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“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds find shelter in its branches.” (Matthew 13: 31 – 32) < Back The Mustard Seed David Cowles Sep 1, 2024 “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds find shelter in its branches.” (Matthew 13: 31 – 32) Jesus’ parables are a mixed bag. Some are clear and incredibly insightful. Others are opaque, serpentine, and hard to interpret. Even the apostles couldn’t make head nor tail of some of them. I do not mean to give Jesus ‘notes’. He had issues! As has often been pointed out, he could not relate to his followers using only the abstract concepts of ‘professional’ philosophers and theologians. He needed to give his audience something they could relate to and so he needed to rely on imagery familiar to everyday Palestinians in the first century CE. But that was a secondary motivation! More importantly, Jesus needed to ‘code’ his message. At the beginning of his public ministry, he tried proclaiming it directly in the synagogue in Capernaum and barely escaped with his life. “Won’t make that mistake again. So much for 40 days in the desert wrestling with Satan. Time for Plan B!” Beginning with Matthew the Evangelist, Christians have gone to great lengths to situate the Christian message as a logical continuation of themes found in what we now know as the Old Testament. And rightly so! But this laudable theological exercise blunts our realization of just how radical Jesus’ teachings were . Supported only by a ‘gang’ of men and boys recruited from remote, hillside villages in the Galilee, Jesus was preparing to take on two global superpowers: Rome (political) and Jerusalem (religious). Not that these two elites had much in common. The Jesus Story is firmly embedded within a much longer conflict between Israel’s two ‘masters’. Pontius Pilate to his credit tried to maintain a modicum of ‘peace’ between the two parties; of course, he failed! Ironically, about the only thing the political and religious forces could agree on was their mutual disdain for Jesus. So let’s recap. On one side, we have Rome’s ‘global’ political hegemony (Empire) supported by overwhelming military might. On the other side, a millennia old theology and religious tradition, fundamentally theocratic and anarchic, rapidly gaining converts all the way from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules. “And then came Maude” (aka Jesus of Nazareth)! I wonder how William Hill™ would have handicapped this 3 way race. Spoiler Alert : Over the next 400 years, the ‘glory that was Rome’ faded out. Efforts to revive it (800 CE, 1500 CE) were never fully successful. Judaism continued to spread and became an important world-wide religion but, for various reasons, failed to reach ‘critical mass’. Only Christianity achieved ‘escape velocity’. The Jesus Story often presents the political and religious establishments as a collection of bungling fools, too preoccupied with their own interests to respond effectively to Jesus’ challenge. Nothing could be further from reality. Just ask Jesus’ cousin, John, the Baptist, arrested, imprisoned and beheaded. Or the two prisoners crucified alongside Jesus on Calvary. Or Barabas whose life became a bargaining chip. Imagine his shock when he learned that he was being released as part of a comprehensive ‘deal’ to kill Jesus. For one brief evening, the Roman Governor (Pilate), the local ruler (Herod), and the Chief Priest joined hands and sang Kumbaya . That’s how much of a threat Jesus was to political order and religious orthodoxy. In fact, far from dropping the ball, the forces of reaction dogged Jesus from the very first days of his public ministry. To survive even three years, Jesus needed to deploy a complex strategy: Stay out of the big cities, avoid the limelight, take the roads less traveled. Stay out of Judea, until the end, and even minimize time in Galilee. Jesus was most at home in the region north of the Sea of Galilee, from the shores of Lebanon (Type and Sidon) to Syria (Golan) and along the East bank of the Jordan, including the Greek cities of the Decapolis – areas where sway of the political and religious powers was weakest. Swear witnesses and beneficiaries to secrecy. Encode his teachings in the language of parables, only explaining the unencrypted meaning to his closest disciples. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . purpose and devotion. Return to Table of Contents Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Mary Magdalene, The Witness Rachel Held Evans "That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered." Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news:“I have seen the Lord!”—John 20:18 The story of how Mary Magdalene became known as a prostitute is a complicated one. One of six Marys that followed Jesus as a disciple, she was distinguished from the others through identification with her hometown of Magdala, a fishing village off the coast of the sea of Galilee. According to the gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus cleansed Mary of seven demons, (a backstory infinitely more complicated and mysterious than prostitution, if you ask me), after which Mary became a devoted disciple, mentioned by Luke in the same context as the twelve, who traveled with Jesus and helped finance his ministry. In 597 pope Gregory the Great delivered a homily on Luke’s gospel in which he combined Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (Martha’s sister), suggesting that this Mary was the same woman who wept at Jesus’ feet in Luke 7, and that one of the seven demons Jesus excised from her was sexual immorality. The idea caught on and was perpetuated in medieval art and literature, which often portrayed Mary as a weeping, penitent prostitute. In fact, the English word maudlin, meaning “weak and sentimental,” finds its derivation in this distorted image of Mary Magdalene. In 1969, the Vatican formally restated the Gospels’ distinction between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the sinful woman of Luke 7, although it seems Martin Scorsese, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Mel Gibson have yet to get the message. A cynic might suggest that this mistake and its subsequent popularity represent a deliberate attempt to typecast and discredit a woman whose role in the gospel story is so critical and so revolutionary that the eastern orthodox Church refers to Mary Magdalene as equal to the apostles. Although she appears to have been a critical part of Jesus’ early ministry, Mary Magdalene’s extraordinary faithfulness shines most brightly in the story of the passion. After Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, his male disciples abandoned him. Judas delivered him over to the authorities for a bribe. Peter denied him three times. And only John, described as “the apostle whom Jesus loved,” was present at the crucifixion. But Mary Magdalene and the band of women who followed Jesus and supported his ministry are described by all four gospel writers as being present during the savior’s darkest hours. Even after Jesus took his last breath, and all hope of redemption seemed lost, the women stayed by their teacher and their friend and prepared his body for burial. It is precisely because they were present, loyal even through failure, that the women who followed Jesus were the first to witness the event that would define Christianity: the resurrection. Gospel accounts vary, but all four identify Mary Magdalene as among the first witnesses of the empty tomb. According to the synoptic Gospels, she and a group of women rose early that fateful morning, three days after Jesus had died, to anoint the body with spices and per- fumes. When they arrived at the tomb, they were met by divine messengers guarding the entrance, who declared that Jesus had risen from the dead, just as he said he would. The women immediately left the tomb behind and, “with fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8), ran to tell the other disciples. Luke notes that on their way, they remembered what Jesus had taught them about resurrection, confirmation of the fact that these women had been present for some of Christ’s most important and intimate revelations and that they took these teachings to heart. But when the breathless women arrived at the home where the disciples had gathered, the men did not believe them. Women were considered unreliable witnesses at the time (a fact that perhaps explains why the apostle Paul omitted the women from the resurrection account entirely in his letter to the Corinthian church), so their proclamation of the good news was dismissed by the men as an “idle tale,” the type of silly gossip typical of uneducated women. Perhaps the men invoked the widely held belief that, just like their sister Eve, women were easily duped. A few, however, were curious enough to take a look at the tomb, and so, according to John’s account, Mary returned with peter and another disciple to the place she had encountered the messengers. The men saw for them-selves an empty grave and a pile of linen wrappings folded neatly within it, and conceded to the women that the tomb was indeed empty. However, John 20:9 notes, “they still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” The men returned to report what they had seen to the rest of the disciples, leaving Mary behind. Perhaps disciples posited the theory that Jesus’ body had been stolen, for John wrote that Mary, once so full of breathless excitement and impassioned belief, now stood outside the tomb, crying. Angels appeared and asked her what was wrong. “They have taken my Lord away,” she told them, fully accepting the disciple’s dismissal of her “idle tale." The angels were then joined by a mysterious man, whom Mary assumed to be the gardener. He, too, asked why she was crying. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him,” she pleaded. Only when he called her by her name, did she recognize the man as Jesus. “Mary,” he said. “Rabboni!” she cried. “Do not hold on to me,” Jesus urged as she fell before his feet, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” And so again, Mary Magdalene ran to the house where the disciples were staying and told them she had seen the risen savior face-to-face. “I have seen the Lord!” she declared. But it was not until Jesus appeared to the men in person, allowing them to touch the wounds in his hands and side, that they finally believed. Far from being easily deceived, women were the first to make the connection between Christ’s teachings from scripture and his resurrection, and the first to believe these teachings when they mattered the most. For her valor in twice sharing the good news to the skeptical male disciples, the early church honored Mary Magdalene with the title of Apostle to the Apostles. That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered. And yet too many Easter services begin with a man standing before a congregation of Christians and shouting, “he is risen!” to a chorused response of “he is risen indeed!” Were we to honor the symbolic details of the text, that distinction would always belong to a woman. *** This was an excerpt from A Year of Biblical Womanhood. This piece was republished with permission from rachelheldevans.com . *** Image: "Christ and St. Mary Magdalen at the Tomb." Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669). Royal Collection Trust. Rachel Held Evans was a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Faith Unraveled (2010), A Year of Biblical Womanhood (2012), Searching for Sunday (2015), Inspired (2018). Hailing from Dayton, Tennessee—home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925— she wrote about faith, doubt and life in the Bible Belt. She was featured in The Washington Post , The Guardian , Christianity Today, Slate, The Huffington Post, The CNN Belief Blog, and on NPR, The BBC, The Today Show, and The View. She served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and kept a busy schedule speaking at churches, conferences, and colleges and universities around the country. Rachel and Dan welcomed their second child in 2018. Rachel passed away in 2019. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

