Anglican

What Distinguishing Religion, Science, Magic, and Technology, Might Teach Us About Beauty
A book of essays by Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft has written an illuminating essay on the use of indirect communication by CS Lewis and Walker Percy. In it, and in a humorous recording of its content, he explores how both Lewis and Percy present the predicament of the modern person. We live as upside-down persons. And we are not among the first people in history to suspect this. (See St. Augustine, d. 430 AD)

As a way into the heart of his theme, Kreeft invites us to consider a hypothetical challenge posed to a child: take four common objects and sort them into two boxes. The four items are a baseball, a basketball, a baseball bat, and a basketball net. The two most obvious solutions to this challenge, based on the categories of being and doing, nicely set up a thought experiment that Kreeft intends for his audience to engage. He invites us to sort the following four things into two (undefined) categories: Religion, Science, Magic, and Technology. Try it. 

In taking up this simple quiz question, we discover one way that our contemporary thinking habits depart from those of our ancient forebears. Our common assumption that science and technology are sister fields, reliably distinguished by their empirical methodology from both religion and magic, reflects a misunderstanding. For what we may overlook in this supposition of an affinity between science and technology, as well as between the second pair of terms, is how our categorization of these four terms demonstates our understanding of what we consider to be real. And the key variable governing our typical way of sorting these four conceptual categories centers less on what is ‘real,’ and more on the significance of how we conceptualize our encounter with ‘reality.’

A theme that has surfaced from time time in this space, and which plays a large role in structuring my understanding of Beauty, rests upon my appreciation for the distinction between the meaning of the words ‘objective’ and ‘subjective.’ I credit my graduate research in ethics and moral theology for raising my awareness of what these terms can and do mean. With regard to Beauty, and more broadly about what is real versus what is presently actual in our awareness of things, ‘objective’ best refers to the objects of perception, and ‘subjective’ in a corollary way best refers to the subject of perception (I.e., to me, the observer, the knower).

CS Lewis in his Oxford study

Kreeft makes the case that both CS Lewis and Walker Percy shared a conceptual understanding with many philosophers and writers from the pre-modern era. In making the point, Kreeft quotes what he says are the three most illuminating sentences he has ever read about our civilization:

“There is something which unites magic and applied science [i.e., technology] while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.”

And if we have not guessed where Kreeft is headed with all this, he puts the matter succinctly: “Technology is more like magic than like science.” It follows that he commends thinking of religion as being like science by also involving a search for what is real and true, even if differing in its methodology and content.  

Walker Percy at home in Covington, LA

A challenge related to Kreeft’s theme, regarding how we approach beauty, faces us as modern people. It stems from how – through the influence of our culture – we are inclined to think of art and architecture as being more akin to magic and technology, than to science and religion. For we tend to assume that artists and architects manipulate materials and space to stimulate certain responses from those who interact with their work. And, of course, they do. But is this all that these crafters of beautiful things accomplish? Are they not also among those who seek and make available to others instantiations of what is real, and more particularly of the beauty that is there for us also to perceive and come to know? I believe that they are. 

Artists and architects approach the world in a way that has an affinity with those who work in religion and science, while what they do may seem to be like the work of those who ‘practice’ technology or magic. For like all genuine seekers of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, scientists (especially theoretical physicists) as well as religionists include dedicated persons who want to know these real aspects of the world that may be apprehended by those who look for them.

I continue to learn by reflecting on these themes.

Note: Kreeft develops at greater length than I have scope here to address the significance of these and related distinctions. He does this in his essay, “Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos: The Abolition of Man in Late Night Comedy Format.” I commend an entertaining recording of Kreeft’s presentation of the essay’s content, which can be found on his website (by clicking this link).

Our Doorway Into God’s Trinitarian Being
William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death (1870-73)

When we as Christians pray, we don’t simply pray to God. With faithful assurance, we pray with and through God! As Paul tells us, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit…” This is because, when we pray “to the Father,” we also pray with and through the Son. We are enabled to pray with and through the Son following our Baptism. For after Baptism, we are assured that we pray in the Holy Spirit. We therefore pray to God not ‘from the outside,’ but ‘from the inside’ of God’s own being and nature!

Well, how can this be? As we can easily discover, every Eucharistic Prayer in The Book of Common Prayer has a common shape. For all of our Eucharistic Prayers are prayed to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. This is not an accident. Jesus modeled this in his own life, and particularly at the Last Supper.

