"Praise the Lord, all nations!"

Psalm 117 is unique as a call to praise. Most of the time, the Psalms call upon Israel to praise the Lord. But Psalm 117 calls all nations and peoples to the praise and worship of God:

Praise the Lord, all nations!
Glorify him, all peoples!

There is a dance here between the particular and the universal. God calls a particular people--Israel--but gives this people a universal vocation. 

My next book is scheduled to come out this spring. Titled The Book of Love: A Better Way to Read the Bible, it has a chapter on this dialectic between the particular and the universal. One of the points I make is how love gets distorted when it is pulled too far in either direction.

On the one hand, there is the particular. We are not called to love generically or abstractly. I am called to love the particular people God has put within the scope of my care. My family, my friends, my church, my city. I am called to love a particular people at a particular place. And yet, this love of mine can become insular, xenophobic, and ethnonationalistic. 

This was precisely the temptation Israel faced. We see that play out in Acts 10, where the Holy Spirit has to nudge the Jewish followers of Jesus toward the goyim, away from the particular and toward the universal. As Peter declares at the end of his hard lesson, "God has shown me that I must not call any person impure or unclean."

So, love is universal. As Psalm 117 declares, Israel wasn't just to love herself. She existed to love the nations. And yet, a universalized love has its own temptations. Can you love the entire world without that love become generic, abstract, and disengaged? That is to say, we can love the world in principle but, as I point out in Stranger God, in practice love is local, a face to face interaction. Far too often we love the world at a digital distance via expressions of social media solidarity. Love becomes a meme. Loving everyone universally tends to mean loving no one in particular.

This is a crude contrast, but conservatives tend to make love too particular, with all the attendant temptations. Liberals, by contrast, tend to make love too universal, and suffer their own temptations in that direction. Psalm 117 places us in the middle. A particular people are reminded of a universal calling and concern.

In light of the St. Brigid tradition, we've been talking about pagan nature and fertility goddesses. As I've argued, the link between the Irish goddess Brigid and St. Brigid is thin, really just the similar names. Plus, the goddess Brigid wasn't a nature or a fertility goddess. In fact, the notion of a nature goddess in modern neo-paganism really became established during the modern period with the 18th and 19th century Romantic movement. Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon gives a good account of this.  

And yet, I do think a sympathetic conversation between Christianity and neo-paganism can be had in regards to how the divine feminine relates to nature. The bridge here is the vision of Sophia from the Old Testament.

Proverbs 3 describes how Sophia (Wisdom) was "the first of his [God's] acts" of creation. And once created, Sophia is depicted as a co-creator with God, standing "beside" God as "a master worker." Proverbs 8:22-36:

“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
when he had not yet made earth and fields
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker,
and I was daily his delight,
playing before him always,
playing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.

“And now, my children, listen to me:
happy are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
and do not neglect it.
Happy is the one who listens to me,
watching daily at my gates,
waiting beside my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life
and obtains favor from the Lord,
but those who miss me injure themselves;
all who hate me love death.”

Simply, Sophia is a divine principle, imagined as feminine, that co-creates and pervades the natural world. More, we are called to live in attunement with this divine, feminine principle. Whoever finds Sophia, says Proverbs, "finds life" and "obtains favor from the Lord." Negatively, those who "miss" Sophia "injure themselves" and those who "hate" Sophia "love death."

These connections deepen when we turn to the Deuterocanonical book of Wisdom, found in the canon of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Admittedly, this is a long passage to share, but if you're a Protestant you've likely never read it and it would be illuminating to give it a close, attentive reading. It's a pretty startling and mind-bending text:

Wisdom is radiant and unfading,
and she is easily discerned by those who love her
and is found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding,
and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care,
because she goes about seeking those worthy of her,
and she graciously appears to them in their paths
and meets them in every thought. (Wisdom 6:12-16)

May God grant me to speak with judgment
and to have thoughts worthy of what I have received,
for he is the guide even of wisdom
and the corrector of the wise.
For both we and our words are in his hand,
as are all understanding and skill in crafts.
For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists,
to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements,
the beginning and end and middle of times,
the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons,
the cycles of the year and the constellations of the stars,
the natures of animals and the tempers of wild animals,
the powers of spirits and the thoughts of human beings,
the varieties of plants and the virtues of roots;
I learned both what is secret and what is manifest,
for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.

There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy,
unique, manifold, subtle,
agile, clear, unpolluted,
distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen,
irresistible, beneficent, humane,
steadfast, sure, free from anxiety,
all-powerful, overseeing all,
and penetrating through all spirits
that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle.
For wisdom is more mobile than any motion;
because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.
For she is a breath of the power of God
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.
For she is a reflection of eternal light,
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of his goodness.
Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God and prophets,
for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
She is more beautiful than the sun
and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be more radiant,
for it is succeeded by the night,
but against wisdom evil does not prevail.

She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other,
and she orders all things well. (Wisdom 7:15-8:1)

Like I said, a remarkable passage. Sophia is a "pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty." Sophia "pervades and penetrates all things." Sophia is the "fashioner of all things" within the created order, from the solstices to the nature of animals to the varieties of plants to the virtues of roots. 

