So as I read Exodus 1-3 prior to Moses' burning bush experience, a few things stuck out as interesting:
"But the midwives feared God...And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families." 1: 17, 21 - I never realized till I looked in the notes of my "Scholarly" study bible and saw that the Midwives weren't Hebrews, they were Gentiles/Egyptians and they feared God and he blessed them.
"The daughter of Pharaoh" 2:5 - I never realized that this was Pharoah's actual daughter, not like Moses was pharoah's son. I always thought she was one of the hundreds of adoptee's but I guess she was actually his daughter, meaning that she was closer to her father and probably more likely to report the child to be killed.
"He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand" 2:12 - I remember Mr. Franz a teacher I had in High School (I went to a Mennonite High School) teaching us that this verse should be a key in our morality. If you have to look around before you do something to see if anyone is watching, it's probably a clear sign you shouldn't do it. I still think of that.
"Who made you a ruler and judge over us?" 2:14 - this hebrew who says it to Moses would've stung greatly as Moses later DID have to rule and judge them as a deliverer and leader in the wilderness. It probably rung in his ears as God called him to leadership in the burning bush.
"When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses." - 2:15 - I never knew Pharoah actually wanted to kill him, my version of this story is tainted by the Prince of Egypt in which the Pharoah's son / his (step?) brother isn't angry with him. So Moses actually had to flee.
"seven daughters...came to draw water...[b]ut some shepherds came and drove them away. Moses got up and came to their defence and watered their flock." - Moses has a bit of a Jesus complex and jumps in to help again and this gets him 'in' with the Priest of midian (Jethro) and he gets to marry one of his daughters.
The whole story ends with this line - which is so beautifully a human way of viewing God:
"The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them."
And then we end with Moses an exile, working for his father-in-law and a murderer doomed never to return. And after all those years finally God was ready to say something. I need to contemplate this further.
Showing posts with label Moses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moses. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2009
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Sacraments: Are They A Lie?
I think that the Reformation initially retained a Sacramental Piety, however I've come to realize once more how important the Sacraments are in the discussion of theology. If the sacraments are means of communicating grace (Catholicism) or if they are superstitious and empty rituals.
This is also not so much a Catholic - Protestant issue, as it is a more specific Calvinist & Zwinglian versus Catholic and to a lesser extent Lutheran and Anglican.
The question is not simply one of whether there are 7 Sacraments: Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Extreme Unction, and Holy Orders, or just the first 2. It is also a question of what do the sacraments do? what is their purpose. The question after that though is one of the very character of God. Does God care about the outward and physical or is he only concerned with the inner and spiritual.
The problem is that our Christian Ethics are Ontological rather than Teleological - they are based on the motive of the doer, rather than just the outcome. Was it T.S. Eliot who said the greatest sin was doing the right thing for the wrong reason? (if not it was some other British poet). SO one has to question why God would imbue special powers to actions.
The Calvinist position as I understand it is that God works effectually outside the sacraments in that the baptism which forgives you is the baptism of the Holy Spirit which occurs at the moment of saving faith. The infant baptism is just a covenantal sign, but ultimately it has no purpose other than marking the visible from the invisible church, but since in Calvinistic Ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) the 'true' church is always the invisible church anyway, so there really isn't any point in being in the 'visible' church.
The Catholic position as I've argued before is that the sacraments have power. They actually are objective means of receiving grace. Every time you receive the Eucharist you are recieving the physical body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ (I don't know how one receives his soul if it's his body, but there is probably something about it in Aquinas or a Scholastic, so I won't argue it...maybe I got it wrong by including his soul, nevermind). Likewise when you are absolved and forgiven of your sins by a priest you are forgiven by God Himself.
There are many biblical and historical arguments I've already listed in favour of a literal interpretation of Christ's words about the Holy Communion, and the Sacrament of Confession/Penance, and an argument for regenerative baptism (it forgives your sins). If you wish to see more just check out one of these sites: http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/10/topical-index-pages.html, or http://www.phatmass.com/directory/
The basic question though is why God would promise such Power to the Church? Why would he give frail men the ability to bind and loose, why would he give the keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter and allow men to determine who enters the Kingdom of Heaven. In all honesty, it gives me two thoughts:
1) God has stupidly given too much power to the Church
2) The Bible must be written by the Church as a means to claim supernatural power
The third option of course is that the Sacraments actually do have power and are efficatious, that God does care about physical actions. As C.S. Lewis put it in his defense of grace through the sacraments in Mere Christianity, God has no problem with matter, he created it, and it's no use trying to be more spiritual than God.
