Historical Events in Light of Faith - #4

My dear Sisters in Christ,

The picture we drew this morning of the wretched state of mankind, seduced by the devil and caught up in a web of sinfulness is a very black one, indeed. But it is there, plainly outlined in Sacred Scripture and confirmed by our own personal experience, and for that matter, by the collective experience of mankind throughout history. It has been 2000 years since St. Paul cried out for someone to deliver us from this body handed over to death. It does seem as if the victory of sin is final. God has been totally obscured by human beings. It looks as if He gambled and lost, and we have to just accept this fact and put up with it. We have to try to survive, it would seem, as best we can.

In fact, it appears that God has been so thoroughly obscured that even theologians have begun to despair of ever knowing Him. Actually, I can make that stronger. God has actually been obscured to the degree that some theologians say that God is dead. Some of them have even begun talking of a post-Christian era, the era in which we now find ourselves. The human race has come of age, they say, and we have to strike out on our own. The God of Christians has not been able to survive, and it is folly in the extreme to continue to adhere to Him. These statements are frightening. They are frightening for the ordinary Christian layman, and hence, they are vastly more frightening for us, who are religious. We have made the God of Christians the basis of our entire life. Love for Him is the very fabric out of which our life has been fashioned. We are in a sad state indeed, if God has been effectively shut out of human life and human history.

But really, as you know, God has not lost, and God does not allow Himself to be obscured. As a matter of fact, God has used all of this sinfulness to reveal Himself more clearly. There are depths to the attributes in God that would never have become known unless sin came into the world to provide the background against which God would stand out in all His glory. Our knowledge of Him would have remained superficial had not sin occurred to draw Him out fully, so to speak. Had sin not occurred, we would still have seen His face, but now because sin has appeared, we are able to see His Heart.

What sin has done, in effect, is to have destroyed the universe that God created and in which He first placed mankind. And thus sin has given God a new state of chaos with which to work, a new raw material. Before sin, God had created the entire universe, including angelic natures, out of nothing. Sin has made the original universe to be worse than nothing. Nothingness cannot offer resistance; nothingness cannot oppose the power of God. Nothingness does not admit of awareness and intelligence and power; it cannot use its knowledge and understanding to thwart the fulfillment of God’s plans. And so, in restoring the universe that sin destroyed, God has been able to show us a power and a wisdom and a love that has made the knowledge we would have had of Him, without sin being in the picture, seem pale and colorless. And in addition to that, the world God has given us anew is as far superior to the original world as the power, wisdom and love now revealed as superior to the former.

We are able to continue the parallel between this new creation of God and the old creation. This new world is still in the process of being re-created, and all that we said of God giving us a share in the work of completing the original creation holds good still in regard to this new creation. It still remains our tremendous privilege, not merely to stand by and enjoy seeing the creation take shape (provided the results of original sin in us does not remain to obscure it), but really to assist in the remaking. There was an intimacy with God that our first parents enjoyed and which was necessary for them in virtue of their vocation to complete the work initiated by God in the original creation. We are being called to and admitted to a far more superior intimacy in view of our far more difficult vocation, living as we do in a world infected by sin. Before we were to reveal God’s love. Now we are called to reveal God’s mercy. Just as sin had to exist before the mercy of God could shine forth, so also we need to have a sinful world as a background if we hope to fulfill our new vocation of revealing the mercy, which is in God.

These are some pretty bold statements, and they are also very consoling and reassuring statements. They are statements, which provide hope and give us the courage to go on living in the face of evil and sin. Where did these ideas come from? How can I know whether they are true or not? The answer to all these questions is the fact of a collection of some extraordinary writings. You guessed it; it is the Bible! The Sacred Scriptures are a record of God’s interventions in the chaotic universe brought about by man’s sin for the purpose of initiating and carrying on the work of re-creation and renewal, and to reveal Himself more perfectly, and to give us an even fuller share in the divine goodness and life that is Himself.

Because the Bible exists, we are able to observe God carefully as He goes about His work. We are invited also to share in the work. At the very least, the existence of the Bible gives us the opportunity to offer ourselves to the re-creative action of God to allow ourselves to be renewed. And so we can go so far as to say that the Bible is truly a re-creative word of God being addressed to us. The Bible is for us, now, who are sinners, what the original creative word of God was that first brought the universe into being out of nothing. It is more sublime because it establishes us in greater freedom. Nothingness could not exercise a choice about whether to accept a creative word of God. We had nothing to say about coming into being, for example. Adam and Eve could only freely choose to be themselves, once they were created. We are able freely to accept or reject the re-creative word of God, which destroys sin in us and allows His greater glory to shine through.