As should be obvious. there are resonances here between Sophia and the neo-pagan vision of a nature goddess. Both describe a divine feminine principle that infuses and suffuses nature, from solstices to herbal remedies, that we must live in attunement with. 

Now, can Sophia be connected to St. Brigid from a Christian perspective? It can, and it comes through that Marian association we've already discussed. We'll turn to that issue as we wrap up this series.

One way to tell the story about the relationship between paganism and Christianity in the West is that Christianity co-opted and stole pagan practices, rebranding them as Christian holidays, rituals, and symbols, from Christmas trees to Easter eggs. In this telling, there is a primitive pagan "core" to the Christian practice that has been occluded and which might be recovered by removing the Christian accretion. 

In the Brigid tradition, as I've shared, there is a convergence between her feast day and the festival of Imbolc. As one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals, which include Bealtaine, Lughnasadh and Samhain, Imbolc likely has pagan origins as a celebration of spring and the lambing season. These fertility and birthing connections pull in divine feminine imagery. And given that Brigid's feast day falls on Imbolc we might suspect that, once again, Christianity is rebranding a prior pagan practice. Imbolc, a pagan fertility celebration, has now become the feast day of St. Brigid.

This case is strengthened because there was a goddess named Brigid (or Brigit). Brigid was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods and goddesses of Irish lore, the deities of pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland. A 9th century Christian account of the goddess Brigid describes her as being associated with poetry, wisdom, healing, smithing, and the protection of animals. The argument therefore has been made that St. Brigid is a Christian syncretization of the goddess Brigid. And yet, this account has a few problems. First, and most significantly, St. Brigid was a real person. St. Brigid, as a historical woman, is not a syncretistic co-opting of a pagan legend. Second, the goddess Brigid wasn't a fertility or nature goddess. Her main associations were poetry and smithing. Third, and relatedly, there is no particular association between the goddess Brigid and the festival of Imbolc, which became St. Brigid's feast day.

Basically, the only link between the goddess Brigid and St. Brigid is the name. The goddess Brigid wasn't a nature goddess. Nor is there any connection between her and Imbolc. Still, there are just enough threads of association to be woven into a neo-pagan tapestry. St. Brigid shares a name with a pagan goddess. St. Brigid's feast day falls on Imbolc, which may have origins in pagan fertility rites. Therefore: St. Brigid was primordially a nature and fertility goddess. The pagan goddess became the Christian saint. But upon closer inspection, as pointed out above, this case falls apart. Mostly, again, because St. Brigid was a historical person. St. Brigid didn't become a Christian, take vows, and become an influential abbess because she was "stealing" or "co-opting" the persona of a pagan nature goddess. She was simply her own true, historical Christian self and would be quite horrified at how she is being depicted and venerated in Ireland today. So while it is true that Christians have syncretically borrowed from pagan culture, this didn't happen with St. Brigid. As I put it in the first post, the St. Brigid tradition isn't a case of Christians stealing her from the ancient pagans but is, rather, modern pagans stealing St. Brigid away from Christianity to remake her into a pre-Christian nature goddess.

But now, having said all that, I don't want to be too deflationary. As a historical person, St. Brigid is not a syncretic nature goddess. That much is sure. But I do think a sympathetic conversation can be had with paganism when it comes to the divine feminine and nature in relation to the St. Brigid tradition. I'll turn to that topic next.

I was struck, a few months ago, how the late pope Francis elected to be buried outside of the Vatican. Francis chose to be buried at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Francis made this decision to be forever close to the revered icon of the Virgin Mary at Santa Maria Maggiore. Before and after his international travels, Francis visited the church and the icon.

Mary was a vital part of Francis' life. During the darkest years of his life, when he was "exiled" from Argentina to Germany, Francis frequently visited the Baroque painting of Mary in Augsburg. Entitled "Mary, Undoer of Knots," the painting depicts Mary untying a long ribbon of knots, each symbolizing the problems, sins, and struggles of human life. Devotion associated with the painting emphasizes Mary's help in untangling the messes we cannot fix alone. Which was precisely what Francis was needing at that time in this life. Due to Mary's help, Francis returned to Argentina a changed man, becoming the pastor his people called "the priest of the slums." 

I bring up Francis' devotion to Mary to make a point so obvious it hardly bears making. In contrast to Catholicism (and Orthodoxy), Protestantism is wholly devoid of feminine imagery. Now, it is true that the priesthood and episcopal structure of Catholicism is "patriarchal." But it's also true that, through its Marian devotion, Catholic spirituality is suffused with the maternal and the feminine. Again, look at pope Francis. Much of his spiritual life was lived in intimate communion with a woman. So much so, Francis wanted to be buried next to her.

And this is a worldwide experience. The spiritual gravity of Mexican Catholicism, for example, orbits a woman--the Lady of Guadalupe. Walk the Hispanic section of any cemetery here in Texas and you'll see just as many, if not more, images of the Lady of Guadalupe as there are of Jesus. Because of Mary, Mexican and Hispanic spirituality has a deeply feminine aspect. 

