felix hominum

"Support Gun Control: use both hands"

As seen on a T shirt while getting boat fuel in southern British Columbia last week.

I'm just sayin'.

Dante's Purgatory Canto XVII - the Center of the Center is Love

The center of the center is love.  Readers of Dante have long noticed that this Canto falls in the middle of the Purgatorio, which is itself the middle of the poem as a whole.  And that in this Canto Virgil begins his speech on the nature of love.  Love, then, is the very center of Divine Comedy.  Virgil will begin to tell Dante that all sin is a distorted attempt at love.  We either love too little, or we love the wrong things, or we love lesser things too much.  What Purgatory does is realign, purify and redirect our love.  It is love which gives rise to all our actions, and indeed (as Dante quotes Boethius at the end of the Paradiso) it is love "which moves the sun and the other stars".

In order to walk with Dante and Virgil in this and the following Cantos, it might be necessary for us to put aside our own definitions of the word "love", and try to grasp what the poet means when he uses the word.  This is no easy task.  We use the word almost too freely.  Our contemporary definitions or ideas about "love" may be quite foreign to Dante's world.  But at least trying to grasp what Dante means is needed in order to climb further up the Mountain, and come closer to the entrance to the Paradiso.

In the story of the poem, Dante and Virgil emerge from the smoky fog of the Wrathful, and the sun begins to set.  They can climb no further on Mount Purgatory:  without the Sun (God), there is no ascent.  Just as the sun begins its descent, Dante experiences 3 visions of wrath.  These visions are internal.  Dante tells the reader that he sees these things "in my imagination" (XVII.19); "into my soaring fantasy" (.25); "in my imagination" (.34).  Now it may also be the case that we need to rethink what is meant by "imagination".  Dante, who draws heavily on some of Augustine's themes of journey and pilgrimage from the Confessions, may well have in mind Augustine's use of the term imagination from book X of that work.  Imagination is not merely "daydreaming", nor is it restricted to "creativity".  Rather, for Augustine, imagination is that power of the mind to think, or in some sense even be (ok, let's go for Aristotle here) pure potentiality.  It is a greater power and scope of the human mind than what we normally think of when we use the term "imagination".  Again, it is worth noting that these visions, these images, are within Dante.  They are not external to him.  The movement is from outward things to inward things.

Once they have been forced to stop by the setting sun, Dante asks Virgil about the next level (the Slothful) which they are just reaching.  This gives Virgil an opportunity to begin his speech on the nature of love, which will continue into Canto XVIII.

Neither Creator nor his creatures ever
my son, lacked love.  There are, as you well know
two kinds: the natural love, the rational.

Natural love may never be at fault;
the other may: by choosing the wrong goal,
by insufficient or excessive zeal.

While it is fixed on the Eternal Good,
and observes temperance loving worldly goods,
it cannot be the cause of sinful joys;

but when it turns toward evil or pursues
some good with not enough or too much zeal-
the creature turns on his Creator then.

XVII.91ff

What else is sin but a failure, or misdirection, of love?  Our problem, explains Virgil, is found in the structure of the Purgatorio.  There are sins which are the result of loving the wrong things (the lower levels); sins of loving too little (the middle levels); and then sins of loving  too much, or to put it another way, loving good things out of proportion to our love for God.  The Slothful, whom they will encounter next, are an example of those who "love too little";  the Lustful, whom they will meet later on, are an example of those who "love too much", so to speak. 

Back in the saddle

From the log cabin in southern British Columbia.  Next up is a continuation of Dante's Purgatory.

Book Review: John H Armstrong: Your Church is Too Small

Your Church Is Too Small
Why Unity in Christ's Mission Is Vital to the Future of the Church
John H Armstrong
Zondervan, 2010
220 pages

One of my first memories of campus ministry takes me back to a scene during orientation week at a major university.  I took some time to wander through the vast array of displays in the school's athletic center.  All of the various group and clubs and organizations on campus had their wares set up in assorted booths and tables and such.  I had just arrived as the new person for Anglican campus ministry in a university of over 35,000 students.  I thought it would be a good thing to check out the variety of Christian groups on campus - each one having it's own location in the campus agora to recruit new students and proclaim their message.