When we repeat Jesus’ pattern, offered at that supper, we stand with him around the same table. And by his graceful invitation, we join his prayer to the One he called, ‘Our Father.’ Our prayer with him, to the Father, is in the power of the Spirit, the same Spirit he spoke about at that table. He modeled at that supper what grace means in practice.

Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, Jesus shares with us his own particular intimacy with the Father. Inviting us to stand with him as he prays, he offers the whole world back to the Father-Creator. By this, Jesus – and us with him – fulfills the divinely intended-but-failed stewardship vocation of the mythical Adam and Eve. And so, this is also our vocation, to offer up to our Father all that truly belongs to the Creator. Sharing with Jesus the grace of the Holy Spirit allows us to join him, the Son, in his ongoing Eucharistic vocation.

A good way we can live into the saving implications of God’s Trinitarian nature, is to engage in some creative imagining. Imagine that, in this moment, Jesus reaches out his hands to us. In reaching out his hands, he does not simply extend his greeting. Extending his embrace, he invites us to join him by standing with him, closely at his side. By his invitation, and our acceptance of it, he shares with us his own intimate and particular relationship with our Father.

And with this invitation, he gives us the power of the Spirit, making it a reality in our lives. Because the invitation comes from him, the power of the Spirit he shares with us is God’s grace-filled power. Jesus makes all this actual and true, whether we feel it or not.

This Trinitarian shape of prayer is different from how we usually imagine prayer. Commonly, we think of prayer as our communication to God. When we feel aware of God and close to God, we speak to God of what is good and well and of that for which we feel thankful. And we often ask for help. But, when there seems to be a veil between us and God, we speak to God with lament or we complain, sometimes in anger. This concept and experience of prayer is ‘subjective,’ and therefore narrow. That is, it is a concept of prayer based primarily upon our personal, interior, experience. It reflects our experience of being the subjects of perception and action. Yet, as the Prayer Book Catechism teaches us, prayer is first of all responding to God.

As we learn from Jesus, and by the Holy Spirit, true prayer is not something we do, which we somehow manage to achieve through our faithfulness, devotion, or energy. True prayer is something we allow God to do within us. True prayer is the kind of praying that we find God already making real within us through the indwelling Grace of the Holy Spirit. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are constantly engaged with one another, in what the Eastern Christian tradition calls ‘a dance,’ a perichoresis. Prayer involves being drawn into this dance. Prayer is sharing in the Trinitarian relational being of God. Prayer is participation in the community of fellowship that exists within God’s own being.

The Trinitarian pattern of our lives rests upon the Trinitarian shape of our prayers. We can accept Jesus’ invitation to stand with him. We then experience his own fellowship with the Father, in the grace-filled power of the Holy Spirit. This enables us to live truly. To live truly, is to live to the Father. It is to live with and through the Son. And true prayer is to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so, we seek to live in the way that we pray: to the Father, with and through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

Note: This post is based on the Western Church’s observance of Trinity Sunday, on June 15, 2025. My title is based on a well-known metaphor found in John’s Gospel. The text here is based on my homily for that occasion, which may be accessed by clicking here.

My goal is to commend the assurance of hope that lies within the Gospel. And while being aware of concerns about the so-called ’scandal of particularity’ associated with Christianity and Judaism, we should be aware that God is free to offer a similarly positive spiritual experience to those of other religious traditions, or of no particular tradition with which they may identify. I hope to address Hunt’s evocative painting, featured above, in a subsequent post.

The Challenge Posed by Eric Gill

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Eric Gill, Christ Crowned

 

To my mind, some of the most beautiful work in the area of graphic art was created by the British artist and craftsman, Eric Gill. The intractable problem posed by Eric Gill is not a legacy of his artistic output, but of his personal life. Largely unknown to those outside his family until about 50 years after his death, Eric Gill – by admission in his own unpublished writings – had engaged in personal behavior of a kind that most people would find not only abhorrent but, increasingly, as also criminal.

This is related to the larger problem posed by the work of artists, musicians, and architects whose work is seen as having been collaborative with tyrannical regimes (eg., the Third Reich, the Soviet Union). How do we view beauty in art that either depicts or is simply associated in some way with sin or with evil? (This is a matter I have previously tried to understand in relation to Picasso’s great painting, Guernica.)