Thanks to Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, it can be a bit woo woo to talk about "the divine feminine." Feel free to roll your eyes. But the term is apt for Marian devotion. Perhaps "sacred feminine" is better than "divine." Still, there are doctrines associated with Mary in Catholicism that push her toward a quasi-divine status. For example, Mary was born without sin (called the Immaculate Conception). More, Mary never committed a sin during her life: "By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long" (CCC 493). And finally, at the end of her life Mary was assumed into heaven. Some even hold that Mary never died, that her assumption into heaven allowed her to escape death. Add to all this Mary's powerful role in Catholic intercession along with the prominence of the Rosary and the "Hail Mary":

Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

There is, in all this, a divine and sacred feminine aspect to Catholic spirituality. As we see in the "Hail Mary," the words "women," "womb," and "mother" are central to Catholic devotion. Words and images said over and over and over again. It is not uncommon in Catholic devotion to spend more time with the Mother than with the Father. The math of the Rosary makes this clear: 50 "Hail Mary's" to 6 "Our Fathers" are said. You say "Mother" way more than you say "Father."    

Again, all this is well known. I'm underlining the point in this series to highlight how, through her connection to Mary as "Mary of the Gaels," St. Brigid gets pulled into the "divine feminine" conversation in Irish spirituality. Due to these associations, Brigid is now regularly, and increasingly, being described as a "goddess." Veneration of Brigid in Ireland has been drifting away from the Christian toward the pagan. And the bridge is the Marian divine feminine link. 

During the class on Celtic Christianity I led in Ireland with my students in May, we visited one of the many holy wells associated with St. Brigid.

In Hunting Magic Eels I talk about the place of St. Brigid within Irish Christianity, and how she's become a location of pagan and Christian syncretism in Ireland. It is regularly claimed that St. Brigid was a Christianization of a pagan goddess. The case for this is thin, and rests mostly upon the fact that St. Brigid's feast day falls on February 1, the same day as Imbolc, the first day of spring. Some scholars trace Imbolic back to a pre-Christian, pagan festival that celebrated the start of the lambing season in Ireland. And when you look at the life of Brigid, many of her miracles have to do with agriculture and farming. Cows giving milk, supplying honey, making beer, affecting weather. In light of these miracles, along with the association with Imbolc, people sense some sort of pagan "nature goddess" lurking behind the Irish veneration of Brigid. 

My take on the historical literature is that the case for "Brigid as pagan goddess" is a modern phenomenon attempting to wrest Brigid away from Christianity. I'll share more about this in a post come. For now let me say that I don't think Christianity stole Brigid from the ancient pagans. It is, rather, modern pagans who are stealing Brigid from Christianity.

That said, there are some odd things within the Brigid tradition. Specifically, how Brigid is associated with Mary.

Brigid is called "Mary of the Gaels." The Gaels being the Irish. Now, throughout Catholic history there have been Marian visitations and apparitions, from the Lady of Guadalupe to Our Lady of Lourdes. In these cases, Mary appears as herself, though sometimes, like the Lady of Guadalupe, in changed form. What we don't see is a living woman being identified as Mary. And yet, that's what we find in the Brigid tradition. As "Mary of the Gaels" Brigid is treated very much like a Marian apparition within Irish spirituality. For example, in one of the early lives of Brigid the story is told of a holy man who had a vision of Mary, the Blessed Virgin, leading a company of virgins across a plain to bless an episcopal synod. Soon after, the holy man sees Brigid, accompanied by her virgin sisters, making their way across the Plain of Liffey to the synod. Upon seeing Brigid, the holy man exclaims, "This is the Mary I beheld!"

The curiosities continue. In Broccán's hymn to St. Brigid, Broccán describes Brigid as the mother of Jesus: "mother of my high king" and "she slept the sleep of a captive--the saint, for the sake of her Son...she was One-Mother of the Great King's Son." In the An Leabhar Breac, an early vita of Brigid, this claim is repeated:

This is the father of this holy virgin--the Heavenly father. This is her son--Jesus Christ.

Reflecting on these texts, Phillip Campbell observes:

Historically, there has been a general Christian sensibility that the motherhood of Jesus is predicated of Mary uniquely--that, however perfectly a woman may model Mary spiritually, calling her Jesus's "mother" and He her "son" is a line never crossed. That Brigid's early biographers were at ease crossing this line is a peculiar eccentricity of Irish Catholicism, one that authors of later generations felt the need to carefully walk back from.

This "peculiar eccentricity of Irish Catholicism" in treating Brigid as a Marian figure--Brigid as the mother of Jesus--along with her feast day falling upon Imbolc, makes the Brigid tradition, both ancient and modern, a fascinating place to reflect upon divine feminine imagery within the Christian tradition.

"I was helpless, and he saved me"

We haven't talked about this much in this series, but Psalm 116 is one of those psalms that create the different numbering of the Psalms in Catholic Bibles versus Protestant Bibles. I expect most Protestants aren't aware of this, but if you've ever picked up a Catholic Bible you might have noticed how the Psalms, in some spots, seem to be off by one or two numbers.

The difference has to do with the role of the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate in the Catholic tradition. The Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Old Testament made by Jewish scholars in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. This Greek text was the basis of St. Jerome's initial Latin translation of the Psalms, though he later produced a Hebrew-based version as well. We should also note that the Septuagint contained the Deuterocanonical books (also called the Apocrypha). The Vulgate functioned as the Bible of the church until the Protestant Reformation.