“I’m willing to bet there are some people out there (actually, a lot of people) who would literally love to spend their careers revealing the presence of God to others.” < Back Sacramental Priesthood David Cowles Apr 15, 2024 “I’m willing to bet there are some people out there (actually, a lot of people) who would literally love to spend their careers revealing the presence of God to others.” Prior to 1800, it was more or less taken for granted that human life had some sort of transcendent purpose or value. After 1800…not so much! Popes Leo XIII, Pius X, and John XXIII each made a valiant, but largely unsuccessful, effort to win back the hearts and minds of the ‘once faithful’. The high water mark of this renewal was Vatican II (V2), the Church’s 20 th century effort to reinvent itself. For all its good intentions and fine documents, V2 did not accomplish its objective. In retrospect, JP2 probably did more to make the church relevant . Today, the Church is adrift. Even a generally popular Pope like Francis seems oddly out of touch. The Church’s structural and institutional problems are serious and well known but they are not the root cause of this cultural schism. That goes to something much deeper: Christians believe… or are expected to believe, things that fly in the face of everyday common sense : that God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, is also a human being, born of a virgin to a working class family in first century Palestine; that he cured the sick, raised the dead, turned water into wine, wine into blood, and bread into his body; that he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Non-Christians… believe in science. See the problem? Believers and non-believers do not just disagree about things like Abortion; they disagree about what the World is ! What the meaning of ‘is’ is! Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, science and religion coexisted, albeit uneasily. Science had its realm, religion had its, and never were the twain to meet. If this ‘two state solution’ ever worked, it certainly doesn’t today. Science strives to be a Theory of Everything (TOE) and, frankly, Theology should do the same, not excluding science, not co-opting it, but incorporating it. The scientific world view - logical, empirical, material and practical - has permeated every nook and cranny of civilian life. 8 year olds today are doing science that was unimaginable for 80 year olds a generation ago. It is hard to imagine a role for religion in such a world. However, we also know that the scientific world view is ultimately unsatisfying. Despite stupendous material progress, people are at least as unhappy today as they ever were. Stress, anxiety, depression, boredom, and self-harm are symptoms of an even deeper malaise – the loss of meaning and purpose. I mean a universe that comes into being spontaneously, evolves randomly, and vanishes without a trace is hardly reassuring. May I be excused for at least asking, “Could something else be going on?” I mean, if it turns out that everything is worthless and nothing has any meaning, then fine! But don’t expect me to go gentle into that no good night. Science offers no ultimate explanations; it can’t. It’s not in its nature. Now don’t get me wrong: science does an outstanding job of explaining things , one thing at a time, in terms of other things, one thing at a time. Any Best of Science highlight reel must include a shot of a billiards table. But why are there things to explain in the first place? Not a cue! (Oops, clue.) We have everything…we are nothing! Materialism has proven to be the first cousin of nihilism; so re-enter Christianity? Most Christians believe in science – deeply! It’s Nature after all. It’s the Mind of God. In 1000 CE, Pope Sylvester II was said to be the finest scientific mind in all Europe. In Jewish tradition, the Torah is thought to have been given twice: once as Written Torah (first five books of the Old Testament) and once as Oral Torah (nature, logos , the cosmic order). One law, two expressions! Science and religion don’t conflict…or even complement; they reinforce. A knowledge of science can and should lead to a deeper understanding of religion… and vice versa! But this is 2000, not 1000, CE, and it’s certainly not 500 BCE. Science reigns, religion is in exile. The priesthood itself, the scaffolding of the hierarchical Church, is an endangered species. There are no priests! And religious? Forget about it. What can a priest do? He (sic) can educate, heal, counsel, administer; he can perform the Works of Mercy…but so can others . A priest can ‘also’ facilitate the Seven Sacraments. These are 7 ‘moments’ or ‘stages’ in someone’s life that can bring a person into closer contact with the Transcendent. Generally speaking, this is something others can’t do! Beyond the 7 Sacraments, most of what the Church does can be laicized, subbed out, or snubbed out. Much can and should move to the public sector and/or to non-denominational charities. Where the Church wishes to retain a role, e.g. in education, there is no need for ordained clergy to be involved. Imagine a Church with two ‘tracks’: (1) the lay track for those primarily interested in public service, education, administration, charitable work; (2) the ordained track for those wishing to devote themselves to manifesting God’s presence through the Sacraments. We are all called to be Priest, Prophet, and King . Absolutely! But perhaps in our professional lives, we should be priest, prophet, or king. For example, reimagine the priesthood as a loose confederation of men (sic) welcoming newborns and converts, strengthening faith, hearing confessions, celebrating Mass (Eucharist), marrying couples, ordaining clergy, and easing the way for the sick and the dying. Not the worst job description! To whom could we compare such a ‘reformed’ clergy? To Robin Hood’s Merry Men, to Worker-priests, to Medieval troubadours, to Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums? Wait, I’ve got it, how about we compare the new priesthood to Jesus’ band of disciples (Gospel of Mark), wandering the border regions of Galilee, performing good works and manifesting the presence of God. In other words, the Church as Jesus and the Apostles lived it. How about that? Of course, in the process of carrying out these spiritual functions, priests would overlap with lay practitioners and even civil servants as the latter perform their material and/or social duties: caring, counseling, educating, et al. It could be no other way! Each Sacrament is not only an encounter with Christ; it is also an encounter with, and an unmasking of, the world ( Aletheia ). Sacraments strip away the world’s phenomenal veneer to reveal its noumenal essence. They hijack Parmenides’ Doxa and shine its ‘bright light’ on Aletheia . This is Neant without Etre , Dasein without Wassein , the unheard sound of a tree falling in a forest, the unheard sound of one hand clapping. Imagine officiating at these moments of sacramental epiphany…and doing it for a living! Doesn’t appeal to you? You’d rather shuffle papers? No problem. I’ve got plenty of work for you . But I’m willing to bet there are some people out there (actually, a lot of people) who would literally love to spend their careers revealing the presence of God to others. And if I’m right, Eureka! We have priests again! Maybe John Webster was right, “Better days are coming,” after all! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Holy Days 2024. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Science Behind the 7-Second Rule Dr. Stuti Pardhe "First impressions swiftly shape neural pathways, steering our social interactions through rapid cognitive processes." The concept of the "7-second rule" is often linked to swift assessments or forming initial impressions in the first moments of an encounter. While not a strict scientific principle, it resonates with the notion that our brains excel at swiftly processing information, potentially tied to creating and activating neural pathways. Neural pathways are links between neurons (nerve cells) in the brain, enabling signal transmission. The brain's capability to establish and reinforce these pathways is termed neuroplasticity. Here's how the 7-second rule might relate to neural pathways: Rapid Processing and First Impressions: The brain can handle a vast amount of information quickly. When meeting someone or encountering a new situation, the brain promptly evaluates visual cues, facial expressions, body language, and other nonverbal signals. This rapid processing contributes to forming initial impressions within seconds. Thin Slicing and Neural Efficiency: "Thin slicing" means making quick judgments based on limited information. This swift cognitive process likely stems from neural efficiency—the brain's adaptation for rapid decision-making crucial for survival. In the context of the 7-second rule, thin slicing aids in forming initial impressions, possibly activating specific neural pathways linked to swift decision-making. Neural Plasticity and Adaptation: Neural plasticity allows the brain to adapt based on experiences. Quick judgments and first impressions can impact strengthening or weakening existing neural pathways. Consistent positive first impressions might reinforce neural pathways associated with positive social interactions over time. Emotional Responses and Neural Connectivity: First impressions often trigger emotional responses. Positive or negative emotions can influence neurotransmitter release, affecting connectivity and strength of associated neural pathways. Over time, repeated emotional responses might contribute to habitual thought patterns. While the 7-second rule doesn't strictly dictate neural pathway formation, it highlights the brain's swift cognitive processes and its ability to form rapid judgments. It's crucial to note that the brain's plasticity permits ongoing adaptation and rewiring based on experiences. Hence, individuals can consciously shape their neural pathways through deliberate thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes. In essence, the 7-second rule corresponds to the brain's quick processing, thin slicing, and neural pathway formation. These mechanisms influence the swift judgments and initial impressions formed during social interactions. Neuroplasticity allows ongoing adaptation, offering opportunities for individuals to consciously impact their thought patterns and responses. Dr. Stuti Pardhe is a dedicated professional with a broad spectrum of experience spanning social work, clinical therapy, and alternative modalities. With a profound commitment to mental and public health, she aspires to be a global Brand Ambassador and Role Model, leaving a positive impact on humanity. Click above to return to Winter 2024. Previous Next