Now don't get me wrong.  I didn't lament the presence of so many different Christian groups on the campus.  But that very first day on the job I was struck with the thought of what might happen if all these groups had some way of uniting.  And so I was moved to do what was perhaps almost unthinkable for an Anglican in such a setting.  I went around to all of the Christian displays and asked the students and leaders staffing them if we could gather the Christians together, even for a few minutes, for prayer.  Right there, in the middle of the athletic center, buzzing with thousands of students.

I start with a story  from the past because that is where Armstrong starts.  He comes from a Reformed tradition, and he has been influenced by the ecumenical work of people like John Mott and Leslie Newbigin.  His book begins with a look at two histories;  his own and that of the church.  In his own life and work he began what he calls a "journey to catholicity".  He takes his starting points from Scripture (Jesus' prayer for unity in John 17) and from the common witness of the early church as expressed in the Apostles' Creed.  These, for Armstrong, served as benches upon which he can sit with Christians from other traditions.

As Armstrong comes from a confessional Reformed tradition, it is easy to see how his passion for unity can be seen by some withing his tradition as compromise at best and dangerous pluralism at worst.  I think all of us who have been involved in some such activity on a real level run up against this.  The fuller unity is not one in which we merely hang out with Christians from other places or denominations whose doctrines or practices are close to our own.  That is merely associating with the like-minded or the like-practiced.  Which is why, by the way, I have often found that many "Ecumenical" events are rather predictable.  They can sometimes merely be the getting together of similar people from different traditions.

I suspect Armstrong would strongly reject a charge of compromise simply because he has been searching for that early common ground.  Biblically, it is Jesus' prayer;  confessionally, it is the creed; practically, it is mission-ecumenism.  At heart of course, it is Christ himself.  As Armstrong points out, the quickest route between two Christians goes through Christ Himself.

Can the church's past act as guide for unity in the present?  Armstrong suggests that the 4 classical marks of "The Church" - one, holy, catholic, apostolic - can at least be a framework upon which contemporary Christians might build bridges over their differences. Currently there are tens of thousands of Christian denominations, independent churches and sects in North America.  Somehow each one thinks it has an understanding of what it means to be the Church.  In order to address the question of unity in the present, Armstrong looks at the roots of disunity in church history, as well as some of the current thinking that has supported the particularly Protestant pastime of splitting congregations and starting new "churches".

At heart (though Armstrong devotes only a few pages to it) is the Cartesian revolution of looking at the self as the source of certainty.  Here I want to draw out some points that Armstrong makes in broad terms.  Opposing the "self" there is the classical understanding of God as Trinity.  My sense is that once we are moved by the the unity and diversity which is the Trinity, we will have a better chance of finding the path to unity and diversity incarnated in the visible church. While we might want to go back in a romantic sense to the unity of the early church, we cannot.  First, that unity was not without its difficulties and factions.  Second (and here I am stealing a thought from Pete Rollins) it is not to the early church that we must return, but to the Person and Event which gave birth to the early church.  So our present quest for unity, while we wrestle with practices and doctrines, traditions and Scriptures, must go back, eventually, to God himself as Trinity.

So where does the path go from here?  For Armstrong, the church of the future needs to be missional-ecumenical. I know, I know:  can you pack two buzzwords from different ends of the spectrum together and not have a mess of pottage at the end?  Fortunately, Armstrong brings these two terms together with content (accent on the first syllable).  Here I think I'll return to that episode of days gone by.  Over the course of that year, the students and leaders of various Christian groups on campus tried to covenant to meet together regularly for prayer.  We would take turns leading the prayer times, which in itself was a learning experience for many.  As the year went along, we sensed that the places in which could really cooperate actively were in the areas of mission.  This is the point of the exercise:  to work together in Christ's mission to the world.  I have personally found that ecumenism which tends to focus solely on having a smorgasboard worship service, cobbling together external pieces from various traditions, often misses the point and the power of the Kingdom.  Armstrong encourages us toward relational and cooperative unity in mission as a place where the Church, in all its fullness, can begin to exhibit the unity for which Christ prayed.

Overall - A good basic intro to a newer and more robust ecumenism.  Easy to read, questions at the end of each chapter for discussion.  Lots to think about, act about, and of course, to argue about amongst ourselves.

Notice:  This book has been provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications, Inc and the author. Available now at your favourite bookseller.