After the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, rabbinic Judaism worked to standardize the Hebrew text of the Tanakh (what Christians call "the Old Testament" or "the Hebrew Scriptures"). This work was safeguarded and preserved during the 6th–10th centuries by the Masoretes, Jewish scribes in Tiberias, Babylonia, and Palestine. Their work produced what is called the Masoretic Text. This text had different numbering for the Psalms compared to the Septuagint and Vulgate. The Masoretic Text also did not contain the Deuterocanonical books. During the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers began to base their translations of the Old Testament on the Masoretic Text rather than the Latin Vulgate. Consequently, Protestant Bibles have different numbering for the Psalms and do not contain the Deuterocanonical books.

Basically, it boils down to the Septuagint versus the Masoretic Text as the basis for the Old Testament. 

The different numbering of the Psalms in the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text are due to four splits/combinations. These are:

Masoretic Text Psalms 9–10 = Septuagint Psalm 9

Masoretic Text Psalms 114–115 = Septuagint Psalm 113

Masoretic Text Psalm 116 = Septuagint Psalms 114–115

Masoretic Text Psalm 147 = Septuagint Psalms 146–147

As you can see, Psalm 116 is one of those places where the split/combination occurs. In Protestant Bibles, Psalms 116 is a whole. But in Catholic Bibles Psalm 116 is split into two. Where does that split occur in the poem? It happens between verses 9 and 10. In Catholic Bibles, Psalm 114 ends with:

I will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.

Which is verse 9 in Psalm 116. Psalm 115 in Catholic Bibles then begins with verse 10 of the Psalm 116:

I believed, even when I said,
“I am severely oppressed.”

///

Sorry for the history lesson, but this is the sort of stuff I enjoy. Let's get back to some devotional thoughts. 

Psalm 116 is an expression of thanksgiving for deliverance. Recall, again, how Psalm 116 is a part of the Hallel psalms used during Passover. The poet finds himself in a dire situation and cries out: 

The ropes of death were wrapped around me,
and the torments of Sheol overcame me;
I encountered trouble and sorrow.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, save me!”

The Lord hears and rescues:

The Lord is gracious and righteous;
our God is compassionate.
The Lord guards the inexperienced;
I was helpless, and he saved me.

One of my concerns with how salvation is described in progressive and conservative Christian spaces is how moralized they are. To be sure, they are moralized in different ways, but both focus upon some vision of moral purity.

For conservatives, the moral purity is achieved juridically, being "justified" before God due to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. I am "clean" because Jesus' righteousness is imputed to me. Downstream of justification, we also see conservative concerns about moral purity in places like evangelical purity culture.

For progressives, moral purity is more performative than juridical. (Progressive Christians hate penal substitutionary atonement.) This is the moral influence view of atonement. We are saved by emulating the love of Jesus. And insofar as we love, we are saved. The purity aspect of this moral performance shows up in what I've described, way back in 2015, as the "purity culture" of progressive Christianity. In progressive Christian spaces being complicit in oppressive structures creates an experience of moral contamination. This causes progressives to embrace puritanical displays of moral purity and social quarantine. Cancel and callout culture are examples. Progressives leaving Twitter/X because of Elon Musk is another example, fleeing a morally contaminated space for the purer Bluesky. It's the social media version of social distancing. Recently, I've seen progressives leaving Substack for Ghost because Substack hosts Nazis. Since Substack is morally contaminated, purity is regained via social quarantine. All this is purity culture behavior, fearing contamination through contact. A pursuit of moral purity in a world where “everything is problematic” is also what drives the radicalization of progressive spaces, where purer and purer expressions of solidarity and commitment drive the community toward extremism and individuals to moral exhaustion. If you’re trying to be 100% free of complicity in a world where being morally compromised is unavoidable you’ll never be fully or wholly clean. See Unclean for more about purity psychology. 

My point, again, is how both progressive and conservative Christians define salvation as moral purity.

But as I've argued in this space, what moral purity misses is our need for help and assistance. As the recovery community puts it, our lives have become unmanageable and we need to rely upon a power that can restore us to sanity. And that is the vision of Psalm 116. 

I was helpless and he saved me.

There's a famous passage from John 12:24-25: 

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 

The mystery of love is communicated in these lines. 

Reading this passage the other day, the line that interrupted me was "It remains alone." We know the passage so well we tend to jump to the end, how if we lose our life we'll find and keep it. But what if we refuse to lose our life? The consequence of that choice is named: "It remains alone."

So when I say this passage communicates the mystery of love, this is what I mean. There is a suffering, losing, and dying aspect of love. We say that love is "sacrificial." And that "sacrifice" is yourself, the losing and giving of your life. As the theologian Arthur McGill has described: 

Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one’s own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God’s Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my disposal, these I receive to give away. Those who would live as Jesus did—who would act and purpose themselves as Jesus did—mean to love, i.e., they mean to expend themselves for others unto death. Their being is meant to pass away from them to others, and they make that meaning the conscious direction of their existence.