“And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” < Back Mark’s Diary – Notes for a Screenplay David Cowles Sep 1, 2024 “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Narrator : (Quoting Isaiah) “Here is my messenger whom I send ahead, a voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare a way for the Lord; make straight his path’.” Direction : As the Narrator is reciting Isaiah, the words are captioned in white letters across a black screen. Scene #1 : John is baptizing pilgrims in the waters of the River Jordan. Jesus approaches and is baptized. Chorus (of 3): “This is my beloved son on whom my favor rests.” Scene #2 : Jesus is praying alone in the wilderness, wrestling with the temptations of Satan. Learning that John has been arrested, he enters Galilee, proclaiming the Good News to everyone, everywhere. Jesus : “The kingdom of God is at hand! Repent and believe the good news.” Scene #3 : As he walks along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus recruits his first apostles, Simon (Peter), Andrew, James, and John, fishermen and merchants from the local bourgeoisie. Jesus : “Come, I will make you fishers of men.” Scene #4 : On the Sabbath, Jesus enters the synagogue at Capernaum, the major city in the region, and teaches the rapt congregation with authority. (We don’t hear the specifics of the teaching.) As he is speaking, an obviously troubled man interrupts and exposes Jesus’ identity: Chorus : “I know who you are, holy one of God.” Jesus : “Silence! …Come out of him!” Direction : Jesus is piqued at the interruption and at the untimely disclosure and, knowing it to be the work of demons, Jesus cures the man just to silence him, but it’s too late. He’s created a stir! It’s early days but already, things are not going as smoothly as expected. Scene #5 : Jesus takes refuge in Simon’s house where he heals Simon’s mother-in-law as well as others from the town. Before dawn, Jesus slips out, hoping to pray alone, but Simon et al. soon follow. Scene #6 : Now Jesus and his tiny band roam the hills of Galilee, sticking mainly to byways and speaking only in rural villages. Along the way, Jesus meets and cures a leper, and swears him to silence. Jesus : “Show yourself only to the priest.” Narrator : “But the man went out and made the whole story public, until Jesus could no longer show himself in any town. He was forced to remain in deserted places, but the people continued to come.” Direction : The Gospel of Mark includes numerous instances of Jesus performing miracles, usually swearing his beneficiaries to silence that they often break. We have staged a few of these miracles but the Director should feel free to stage additional miracle stories from the Gospel as she sees fit. Scene #7 : Jesus and his disciples are walking through a corn field; it happens to be the Sabbath. The scene suggests Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows . The apostles are picking, peeling and eating ears of corn. Chorus : “Why do they do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?” Jesus : “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Son of Man is sovereign, even over the Sabbath.” Narrator : “So the Pharisees began plotting against him with the partisans of King Herod to see how they could do away with him…Then Jesus went up into the hill country and called the men he wanted, and they joined him. In all, he appointed 12 to be his companions.” Scene #8 : As Jesus and his followers continued on their way, Jesus takes the opportunity to teach: Jesus : “Nothing is hidden unless it is to be disclosed, the measure you give is the measure you will receive…and more besides. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed , the smallest of all seeds…Once sown, it grows taller than any other plant and forms branches so large that birds can settle in its shade.” Scene #9 , Narrator : “Once more, a crowd has gathered around Jesus so that he’s had no chance to eat. His family set out to take charge of him for people were saying that Jesus was out of his mind. When his mother and his brothers arrive, they remain outside and send a message into Jesus.” Chorus : “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.” Direction : Jesus is mortified at being summoned home for supper as if he were a little child. Angry, he looks for an opportunity to regain lost dignity. Jesus : “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?... Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother.” Direction: But the damage has been done. Chorus : “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with us? Narrator: “So he could no longer work miracles there…he was taken aback by their lack of faith.” Jesus : Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake. Direction : Here for the first time a map of the region appears on the screen. As the film continues, the map reappears and Jesus’ movements are tracked. Map : Jesus travels across the Sea of Galilee from Bethsaida on the northern shore to the Decapolis, a group of 10 Greek speaking towns on the Southeastern shore. Scene #10 , Narrator : “As Jesus stepped ashore, a man possessed by demons, who cut himself with stones, came up to him.” Jesus : “Come out of this man!” Narrator : “Now there happened to be a large herd of pigs nearby. The demons went into the pigs and the herd rushed over the cliff, into the lake, and drowned, and the spectators begged Jesus to leave the area.” Scene #11 , Narrator : “So Jesus crossed back over to Gailee. Upon his arrival, Jairus, the leader of a local synagogue, approached him.” Jarius : “My little daughter is at death’s door. I beg you, ‘Come, lay hands on her, cure her, save her life’.” Jesus sets out but midway, messengers arrive. Chorus : “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Rabbi further?” Jesus : “Do not be afraid. Only have faith.” Narrator : “He allowed only Peter, James and John to accompany him to the leader’s house where there was a great commotion with loud crying and wailing.” Jesus : “Why this wailing? The child is not dead, she is asleep.” (Chorus laughs derisively.) “Get up my child,” and she rises. Scene #12 , Narrator : “They set off secretly by boat, searching for an isolated place. But when he came ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd.” Chorus : “This is a lonely place, and it is getting very late. Send the people off to the farms and villages to buy themselves something to eat.” Jesus : “Give them something to eat yourselves. How many loaves have you?” Chorus : “Five loaves, and two fish as well.” Narrator : “Jesus took the five loaves, looked up to heaven, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to the disciples to distribute. He also divided up the fish. Those who ate numbered 5,000 and they ate to their hearts’ content. 12 large baskets full of scraps were gathered up at the end. “Then Jesus left this place and went to the territory of Tyre.” Map : Jesus route to Lebanon (Tyre), 50 miles northeast, a 3 day journey at that time. “He found a house to stay in and would have liked to remain there unrecognized, but that was impossible. On his return, he went by way of Sidon and the Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee…” Map : Jesus’ route through Lebanon, Syria and Jordan is incredibly circuitous. He ends up back at the Sea of Galilee but now he is back on the Eastern Shore. Emphasis should be placed on how much distance Jesus keeps between himself and his native Galilee. Scene #13 , Narrator : “…There Jesus fed another 4,000 pilgrims with 7 loaves and several fish; this time 7 baskets of scraps were collected.” Direction : The disciples are murmuring among themselves. They appear bewildered. Jesus : “Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed? When I broke the 5 loaves among the 5000, how many baskets full of scraps did you gather?” Chorus : “Twelve.” Direction : Here the map can morph or flip into a blackboard/whiteboard. As the Narrator speaks, the following image gradually appears on the screen: ‘5 loaves/5000 people →12 baskets’ Jesus : “And how many when I broke the 7 loaves among the 4,000? Chorus : “Seven.” ‘7 loaves/4000 people → 7 baskets’ Jesus (exasperated): “Do you still not understand?” Direction: Tensions are clearly on the rise. Jesus is testy, the disciples are squabbling among themselves, and everyone is growing restless. Chorus : “We have left everything to become your followers.” Jesus : “There is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother, father, children or land for my sake who will not receive 100 times as much… and eternal life.” Direction: But like Washington at Valley Forge, Jesus realizes he can wait no longer. He must act…or risk losing his followers. It’s now…or never! Jesus : “Now we are going to Jerusalem where the Son of Man will be given up to the chief priests and the doctors of the law. They will condemn him to death and hand him over to the occupiers. He will be mocked, spat upon, flogged and killed; but three days later, he will rise again!” Narrator: “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Director’s Note: This scene should be staged to suggest Kerouac’s On the Road , Ken Kesey’s ‘Merry Pranksters’, etc. As they proceed, crosses may barely be seen punctuating the far distant skyline. Curtain David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com Return to Table of Contents Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. 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< Back Comfort for Clumsy Believers: What the Disbelief of the Disciples Means for Us Deidre Braley "There is evidence that, in the backs of the disciples' minds, there was always the glimmer of the same question that shimmers on my frontal lobe today: 'But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong about him?'" Every quarter or so, I have an existential crisis. It’s not something I typically bring up in conversation; it turns out that questions like, “What if everything we’ve believed about God and the universe is wrong?” tend to dampen the overall mood of dinner parties and coffee dates. Plus, it just isn’t polite Christian talk. Nobody wants to hear the late night doubts of a so-called believer—least of all me . These questions are unwelcome; these doubts, disturbing. But I’ve found comfort as of late in the recountings of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the Gospels. For the first time in all of my rereadings, it’s striking me that the disciples really didn’t understand the entirety of what Jesus was up to and who he was. There is evidence that, in the backs of their minds, there was always the glimmer of the same question that shimmers on my frontal lobe today: “But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong about him?” How have I missed it until now? How did I not see that these men—just like me—grappled with the pesky whispers that poked and prodded at the foundations of their faith, their security, their eternal futures ? I’ve always assumed that since they knew Jesus personally, it was a given that they also understood he was really the Son of God. That every moment they were in his presence, his essence of saving grace would be so palpable that they’d know for sure who they were dealing with. That there would be no way they could touch