To cite Scripture to the effect that “all have sinned,” may help us begin to locate the terrain upon which we need to address the problems stemming from Eric Gill’s biography, but it is not in any way to excuse his conduct. Though all sin is bad, and equally problematic in the eyes of God, not all sin is equal in its damaging effect upon others, and upon ourselves. The traditional distinction in moral theology between mortal and venial sins provides one way to try to parse some of these differences, while not excusing any forms or examples of sin, whether in ourselves or among others.

My purpose here is to invite reflection upon how we might appreciate Eric Gill’s religious art, as many did for several generations, without having our view of the merit of his work diminished by our moral evaluation of troubling ethical choices he made, and the lapses from good moral judgment they represent. In other words, and as an amateur student of the arts while also being a retired parish priest and former professor of moral theology, I wish to present some examples of Eric Gill’s art, letting his work speak for itself apart from ethical consideration of his personal life, and without ignoring the problems associated with the latter.

Perhaps my theme here can be summed up in this way: I invite you to benefit from the beauty of what Eric Gill created without asking you to overlook what we have learned about his private life. And I offer this invitation aware that some will not find it possible to accept.

A sculpted carving by Eric Gill above the altar of the Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs, Westminster Cathedral, London
Eric Gill, Crucifixion
Eric Gill, sculpted relief panel from a series of the Stations of the Cross, Westminster Cathedral, London

As we consider some of his art, we should not overlook Eric Gill’s impact, at least indirectly, upon much of the daily life of the population of Great Britain (and elsewhere), in the form of three type faces he created. The most well-known is Gill Sans, named after its designer, and evident at almost every Tube stop in London. An effort to erase his work from the public eye, and replace it with alternatives, would require removing virtually every train station sign in Britain. It could be done. Should it?

Three fonts designed by Eric Gill

To put the problem I have raised here most bluntly, how can we appreciate the beauty in the holy art created by someone who behaved in a way most people would describe as sinful? I do not have a ready answer to this question. Note that, in what I have written above about Gill’s behavior, I have not gone into detail. Would that make a difference? If so, in what way?

And even if we refuse to give any amount of attention to Eric Gill’s artwork, we must still grapple with a timeless question: are there any unforgivable sins? Is anyone, because of his or her behavior, beyond the power of God’s redeeming love? Is it not likely that someone having Gill’s religious inclination also possesses a glimmer of moral awareness such that he or she might be open to repentance when – at the end of life – the person faces the awesome and undiminished light of God’s truth-seeking love?

Here is one thing that we can do: pray for the repose of the soul of Eric Gill, and for God’s Providential mercy.

In beginning to approach the questions I have raised here, I would start with some of the distinctions I shared above. I do not think we can deny this reality – that we, as people who are created in the image and likeness of God, and who have lost that likeness through the Fall and human sin, still bear God’s image however marred it may be by the corruption resulting from our sins. And, that we are still capable while in this life of acts and works of uplifting beauty.

Leo XIV: The Beauty of Possibility

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Pope Leo XIV, upon his election

As an Anglican, I join other non-Roman Catholics in hoping and praying that the new Bishop of Rome will live fully into the beautiful opportunity he has been given. His new office brings with it a symbolic role for all Christians, to be a principled unifier and peacemaker. In this era, that will surely be a challenge.

People of good will seek truth where it is to be found. We want all persons to live in harmony with one another, and with the beautiful world in which we find ourselves. We see this spirit of inquiry and discernment exemplified in many Christian leaders, as well as in non-Christian leaders like the Dalai Lama.

At heart, we seek and desire to serve what Christians and Jews hold to be true regarding all human beings. For we believe that all persons were and are created in the image of God, and that despite the woeful effects of our sin, we all still bear that image, however much we may have lost likeness with God. This was the central insight that some Roman Catholic Christian thinkers, along with fellow spiritual travelers from other traditions, brought to the creation of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Principal documents from the Second Vatican Council display this theme in abundance. These texts continue to inform and guide wise souls who are genuinely concerned about the numerous lingering and emerging problems within the worldwide Church, and in the many societies and cultures where Christians seek to serve Christ in all persons, and respect the dignity of every human being.

Pope Leo has in large measure the same opportunity that we all have. May he have grace to live and serve well, and may we remember the importance of our own often overlooked roles in seeking to do the same. Every day brings new opportunities to seek and serve what is true, especially as we come to know the source of all Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, in Christ.