This is what I believe Jesus means by "but if it dies, it bears much fruit." If I were to float a speculative mysto-physical idea here, we all are tending toward entropic disorder. We're always moving toward death. I can struggle against that drift, arrogating to myself power and pleasure to either delay or enjoy the ride. Or I can, via my Spirit and the Holy Spirit, direct the flow of my energy to give life to others. But this spiritual-energy transfer takes intention, and we call that intention "love." We call it "living for others," but it would be more properly described as "dying for others." Paul describes this in Corinthians 4:12 when he says about his ministry in relation to the church, "So death is at work in us but life is at work in you." Paul is the dying grain of wheat who is bearing much fruit. His life is being poured into others. 

Now, what if we refuse to take this path? As Brené Brown has described in her famous TEDx talk (now viewed over 67 million times), relational connection and wholehearted living requires "excruciating vulnerability." For the reasons I've described above. Again, that is the mystery of love. There is a giving away in love, but that gift bears "much fruit" in connection and belonging. You lose your life to find it.

And what if we refuse to die? What if we refuse to love? Jesus names the consequence:

For the seed that refuses to die, the life that refuses to love, it remains alone.

Obviously, the big word of this series has been "ontological." "Ontology" is not a common word, but I wrote this series to argue, in a lot of different but convergent ways, that the question of ontology is the issue we need to be focusing on in the church.

As I've described in this series, everywhere you look we are witnessing moral, symbolic, sacramental, and ecclesial drift away from the ontological. We've severed our connection to the Real. We've cut ourselves loose through deconstruction and demythologization. This has created a host of problems, from our mental health crisis to an impoverishment of our moral vision to a deeper slide into post-Christian disenchantment. Churches have begun to traffic almost wholly in the therapeutic and the moralistic and are systematically talking themselves out of existence. 

Given all this, do I have any takeaway recommendations?

One recommendation is this: Pay attention to how your church describes the spiritual life. Notice when our language becomes reduced to the therapeutic and the moral, when the only agents in view are human persons. It is, of course, very good to gather "in the name of Jesus" to "encourage" each other and to "love each other." It is good to "serve the world" and "bless our neighbors." But be alert to how such stock phrases make no reference to the Real. Notice when we are the only players on the stage. Be concerned about the functional atheism on display. 

In one of the letters Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison to his friend Eberhard Bethge, he described the decisive moment in his spiritual journey as turning from "the phraseological to the real." Influenced as he was as a German theologian by Bultmann's demythologization, theology for Bonhoeffer had been moral and existential. But during his American sojourn, Bonhoeffer's theology became ontological. He turned toward the Real. This is what the church must do. We must turn to the Real. All the layers--moral, existential, and ontological--need to be stitched back together. 

How to do this?

Following from what I've just said, words matter. We can pay attention to how we talk. Throughout this series I've shown how we can highlight the ontological aspects of faith, from the sacraments to eschatology. Following people like Jordan Peterson, we can remythologize the moral layer. Meaning, remember, is the bread of life. But we need to push past Peterson's agnosticism to reontologize the existential layer. Because if it's all just a symbol, to echo Flannery O'Connor, then to hell with it. 

So that's the first thing we can do, we can remythologize and reontologize faith and the life of the church. 

But we need more than words. Otherwise, like Bonhoeffer, we get caught up in the phraseological and never turn toward the real. Reontologizing the faith isn't about shuffling words around, like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship. We need to encounter the Real.

Given this, let me, once again, share the insight of Karl Rahner: 

The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic’—someone who has ‘experienced something’—or will cease to be anything at all.

At some point we must pivot away from the moral, the political, the therapeutic, the symbolic, the existential, and the propositional toward ontological encounter. Mysticism is the path. And if this path seems vague or elusive, pick up Hunting Magic Eels and The Shape of Joy as two accessible and practical books on everyday mysticism.    

It is time to encounter the Real.

In 2023 I shared a post lamenting what I described as "sentimental nihilism." The topic of that post, and what triggered my lament, concerns the subject of this series. 

As I described it, there are many ex-Christian people who continue to embrace the role and mantle of social justice "prophet." That these ex-Christians continue to embrace the Judeo-Christian ethic regarding concern for the oppressed shouldn't be a surprise. Most ex-Christians reject Christianity on very Christian grounds. That is, in fact, one of their chief complaints, how Christians are not very Christian. 

Using the framework of this series, these ex-Christians continue to embrace the moral and political layer of Christianity. They don't, generally, become Nietzschean or acolytes of Ayn Rand. As I said, their rejection of Christianity tends to be very moralized and politicized. What is making these people ex-Christian isn't moral or political but their jettisoning of the ontological layer, a rejection of Christian metaphysics as being Real or True. The moral and political commitments related to social justice and creation care are retained, but dogmatic metaphysical convictions are rejected. 

This, however, is an untenable situation. As I've put it, these are prophets who no longer believe in the Lord. Moral realism, the heart and soul of prophetic criticism, is incompatible with post-modernism. You can't be dogmatic about your moral convictions while at the same time being undogmatic about the ontological truth behind those convictions. Prophets are not post-modernists. You can't be a prophet and a nihilist at the same time. Simply put, if you want to speak truth to power you need to believe in truth. This isn't rocket science.

