What is Happening
The Celtic Courier May 2008 For a Full Version in PDF Format, Click Here
Fr. Greg's Message and Vestry Highlights are not included as they are on separate pages of the Web Site.
The honor of your presence is requested at
the Celebration and the Blessing of the Marriage of
Gail Louise Sullivan
and
Maurice Leonard Hill
on
Sunday, May 18, 2008
10:15 a.m.
at
St. Columba’s Episcopal Church
1251 Las Posas Road
Camarillo, CA 93010
Please come join us for this joyous occasion in our lives!
Reception immediately following in the Parish Hall.
We are combining households, so no gifts, please.
You can make a donation to St. Columba’s if you’d like.
***
The Daughters of the King will meet May 3, 2008 at 10 a.m. in the Parish House. We will be discussing Chapter 5 of our book Your Daily Life Is Your Temple, by Ann Rowthorn. All women of the parish are welcomed at any of our meetings.
Iona Society to Gather June 18
The Iona Society will gather for its second Grand Celebration reception on Wednesday, June 18, at the Camarillo Ranch House. This is the annual event thanking those who have joined the Iona Society in its support of Saint Columba’s. The evening will include docent-guided tours of the Ranch House, festive wines and beverages, and hors d’oeuvres.
This gathering is open to all members of the Iona Society. The Iona Society is made up of those committed individuals who have included St. Columba’s in their estate plans or have in some other way contributed to the St. Columba’s Endowment Fund. If you would like to become a member of the Iona Society, or are interested in attending the Grand Celebration, please speak to Maurice Hill or to Fr. Greg Larkin.
Celebrate the Feast of Pentecost May 11
The Feast of Pentecost will be celebrated on May 11 at the 8:00 and 10:15 services. On this day we celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to the church. It is one of three (along with Christmas and Easter) holy days of obligation in the church. Plan now to join us for this special day as we celebrate what many have called the birth-day of the church, and be sure to wear red.
Time To Play Ball!
St. Columba’s is entering a team in the Parks and Recreation Sunday night Coed Softball league. If you are between the ages of 16 and 96 and would like to play for fun, sign up in the Narthex.
Mark Your Calendar
Mark your calendars for St. Columba’s Thank You Event, Sunday, May 4, 3:00–5:00 p.m., in the Parish Hall. The entire parish is invited to this celebration and time of thanks dedicated to everyone who participates at St. Columba’s. This will be a fun event for all ages as we dance to the music of the Seniors of Note band; enjoy hors d’oeuvres and beverages; and share our fellowship. This will be an afternoon you won’t forget! Watch for further details in the April bulletins.
St. Columba’s Day June 8
Save the date of Sunday, June 8, for our Annual St. Columba’s Day Celebration and Picnic. Join us for one joint service at 9:00 a.m. and then stay around for fun and fellowship. There will be games and a jolly jumper for the kids.
Hot dogs and all the trimmings will be provided, but we will need both picnic- and coffee hour-type foods to round out the celebration. Sign up on the bulletin board in the Narthex for what you plan to bring and join us as we celebrate our Name Saint.
“Thank you to Al Bianco and Brett Hanley for building our new storage shed. It looks great and is a nice start to solving our storage problem!”
—St. Columba’s CLC
Theology Corner by Tim Helton &
Divine Perfection, Part 3
In the last two articles, we considered traditional Christian ideas concerning divine perfection, and their impact on divine-human relations. In the last article, we saw that both modern and traditional Christian theologians assert not only that God is perfect, but also that his perfection is both static and insular. Catholic theologians like Thomas Aquinas and Anselm and Protestant theologians like John Calvin and Martin Luther all conceived perfection in general, and divine perfection in particular, as unchanging. For—so their logic ran—if God changed, he necessarily added to or subtracted from his perfection. If the former, then his perfection was incomplete before the addition, and if the latter, his perfection diminished and did not remain perfection. Most of these theologians extended this understanding of static perfection to God’s emotional state, thereby denying him a capacity for empathy. For to feel, whether joy or pain, implies a change in emotional state, and as we have just seen, perfection is incompatible with change.
Finally, in last month’s article we argued that understanding God’s perfection as static and insular tends to magnify intractable shame and so hinder our already limited capacity for relationship with God. Yet, by considering these issues, we have not yet exhausted the problems that traditional Christian theological understandings of divine perfection impose on divine-human relations, for traditional Christian theologians also insist that God’s perfection is categorical. By this I mean that God authored and upholds an inflexible moral code.