As St. Richard, the 13th century pre-Reformation Bishop of Chichester (England), taught us to pray: “Dear Lord, of thee three things [we] pray: to see thee more clearly, to love thee more dearly, and to follow thee more nearly, day by day.” (text from The Hymnal 1982, yet familiar to many from the musical, Godspell)

We find the same words as part of a prayer found in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church:

MOST merciful Redeemer,
who gavest to thy Bishop Richard a love of learning,
a zeal for souls, and a devotion to the poor:
grant that, encouraged by his example,
and aided by his prayers,
we may know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly,
day by day;
who livest and reignest with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God,
world without end. Amen.

A stained glass window commemorating St. Richard of Chichester, found in the church of St. Saviour, Eastbourne, East Sussex, England

The Beauty of Redemption-Based Identity

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Fra Angelico, The Transfiguration, prefiguring the glory of the Risen Christ and the beauty of our redeemed humanity

 

There is beauty to be found when we base our identity or concept of ourselves upon the Redemption that has been freely shared with us. Yet, we can experience sadness when we rest our self-perception upon our ailments and disorders. Regardless of our feelings, these alternatives represent choices we can make on a daily basis.

We all have an innate disposition to sin, and in various ways we all enact this disposition. But, for Baptized people and all others, this is not ‘the be all and end all’ of who we are made to be. Our end is in Christ, and so our wholeness is in Christ. We may be sinners; we are also among those who have been redeemed and are being transformed by the power of the Resurrection.

Appreciative Inquiry teaches us that what we we focus on grows. This empirical fact can be seen in two readily observable ways. New soccer players, especially the youngest ones, tend to swarm around the soccer ball. And, when on a fast break to try to score a goal, almost inevitably they kick the ball toward the goalie, the apparent impediment on whom their eyes are affixed instead of upon empty areas of the net. Another example lies in how Drivers Ed instruction teaches aspiring drivers to keep their eyes on the road. Why? Because we steer toward what we are looking at, often with sad results when what catches our attention are the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle on the shoulder.

I remember an observant friend remarking about another person known to both of us, regarding how that person was “someone who dotes on his infirmities.” Not a recipe for health in light of our greater awareness about the symbiotic relationship between psychology and physiology.

These insights may have what I hope are obvious spiritual implications. They may lead us to ask, toward what end are we living? Upon what image of our humanity are we most focused?

Raphael, The Transfiguration (detail)

An ironic aspect of the way that we can associate our identity with symptoms or conditions from which we suffer is how we commonly speak about our embodiment. When we say things like, “my leg is killing me,” or “my head feels terrible,” we may unintentionally reinforce a kind of dualism. All too casually, we dismiss such statements as mere figures of speech, and we may wish to consider their further significance. If I say that ‘my leg is killing me,’ then I suggest that in some way ‘my leg’ is not ‘me.’ Because my words imply that ‘it’ is acting upon ‘me.’ In a slightly more abstract way, we make statements like, “my conscience is bothering me.”

When I am inclined to think and speak in this latter way, I suggest by my words that ‘my conscience’ is something other than ‘me,’ and that it has some power of agency over or against me. What we commonly refer to as ‘my conscience’ might better be described as my experience of ‘consciencing’ (an intentional neologism). Or about how I am the kind of being who experiences and engages in acts of conscience. As the older moral tradition recognizes, conscience must not only be followed; conscience can and must be educated.

So, to say that “I am powerless over sin” does not necessarily mean that I am powerless over my disposition to engage in the bad choices and decisions that I tend to make. Like my emotional experience, I may not be able to choose to have the various physiological conditions that I experience. But I can choose how I respond, or how I act in relation to such experiences and conditions. As John Wesley is remembered as having said about the vice of lust, “a bird may land on my head, but I don’t have to make a nest for it with my hair.”

Experientially, I can associate myself with the conditions that may ‘happen to’ me, and with which I may suffer. But conceptually, I can also choose to identify with the reality of the person I have been made to be and become. By grace, we have been made to become icons of Christ, who is the beautiful Icon of God. To seek to become so is to seek to become an icon of the goodness of God as well as of the truth of God, as these have been revealed to us in the face of Christ.

Rembrandt, The Ascension, an image prefiguring our redeemed humanity to keep in mind so that we may, as the Prayer Book’s venerable words put it, “thither thereto ascend.”

