Religion

What is the main influence in a person’s behavior? Psychologists and psychiatrists have disagreed about that question from the advent of their science. Is it their emotions, their physical desires and comforts, their baser instincts or their ability to reason that most influences their behavior? I propose it is their religion. Funk and Wagnall defines religion as the beliefs, attitudes, emotions, behavior, etc. constituting a person’s relationship with the powers and principles of the universe, esp. with a deity or deities. Even atheists and agnostics have a religion, no matter how much they try to deny it. Everyone has beliefs regarding the universe and few are more passionate about them than atheists! So we may say that atheists are among the most religious people in our midst. For more than a hundred years scientists have been denouncing Darwinian Evolution as a realistic explanation for life on Earth, yet we still teach it in our public schools as the only valid reason for our existence and absolutely fail to offer alternatives or even pretend there are alternatives to it. Let me return to religion before this turns into a tirade against Darwinism.

Religion is not only our attempt to approach God, but also one of the ways He approaches us. Of course this is plainly evident in such wonderful traditions as Judaism and Christianity where the evidence takes little to no effort to see how God longs for our companionship, or communion, if you prefer. What about paganism, ancestor worship or atheism, which can only be described as demonic in nature? There can be no mistake that participants in these brands of worship are attempting to discern the truth, to gain a union with the divine or the universe as they understand it, so the real question becomes does God try to approach pagans and atheists and others in these cults and misguided religions?

The Lost Son

Roy H. Schoeman is one of my favorite authors. He is incredibly insightful. He wrote Salvation is From the Jews. I began to reread his book today and I was thinking over many things. The thrust of one of his arguments is built from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, Chapter 11. He points out that even though many of the Jews who lived during the time of Jesus rejected him as the Messiah, God still did not reject his people. This is something I have always agreed with but I have never been able to articulate it as well as Mr. Schoeman does. He points out that even though a stumbling block is placed in front of the Jews it is not so as to make them fall. They have been called into unbelief by God that the Gentiles might partake of their salvation, later they will be grafted back into the tree bringing yet more grace both to themselves and to the Gentiles. I really admire Mr. Schoeman because his argument for the fact is strictly scriptural and leaves practically no room for dispute, while mine has always been theological and leaves plenty of room for dispute.

Naturally this all made me rethink the general interpretation of the Prodigal Son. The interpretation I have always heard regards mankind as the younger son who squanders his inheritance early and wants to steal the food he is supposed to feed to the pigs. He remembers the goodness of his father, who represents God, and returns to his father’s house. Upon his arrival his father greets him and restores him to his place as an heir. This is a good interpretation, but I do not think it is entirely correct.

The faithful son is the Church of Christ. The father is Jesus Christ and the lost son who returns is the nation of Israel. St. Paul told us that Jesus is waiting to return for the full number of Gentiles to come into the Church. After that the nation of Israel will be jealous of the Gentiles and will return. The rejection of Jesus as the Messiah by the majority of Israel was represented by the son asking for his inheritance early. What has occurred since the Holocaust is wide spread apostasy and atheism among the Jews. This is represented by the lost son who finally lost everything. It seems to me that if Israel reflected on the favor the Church has found with God and the travesties the Israelites have endured since the foundation of the nation and especially in the past hundred years, they might get a little jealous. In the parable of the lost son this jealousy is disguised, but the astute observer will notice that the lost son is jealous. He realizes that even his father’s servants have more than he himself does and decides to return to his father and repent of his sins. It all makes perfect sense! Israel will repent of her sins and return to Jesus Christ! One thing to be personally on guard for is the reaction of the faithful son to his father’s joy upon learning of the lost son’s return home. The faithful son is angry and jealous! We can see that in the Church today. The majority of Christians do not like the Jews at all. This has been true for the entire life of the Church (much to our shame). The exact same reaction by the Church towards the Sons of Jacob sounds likely. The jealousy of the Church will stem from the mercy of the Father extending to all of Israel for all of time. St. Paul told us, in regards to Israel’s final salvation through Jesus Christ, “In respect to the gospel, they are enemies on your account; but in respect to election, they are beloved because of the patriarchs. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”

Karl Der Grosse

I am reading a book right now called A Natural History of Latin by Tore Janson. One of the people it made me think about was Charlemagne. Of course the author spoke a lot about him, thus I thought about him. As the Romans expanded their empire and took over administration of the Mediterranean area Latin became the common language for the entire western empire. Business, government and schools were all conducted in Latin and an increasing amount of soldiers were being settled in conquered lands. Because of these things Latin edged out the local languages in the western part of the empire. When the Roman West dissolved into smaller independent states at the end of the Fifth Century every province except Britton spoke Latin. As the various German tribes took control from each other they spoke different languages but ruled over Latin speaking peoples and, just as in China we saw the Sinicism of conquerors, the Germans adopted the Roman language as their own. As time went on the language changed and adapted to local dialects, thus Spanish, Italian and French were born. We can even see evidence of the change before the fall of the west, we know that Latin began to become Italian in the spoken language even though written Latin held on to the classical rules in the early part of the Fifth Century. The public schools continued to be conducted in Classical Latin through their decline and collapse in the Seventh Century. The learning institutions did not disappear in the Church though, which continued to use Classical Latin.

After the rise of Islam and their conquest of North Africa the Bourbon Muslims crossed the Straights of Gibraltar and began the conquest of Europe. Thanks to the military might of Charles the Hammer they were defeated in France and retired to the Iberian Peninsula. The Spaniards faithfully began the Reconquest and further to the northeast a great leader was born, the grandson of Charles the Hammer – Charles the Great. After reunifying the old Roman West he rightfully looked to restoring the scholastic traditions of the Empire.