I was thinking the other day about Rob Bell's "The gods aren't angry" and how he proposes that none of the Israelite offerings in the Old Covenent satisfied God as he didn't 'need' blood. He also asked the question "Does your God need to hurt someone so that he can love?" it sounds like a great atheistic question and I've finally come to believe (as all Christians holding to either Calvin's Substitution or St. Anselm's Satisfaction theology of Atonement should) that yes God does have to hurt so that he can Love. But in essence he hurts himself, in Christ, he provides the sacrifice, which becomes an eternal part of his nature (Christ's eternal sacrifice).
I also remembered the 2 stories of God's anger towards violations of his covenants. The Second is of course 1 Corinthians 11 where St. Paul writes that those who partook of the Eucharist in an unworthy manner 'drank God's wrath against themselves' and 'were guilty of the body and blood of our Lord' and that this misuse resulted in illness and death. The first however is more obscure, I read about it in Exodus 4 at Capernwray Bible School and it was a blessing to be 'forced' to read the whole bible so that now I am more aware of all these extra stories.
The story is about Moses going into Egypt after receiving his mission from God in the Burning Bush, Zipporah and Moses are travelling with their son when we hear this:
"On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched Moses’ feet with it, and said, ‘Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!’ So he let him alone. It was then she said, ‘A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.’ "" - Exodus 4:24-26
It seems odd to us that God would plan on killing Moses for not performing this outward circumcision rite. We are constantly taught in the New Testament that "circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything" (Gal 5) and likewise by St. Stephen the Martyr that we are to have 'circumcised hearts' not dead rituals. However it seems that in this story God disagrees, not in a way contradictory to the New Testament but in a way contradictory to my former interpretation. What if God really does care about the Sacraments about his Covenantal signs and realities. It isn't all bad though, it's also a huge gift, for maybe God really does work through the sacraments. Maybe that is why the Eucharist means 'the Good Gift' (or at least that's what someone told me).
The real question then is why no angel killed Zwingli? but I guess 'where sin abounded grace abounded all the more' (Rm 5.20)
An interesting book on this topic which I hope to buy soon is Dr. Scott Hahn's "Swear to God: God's Promise and Power of the Sacraments" http://www.amazon.com/Swear-God-Promise-Power-Sacraments/dp/0385509316/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221099823&sr=1-11.
This is also not so much a Catholic - Protestant issue, as it is a more specific Calvinist & Zwinglian versus Catholic and to a lesser extent Lutheran and Anglican.
The question is not simply one of whether there are 7 Sacraments: Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Extreme Unction, and Holy Orders, or just the first 2. It is also a question of what do the sacraments do? what is their purpose. The question after that though is one of the very character of God. Does God care about the outward and physical or is he only concerned with the inner and spiritual.
The problem is that our Christian Ethics are Ontological rather than Teleological - they are based on the motive of the doer, rather than just the outcome. Was it T.S. Eliot who said the greatest sin was doing the right thing for the wrong reason? (if not it was some other British poet). SO one has to question why God would imbue special powers to actions.
The Calvinist position as I understand it is that God works effectually outside the sacraments in that the baptism which forgives you is the baptism of the Holy Spirit which occurs at the moment of saving faith. The infant baptism is just a covenantal sign, but ultimately it has no purpose other than marking the visible from the invisible church, but since in Calvinistic Ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) the 'true' church is always the invisible church anyway, so there really isn't any point in being in the 'visible' church.
The Catholic position as I've argued before is that the sacraments have power. They actually are objective means of receiving grace. Every time you receive the Eucharist you are recieving the physical body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ (I don't know how one receives his soul if it's his body, but there is probably something about it in Aquinas or a Scholastic, so I won't argue it...maybe I got it wrong by including his soul, nevermind). Likewise when you are absolved and forgiven of your sins by a priest you are forgiven by God Himself.
There are many biblical and historical arguments I've already listed in favour of a literal interpretation of Christ's words about the Holy Communion, and the Sacrament of Confession/Penance, and an argument for regenerative baptism (it forgives your sins). If you wish to see more just check out one of these sites: http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/10/topical-index-pages.html, or http://www.phatmass.com/directory/
The basic question though is why God would promise such Power to the Church? Why would he give frail men the ability to bind and loose, why would he give the keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter and allow men to determine who enters the Kingdom of Heaven. In all honesty, it gives me two thoughts:
1) God has stupidly given too much power to the Church
2) The Bible must be written by the Church as a means to claim supernatural power
The third option of course is that the Sacraments actually do have power and are efficatious, that God does care about physical actions. As C.S. Lewis put it in his defense of grace through the sacraments in Mere Christianity, God has no problem with matter, he created it, and it's no use trying to be more spiritual than God.