All this is why I described the moral convictions of these ex-Christian prophets as "sentimental." Since their moral convictions no longer reflect anything Real or True, given how Christian metaphysics has been deconstructed and rejected, prophetic outcry has been reduced to expressions of personal sentiment. Severed from the True, moral speech no longer traffics in obligating and universal duties but becomes an expression of your preferences. Where prophets once roared "Thus saith the Lord!" in the face of oppression and injustice, the best the ex-Christian prophet can offer is, "I'd rather you not do that." 

Now, the ex-Christian prophet might respond, "This is unfair. I can justify my moral commitments without appeal to Judeo-Christian metaphysics." To which I'd respond: Show me. Show me how you can justify your very particular vision of moral realism without any appeal to ontological commitments that look suspiciously similar to the Judeo-Christian commitments (e.g., people are created in the image of God, care for the weak is an obligating duty, etc.). Of course, if you wanted to take up this challenge here it is in full:

1. Moral particularity

Why this value and not another? That is, you want to proclaim particular values--like "We must care for the weak" or "First do no harm"--over against other particular values. This work is responding to the Nietzschean criticism that the Christian ethic of love is a "slave morality" and should be replaced with a "will to power" where the strong lord over the weak. In short, there are many different values at large in the world--for example, "care for the weak" versus "lord over the weak"--and you must justify your particular values from all the available options.

2. Moral realism

Beyond the particular content of your values you need to justify why these values are universally obligating, why these values are not your personal opinion or subjective preference. In short, you need to defend the moral realism of your values, why your values are true.

3. Eschewing Ontological and Metaphysical Appeals

Next, you'll have to justify the particular content of your values (why these values and not others) and the realism of your values (why these values are obligating and true) without any appeal to metaphysics, reality, or ontology. You'll have to defend the content and realism of your values on a purely post-modern and nihilistic foundation.

4. Extrinsic to Judeo-Christianity

Finally, you'll have to do all this without trading on Judeo-Christianity metaphysics and ontology. For example, you can't justify care for the weak by claiming that people possess "innate worth and dignity." That would be smuggling into your argument the Judeo-Christian conviction that human persons were made in the image of God. If you want care for the weak to be your value you have to justify that value with reasons extrinsic to Judeo-Christianity.

I'm confident that every ex-Christian prophet would fail at this task. As I put it above, you can't be a prophet who no longer believes in the Lord. The moral layer must be connected to the ontological. Judeo-Christian metaphysics is integral to the Judeo-Christian moral vision. You can't have one without the other.

And if you think you can, well, I’ve offered my challenge. Show us. Otherwise, admit that your prophetic performance on social media is really just that, performative. Because, by your own admission, nothing you say is true.

Over the course of this series I've explored how the moral, existential, and ontological framework I've proposed can be used to describe and analyze different cultural and ecclesial trends and dynamics. In this post I want to try to map the transcendental values of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good onto that framework. 

Let us identify the Good with the top, normative layer concerning morality and politics. 

Next, let us identify the Beautiful with the middle existential layer, the layer of symbol and narrative.

Finally, let us identify the True with the bottom ontological layer, the location of the Real.

Thus:

The Good [Moral]

The Beautiful [Existential]

The True [Ontological]

Here are some initial thoughts about how such a mapping might be fruitful.

First, I've suggested in this series that working the existential layer is the path forward for post-Christian evangelism. Our culture is thirsting for meaning. But more than that, there is also a desire for beauty. For example, as I describe in The Shape of Joy moral beauty is the biggest predictor of wonder, transcendence, and awe, an experience that creates a "small self," a feeling of connection with a reality greater than your own. There is an aesthetic aspect to the moral life. There is an artfulness to living well. The Beautiful suffuses the Good with zest, passion, unity, and light. The Beautiful keeps the Good mysterious and ineffable. Separated from the Beautiful, the Good becomes grey, grim, legalistic, and puritanical. The Good can even become ugly. 

But the Beautiful needs its connection with the True. The Beautiful must touch the Real. Otherwise, the Beautiful will become sentimental or merely self-expressive. If the Beautiful loses contact with the True it becomes kitschy, a pretty patina. That, or it becomes a reflection of the artist's inner life. Now, insofar as an artist's self-expression taps into the True, giving voice to something shared and universal in the human condition, it becomes art. But given how human persons can be malformed in various ways, creative expressions can be self-indulgent, performative, bizarre, elitist, neurotic, sick, or vacuous. Creative self-expression is not the same as art, and the critical issue is its connection with the True. Lacking contact with the Real creative expressions can function as communication (let me share with you something about myself) or consumed as entertainment, but they fall short of being art.

And let me make a point here about the scope of the True. In our increasingly post-Christian world the scope of the Real has been delimited to subjective human experience. As I point out in The Shape of Joy, the only thing that is "real" for us is the drama within the human mind. Thus, "truth" in art increasingly means "true to the human experience." And while this is correct as far as it goes, when limited to human psychology art becomes a neurotic mirror and loses a capacity for transcendence. Art has suffered in the modern world as a consequence. Consider the beauty of nature, Notre-Dame Cathedral, the music of Bach, or the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The ontological realm of the Beautiful is large and far exceeds inner human drama. Yes, the subjective life of the artist can be a truthful reflection of the human experience. The particular can express the universal. And a feeling of solidarity can result. This is no small achievement. But the Beautiful and the True transcend human psychology. The Real is greater than what is locked up in our minds, and art reaches toward and expresses that transcendent ontological encounter. 