 

Note: The wisdom of our Holy Tradition is reflected in the fact that our Lectionary appoints Gospel readings about the Transfiguration on two occasions every year: on the last Sunday after the Epiphany (or the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and Lent, March 2 this year), and also on August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord. / In addition, readers interested in some of the ideas presented above might consider further material relevant to them in my book, Ethics After Easter, available from libraries and booksellers.

The reflections offered here may assist choosing a theme upon which to focus in preparing for and in keeping a Holy Lent.

The Beautiful Spirit of my Friend, Renee

 

I want to share my continuing appreciation for the beautiful spirit of a friend with whom I have been a colleague in life and work for over twenty years, and from whom I have learned much. Renee was first a mentor to me, as someone who exemplified spiritual authenticity while also demonstrating leadership gifts that have come to be recognized in the wider Church and in the corporate world. Renee truly loves people in a genuinely infectious way. It is no surprise, therefore, that she is a natural team leader who is blessed with the gift of inspiring others to become more whole, and to take the pursuit of holiness more seriously.

Renee was raised in the Midwest and the Southwestern desert, but yearned for a wider worldview than what her family and her early educational and social communities seemed to offer. This has led her to pursue a great deal of travel throughout her life, a good bit of it overseas. She has always been a seeker who has moved through life with the humility of an inquisitive learner and perceptive observer. To me, these qualities are fundamental.

I got to know her as a fellow leader at conferences in what she and I humorously might call the ‘early days,’ when she sought to share her vision for mission and ministry with a wider community. I remember her approaching the task of assembling some fifty-plus plastic transparencies to be set upon an overhead projector {remember those?}. And yet, despite these kinds of challenges we commonly faced as conference presenters, her story and personal witness were always compelling. For she quickly made meaningful connections with others in ways that encouraged us to identify with what she had come to see and know, and then as things we could take on to value in our own lives.

Some personal details of Renee’s life-journey fortify my appreciation for who she is, and the person she has been open to becoming. After her childhood and subsequent education, largely shaped by life in middle America, she adventurously responded to a ministry opportunity that took her to a rural area in the Philippines. This was likely a significant growth opportunity as well as an early indication of some emerging directions in her future vision and work. In so many ways, she has had an inclination to approach ideas about what it means to live as a spiritual being who engages with this world in all its complexity, with curiosity and a compelling equanimity. I particularly value her intentional pursuit of aspects of Asian cultural and spiritual life, and her frequent travels to the far side of the Pacific. These pursuits stand out to me given my own childhood and adolescent experience of growing up in Japan.

As a practical example, her decision for many years to risk adopting a pattern of clothing that could by some be labeled as ‘cultural appropriation,’ was yet a sign of her openness to other and non-traditional ways of living and of seeing things. Based on a spiritual principle, she has also often led worship after removing her shoes. For her, these kinds of decisions regarding how she approaches daily life are not an affectation, and call attention to what she is focused upon and to those things in which she finds value, rather than to herself.

Having lived and worked for a period of time in the humid hill country of the Philippines, Renee has also been effective in encouraging church community in the comparatively arid rural areas of Idaho, the azure coastal region of central California, as well as in the rice-growing flat land of southeastern Arkansas. Throughout her life, Renee has been drawn most to the desert, and to the spirituality that can be found in places like where Abraham perceived the nearness of God, outside his tent on a bright starry night, and where Jesus confirmed his vocation while setting aside the alluring possibilities offered by the Enemy. Her regard for the divine Spirit, who is often best found in the desert and in desert-like places, provides insight about the abiding interiority of Renee’s spiritual character.

What particularly marks Renee as a learner and as a teacher is her remarkable capacity for creative but also sincere self-remaking. She has in many ways transcended perceived attitudinal ‘boundaries,’ and has not only grown but has flourished in her life-informed path, to the joy of many others.

I offer this with thanks for my friend, Renee Miller, who embodies a wonderful appreciation for ‘the beauty of holiness.’

Here are some words from Renee that I think capture well her positive view of her life and ministry: “My primary core value is attributing the highest motive to people’s behavior. This helps me stay in the place of unconditional love, and for me, there’s nothing more theological or beautiful than the reality and demonstration of love. It can transform even the ugly and horrific, and if not transform, at least lessen its power.” Surley, these are words that we all want to live by.

 

Laetitia Jacquetton and the Art of Both-And

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Not so long ago, my friend James brought to my attention the striking glass-based sculptural work of Laetitia Jacquetton. Born in France, Jacquetton has a background in fashion design and a longterm interest in the minimalist qualities present within much of Japanese art and its Mingei (or folk art) tradition.