The Bible is a remarkable book, that is, a remarkable statement of a creative word, because it is continually operative. It is both invitation and response. It is an invitation because it is also a response. Because in it we find a record of mankind’s response to God’s re-creative word we are aware of His invitation. Then we respond; our response becomes an invitation for others. It is in this way that we share in the re-creative word of God and will one day see the glory of God resplendent in us, namely, His loving mercy, and so enable others to overcome the obstacles in their lives, which obscure the glory of God.

It is obvious therefore that we should be familiar with the Bible. The better we understand it and the more clearly it speaks to us, the more sure and lasting is its effect in re-creating us, and in destroying sin in us. Reading the Bible is an exercise of our Christian life, which helps both to heal our spirits, wounded by sin and to nourish the divine life, which it restores.

There are several ways of thinking about the Bible, which reveal the wonderful properties it possesses as the re-creative word of God. Most generally we call the Bible Salvation History; we also refer to the Bible as an account of the Paschal Mystery. Finally, we speak of the Bible as the creative word that reveals the Christ-Event and draws us into it.

When we think about the Bible as Salvation History, what we are doing is drawing attention to the fact that God is taking an active part in directing the course of History, but more basically, we are drawing attention to the fact that He is revealing His presence and His activity in the minds and hearts of men. Salvation History is an account of how the re-creative word of God grew from its very humble beginnings until it reached the fullness of its power and extent in Christ and the giving of the Holy Spirit. Salvation History is a record of the triumph of the re-creative word of God over the evil universe brought into being by man’s sin.

Let us take a brief look at the entire trend of events related in the Bible. For the time being, let us look only at those events that are related with the introduction of Abraham into the Sacred Text. It is with the vocation of Abraham that Salvation History begins. But we must accept as true what the stories in those chapters want to say that preceded Abraham’s call, namely, that the Universe was good, and that it was the sin of man, instigated by the devil, which brought misery and suffering and death into the world.

In order to initiate the work of healing the entire human race, God chose a man, Abraham, and began to reveal Himself to this man. The object was, of course, to reveal His existence, to reveal He was a person, and to reveal some of His attributes. He communicated with Abraham, impressed Himself so deeply upon the mind and heart of Abraham that Abraham’s entire life was affected. Great upheavals became commonplace in Abraham’s life and he passed on to his children the conviction that God had chosen to live on familiar terms with him and with his posterity. Thus, in this man and in his descendents, God had managed to get a foothold in this world.

The posterity of Abraham kept alive God’s memory for over 400 years, and then God revealed Himself more fully to them while they were in bondage in Egypt. The chain of events, which brought them to a state of slavery, seemed providentially suited for God’s purpose of revealing not only His existence and some of His personal attributes, but also of revealing His saving power. He was able to show them His presence and power on their behalf by taking them out of Egypt at a time when nothing seemed more humanly impossible. These events convinced the Israelites of the transcendence of God, His supreme mastery over all creation, and also of His loving concern for them. And thus a whole people were now deeply imbued with the sense of God’s near-presence and His unconquerable intention to be closely allied with them for the sake of revealing Himself to them. He continued to work miracles for them. He kept them alive in a desert for 40 years when all hope of survival was lacking. He revealed Himself particularly in the Law He gave them on Mt. Sinai. It was this Law, which was a corrective for all the sinful and degrading customs that had sunk deep roots in the peoples of those times. It was the law of Israel that respected the true dignity of mankind and revealed, by way of contrast, how far from the truth the world had gone in its interpretation of the purpose of creation, the true destiny of man, and the true notion of the divinity.

We can see that God was behind Israel because He wished now to place them all in a prominent position before the entire world. He gave them a homeland at the crossroads of the ancient world. Again, with a powerful hand, He gave them possession of Palestine and put them in touch with all the peoples of the world. There, all the world would get to know of Him and would get to see what holiness of life is really like. And since the caravan routes all passed through or near Palestine, God had to remove the depraved Canaanites and make room for the Israelites, whose adherence to the Law would reveal the face of God and reveal His power to re-create and renew the human race. They would do this by living a life of social justice and due respect for God and man in that little island in the sea of gross wickedness.