"And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them."

Psalm 115 is one of the most anti-idolatry polemics in the Old Testament, ranking alongside Isaiah 44 and Jeremiah 10. A taste:

Their idols are merely things of silver and gold,
shaped by human hands.
They have mouths but cannot speak,
and eyes but cannot see.
They have ears but cannot hear,
and noses but cannot smell.
They have hands but cannot feel,
and feet but cannot walk,
and throats but cannot make a sound.

And then, after these lines, the passage I shared above: "And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them."

You've heard the refrain, "You become what you worship." That's the claim of Psalm 115. You are transformed into the image of your idols. You are conformed to what you trust. You are poured into the mold of what you worship.

This point is relevant to the current series concerning the relationship of the moral and symbolic to the ontological. A point I've made in that series concerns moral and symbolic drift. If we're not in contact with something steady, enduring, particular, and real we're prone to curating and adopting a moral and symbolic worldview that becomes self-referential and self-reinforcing. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, the self begins to loop. That's the vision of Psalm 115, how idols become egoistic mirrors, narcissistic reflections, and self-referential loops. We come to worship ourselves. 

Having brought up Orthodox soteriology in the last post, let me linger here a bit.

A few posts ago I described progressive and evangelical visions of salvation as "moralized." Of course, they are moralized in different ways. For the progressives, we are saved through morality itself. We are saved by emulating Jesus' love. We are saved because Jesus showed us "how to be human." For evangelicals, we are saved through grace and mercy. The blood of Jesus washes away our sins. Salvation is forgiveness. 

The patristic tradition, by contrast, tended to view salvation as more ontological. In this series I've focused upon how Christ's resurrection overcame death and the predicament of human finitude. But the patristic tradition also saw the Incarnation itself as salvific. In fact, the resurrection was really just a demonstration of the ontological consequences of the Incarnation. The effect of God joining His Life with mortal human flesh was made plain on Easter Sunday. What was ontologically true of the infant Jesus was manifested in the adult body of Jesus: that death could have no dominion over his mortal flesh given its connection to God's own Life. This ontological truth about Christ's body is what flashes out at his transfiguration. 

The ontological connection between human flesh and God's Life is Christ's offer of salvation to finite and mortal humanity. By uniting our flesh to Christ's body ontological contact is made with God's Life, and that Life changes us ontologically. As with Christ's flesh, our flesh becomes empowered to survive death. 

Here is how Saint Cyril of Alexandria (c. 375-444), an early church father, describes all this: 

So Christ gave his own body for the life of all, and makes it the channel through which life flows once more into us. How he does this I will explain to the best of my ability.

When the life-giving Word of God dwelt in human flesh, he changed it into that good thing which is distinctively his, namely, life; and by being wholly united to the flesh in a way beyond our comprehension, he gave it the life-giving power which he has by his very nature. Therefore, the body of Christ gives life to those who receive it. Its presence in mortal men expels death and drives away corruption because it contains within itself in his entirety the Word who totally abolishes corruption.

Again, this is a very ontological way to describe salvation, a vision not typically found in either progressive or evangelical spaces. Christ's body confers ontological power, literally transforming the "stuff we are made of" so that decay and corruption become abolished from our bodies. Salvation is more than morality. Salvation is more than forgiveness. Salvation is ontological transformation.

To write The Slavery of Death I did a deep dive into Eastern Orthodox theology. I did so to explore the Christus Victor themes in Orthodox soteriology, how they place death at the center of the human predicament. That is something I've already discussed in this series, how salvation concerns ontology (human finitude) as much as morality (love, social justice, and our need for grace). During my time studying Orthodox soteriology I also explored Orthodox iconography. Because of this, icons have become an important part of my devotional life.

For this series, here's the point I want to make about Orthodox icons. Icons are not merely "art." Icons are not simply "pictures." Rather, as the Orthodox put it, icons are "windows into heaven." That is to say, the icons ontologically participate in the realities they visually display. When you look at, say, an icon of a saint, that saint is really looking back at you through the icon. Just like you and I can look at each other through a glass window. Icons are mystical and sacramental in this way, ontological portals into heavenly realities. When you stand in an Orthodox church all the icons surrounding you display the "great cloud of witnesses" described in Hebrews 11. Heaven is directly "looking upon" the liturgy, connected and participating. 

Let's now map all this onto our moral, existential, and ontological framework. 

As a Protestant, my default approach to icons is primarily symbolic and aesthetic. The icon is "art." Holy and wholesome art, but primarily art. The icon, for me, isn't ontological. It isn't mystical or spooky, a real portal into the Otherworld. The icon isn't a "hole in the universe" through which another World can enter. The icon isn't the wardrobe that takes me into Narnia. My experience with the icon is largely symbolic and existential. The icon represents realities that are not immediately present. Heaven is vaguely "somewhere else" rather than looking directly at me. 