I was thinking the other day about Rob Bell's "The gods aren't angry" and how he proposes that none of the Israelite offerings in the Old Covenent satisfied God as he didn't 'need' blood. He also asked the question "Does your God need to hurt someone so that he can love?" it sounds like a great atheistic question and I've finally come to believe (as all Christians holding to either Calvin's Substitution or St. Anselm's Satisfaction theology of Atonement should) that yes God does have to hurt so that he can Love. But in essence he hurts himself, in Christ, he provides the sacrifice, which becomes an eternal part of his nature (Christ's eternal sacrifice).
I also remembered the 2 stories of God's anger towards violations of his covenants. The Second is of course 1 Corinthians 11 where St. Paul writes that those who partook of the Eucharist in an unworthy manner 'drank God's wrath against themselves' and 'were guilty of the body and blood of our Lord' and that this misuse resulted in illness and death. The first however is more obscure, I read about it in Exodus 4 at Capernwray Bible School and it was a blessing to be 'forced' to read the whole bible so that now I am more aware of all these extra stories.
The story is about Moses going into Egypt after receiving his mission from God in the Burning Bush, Zipporah and Moses are travelling with their son when we hear this:
"On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched Moses’ feet with it, and said, ‘Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!’ So he let him alone. It was then she said, ‘A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.’ "" - Exodus 4:24-26
It seems odd to us that God would plan on killing Moses for not performing this outward circumcision rite. We are constantly taught in the New Testament that "circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything" (Gal 5) and likewise by St. Stephen the Martyr that we are to have 'circumcised hearts' not dead rituals. However it seems that in this story God disagrees, not in a way contradictory to the New Testament but in a way contradictory to my former interpretation. What if God really does care about the Sacraments about his Covenantal signs and realities. It isn't all bad though, it's also a huge gift, for maybe God really does work through the sacraments. Maybe that is why the Eucharist means 'the Good Gift' (or at least that's what someone told me).
The real question then is why no angel killed Zwingli? but I guess 'where sin abounded grace abounded all the more' (Rm 5.20)
An interesting book on this topic which I hope to buy soon is Dr. Scott Hahn's "Swear to God: God's Promise and Power of the Sacraments" http://www.amazon.com/Swear-God-Promise-Power-Sacraments/dp/0385509316/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221099823&sr=1-11.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Moses: Knowing God, Face to Face
"Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequalled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel. " - Deuteronomy 34.
I don't have anything too theologically deep to say, I was just pondering what life was for Moses. When I read the Church Fathers I like the fact that they use people like Moses and the Patriarchs, and the stories of the torah to make statements about what the Christian life is about. I'm still reading the Life of Moses by St. Gregory - it takes me forever, but I'm kind of glad I'm not done, I am enjoying it over a long period of time, and everything he writes is so rich in meaning and application that it's hard to read more than a few pages at a time.
As I think about Moses I am amazed at his faith. We have all read the bible and know the stories of friends and family who have trusted God and been blessed. But look at Moses. It's hard to try to put yourself in his mindset. All he knew about God was that the Lord was the God of Abraham and had done great and awestriking things like destroy Sodom & Gomorrah. He knew God had made a promise to Abraham. But maybe he didn't even know all of that, as he was raised in Pharoah's house. Maybe when he was shepherding those sheep and saw the burning bush he didn't know anything about God. Didn't know things like 'God is love', didn't know the fruits of the Spirit - nor probably even about the Holy Spirit. But the conclusion of Deuteronomy is so wonderful, it is easy to understand why the Jews revere Moses as the greatest prophet (other than the fact it says right here). He was a man who KNEW God intensely. He learned about God's character himself. Could you imagine being on Mount Sinai, seeing God in the darkness and hearing him tell you his character and his law. Absolutely brilliant.
I remember reading a book called 'Prayer Works' by Brother Andrew once. The book was poorly written and a bit heretical and not really helpful, to me except for his great stories as a man serving the Lord, and a for one lesson from scripture that I think I'll always remember. It is from a commentary on the Pentateuch and it is the part where God is so angry with the children of Israel that he says to Moses that he could make Moses the father of nations or leader/whatever. The point was that some commentator said when describing the conversation between an angry God, and Moses trying to calm him, the Hebrew could be translated, 'Moses smoothed out the wrinkles (of anger) on Jehovah's face'. It was a beautiful picture of God to me. The Calvinists of course are ripping their hair out in anger because Moses acting as such is clearly opposing God's sovereignty etc. But I think it's beautiful.