But great as this was, it was not nearly enough to reveal God fully. The Law was something external. It was imposed from outside. It was always interpreted as burdensome and restrictive. It really didn’t change the hearts of the majority of the Israelites. And so in order to keep them faithful to it, and thus keep them faithful to the way of life that would reveal Him, He had to threaten heavy punishments. And so, when eventually, the Israelites, as an independent nation had ceased to be different from their pagan neighbors, and had shown in their political life that they were becoming more like the pagan kingdoms in their thinking and attitudes toward human society and human life, God wiped away their hold on the promised land and had to find a new way to reveal Himself. He had to find a way, that would enable us to reveal Him from within, a way, which would not require force, imposed from without. He had to find a way of displacing sin from the hearts of men, and all men, not just a privileged few. He found that way when a human being had allowed herself to be so transformed by the knowledge and love of God, revealed in the History of the Jewish people, that she was able to allow God full entry into historical time. She allowed the re-creative word of God to be spoken in utter fullness. That woman is Mary, and Jesus is the one who reveals the Trinity in its entirety. He also reveals the love and mercy of God most perfectly. But even He had to share in the progress of Salvation History. He had to conquer sin and evil completely by coming to grips with it, and He had to find a way of remaining with us at all times in order to exert His re-creative influence upon us. He did that by giving us His Church and His Spirit. It is His Holy Spirit; an interior principle that alone can conquer sin. It does so because it transforms us internally (interiorly) and gives us the wherewithal to love and be merciful as God loves and is merciful.

What is so wonderful about the Bible is that as Salvation History it offers us a means of validating our own personal encounters with God in our daily lives, in our personal history. Because, you see, Salvation History is an interpretation of events. The authors who wrote it were looking at facts with eyes given to them by God Himself. They were not reporters, telling simply what happened exteriorly. Historians differ from reporters the way an artist differs from a camera. A true artist can put his entire evaluation and his personal vision into a landscape. A camera does nothing but record lines and colors and shapes. A reporter narrates; an historian sees the deeper realities, the world of ideas underlying the appearances. What is remarkable about Salvation History is that the point of view presented is the point of view of God Himself. And only He could give the Sacred Authors the eyes to see things as they did, and the understanding and the perspective to record them as they did.

Historians not sharing the divine instinct given to the Sacred Authors say absolutely nothing about the Exodus or of the taking over of the Land of Canaan. Those extraordinary ten plagues are never mentioned in Egyptian History. Neither was the escape across the Red Sea. They didn’t cause a ripple in the daily course of Egyptian events. But to the Sacred authors whom God had given their special insights, it was God who was intervening to save in these otherwise non-notable events, and they recorded them in a way, which made a profound impact upon subsequent generations.

This notion of Salvation History as interpretive History applies particularly to the Gospels. Secular Historians have not been able to recover the historical Christ. They say that the gospels do not tell us what Christ was like, but rather what the early Christian communities thought of Him. This is true, and we will never have a biography of Jesus in the ordinary sense. We will only have the Gospels, which are interpretations of events in the life of Jesus seen under the very powerful light supplied by the Holy Spirit. Only those events were recorded which lent themselves most happily to illustrate those convictions, convictions born of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that Jesus is the Christ of God, Son of God, Lord and Saviour. The Gospels present Christ as the final and decisive intervention of God in the life of mankind, and of giving us at long last the means whereby we shall be able to fulfill the work of re-creation and thus of finally, eventually revealing Him.

I began to say that the idea of Salvation History enables us to validate our own personal encounters with God. In each of our lives there is a progressive revelation of God. And it should be possible for each one of us to trace the history of that progressive revelation. We are given a spirit who provides the insights and perspectives whereby we can see just when and where and how God was intervening in our life, directing the course of events, marking out the path He wishes us to follow. Reviewing our past in the light of the present we can see why certain things that we didn’t understand then have now taken on great significance and convince us that God was there leading us by the hand. Reading the Bible sharpens our spiritual vision. In the Bible we can often find ourselves.

There is no time left to speak of the events of the Bible in terms of the ‘Paschal Mystery’, or as the ‘Christ-Event’. But we have really said what these ideas incorporate. The Paschal Mystery refers to that great movement of God extended in time, taking place in spurts and flashes (as far as our knowledge of it is concerned, but progressing steadily all the while) by means of which He entered into the universe, gathered it all to Himself, made it one with Himself and returned to His Father, who abides beyond space and time. The real Paschal Mystery involves Christ only: His Incarnation, public life, Suffering, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and the Sending of the Holy Spirit. But everything else in the Bible is seen as either leading up to it or as flowing from it. The Bible does also offer us the means of sharing in the Paschal Mystery.

The Christ-Event is the on-going development of the re-creative word of God, which is Jesus Christ. We still seem to be in the grip of sin, but little by little the entire human race is being transformed interiorly so that our lives are true and splendid reflections of the glory of God, His love, and His Mercy. Really, we are winning and losing the fight. The number of dedicated Christians presumably grows, but the world population grows proportionately faster. Again, it is the Bible which enable us to partake of the Christ-event: a response to the sinful world which redeems, transforms, and bestows the power to love and reveal God’s mercy where before it was totally obscured.

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