It is not hard to sympathize with the sentiment he felt. If you ask me or anybody I know we will all tell you that we speak English. If you ask people in Atlanta, New York, Boston, or Chicago they will all tell you the same thing, but if you take the street languages of those places and compare them to the street languages of Sidney, Dublin, Perth, London or New Zealand then you will definitely find differences even though everyone in those cities all speak English. In New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Nevada the residents claim the heritage of the Wild West and in some of the more rural communities the spirit is still alive and in-your-face. The inhabitants of these communities are rightfully the heirs of such a tradition and feel a close connection to it despite the vast differences that exist in practice and culture. Charles the Great felt the same way about the Roman Empire and rightfully so.

After the evangelization of Ireland, Scotland and England the scholastic tradition of the Romans was richest in that area. A very large monastic community grew up in that part of the world and Church scholastics was alive and well. In fact, it was the intellectual center of Western Europe. Alcuin was a scholar from the city of York. He moved to mainland Europe and became associated with Charlemagne. He brought the intellectual heritage of the island with him and began to propagate it in Charlemagne’s empire. Finally, after centuries of disunity and degeneration, Europe was again unified. Roman law, the Roman Church and Roman scholastics were all to be unified under the new Holy Roman Emperor. What a glorious occasion! The return of the glory of the Eternal City and the ushering in of a new era! Who wouldn’t be excited and have hope and delight at the good things to come in the foreseeable future?

Language

Language has always fascinated me. When I was ten years old my family moved to Germany and I was amazed that anybody spoke anything other than English. I didn’t understand how anybody could speak in a language other than the one I grew up with. Thus began my love of language. Of course it began as a rocky affair in grammar school, learning how to dissect sentences. What a bore! Later I found it similar to the way others have described logic, boring but important. Today I find intrinsic value in just about every aspect of linguistics. Literature was, for the most part, enjoyable until I got out of high school. While in Germany I learned to speak German quite well. I did attend American schools (Department of Defense Dependent’s Schools) but German was a required course until I reached the 7th Grade. That is not why I learned German though. We lived a half hour’s drive away from the military community so when I was at home I was completely surrounded by the German community, of course I had German friends and the local businesses were all conducted in German and we lived on a cul-de-sac in which everyone were friends (the adults I mean), so whenever we socialized with the neighbors it was in German.

Once I got into college I discovered I did well in English composition and the literature I found was so much more enjoyable than in high school. I even took English courses as electives! I was in love with it! Other than that I was required to take several psychology courses. Linguistics was one of the subjects we studied. Some of it seemed natural and common sense, but it stimulated thought that I was not normally in the habit of doing and my love of linguistics grew. One of the old German proverbs returned to me in that class. “If you want to think like a German you have to speak like a German.” Sentence structure, word case and gender suddenly became important to the way I think! These are things that affect my view of life and the order in which I perceive things.

Of course we all know that language changes over time. It develops and adapts to a changing world. Not very long ago in Germany there was a very different class structure than existed when I lived there. There used to be an aristocratic class and a lower class. There is an example of how quickly and subtly a language can change. Two words that both mean bad in German are “böse” and “schlect.” They didn’t always mean bad. In fact, they meant different things to different people depending on which class you belonged to! To the upper class böse meant “strong” or “powerful” which was good, while to the lower class it meant “oppressive” which was bad. In both upper and lower class schlect meant “popular” or “common.” On the lips of the upper class that was bad but on the lips of the lower class that was good.

So, how does that affect the price of tea in China? What good does that kind of knowledge do anyone, other than for someone like me who loves linguistics? And why is a subject like that brought into the religious arena? One reason is to address what has been called, by the pope, the American Heresy. That is the idea that I, as an individual, am capable of interpreting the scriptures for myself (unfortunately it has become quite large spread, even within the American Catholic Church!). Even though I lived in Germany for six years and spoke German fluently, I never knew that schlect meant common until I recently read a book on philosophy. Sixteen years after returning to America I have to learn from an American the original meaning of a German word! When I was sixteen years old I never discussed linguistics with my friends and I am sure they never discussed it with anyone either. I do not even know if my German friends knew the original meanings of schlect or böse. Two hundred years from now who knows how English will change and who will think to comment on the subtle changes that have taken place other than a linguist? Would it even enter the mind of a protestant preacher that this type of thing is important to pay attention to? Will they consult the teachings of Cotton Mather? With they even know who he was? Possibly not, they don’t have saints! Will they know who Lewis Speary Shaffer, D.L. Moody or J. Vernon McGee were? They would be Baptist saints, if the Baptists had saints! If today I said something was common but did not make the distinction that I meant it happened frequently rather than it was a poor experience, will it be interpreted as a poor experience in four hundred years? That is the danger with individual and unguided interpretation of Holy Scripture.

The whole point of it all is that we need to depend on the Magisterium to help us interpret the Holy Scripture. We need to listen to people like Pope Benedict who know and hold the truth about our faith. That is not to say that we are not thinking people and have no independence of thought. It means we should temper our thinking with the wisdom of the ages, with the wisdom of the Apostles as handed to us by those responsible for delivering and preserving their teachings. It means when we hold a view vastly different than the Church we should examine it thoroughly to find out why we hold a different view than the Church. That is no small or easy task and definitely not one that should be taken alone!