It's this disconnection from the ontological layer that separates Christian art from Orthodox iconography. Christian art is moral and aesthetic, but not ontological. That Orthodox icons participate in and connect with ontological realities is what sits behind the Orthodox practices of icon veneration. Miss the ontological aspect of Orthodox iconography and you'll never understand veneration. 

Personally, I find the Orthodox vision of icons as "windows into heaven" quite lovely. But as a Protestant I don't venerate icons. (Well, sometimes I do kiss icons and statues.) I stand, mostly, at an ontological remove. I find myself mainly on the aesthetic side of the experience and haven't wholly bridged over to the ontological. And a lot of that concerns practices. It's one thing to theologically appreciate an ontological insight. But it's quite another to experience ontological mysteries through practices of veneration. Incense, icon lamps, candles, bowing, kissing, and crossing yourself--these are practices that carry you across the art-to-ontology divide. And in many ways, icon veneration is just an example of what has to happen in all areas of our disenchanted lives if we are to bring the Impingement of the Real back into view. 

Practices of hallowing and rituals of sacralizing, these are ontological interventions, ways to stitch ourselves back into the Real. 

There is a vision here of how to punch a hole in the universe.

When it comes to the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, one of the impacts of the Protestant Reformation was severing these sacraments from the ontological layer.

For example, there's the oft-quoted comment of Flannery O'Connor's about the Eucharist. At a party one evening talk turned to the Eucharist and a person commented, "I think it is a lovely symbol." To which O'Connor replied, "If it's just a symbol, to hell with it." 

In the framework of this series, O'Connor was dismissing any vision of the Eucharist that had cut itself off from the Real, from the ontological layer. The Catholic doctrine in question here is transubstantiation, which Protestantism broke with. 

The issue, though, is a bit more nuanced. Early on in the Protestant Reformation, there was a debate about the Eucharist, the "Sacramentarian Controversy." To one side were the Lutherans, who defended the Catholic-adjacent view of the Real Presence. On the other side were the Zwinglians, who defended a memorialist view. The point to note is that Protestant commitments to the Real Presence, like what the Lutherans were defending in the controversy, do strive to keep the Eucharist tethered to ontology. Christ is really, ontologically there in the sacrament. The memorialist view, by contrast, severs itself from the ontological, leaving only the moral and symbolic layers behind. The Eucharist becomes, in O'Connor's remark, "just a symbol." 

Similar shifts happened with the sacrament of baptism. Ontological views of baptism describe how baptism changes reality. For example, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: "Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word." (CCC 1213)

Baptism as effecting "regeneration" highlights the ontological aspect of the sacrament. As the Catechism continues:

This sacrament is also called "the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit," for it signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit without which no one "can enter the kingdom of God." (CCC 1215)

Note how the description is ontological: Baptism "signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and Spirit." Baptism isn't merely a symbol. Baptism ontologically changes the world. Baptism actually brings about our new birth in Christ.

Like with the Eucharist, Protestants hold mixed views about baptism. Raised as I was in the Churches of Christ, our view of baptism was ontological. Like the Catholic view, we believed that baptism wrought an ontological change. Other Protestants, like the Baptists, hold to a more symbolic view of baptism, the sacrament severed from the ontological layer. 

So, to be clear, Protestants are divided on the degree to which they tether the sacraments to the ontological. And some traditions, like my own, have mixed profiles. Our view of the Lord's Supper was symbolic, but our view of baptism was ontological. But in some Protestant spaces, both sacraments are symbolic. Consequently, untethered at they are from the ontological layer, we observe sacramental drift in these churches. The Lord's Supper is only rarely or intermittently celebrated, and baptism is delayed or ignored as something optional. 

We're even seeing drift in traditions that embrace ontological views of the sacraments. The US Catholic Church recently went through a Eucharistic Revival because surveys revealed that increasing numbers of American Catholics did not believe in the Real Presence. And in my own tradition, our practices of baptism have become increasing symbolic, and therefore optional. 

Stepping back, I believe we can see how sacramental drift contributes to Christian disenchantment. If there is nothing Real about the sacraments then is anything going at church Real? Are ontological realities being ontologically encountered in the church? Or is it all just moral uplift and therapeutic encouragement? 

This ontological drift is one of the reasons why, I believe, evangelical churches focus so much on emotions. Without any connection to ontology you have to "feel something." And that "feeling something" tips you toward charismatic preaching and amped up praise services. Emotion has come to replace ontology, feelings now substitute for the Real. 

In short, with sacramental drift comes ecclesial drift, church becoming decoupled from ontology. And as with the sacraments, if nothing Real is encountered in church then church becomes optional. When church becomes severed from ontological realities it reduces to moral pedagogy and therapeutic uplift. Which are good things. But we can get these moral and therapeutic goods from many places. We can listen to sermons on podcasts and stream praise music.

Given this sacramental and ecclesial drift, one of my big soapboxes has become reconnecting church to the Real. And we do this by pushing down through the moral and the symbolic to connect ourselves, the sacraments especially, to the ontological layer. 

Because if it's all just a symbol, well, to hell with it.