I am in love with the idea of synergism (another reason I like Catholicism) because it's the idea that God works with us. That we really are in a covenant with Him. That he created humanity not just for a puppet show of his divine glory, wrath and mercy, to amuse himself. But that he genuinely wants to live in relationship. That he wants to love his children, hear prayers, and even oddly enough be angry at us when we screw up (like the Israelites), out of his desire for our own good. Maybe I'm making an Anthropomorphic God or some kind of other big scary sounding word that some random person believed in the 6th century and was killed for heresy in a horrific way, but I just think the life of Moses is amazing.
As I plan on confirmation I realize that my relationship with God will change significantly in that I will now have a different answer to 'where are you God'. In the Eucharist, in the communion, and in the Church. It is comforting to think as well that because of Christ's death the temple curtain has been ripped, and like Moses we can each know God face to face. If I accomplish nothing else in my life, that is my greatest desire.
St. Gregory describes Moses' life as a journey, and writes that the knowledge of God is a mountain indeed and few ever scarcely reach it's base. He describes Moses journey in a mystic way where in the beginning Moses saw God in a blazing fire (burning bush) , after that he followed him in smoke/cloud (pillar of cloud) , but when he truly knew God and was more perfect he could see God even in the darkness (Mount Sinai).
Imagine what I'd be like to have talked with God face to face so much that you could hear his voice and see him even in utter darkness.
I don't have anything too theologically deep to say, I was just pondering what life was for Moses. When I read the Church Fathers I like the fact that they use people like Moses and the Patriarchs, and the stories of the torah to make statements about what the Christian life is about. I'm still reading the Life of Moses by St. Gregory - it takes me forever, but I'm kind of glad I'm not done, I am enjoying it over a long period of time, and everything he writes is so rich in meaning and application that it's hard to read more than a few pages at a time.
As I think about Moses I am amazed at his faith. We have all read the bible and know the stories of friends and family who have trusted God and been blessed. But look at Moses. It's hard to try to put yourself in his mindset. All he knew about God was that the Lord was the God of Abraham and had done great and awestriking things like destroy Sodom & Gomorrah. He knew God had made a promise to Abraham. But maybe he didn't even know all of that, as he was raised in Pharoah's house. Maybe when he was shepherding those sheep and saw the burning bush he didn't know anything about God. Didn't know things like 'God is love', didn't know the fruits of the Spirit - nor probably even about the Holy Spirit. But the conclusion of Deuteronomy is so wonderful, it is easy to understand why the Jews revere Moses as the greatest prophet (other than the fact it says right here). He was a man who KNEW God intensely. He learned about God's character himself. Could you imagine being on Mount Sinai, seeing God in the darkness and hearing him tell you his character and his law. Absolutely brilliant.
I remember reading a book called 'Prayer Works' by Brother Andrew once. The book was poorly written and a bit heretical and not really helpful, to me except for his great stories as a man serving the Lord, and a for one lesson from scripture that I think I'll always remember. It is from a commentary on the Pentateuch and it is the part where God is so angry with the children of Israel that he says to Moses that he could make Moses the father of nations or leader/whatever. The point was that some commentator said when describing the conversation between an angry God, and Moses trying to calm him, the Hebrew could be translated, 'Moses smoothed out the wrinkles (of anger) on Jehovah's face'. It was a beautiful picture of God to me. The Calvinists of course are ripping their hair out in anger because Moses acting as such is clearly opposing God's sovereignty etc. But I think it's beautiful.
I am in love with the idea of synergism (another reason I like Catholicism) because it's the idea that God works with us. That we really are in a covenant with Him. That he created humanity not just for a puppet show of his divine glory, wrath and mercy, to amuse himself. But that he genuinely wants to live in relationship. That he wants to love his children, hear prayers, and even oddly enough be angry at us when we screw up (like the Israelites), out of his desire for our own good. Maybe I'm making an Anthropomorphic God or some kind of other big scary sounding word that some random person believed in the 6th century and was killed for heresy in a horrific way, but I just think the life of Moses is amazing.
As I plan on confirmation I realize that my relationship with God will change significantly in that I will now have a different answer to 'where are you God'. In the Eucharist, in the communion, and in the Church. It is comforting to think as well that because of Christ's death the temple curtain has been ripped, and like Moses we can each know God face to face. If I accomplish nothing else in my life, that is my greatest desire.
St. Gregory describes Moses' life as a journey, and writes that the knowledge of God is a mountain indeed and few ever scarcely reach it's base. He describes Moses journey in a mystic way where in the beginning Moses saw God in a blazing fire (burning bush) , after that he followed him in smoke/cloud (pillar of cloud) , but when he truly knew God and was more perfect he could see God even in the darkness (Mount Sinai).
Imagine what I'd be like to have talked with God face to face so much that you could hear his voice and see him even in utter darkness.
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