When I consider what I find compelling about her sculpture, I am reminded of the art of photography. A decisive factor in effective photography, especially black and white photography, is that of contrast. This is a predominant feature in Jacquetton’s work. Though this may seem obvious, perhaps too obvious for comment, I would like briefly to explore the significance of this element of contrast, and what her work might help us to appreciate regarding other spheres within our life experience. For the sculpture of Laetitia Jacquetton may alert us to an expansive question: can dissimilar and even contrasting things – as well as ideas – be brought together into beautiful harmony? And, what might asking this tell us about our concepts of nature and grace?

Photos of Jacquetton’s sculptures help acquaint us with how contrast functions in her sculptures. For example, the photo at the top displays an intentional contrast between light and dark, as well as between shiny and matte materials.

Here, we see a contrast between translucent and opaque materials.

We also see in these photos a further contrast, between smooth and textured materials. This feature, along with those previously noted, stems from the way a fluid and malleable material has been brought into relation with a static and unyielding one. Observing this allows us to infer something about the creative process involved in the production of Jacquetton’s sculptures. The artist has taken a humanly-fashioned form and adapted it to a naturally shaped object, bringing something crafted in the studio to bear upon something found in nature.

Empirically observed contrasts like these may also have a bearing upon our ideas, and how we think about concepts like nature and grace. We may have been taught to view such ideas in terms of a perceived contrast between them, even an antithetical one. Here, when thinking about objects found in relation to others that are crafted, or about nature in relation to our view of grace, we may gain insight by considering some apposite words that Eucharistic celebrants may say before consecrating the bread: “Fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the Bread of Life.”

Several contrasts already noted are also evident in photos of Jacquetton’s other works:

Reflecting on these photos that feature contrasts allows us to articulate what is most significant within Jacquetton’s work, her intentional juxtaposition of contrasting elements.

Jacquetton as an artisan, a human agent gifted with a creative vision and developed skills, has juxtaposed dissimilar materials, achieving aesthetically pleasing results. A singular focus upon one or more of the contrasting materials (or the qualities associated with their appearance), could lead us to highlight one aspect of the artwork at the expense of another, in an either/or way. Yet, it is the dynamic conjunction between dissimilar materials that Jacquetton prioritizes in her work. Evident contrast is accompanied by intentional conjunction, leading us to appreciate the interplay of the differences in a both-and manner.

Noticing this, I think once again of the Eucharist, which – like the Incarnation – is another and relatable example of what I am referring to as a ‘dynamic conjunction.’ For the Eucharist makes present together both the natural physical properties of bread, and the supernaturally graced properties of the sacrament.

Nevertheless, we tend to view many aspects of our world, and of our lives within it, in a simplistic and reductionist manner. For me, comparative reference to the influence of Plato and Aristotle helps limit this tendency toward reductionism.

For example, I credit Plato’s influence with an implicit encouragement to view things, and especially their moral value, in relation to a single reference point. According to this approach, something either possesses or manifests this or that quality – let us say beauty, or goodness – or it does not.

I credit to Aristotle’s influence a more nuanced approach, which nurtures a willingness to consider what we see and come to know in relation to several reference points. We are then better able to say (in a both-and way) how this or that object of attention has a particular quality, while also possessing something of a second quality, and how it can be aptly described by referring to other qualities or attributes.

In all this, I do not attribute my reflections to Laetitia Jacquetton, though her compelling sculptures have clearly inspired them.

 

Additional notes: Thanks to my friend, James Ruiz, for introducing me to Laetitia Jacquetton and her evocative sculptural work. / Regarding my references to Plato and Aristotle, I do not presume to have accurately summarized aspects of their thought, but rather cite what I think are aspects of their dual influences.

I hope readers might perceive how my reflective observations above are related to the paradoxical conjunctions of ideas upon which I reflected in my prior post, regarding how repentance may display beauty, and how painful grief may be accompanied by joyful reassurance.

An Advent Magnificat

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Jim Janknegt, Joyful Mystery 1

 

Neither the Bible nor history tell us the precise details about the Annunciation to Mary, such as on what day the Angel appeared, or when Jesus was later born. The Angel’s wondrous appearance could have happened on a drab winter’s day. Yet, by virtue of the Angel’s message, it was also like spring. Our Church calendar and holy tradition reckon that the Annunciation was in March. If it was in the spring, the average high temperature in northern Israel would have been in the 60’s. So it could easily have been a season colored by the appearance of emerging flowers and foliage.

