself, what he has done, and what that means for us. To take the first chapter of God’s Word as an allegory would be to imply that our Creator is tricky, making up myths in order to hide from our inferior minds what he really did. If we are to take the historical account of creation as an allegory, who is to say that we shouldn’t take other historical accounts in Scripture mystically? This can lead into unsafe territory, especially once we get to the incarnation of Jesus.
Our Creator does things in certain ways for us. He does not do things in ways that suit him and then describe the events to us in earthly terms so we can understand. He actually uses earthly means in order to carry out his divine work for us. What a Creator we have!