Anselm provides a troubling example of the categorical nature of God’s perfection when he depicts God as one whose honor is of greater value than the entire universe, arguing that it would be better for the universe to perish than for one of its creatures impugn God’s honor by glancing in a direction contrary to God’s command. This notion that a single glance contrary to God’s will sufficiently dishonors him to create a gulf between God and humanity suggests the inflexible nature of divine perfection as traditional theologians envisioned it. Indeed, Anselm wrote, “And so, though man or evil angel refuse to submit to the divine will and appointment, yet he cannot escape it; for if he wishes to fly from a will that commands, he falls into the power of a will that punishes.” Divine perfection, as Anselm understood it, then, implied a categorical will that humanity must not oppose.
Anselm was not alone in considering God’s perfection categorical. Aquinas agreed with him. Moreover, for Aquinas, not only was God’s perfection inflexible, the unbending nature of divine perfection infected both sacred doctrine and divine reason. He called sacred doctrine, for example, “wisdom above all human wisdom; not merely in any one order, but absolutely.” This view that divine perfection was categorical was not limited to Catholic theologians. Calvin thought it so as well. He held a view of scripture reminiscent of Aquinas’ view of sacred doctrine. “The Holy Scriptures contain a perfect doctrine,” he wrote in the Institutes, “to which nothing can be added.”
At first blush, that these theologians thought of divine perfection as inflexible seems rather more positive than negative. After all, who would worship a deity whose will was less than absolutely perfect, and indeed, I am not advocating a theology that imagines God’s perfection or that of her will as deficient. The problem is that perfection conceived as categorical loses its flexibility. It is a short step from a categorical perfection to a fixed law, and while none of our theologians would have set the law up as a basis for divine human relations, all of them thought that humanity’s violation of an immutable divine law was the factor that created the gulf that separated humans from their creator. Augustine voiced his understanding of the inflexibility of the divine law in his Confessions. For him, the “most perfect law of God Almighty” does not change. It “is the same always and everywhere.”
We are all familiar with human laws that, by their inflexibility, impose unnecessary burdens. Indeed, it is for just such a reason that governors and presidents enjoy the privilege of granting pardons. While it is tempting to imagine, as Augustine appears to have, that God’s laws are somehow immune from the problems that attend inflexible human laws, I would argue that the problem is in the nature of law and not in the nature of the lawgiver. That is to say that the nature of the universe makes it impossible to craft laws that take into account all circumstances, and that even God’s laws are inevitably subject to an infinite number of qualifications as they are brought to bear on particular human circumstances.
To the static and insular characteristics asserted on behalf of divine perfection by traditional Christian theologians, then, we must add the characteristic cate-
Continued from previous page
gorical; for traditional Christianity has generally taught that God’s will, as well as his nature, is perfect and that all human beings have offended this will. Thus, a great gulf separates humanity from God. By juxtaposing God’s perfection with human imperfection, moreover, we create for many people a heavy load of intractable shame that hinders loving relationship with God. As we saw in the previous article, however, this view has a second harmful effect, for it is often conjoined with the notion that this offense against God’s law has hopelessly corrupted human nature so that men and women have no ability to choose good over evil. By denying them agency in this manner, traditional Christianity further objectifies humanity and reduces people to objects of either divine judgment or divine mercy.
In this and the preceding articles, I have painted a rather bleak picture of traditional Christian theology. Nonetheless, it is a picture that I believe accurate as far as it goes. Noticeably absent from the picture, however, is any reference to the central Christian message—that of grace. This has made the picture difficult to paint and has undoubtedly distorted it to a degree. Nevertheless, I feel the distortion justified, not because I think that it renders a faithful portrait either of traditional Christianity or its god but rather because it alerts us to the implications of a theology that views God’s perfection as static, insular and categorical. It also alerts us to the fact that these qualities have opposites, and it invites us to consider how our vision would change if we conceived divine perfection as dynamic, relational and situational.
In the forthcoming articles, we will place this somewhat stereotyped view of Christian theology in conversation with Confucian ideas of perfection. As we do so, we will find that there is a way to think of perfection, including divine perfection, as dynamic rather than static, relational rather than insular, and situational rather than categorical. In rethinking divine perfection in these terms, we will find that the notion of divine perfection loses its tendency to induce shame and therefore to inhibit our relationship with God. W