Faithful to the pattern of Scripture, Jim Janknegt seeks to portray something beyond literal circumstances. He has more than flowering plants, trees, and shrubs in mind. The decorated edge of the painting is a border of roses, which evoke the mysteries named in the Rosary, of which this scene is only the first. Inside that border are more flowers, and these also play a symbolic role. For we find lilies on Mary’s dress, suggestive of a later-to-be-revealed Easter, and calla lilies in a vase on the table, traditionally associated with the Annunciation to Mary.

Even more dramatically, flowers cover a large part of the angel, which suggest something transcendent and other-worldly. The Angel has come to speak the Word: the Word of Life, which is also a Word of blessing (look at the Angel’s hand-gesture!). Central in the painting, but depicted in a very subtle background way, is a great tree. Surely, it is the Tree of Life, from Genesis and Revelation, the first and last books of the Bible. Surely, the tree also prefigures that toward which everything in this moment is heading ~ the dead wood of the Cross, which paradoxically became a life-giving tree. Yes, it is springtime! But, this is springtime in salvation history.

So this is what we begin to see in Jim Jangknegt’s painting: his portrayal of the Angel’s Annunciation to Mary is not so much about springtime in the world. Instead, it is about springtime for the world.

 

Jim Janknegt’s painting, featured here, is used by permission of the artist. The text of this post is based on my homily for Sunday, Advent IV, of this year, which may be accessed by clicking here.

The Elusive Biblical Idea of Ransom

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In late 1987, two American college students were exploring the jungles of Columbia. After obtaining a canoe, they embarked upon the Putumayo River and strayed into territory held by a Marxist rebel army. Formally known as FARC, these guerrilla soldiers abducted the students and held them captive for ten months in various jungle camps.

At first, the FARC guerrillas thought the two men were CIA agents, though the students corrected this. But then their captors came to see them as hostages having economic value. Soon, their parents hired an American explorer, who found the hostages and their captors. After four months of negotiations, conducted by a Roman Catholic Bishop, the students were released and taken to the American Embassy in Bogata.

Release for the young explorers surely came about through the payment of money, probably a lot of it. Ransom is a way to describe this kind of payment, where something valuable is exchanged for the freedom of captives. John Everett Millais’ painting (above), The Ransom, depicts a father handing over of fistful of jewelry and a bag of coins to some men who have taken his daughters hostage. Revolutionaries, terrorists, and criminals have long used ransom as an efficient means of fund-raising, especially when their captives come from wealthy families or are politically well-connected.

Clearly, when payments are made to captors, the purpose is not to honor or reward the hostage-takers. Instead, these payments reflect an abiding concern for those who are held-captive, awaiting redemption.

This concept of ransom is deeply rooted in our Judeo-Christian tradition, and it shapes how we understand redemption. Think of the beloved Advent hymn, which begins this way: “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…” In the Old Testament, in many passages like Psalm 49; Isaiah 35, 43, and 51; Jeremiah 31; and Hosea 13, we hear about how God’s promises inspire hope for the possibility of ransom from the power of death.

These insights help us understand Jesus’ words about ransom in Mark’s Gospel (in 10:45; parallel in Mt. 20:28). After predicting his suffering and death three times, Jesus tells the oblivious disciples that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Yet, instead of a ransom-based understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice and death, many Christians think of Jesus’ saving work in a largely legal or juridical way. In this view, our sin involves a degree of corruption and guilt so bad that it’s beyond what we can make right. And so, human captivity to sin means that ‘a penalty must be paid, and punishment meted out.’ By this reckoning, only a ‘sinless one’ could pay the uncountable price, and bear the penalty for all. Therefore, Christ as a substitute for us, paid the price and endured the punishment so that we, ourselves, don’t have to, even though we are the ones who deserve it. Yet, according to this very common theory, the ‘price’ was paid to God, to satisfy God’s justice!

This legal or ‘punishment-substitution’ understanding of Jesus’ death did not become widespread for at least a thousand years after his crucifixion. Instead, during the first millennium, a different concept of Jesus’ mission was preeminent. It springs from the ransom words in Mark, as well as from 1st Timothy 2:5, where Paul writes, “…there is … one mediator between God and human kind, Christ Jesus… who gave himself [as] a ransom for all.”