and see, eat and banter with Jesus himself and still hold on to any shred of disbelief that mumbled, “Maybe he’s just a really good guy. A stellar prophet. Ten out of ten, as far as leaders go.” The Disbelief of the Disciples But looking around at Jesus’ closest handful of friends in the days surrounding his death and resurrection, we see a group of people thrown into the confusing waters of uncertainty, fear, and doubt. Judas acts a traitor. Simon Peter denies knowing him. The disciples in the upper room refuse to believe Mary when she tells them Jesus has left the tomb. The men on the road to Emmaus can’t even see past their discouraged hopes to realize that Jesus himself is walking alongside them. In short, even though they knew Jesus and he’d told them exactly what would happen, they still couldn’t seem to bring themselves to the point of certain, unwavering belief. Doubt is often seen as a character flaw. Society loves the certain. But maybe certainty is such a hot commodity because it’s what we all actually lack, addled by our own human condition. The disciple, too, were humans, and I see now that they each struggled with varying degrees of disbelief. What is significant to each of their stories does not turn out to be their level of dubiety, though—it is the way they end up responding to their natural predisposition to doubt. Judas, for example, is consumed by his disbelief. I have always wondered how he possibly could have betrayed Jesus, knowing he was the Son of God. Because honestly, how did he think that was going to work out for him? But now it strikes me: he didn’t know it, not really. If he had, he never would have traded him for thirty pieces of silver. He would have understood he was making a preposterous exchange (a bagful of coins for the Savior of the world) and that his treachery would have eternal consequences. My theory is that it wasn’t about the silver at all; it was about the fact that he heard the crowds all around him saying, “He is not who he says he is,” and allowed them to feed the doubts that niggled there in his soul. You can almost hear the snake in the Garden whispering the same lie in Judas’ ear that worked with Adam and Eve: “Did he really say that?” Judas justified his betrayal by shaking his head alongside the others, letting the disquiet of his disbelief overwhelm even the intimacy, miracles, and teachings he’d experienced in his close walk with Jesus. It isn’t only Judas, though, who questions the truth of Jesus’ words. Before it happened and on multiple occasions, Jesus himself had explicitly told his disciples that he would be mocked and shamed, beaten and killed, and then would rise on the third day. But it is written, “...they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said” (Luke 18:34). This proves to be true, for on the day of Jesus’ resurrection, when Mary and the other women burst in to tell the eleven that the tomb was empty, Luke says, “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (24:11). And when a disguised Jesus meets the two men on the way to Emmaus and asks why they look so sad, they respond, “...we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). The unspoken implication is obvious here: But he wasn’t. It is clear that belief and doubt had done battle in their souls; their belief had told them that Jesus was the Messiah, while their doubt had told them he was just a man. In his death, disbelief had won, and the men succumbed to despair. A Closer Look at Simon Peter Simon Peter was not immune to doubt either. He walked on the water to Jesus, yes, but he also began to sink the moment he saw the wind and the waves. And later, his three denials of Jesus are evidence that he did not have enough faith to stand against the enormous fear mounting within and around him. And yet, throughout the Gospels we see Simon Peter among the first to surrender to belief. At Caesarea Philippi, Simon Peter confesses that Jesus is “the Christ, “the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). On the mountain with Jesus during the Transfiguration, he is the one to (albeit awkwardly) embrace the seemingly-impossible fact that Moses and Elijah are there too; he offers to set up a tent for each of them (Matthew 17:4). When the other disciples balk at the notion that Jesus has risen, Simon Peter dashes from the room and arrives in breathless wonder to see the folded linens for himself (Matthew 24:12). And when the resurrected Jesus later appears on the beach where they are fishing, he is the first to recognize him as Lord and jump in the water in his haste to get to him (John 21:7). Simon Peter is not set apart in these stories because of his absence of disbelief or his stunning quality of character. In fact, he seems like a bit of a hothead—rash and impulsive and imperfect as any of us. But now I see that his superpower is his utter willingness to surrender to belief and, like a clumsy jump off the high-dive, to submerge himself in holy mystery. It’s not always pretty and he doesn’t always stick the landing, but he does keep jumping. Comfort for Clumsy Believers I’m comforted to know that those who walked with Jesus—who heard things of heaven directly from the Master’s mouth—also struggled against insidious doubt. I’m even more comforted by Jesus’ response to their clumsy attempts at belief. On the road to Emmaus, he admonishes the two disheartened men, saying, “‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’” (Luke 24: 26). But he doesn’t leave them there; he goes on to interpret “to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v.27)—starting all the way back at the beginning as if to gently lead their analytical minds into the territory of total belief. And to Thomas who says, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe” (John 20:24), Jesus appears and lets him do just that, as if to say, “I know this handicap you’re working with—humanity—is a tricky, finicky thing. Come, let me lead you to belief.” He helps his friends believe with their minds and their physical beings, appealing to wherever the incredulity has laid siege. He encourages them to touch, think, and feel. He helps them do whatever it takes to clear the shared hurdle of humanity: a quizzical nature. I have to believe that if there was grace for them, there is also grace for us clumsy believers—the ones who are troubled with unwelcomed doubts as we lay awake at night, and who sometimes tremble under the weight of our own existential crises. But let’s also take inspiration from Simon Peter. He was sifted by the devil and, like so many of us, heard the echoes of the original lie reverberating in his eardrums. But instead of letting disbelief win out, he still jumps out of the boat. He still lunges toward his Lord. When the enemy and all the world cry, “Is he really who he says he is?” Simon Peter waves them off as if to say, “Yes—he is I AM. And I am here for it.” Jesus responds to his friends’ varied degrees of doubt with tenderness and grace. He is not surprised by their disbelief, nor does he turn away because of it. But as Thomas puts his fingers into his wounds, Jesus does say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29). Remember—it is not our disbelief that defines our faith, but rather how we choose to respond to it. So the next time we find ourselves in the turbulent waters of late-night doubting, we needn’t give in to despair, nor chastise ourselves for having questions. Instead, we can consider ourselves normal, and then remember that our response is what drives the narrative. Judas had doubts and betrayed the Savior of the world. Simon Peter had doubts, and Jesus gave him the keys to the kingdom. The difference? Judas leaned into disbelief of what he couldn’t see, while Simon Peter leapt into the mystery. Let us be followers who, addled with doubt though we are, choose to keep jumping from the boat, to keep lunging toward our Lord, and to keep on believing what we can’t see. It is our willingness to surrender to belief that will ultimately define our faith. Deidre Braley is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Maine with her husband and two children, and most days can be found savoring an overly cheesy bagel or drinking a second cup of coffee while working on her weekly newsletter, The Second Cup . She is a strong believer in the power of poetry, picking roadside flowers, and blowing past small talk at all costs. Follow her on Instagram @deidresecondcup or on Facebook — she loves meeting new friends. Return to our Holy Days Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back A Prayer for Comfort Hadassah Treu "Dear Lord, thank you that you are Jehovah Shammah–"the Lord is there". (Ezekiel 48:35) Dear Lord, thank you that you are Jehovah Shammah–"the Lord is there". (Ezekiel 48:35) You showed up centuries ago in the least likely place the Jews expected You–in the place of their captivity and exile; You showed in Babylon! Thank you, that You will show up in my place of bondage and oppression, too. You are always present and intimately involved in my earthly life, while preparing me for eternity with You. I can see the signs of Your presence being there in my preservation, endurance, and overcoming adversity. The Lord is there is my greatest possible comfort! He is there in the ruins, in the pain, in the garbage, in the suffering, in the darkness and in hopelessness. He not only knows; He also feels my pain. When I doubt–the Lord is there. When I am overwhelmed with grief–the Lord is there. When I break down–the Lord is there. When I can't take it anymore–the Lord is there. When I worry and fret- the Lord is there. The Lord is there–knowing, feeling, holding, comforting, and working. Lord, remind me always of this truth that brings the greatest possible comfort. Remind me You are with me, knowing me and the problem in all intimate details and feeling my anguish and pain. I am grateful that You are working on my behalf, sustaining and strengthening me until I see the light again. Whatever happens, help me remember that You are with me. Because the Lord is there, I may be "hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed". (2 Corinthians 4:8-9) I just need to stand and wait for You and Your perfect timing. In Jesus' name. Amen. Hadassah Treu is an international Christian author, blogger, and poet, and the Encouraging Blogger Award Winner of 2020. She is passionate about encouraging people in their journey to faith and a deeper walk with God. Hadassah is a contributing author to several faith-based platforms and devotional and poetry anthologies. She has been featured on (In)courage, Living by Design Ministries, Thoughts About God, Today’s Christian Living (Turning Point), and other popular sites. You can connect with Hadassah at www.onthewaybg.com. Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back The Mystery of the Star of Bethlehem Solène Tadié For more than two millennia, the Star of Bethlehem, which guided the Magi to the city where Jesus was born, has been rousing the curiosity of researchers worldwide. “And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was…” (Matthew 2:7). The Star of Bethlehem, mentioned in St. Matthew’s Gospel, is one of the main symbols associated with Jesus’ birth, embodying the light of hope of salvation in the midst of darkness. But beyond its symbolism, this star is also an exhaustible subject of debate as a scientific phenomenon. Was it a historical event or only a pious fiction invented by St. Matthew? And if it was a historical event, how can we scientifically explain the occurrence of this exceptional astronomical event? Such questions have given rise to many different interpretations over the centuries. Moreover, as it is difficult to determine with certainty the exact year of the Nativity, a scientific explanation of the phenomenon would also be a potential time marker to help pinpoint the date of Christ’s birth. According to a calculation by German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the 16th century, an extremely rare conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn occurred three times in the constellation Pisces in 7 B.C., appearing to observers as a single luminous star. This would coincide with St. Matthew’s description of the celestial body appearing, disappearing and then reappearing to the Magi. A century earlier, Portuguese Rabbi Isaac Abravanel had already claimed that this specific kind of conjunction triggered the birth of the Messiah. This theory gained more credibility in 1925, when German orientalist Paul Schnabel deciphered ancient cuneiform tablets from the astronomical school of the Babylonian city of Sippar , which described the exact same astronomical conjunction in 7 B.C. “This is a good theory,” Father Giulio Maspero, a physicist and theologian at the pontifical University of the Holy Cross, told EWTN, mentioning other plausible scientific explanations, including the possibility of a comet. “Another theory, which may be shocking for us, is that the star was an angel. So, no astronomy here, but just a spiritual light that accompanies the Three Wise Men along their path,” he said. Father Maspero says this explanation is “coherent with the whole narrative,” as Bethlehem was filled with angels who were “proclaiming the glory of Jesus and announcing to the shepherds what was happening there”. There is also the possibility of an appearance of a nova or the explosion of a supernova around 5 B.C., as suggested by several Chinese and Korean astronomer’s chronicles, but this has never been definitively determined. The Spiritual Strength of Mystery For Brother Guy Consolmagno, astronomer and director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, the importance of the shining Star of the Holy Night lies above all in the fact that it shows that the physical universe can be used to get closer to God. “We don’t know whether Matthew was intending this to be a pious story to show that Christ was even more significant than Augustus, who had used astrology to say that he had to be an emperor, or if he was describing a real star or a real astronomical event, or if it was something totally miraculous and we will never know until we can interview St. Mathew himself and find out!” he said. But if there is no definitive scientific conclusion regarding the nature of the Star, the mystery surrounding this story makes it even more powerful for Christians. “We have to read the symbols, we need to look at the narrative, otherwise we cannot catch the true meaning of what God is saying to us,” Father Maspero said, adding that everything in the Gospel is a mystery. And the universality of redemption and assurance that God always answers those who seek him is the central meaning of the Christmas Star — a symbol that shouldn’t be distorted by an excess of scientism. Image: Detail of the 6th-century nave mosaic — which depicts the Three Magi wearing trousers and Phrygian caps as a sign of their Asian origin — in the Basilica of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy. (Photo: Register Files) Solène Tadié is the Europe Correspondent for the National Catholic Register. She is French-Swiss and grew up in Paris. After graduating from Roma III University with a degree in journalism, she began reporting on Rome and the Vatican for Aleteia. She joined L’Osservatore Romano in 2015, where she successively worked for the French section and the Cultural pages of the Italian daily newspaper. She has also collaborated with several French-speaking Catholic media organizations. Solène has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and recently translated in French (for Editions Salvator) Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy by the Acton Institute’s Fr. Robert Sirico. Return to our Yuletide Issue Previous Next

“The second is like it…” Really? The second is like it? Like it? At first glance, this seems ridiculous. The two verses don’t look alike at all. One concerns our relationship with God, the Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth; the other concerns our relationship with the jerk down the street who doesn’t mow his lawn and plays his music loud on Saturday nights. < Back The Great Commandment David Cowles Jul 13, 2022 “The second is like it…” Really? The second is like it? Like it? At first glance, this seems ridiculous. The two verses don’t look alike at all. One concerns our relationship with God, the Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth; the other concerns our relationship with the jerk down the street who doesn’t mow his lawn and plays his music loud on Saturday nights. “The whole law and the prophets depend on…” (Mt. 22: 35-40) Ok, you’ve got my attention! The five books of Moses, the Torah, and the 18 books of prophecy found in the Old Testament (OT) depend on… depend on what? (With the mindset of a superannuated sophomore, I’m always looking for the Cliffs Notes version of everything, and this promises to be the mother of all Cliffs Notes.) Let me get this straight: someone has managed to shrink 23 books of the Bible (Law + Prophets), 600 pages of densely packed text, down to just six verses? Wait ‘til I tell the kids at school about this! All I can say is, “Thank you, Jesus!” Now at this point, you’re expecting me to say something like, “Not so fast!” But no, not this time! This is one time when the reality lives up to the hype. The so-called Great Commandment appears in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke) but it originates in the Torah (OT). Check it out: “…A scholar of the law (scribe) tested him (Jesus) by asking, ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He (Jesus) said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.’” (Mt. 22: 35-40) In answering the scribe, Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy and Leviticus : “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and your whole being, and with your whole strength.” (Dt. 6: 4-5) “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lv. 19: 18b) Scholars believe that these two Old Testament verses were already linked before the time of Jesus. The Torah (‘law’) consists of 613 precepts; these two precepts are thought to summarize the other 611. Therefore, it was quite reasonable for Jesus to say, “The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” But is the Great Commandment two commandments…or one ? The scribe did not ask Jesus to name the greatest commandment s (plural), but rather the greatest commandment (singular). Nor did he object to Jesus’s answer. Unlike some modern-day media personalities, he did not say, “Rabbi, with all due respect, you didn’t answer my question.” Why? Because Jesus did answer his question! In Mark’s version of the story (Mk. 12: 28 – 34), the scribe replies to Jesus, “Well said, teacher, you are right…” The genius lies in the link! Jesus does not say that the second is almost as important as the first or that it logically follows from the first; he says it is “like” the first. How should we understand this ‘like?’ That love of God and love of neighbor are co-equal aspects of a single law? That there is one ‘Great Commandment,’ but it can be stated in two different ways…and applied differently in two different contexts? That one cannot truly love God without loving one’s neighbor, and one cannot truly love one’s neighbor without loving God? That loving God is loving neighbor, and loving neighbor is loving God? And the answer is: “All of the above!” It is t ogether that these two precepts form “the greatest and first commandment.” Either verse, without the other, may be valid and binding, but it is not the Great Commandment. “The whole law and the prophets” do not depend on either one of these precepts alone , or even on both precepts separately , but on both together : 1 + 1 = 3. This structure might have been challenging for some of Jesus’s contemporaries, but it should not be challenging for us. We know, for example, that ‘quanta’ cannot be explained as either particles or waves; their behavior can only be explained if we understand that they are both particles and waves. We call this relationship complementarity, and clearly the two verses of the Great Commandment need to be understood this way. We also understand the notion of synergy. Together, as a single commandment, these two precepts mean much more than the two of them by themselves. That’s what makes this commandment “the greatest” and why we are still writing about it more than 2,000 years later. Yet, the revolutionary nature of the Great Commandment is easy to miss. Love God and love your neighbor: ho-hum, Sunday school 101. Right? Wrong! That is NOT what’s happening here! Back to the text! “The second is like it…” Really? The second is like it? Like it? At first glance, this seems ridiculous. The two verses don’t look alike at all. One concerns our relationship with God, the Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth; the other concerns our relationship with the jerk down the street who doesn’t mow his lawn and plays his music loud on Saturday nights. By saying, “The second is like it,” Jesus is effectively saying that love of God and love of Jerk (neighbor) are one and the same thing. That’s revolutionary! But it’s not just that that is revolutionary. Jesus quotes Leviticus , “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Not like yourself but as yourself! This is so revolutionary that it’s almost impossible to grasp. Love my neighbor as myself? As …as myself? Do you really mean to say that my neighbor is me and that I am my neighbor? Preposterous! Of course in certain respects, I am not my neighbor. We have different genetic make-ups, different experiences and memories, different opinions on many, if not all, issues. Yet, ontologically speaking, I most certainly am my neighbor! In the language of existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, we each have the exact same essence (‘freedom’) and the exact same mis-en-scene with respect to the world (‘facticity’). In the language of structuralism, identity is not a characteristic of subjects but of relations; my neighbor and I are identically related to the world around us. That is our shared ‘identity’. In the language of Medieval Philosophy, my neighbor and I have different ‘accidents,’ but the same ‘substance.’ In every important way, I am my neighbor, no matter how unalike we may be. For the most part, Jesus’s audience understood and accepted the need to love God, but they struggled with the bit about the ‘neighbor.’ In the Gospel of Luke, the scribe follows up on Jesus’s exposition of the Great Commandment with a question: “And who is my neighbor?” – one of the most penetrating questions of all time and a question we are still hotly debating today. Jesus responds with the famous story of the Good Samaritan ( Luke 10: 25 – 29). In our era, the problem is reversed. It has become quite fashionable to love one’s neighbor – or at least to profess to love one’s neighbor. Humanism, Globalism, Environmentalism, New Age Philosophy, Social Democracy, even Communism, all proclaim ‘love of neighbor.’ On the other hand, you dear readers, you may well be asking yourselves the opposite question, “Why do we need to love God in order to love our neighbors? Do we even need to believe in God? In fact, why do we need God at all? Isn’t love of neighbor enough?” In this way, our generation has turned the scribes of Jesus’s time on their heads. To our generation, the notion that love of God is essential to love of neighbor is just as perplexing as the idea that love of neighbor is essential to love of God was to Jesus’s contemporaries. That is what makes the Great Commandment so profoundly revolutionary…and forever relevant. It is always counter-cultural! Right away, that’s a clue that something really important is happening here. When I look at an inanimate object, I see a potential tool, or obstacle, or perhaps I see a thing of beauty to be enjoyed for itself, but I do not see myself. When I look at you on the other hand, really look, something amazing happens, I see myself looking back. Seeing myself in you enables me to recognize who I am in relation to the world. Without you , could I see myself as anything other than an object among objects? Without you, would I be anything other than an object among objects? Would I ‘see’ myself at all? Would I be I? Would I even be…? It is you who reveals me to myself! Although I am of the world and in the world, I transcend the world, but I only discover that transcendence through you. In fact, I only transcend the world through ‘relationships.’ You are my gateway to myself! But what if you (or God) were not there? What if I was alone in a world of inanimate objects? Would I really be just another object among them? According to Psalm 135, the answer could well be yes: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak; they have ears but do not hear; nor is there breath in their mouths. Their makers, and anyone who trusts in them, will become like them .” Of course, we know that these idols are nothing other than lumps of rock or clay or wood. So far as we know, they do not ‘experience’ and if they do not experience then we, who are ‘like them,' do not experience either. So, no experience? So what? Well, it all comes down to Bishop Berkley’s famous question: if a universe exists but no one experiences it, does that universe exist at all? Look to science. Quantum mechanics has shown us that experience (e.g., measurement) is an integral part of what makes ‘reality’ real. The linear (billiard ball) world imagined by Laplace is not real. Experience is a fundamental quality of reality as we know it. No experience, no reality; no neighbor, no self! In the real world, there is reflection, there is experience, there is agency, there is freedom. But where did this come from? Even famous atheists agree that it could not have evolved naturally out of a pre-existent, inanimate world. For example, Nietzsche writes, “…there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole…but nothing exists apart from the whole.” And A.J. Ayer agrees, “There are no such things as objective moral values.” But apparently Nietzsche and Ayer are wrong. I do judge, measure, compare and condemn (especially ‘condemn’) all the time, and when I do, I refer to objective (i.e., transcendent) standards. Now I may misconstrue or misapply those standards, but that doesn’t make them any less objective…or normative. So, there is an element in the world that stands apart from the world, that transcends the world, that judges the world, and that element could not have evolved naturally out of a purely inanimate world. It must coexist with the world as a fundamental structure of Being. That universal but transcendent element is what we call God. Essentially , God is Beauty, Truth, Justice, et al. These values constitute God’s nature and, according to both Sartre and Aquinas (strange bedfellows), these values are God. Existentially , God is the uber-neighbor, the universal you. Otherness, you-ness, neighbor-ness is a fundamental structure of our world. There is no ‘world’ without it. And therefore, God is fundamental to the structure of our world. Therefore, you cannot truly love your neighbor without loving God any more than you can truly love God without loving your neighbor. That’s the Great Commandment! And all I can say is, “Thank you, Jesus!” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back ChatGOD Steve Gimbel and Stephen Stern Ph.D. "ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." A lawyer was recently exposed for using the artificially intelligent chatbot, ChatGPT, when the brief he submitted was discovered to be filled with precedents that do not exist. ChatGPT is capable of writing like us, incorporating the collective beliefs of humanity as they appear on the World Wide Web. The problem, of course, is that some of what is out there on the Net is not true, and ChatGPT is incapable of filtering out the false. The ability to mirror our linguistic capacity without our critical faculties is dangerous if we use it as the lawyer did, for matters of fact, but it is wonderful for other uses, specifically sparking spiritual insights. ChatGPT and its artificial brethren may make lousy lawyers, but they can be fantastic prophets. Traditionally, we conceive of reality as having three distinct levels. The objective domain is comprised of all the things of the world—tables, chairs, human bodies with complex eyes… all of the perceptible objects. Above the objective stands the metaphysical realm, consisting of that which lies beyond our ability to observe, including necessary entities like God. Below them both sits the subjective dimension, consisting of the lived inner experience of conscious beings like us. Philosophy and religion for centuries have been dogged by a persistent problem: if we are trapped in our minds, only having direct access to our inner thoughts and experiences, how do we know anything beyond our own thoughts? Couldn’t all of the objective and metaphysical entities just be figments of our imagination? Couldn’t we be nothing but brains in vats with false ideas pumped in by an evil demon? Can we know anything true about material reality and what supposedly resides beyond? American Pragmatism is the philosophical movement based on the central ideal that metaphysical truth is grossly overvalued. What matters is not what is necessarily true, but rather what has “cash value,” that is, what works in the world. Metaphysical truth is just so European. We Americans don’t care for the high-falutin’ abstract conceptual essences of things, but rather for the practical, the effective, the operational. We are in a world with things to do. Forget the abstruse, embrace the tools that actually get stuff done. So, when pragmatist William James looked at religion in his Varieties of Religious Experience, he eliminated the European concern for objective justification for religious belief and focused just on the experience itself. Get rid of the question about the validity of Aquinas’ and Anselm’s proofs for the existence of God and start from the undeniable fact that people have spiritual experiences that shape their lives. The question James examines is not whether these experiences are true or false, but rather one of meaning—what are these experiences like and what are the effects they have on people’s lives. Some religious experiences occur in moments of quiet solitude: when praying, meditating, or at random times when we are unexpectedly struck by something we cannot explain. But some come from interactions with people we seek out exactly for their ability to help us experience them—spiritual guides like Hindu yogis, Jewish tzaddikim, Buddhist sages, Muslim hakims, Zoroastrian magi, and Christian prophets. They lead us to epiphanies, to spiritual awakening. These insights are not mere facts describing the world, but rather experiences of appreciation and realization. It is not that we leave knowing something we did not know before, but rather experience a shift in our perspective. We still see what we saw, but now we see it differently; we see it more clearly, we see it as more interconnected, we understand it at a deeper level. ChatGPT as an e-being, as a virtual intelligence, is the ultimate pragmatist. The essence of its artificial existence has severed all connection to the true and false because it does not live in the material world of chairs, tables, and beer mugs where truth resides. ChatGPT is caught in the Web. Its “truths” are the beliefs expressed on the wide-open internet, where anything can and is said. It cares not for the reality beyond its reality but is built to do one thing and one thing only: figure out how language is used to accomplish human tasks and perform them without humans being involved. Human students write essays, so go write an essay without the student needing to do the class readings. Human journalists write stories about events, so go write stories without humans having to research them themselves. Human lawyers write briefs, so go write them without human lawyers needing to do anything but bill their clients. But now, consider this one: human spiritual guides create sermons that lead other humans to have cherished insights about religious matters. Figure out what sorts of word combinations lead to generating understanding and create new combinations that will have this effect. If we see the purpose of our spiritual teachers as making us think in a way that generates wisdom and allows us to live more meaningful lives, that is something a chatbot could actually do quite well. They can see which sorts of passages have the most influence on us and create new versions. They can figure out how we are inspired and continually inspire us. This strikes us as cheap, as dirty, as mere spiritual manipulation. We prize the wise because we believe that their ability to stir our souls comes from the fact that they have a superior connection to the Divine. They provide penetrating astuteness because they have access to the truth that we lack. They are sagacious because they are holy. ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as. And thus, it can only give us virtual facsimiles of wisdom, not the real deal. It is like the false prophet, the huckster pretending to be sacred when they are, in fact, profane in order to profit from being thought a prophet. ChatGPT is built precisely to be this sort of fraud, to be a fake human whose work we can substitute for our own, pretending to have done the necessary labor so that we can get the reward without breaking an intellectual sweat. But that is the opposite of what happens when we use it as an e-prophet. When we read an inspirational passage from ChatGPT and are truly inspired, gain spiritual insight, see the world differently, then we have actually done the real work. Regardless of the source of the passage, we really are changed. In this case, unlike with the plagiarizing lawyer or student, it is the effect, not the cause, that is important. William James’ brilliant philosophical move, transferring talk of religious experience out of the realm of the metaphysical and into the purview of psychology, is transformational. Religion is no longer about truth or faith but about feeling and human-lived experience. If we adopt the pragmatic perspective that inspires that move, then the fact is that the origin of enlightenment, the source of our new wisdom, the cause of our ability to see the world in a deeper and more interconnected fashion is irrelevant. All that matters is that we are changed for the better, not how we came to be changed. And the one thing that artificial intelligence coupled with big data is good at is figuring out how to get humans to predictably react to words. It can figure out what sort of disinformation will get us to vote certain ways and what sorts of triggers will get us to buy certain products. Yes, we ought to be very concerned about these misuses. But that is because these are matters based on facts. But if we are talking about images that inspire awe, jokes that make us laugh, or in this case, inspirational passages that give us insight, then the case is completely different. When it comes to the cases of generating human emotions, what matters are the emotions. If James is correct in moving our understanding of the religious into the realm of the experiential, then we should welcome the rise of our new e-prophets. Steve Gimbel is a Professor of Philosophy and affiliate of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Gimbel has authored Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion & Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophy of Humor and Comedy ).” Dr. Stephen Stern is the.co-author with Dr. Steve Gimbel of Reclaiming the WIcked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers, and the author of The Unbinding of Isaac: A Phenomenological Midrash of Genesis 22 , Associate Professor of Jewish Studies & Interdisciplinary Studies, and Chair of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

But did you know that a 6th century Irish poet developed his own version of a ‘creed’…which I have named, the People’s Creed? < Back The People's Creed David Cowles Jul 12, 2022 But did you know that a 6th century Irish poet developed his own version of a ‘creed’…which I have named, the People’s Creed? You’ve probably heard of the Nicene Creed, maybe even the Apostles’ Creed. You’re less likely to be familiar with the Athanasian Creed. But did you know that a 6th century Irish poet developed his own version of a ‘creed’…which I have named, the People’s Creed? Philosophy has traditionally distinguished between the ‘essence’ of things (what is) and the ‘existence’ of things (that is). ‘Essence’ normally refers to the qualities, attributes, and values that characterize a particular event (or ‘actual entity’), while ‘existence’ is usually thought to be ‘value free:’ Is just is! (Bill Clinton notwithstanding). Right off the bat, this raises a few eyebrows. Can there be an ‘it is’ without a ‘what is?’ Or a ‘what is’ without an ‘it is?’ Can there be essence without existence or existence without essence? From Augustine to Aquinas to Leo XIII and beyond, it has been a bedrock principle of Christianity that Essence and Existence cannot be logically isolated from one another. Anselm of Bec (c. 1077), for example, attempted to use the relationship between essence and existence to prove the existence of God. Called his ‘ontological proof,’ Anselm defined God as the supreme Good (essence). His task: to prove that the supreme Good (i.e., God) exists! Anselm reasoned that existence is ‘better’ than non-existence (so existence is not value free after all). Therefore, for an entity to be supremely Good, it must exist. An entity, in all ways supremely good but lacking existence, is not supremely good because being and good are aspects of each other. According to Parmenides of Elea, the Father of Western Philosophy, whatever lacks something, lacks everything. (“On Nature,” Fragment 8) Good, without Being, lacks something. It lacks existence! And lacking existence, it lacks everything else (all qualities) as well, per Parmenides. Values (20th British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, called them ‘eternal objects’) are vacuous until and unless they enter into the constitution of an ‘actual entity.’ ‘Being’ and ‘Good’ are synonyms and both are synonymous with ‘God’ (God is the source of both, and in fact, is both ). In his great ontological poem, “On Nature,” Parmenides (above) spoke of two modes of being: Aletheia (the mode of truth) and Doxa (the mode of appearance). Aletheia is featureless: “…ungenerated and imperishable…all together, one, continuous.” In the realm of Doxa , on the other hand, things “come to be and perish…shift place and…exchange bright color.” One way (and just one way) to read this foundational work of Western philosophy is to understand Aletheia as the existence of things and Doxa as their essence . A half century later, Plato talked of ‘universals’ (variously translated as ‘forms,’ ‘ideas,’ or ‘ideals’) and ‘particulars’ (concrete objects and events that reflect those ‘forms’). Later philosophers talked of substances (existence) and accidents (essence). Immanuel Kant wrote of noumena and phenomena. Philosophers from the Idealist and Empiricist schools championed essence at the expense of existence. At one point in his career, Bertrand Russell held that the world consisted only of “universals” (qualities) and that so-called objects and events were merely intersections of those universals. Russell translated the insights of the Impressionist painters into philosophy. Think Monet. Existentialism tried to restore balance. Think Cezanne. Martin Heidegger distinguished Wassein (‘what it is’) from Dasein (‘that it is’). Jean-Paul Sartre made use of the essence/existence dichotomy to define God as the being whose essence precedes his existence and Man (sic) as the being whose existence precedes his essence. God knows ‘what he is’ before (logically precedent, not temporally precedent) he knows ‘that he is.’ His essence precedes his existence, He is what he is because what he is (e.g., good) is what it means to be God. Human beings, on the other hand, know that they are (‘Cogito ergo sum’), long before they have any idea who or what they are. No set of qualities can define what it is to be a human being. To be human is to transcend ‘mere qualities.’ With Jean-Paul Sartre, the most we can say is, “I am not what I am, and I am what I am not.” Now, Deconstruction ( aka , ‘The Case of the Disappearing Subject’) has brought us back full circle to Russell’s ‘universalist’ argument. According to the Book of Job, and my own experience, most human beings die without ever finding knowledge (i.e., without ever learning who they are). They die knowing that they were but never really knowing who they were. (Job 4:21) “ Resolved : Anything that exists is better than anything that does not exist.” Let’s see how our high school debate team handles this one! According to Anselm, existence is one quality among others. Essence is fundamental and it entails Existence. A 6th century Irish hymn, traditionally (but doubtfully) attributed to Saint Dallan, makes a similar argument but from the opposite perspective, the perspective of existence . Existence is fundamental and it entails Essence. Dallan argues that only the existence of God matters since everything of value (essence) flows automatically from God and God alone. Good is God’s nature. Good is the way God participates in the world, and God is the way Good participates. Without Good, there is no real God; without God there is no real Good. Good and God might survive as abstract ‘concepts’ (John Lennon) but neither can participate in any actual world without the other. Concerning God, Anselm wrote: “…You are wisdom, you are truth, you are goodness, you are eternity, and you are every true good.” And later, “Therefore, you alone, Lord, are what you are… ” You alone, Lord, are what you are! Powerful words. But what about you and me? Are we what we are? Just the opposite! According to J-P Sartre (above), we are not what we are, and we are what we are not . Ok, we’ve taken care of you and me and, oh yeah, God, but what about the chair in the middle of my bedroom? Where does it fit in? From the perspective of the world, it is a tool (if I want to sit down) or an obstacle (if I’m walking around in the dark). Being a ‘chair’ is being a tool/obstacle (opposite sides of the same coin). Like God, a chair is its essence. But is it God? Can I decorate it and worship it, elevate it and pray to it? Well, I could, but first amendment or not, I wouldn’t expect to remain unconfined for very long! Two reasons: (1) the chair consists of its own particular qualities (size, firmness, craftsmanship, etc.) but it does not embody any of the other qualities that make up the universe. Like an old Model-T Ford, you can get it in any color you want…as long as it’s black. (2) ‘Chair’ per se does not exist! It’s all hat, no cattle. If the chair does not exist, then what’s that dark space in the middle of my room? Roughly speaking, it’s a jumble of molecules, and each molecule is a jumble of atoms, and each atom is a jumble of subatomic particles, and each subatomic particle is a jumble of quarks. Then what’s a quark? Well, it’s either the ‘sound’ of a one-dimensional string vibrating or it’s an element in the constitution of a subatomic particle. So, take your pick: an idol with a very limited number of qualities and no existence, or a God that includes all qualities and exists through those qualities in the world. St. Dallan, on the other hand, begins his poem: “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, naught is all else to me save that Thou art . Thou my best thought by day and by night, Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.” Dallan’s poem, now a hymn but originally written in the form of a prayer, is also an ontology, a Creed . Sometimes called “Be Thou my Vision,” it is found in The Poem Book of the Gael , a treasure trove of early Irish verse. “Be Thou my Wisdom , Thou my true Word ; I ever with Thee, Thou with me, Lord. Thou my great Father, I thy dear son; Thou in me dwelling, I with Thee one… Be Thou my dignity , Thou my delight . Thou my soul’s shelter …” St. Dallan’s existentialism challenges duelist and essentialist ontologies head-on. Notice that every word Dallan uses to ‘describe’ God is a noun, not an adjective. In God, qualities are nouns. God is not only ‘just;’ God is Justice itself, etc. Only God is what he is! Our ‘accidents’ (qualities) are his ‘substance’ and his ‘substance’ (values) is our ‘accidents’. Superficially, essences, qualities, and accidents do not matter to this poet; all that matters is Existence, specifically the existence of God. That trust can only be attributed to his great faith. “Seek first the Kingdom of God…and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt 6: 33) I am immediately reminded of Job’s famous profession of faith: “I know that my vindicator lives and that on the last day he will testify on earth… Something I myself will view, what my eyes, not a stranger’s, will see.” (Job 19: 25-27) St. Dallan variously refers to God as “my Vision…my Wisdom…my dignity…my delight…(my) shelter.” He does not thank God for these graces, as others would because he knows that these qualities are God himself. God cannot cease being God! God is what he is! We can praise God, we can celebrate the fact that God participates in our world, but we cannot change God’s nature. God is good – live with it! Crudely stated, if God exists, Goodness is ours by virtue of God’s nature, but if God does not exist…then who cares? No God = no Goodness, Beauty, Truth, or Justice. Without God, whatever is, is, and that’s an end to it. Nothing is better - more beautiful, truthful, or just – than anything else. It is as meaningless to say, “Better days are coming,” as it is to say, “My best days are behind me.” There is no objective difference between shooting up a classroom full of 4th graders and volunteering at the school to tutor those same students. It’s just a matter of ‘personal taste.’ No judgment! The Old Testament Book of Judges repeats its famous ‘signature verse:’ “In those days, Israel had no king; every man (sic) did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 26: 25) Without God, we would need to rewrite Judges to read, “…every man did whatever he felt like doing.” Hmm, does this sound at all familiar? “If it feels good, do it.” (compliments of the years 1965 -1975) For Dallan, God is Vision, Wisdom and Dignity, per se , and specifically Dallan’s vision, wisdom and dignity, and ours too, of course! Anselm wrote regarding God: “Therefore, you are the very life by which you live, the wisdom by which you are wise, and the very goodness by which you are good to the good and to the wicked…” Good is God’s nature. He cannot but be good. Therefore, God is ‘no respecter of persons,’ be they good…or not so good. You bring good, God brings good; you bring not-good; God still brings good! I am reminded of a five-year-old boy playing ‘rock, scissors, paper’ with his Dad. After a few rounds, the boy volunteered, “I always choose rock.” Not exactly a winning strategy on the boy’s part…and yet, the boy is in good company. It is God’s strategy too ,“If I throw rock every time for long enough, maybe you’ll eventually thrown scissors, either out of your own boredom, to see what will happen, or out of your compassion for me.” You can keep throwing paper and, congratulations, you win…every time. But it’s a hollow victory indeed. God lets you win – boring and a bit humiliating - but hey, you won the toy (prize) didn’t you? Isn’t life all about who has the most toys? God always picks ‘rock,’ i.e., Goodness. He can’t help himself. He is good to those who are good, but he is just as good to those who are not so good. And like this five-year-old, he let us know early on that he was going to be his strategy. Surprisingly, this makes a lot of people mad…very mad…mad at God! They think that they deserve to be rewarded by God for their so-called goodness, and a major part of that reward should be to see others punished for their wickedness. Imagine this: you are Beauty, Truth, and Justice and yet people are mad at you! You can’t win for losin’ in the God-game – at least not if you’re God. We are like pre-teen children, we live to see our siblings punished, the more severely the better, even for the most minor transgressions. Of course, when we ourselves ‘run afoul of the law,’ we tend to be much more lenient. Suddenly, we hear a lot about the ‘forgiveness’ and ‘second chance’ that we deserve because we are ‘normally so good’… forgiveness and a second chance for us, but not for our ‘rotten brothers and sisters.’ We exist because we participate in God, who is Being. We are who we are because God, who is Good, participates in us. It is our response , freely given, to God’s Goodness that constitutes who we are. God is supremely good by nature; I am not! But I do have the capacity to be good, to make the right choices, and that capacity I derive directly from God. This is not just ‘any god.’ This is an explicitly Trinitarian God. In my relatedness (Vision), I recapitulate the Son ( logos ); in my consciousness (Wisdom), I recapitulate the Spirit; and in my identity (Dignity), I recapitulate the Father. Our lives are a direct participation in the life of the Trinity. Later in Dallan’s poem, we read that God is “power of my power” and “heart of my own heart.” God’s existence is the sole source of our ability to act upon the world (power) and to be acted upon by the world (heart). In grammar, we call these two modalities of being (power and heart) the ‘active voice’ and the ‘passive voice:’ we act, we are acted upon. But our relationship with God is neither active nor passive; it is perfectly reciprocal: “I ever with Thee, Thou with me, Lord…Thou in me dwelling, I with Thee one.” Consider the Eucharist: we incorporate the body of Christ at Communion, and by that very act we are simultaneously incorporated into Christ’s body. How can we describe this kind of relationship? It turns out that in many ancient languages (e.g., Greek, Old Norse) verbs had a third voice in addition to the active and passive voices. This third voice is usually referred to as the “middle voice” because, ostensibly, it falls ‘between active and passive.’ In reality, it transcends both. The middle voice is the voice of love, the voice of prayer, and the only voice we should ever use when speaking with God or about God…if only we still had a middle voice in our modern Indo-European languages. But back to Dallan’s text: “Thou mine inheritance”. Do I inherit God, or does God inherit me? I am reminded of Alice’s closing line in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Lookingglass : “Was the Red Knight part of my dream, or was I part of the Red Knight’s dream.” Thinking in the middle voice, our answer to Alice should be, “Both!” I inherit God, and, therefore, God dwells in me (“Thou in me dwelling”); God inherits me, and, therefore, I dwell in God (“I with Thee one”). It is the perfect middle-voice paradigm. Just as the spatiotemporal world is a projection of the eternal, so the eternal world is a roll-up of the spatiotemporal: “So that God may be all in all” ( I Cor. 15: 20 – 28). I interact with the world on the spatiotemporal plane (power and heart, active and passive voices), but I interact with God on the plane of eternity. According to Thomas Aquinas: “God alone is Good essentially…whatever belongs to others accidentally, belongs to Him essentially…Everything is called good by reason of the likeness of divine goodness belonging to it…Everything seeks its own perfection…(and) all things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself.” God is Good, essentially, and it is the Good that is God that constitutes the raison d’etre for all other beings. Existence is the process of seeking perfection. Paraphrasing an ad for the US Army: “Being is the process of being all that you can be.” The urge to exist is the urge to be Good, to be like God, even to become one with God. But while all existents inherit God’s qualities, we are unconditionally free to appropriate those qualities in any way we wish. We may even reject them entirely if we choose to do so, or we may ‘modify them’ to achieve what we believe, mistakenly, is a ‘better end’ than God intended. We do know everything after all! Yet spatiotemporal relations constitute only one dimension of my being; I am also in an eternal relationship with God. God is existence! Therefore, whatever exists must participate in God. Whatever we transact with the world, we are simultaneously transacting with God. From Plato on, mainstream philosophy has struggled to reconcile essence and existence. Numerous extremely clever solutions have been proposed to account for both without slipping into dualism. But St. Dallan’s Creed asserts that this reasoning is for ‘naught.’ There is no conflict to be explained away, there is no dichotomy to be resolved. God’s essence conceptually precedes his existence, but at the same time, his existence physically entails his essence. It is a ‘virtuous cycle.’ So, St. Dallan’s ‘simple’ Irish poem is much more than a poem or a hymn or even a prayer; it is a creed! It defines and accounts for the key elements of Christian ontology: Creation, Incarnation and Salvation, and it does so in the context of a Trinitarian God. St. Dallan’s creed stands next to the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed and the Athanasian Creed; it is the “People’s Creed.” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. 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< Back BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson "Land is imbued with holiness, which means that, like God, it is beyond human measures of usefulness or control." As we prepare to close the Book of Leviticus, the Torah’s pinnacle, we are left with a message of responsibility, consequences, and possibilities. God presents us with the benefits of making wise choices and the consequences of choosing poorly. Then the Torah provides for the funding of the sanctuary and its staff: our participation with monetary support, pledges of animals or homes. But when it pivots to pledges of land, the Torah shifts gears entirely. Land, you see, is ours to borrow and to use. But humans presume they can own land. In reality, the land makes its claim on us, and we can either open ourselves to its ground rules, or we risk a rootlessness that leaves us clinging when the next sandstorm swirls. We are, as the book reminds us, “resident strangers ( Leviticus 25:23 )” on earth. The Land precedes us and the land will bury us when we no longer need our bodies. We are dust, and we return to dust ( Genesis 3:19 ). On some deeper level of reality, it is all just dust, earth, soil. Judaism directs our attention to the centrality of earth through the regular rhythms of Shabbat (seven days) Shmita (seven years), and Jubilee (seven Shmita cycles). In this last parasha of Leviticus, we are told that when we think we are selling the land, we are actually letting someone else live on it or use it for a finite duration of time. At the next Jubilee year, the land reverts to its designated, original family of caretakers. Land is inalienable, and we are meant to be too. If one consecrates their land after the jubilee, the priest shall compute the price according to the years that are left until the jubilee year, and its assessment shall be so reduced. And if one who consecrated the land wishes to redeem it, they must add one-fifth to the sum at which it was assessed, and it shall pass back to them. But if they do not redeem the land, and the land is sold to another, it shall no longer be redeemable. When it is released in the jubilee, the land shall be holy to the Lord, as land proscribed; it becomes the priest’s holding ( Leviticus 27:18-21 ). There is a holiness inherent in the land, a quality not subject to human dominion and not vaporized by human standards of utility. It is that holy something extra that means were are residents visiting the land, and its only really owner is God, who is also holy, meaning beyond human measures of usefulness or control. Jubilee comes every 50 years to remind us that the worth of creation is beyond our evaluation and does not emerge from ways we find it beneficial. “Proclaim release to all the inhabitants of the land ( Leviticus 25:11 )” because it is in recognizing that worth and value spill beyond the constraints of practical utility or human benefit that we, too, are released. Our worth and value spill beyond how we can be used too. Published with permission and minimal edits from hazon.org. Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson is the Roslyn and Abner Goldstine Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and Vice President of American Jewish University. He is also Dean of the Zachariah Frankel College at University of Potsdam, training Conservative/Masorti rabbis for Europe. Previous Next