by CCW | 2 August 2009 13:50
Actions reveal intentions and purposes. Nothing could seem more obvious and more necessary to modern freedom. But is what is revealed good or evil? Are we good or bad? Is it simply fated? The Gospel is very clear that there is often a discrepancy between what is and what seems to be, between appearance and reality. Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, not to mention “ravening wolves” in shepherd’s cloaks! Such warnings are not just with respect to others but also ourselves. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” In a way, it is what we constantly pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Margaret Visser’s 2002 Massey Lecture series was entitled “Beyond Fate”. In it she speaks of modern freedom as freedom from constraint and argues for the ways in which that freedom is increasingly circumscribed in contemporary culture, noting the different metaphors that speak about the forms of the inevitable, to what is somehow fated in our world and day. In the face of the various determinisms that are inherently fatalistic, we need a deeper understanding that sees human freedom as found within the order of creation and the divine will; beyond fate, perhaps, but certainly under Providence. As St. Paul suggests in his Letter to the Romans, human freedom has to do with our spiritual identity as “the children of God” in Christ and through union with him in his sufferings and glory. Who we are is very much about what we are called to be, hence the necessary correlation between the inward and the outward aspects of our lives.
Fate and destiny are not always or necessarily negative terms, terms that limit or determine human action, making us unfree. The recent movie, “Slum Dog Millionaire,” set in an Indian and Muslim context, graphically illustrates the theme of destiny in the touching and disturbing story of Jamal and Latika, a destiny that is worked out through hardship and suffering and certainly not without its dark side of great evil and corruption, cruelty and death. Central to the movie is the sense of destiny, of fate, but in a way that is more positive and not simply negative, not merely fatalistic.
A different word belongs to our meditations today. It is signaled in the Collect[1]: “O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth.” Providence. What do we mean by it? How does it relate to our sense of personal identity and freedom? Is it the same as fate and destiny? Or does the term itself imply something more?
The year was 524 AD. The place was Pavia in northern Italy. The person was Boethius, the last of the Romans, as some have described him, a scholar of remarkable learning whose life’s task and ambition, largely unfulfilled, was to translate the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin. He also composed some remarkable theological treatises which contributed greatly to western philosophical theology. In 524 in Pavia, he was in prison, falsely accused of treason against the Arian king, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who would have him brutally executed later that year. But not before he wrote one of the great intellectual and spiritual classics of the West, The Consolation of Philosophy, a work which would be “englished” or translated by Alfred the Great, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth the First and, more recently, by many others.
The Consolatio is actually a treatise on Providence and Free Will and while there is only one reference to Scripture in the whole of the work, the logic of its argument is profoundly Christian and depends on the distinction and relation between different forms of knowing that derive in part from the distinction between the human and the divine in Christ.
Boethius bequeathed, in another work (Contra Eutychen), the word ‘person’ to our western discourse, a term used initially to make sense of the relation of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ and the relations between the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost of the Trinity; in other words, we inherit from Boethius a concept that serves to illuminate an understanding of the names of God revealed in Scripture as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. From such language and terminology for God, there is the natural application of the term to our humanity. For Boethius, following Augustine, we are in imago Trinitatis. For Christian orthodoxy, being made in the image of God means being made in the image of the Trinity. Such are some of the fruits of his labours by which Boethius is known, we might say.
We have, perhaps, as a culture forgotten this. But, perhaps, there is something entirely providential in being reminded about the legacy and deeper meaning of such terms as person, defined by Boethius as “an individual substance of a rational nature.” For it reminds us that the language that we use about ourselves has its roots in language about God; the two are inseparable. And isn’t that central to the Christian witness in the contemporary world? Namely, to proclaim that our humanity is radically incomplete without God, and, in this case, that even our language of political and social discourse is grounded in theology? Such are the wonderful mysteries and intricacies of Providence.
“O thou who dost rule the world with everlasting reason”, Boethius remarks, having been awakened from despair and sorrow at his predicament by Lady Philosophy. She appears to him in his despondency and upbraids him about what he has forgotten before going on to engage him in dialogue. It is, we might say, a classic example of “tough love.” In a phrase that echoes The Wisdom of Solomon, she reminds him that Divine Wisdom rules and moves in and through all things, suaviter et fortiter, “sweetly and strongly”. The Anglican Divine and Poet, George Herbert in his poem “Providence[2]” echoes The Wisdom of Solomon and recalls as well, it seems to me, Boethius’s influential Consolation of Philosophy. “O sacred Providence, who from end to end/Strongly and sweetly movest.”
Herbert’s poem examines the Providence of God at work in the natural world and in the world of human affairs. Like St. Paul in Romans, he sees that God’s Providence is the basis of human freedom and human identity. Herbert puts this in terms of our vocation as “the secretaries of [God’s] praise”. “Shall I write,/And not of thee, through whom my fingers bend/To hold my quill? Shall they not do thee right?” Bringing forth the good fruit of a holy life means giving praise to God in all that we do. Writing and doing right. Not just saying but doing the will of God.
Isn’t that the challenge? Under the Providence of God, and only so, can we become what we are called to be, the children of God whose lives bear witness to the truth and the majesty of God. It means that our identity is not something static but dynamic; it requires of us to “beware of false prophets” and to be aware of what is false in ourselves, endeavouring instead to be the good trees that bring forth good fruit.
What does the Providence of God mean for our lives? Simply this. It is God’s world and we are his children. There is good and evil, both within and outside ourselves. God’s Providence alone can make something good out of human evil. We can’t. But to be open to the Providence of God is to know our freedom in another. It is what makes human life livable and meaningful. It frees us from the greater prison of ourselves and from the fearfulness of a fateful and fatalistic world where there is no freedom, no sense of identity, no vocation, only futility and despair.
Under the Providence of God, we are challenged to be who we are in Christ. As Herbert suggests, the Providence of God is being written out in our own lives. What that means for us is found in the story of Christ, the very thing in which we immerse ourselves Sunday after Sunday in the scriptures and the liturgy. There, we find the Mind of God written out for us to read, “sweetly and strongly”.
We are more than accidents waiting to happen and far more than our DNA, for example. “DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is,” as Richard Dawkins puts it. But unlike our DNA, and, for that matter, unlike all other forms of material determinism, God both knows and cares. Such is Providence. Such is the power and the truth of our sonship in Christ. We have really only to look to Christ to find our path and our way, looking to him in the ordered life of his body, the Church. In prayer and praise, in word and sacrament, in sacrifice and service, we learn to live our lives under the Providence of God, knowing this one essential thing, namely, that we are the children of God.
This is our freedom and our challenge in the face of the fatalistic determinisms of contemporary culture. For we, too, shall be known by our fruits, by the tenor of our lives lived for God and with one another, whether in good times or bad, the tyranny of ravening wolves notwithstanding.
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church/St. Thomas’
August 2nd, 2009
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2009/08/02/sermon-for-the-eighth-sunday-after-trinity/
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