According to this ransom view, ever since Creation, we have placed ourselves in the hands of Satan, by refusing to ‘delight in God’s will or walk in God’s ways.’ In effect, we have strayed into ‘the jungles of sin,’ and have allowed ourselves to be taken hostage by the Devil. We are held captive by our sin, and by our inclination to follow our own will. Like the two student hostages, we might have ‘paid’ our way to freedom ~ if we and they had had the means to do so. But we did not.

And so, showing his great love for us, Jesus offered himself to the Devil, as a ransom for our freedom. Jesus allowed the Devil to take him, as someone of even greater value than all of us. For Satan received as a ransom the sinless One, God’s own son. C.S. Lewis employs a similar ransom metaphor in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In this biblically-derived approach, the ‘price to be paid’ was a concession to the power of an enemy, and compensation for a loss, rather than (as in the later and more prevalent legal view) a payment to satisfy God’s sense of justice.

An image of Aslan’s self-sacrifice, from a film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

 

This post is adapted from some material previously published in this space, with some additional imagery. It is based on my homily for Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, which may be accessed by clicking here.

St John the Divine – A Building and a Gospel

 

 

In the summer of 1974, I left my Massachusetts prep school as one of the few graduates not intending to go on to college. I moved to Manhattan in a youthfully naive venture to try and replicate an aspect of the life of my hero, Frank Lloyd Wright. I wanted to follow his career path of eventually obtaining architectural licensing through practicing in the field, something that was and may still be possible.

Unfortunately, as a career move this was at an improvident time, largely due to what was then called “the oil crisis,” and its effect upon the economy. No architectural office was hiring beginning draftsmen, and some were taking on licensed architects to do the kind of basic drafting work for which I wanted to be hired. The former Frank Lloyd Wright associate, Edgar Tafel, was most gracious in allowing me to come to his New York City office for an interview and then by how he tolerantly responded to my youthful exuberance and evident lack of preparedness for the work. Philip Johnson was less patient with me. When I managed somehow to reach him by phone, he said, “Look – I don’t do the hiring around here. Talk to my associate!”

I had found a room a block and a half from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which was a prominent local landmark and soon became a welcome place to visit. Only years later did I discover that the house in which I had been able to rent my room, the former Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house, on 114th St, opposite the Columbia University Library, was where Thomas Merton had lived when he was a student there.

I would walk over to St. John’s, an alluring place to stop and rest. Now, at this point in my life, I would say it was ‘to pray.’ But I would not have said that then. Yet, as one beautiful phrase in The Book of Common Prayer Catechism puts it, “Prayer is responding to God.” Those are profound words. If taken seriously, we can recognize how many, many people in this world ‘respond to God,’ quite spontaneously and quite naturally – and aside from doctrine or ritual.

The magnificent space and architectural achievement of the unfinished cathedral of St. John the Divine was a profoundly converting space for me, in ways I did not realize then, and in ways that would not really make sense to me until much later.

Drawn to this place, absorbed with my intuitions about its architecture, and visiting frequently with inquiries, I volunteered to become a docent, a kind of tour guide for visitors before places like this cathedral became commercially oriented, leading to the charging of fees and the like. In the process of my time as a guide, I learned many arcane and obscure things, among them the size and height of the granite columns surrounding the main altar (54’ tall, 6’ in diameter); the number and architecturally significant variations among the chapels adjacent to the ambulatory surrounding the apse that encloses the high altar; as well as significant features of other side chapels in addition to the crypt.

If you had asked me then about the nature of my interest in that building, I would have said it was purely of architectural significance. Ask me now and I will tell you that I was seeking a closer experience of what St John the Divine shares with us in his Gospel. I was – as we say in a paradoxical way – unconsciously looking for God. But what I was really looking for, as we all do, is the experience of being found… and of feeling found, by God.

I think it is also providential that my year in New York, and the brief time I served as an occasional volunteer guide at the Cathedral, was when Canon Edward West was Sub-Dean, and Madeleine L’Engle was officially the cathedral librarian. I may have had only passing contact with either of them, but both were exemplars of how the arts may draw people into a more direct experience of what our Christian faith is all about. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine has represented this vision and value for decades.

Where St. John the Divine as a building nurtured my nascent spiritual awareness, the Gospel given to us through St. John the Divine, and the hymn-poems in his Revelation, have been for me a key, a doorway, and a beckoning gateway into a greater fullness of life.