MATHETΩN

One always reads I Tim ii.15 with astonishment. The astonishment can abate if one remembers that “saved” is obsolete English, not properly the revenant that does Evangelicalism’s bidding. But now one is bemused.

I contrived the following catechism as a comment on the passage.

Q. According to the Hebraíc scriptures, what were the results of the human disobedience after creation?

A. Conscience, and mortality.

Q. Can these ills be remedied?

A. Yes, by God’s special gifts mercy and eternal life, as his son Yesús taught and showed.

Q. And what were the punishments with which God cursed humanity for the disobedience?

A. For males, to encounter pain in their labors, and to find nature tend to resist them; and for females, to tend to submit to men, and to encounter pain in childbirth.

Q. Can humanity be rescued from these punishments?

A. Yes: by persisting through the pain, thus to renew the joys of creation. Specifically, males can emerge from the sweat of work with a new bounty, and a subjected Nature; while females can pass through the pangs of childbearing to the reverence of husbands, and a baby.

I’m reading such a difference from Christianity now in the ca. A.D. 600 The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Here are some examples:

1.

“God is the life in all free beings. He is the salvation of believers or unbelievers, of the just or the unjust, of monks or those living in the world, of the educated or the illiterate, of the healthy or the sick, of the young or the very old. He is like the outpouring of light, the glimpse of the sun, or the changes of the weather, which are the same for everyone without exception. ‘For God is no respecter of persons.’ “

I can hear the snort with which a Christian now would greet this description — a Christian used to hearing and saying “ethics aren’t situational”, “but those people worship a different God”, “God bless America.”

2.

“Do whatever good you may. Speak evil of no one. Rob no one. Tell no lie. Despise no one. Show compassion to the needy. Be satisfied with what your own wives can provide you. If you do all this, you will not be far from the Kingdom of heaven.”

Contrast this with “Accept Jesus as your Lordnsavior; do it today!”

3.

“The true teacher is one who has received directly from heaven the tablet of spiritual knowledge inscribed by God’s own finger, that is, by the active working of illumination. Such a one has no need of other books. … Do you imagine that plain words can describe the love of God? Do you imagine that talk of such matters would mean anything to someone who had not experienced it? If you think so, then you are like a man who with words tries to convey the sweetness of honey to people who have never tasted it.”

To which a Christian now would shout, as he shouts at everything either soulful or intellectual: “The Bible is the repository of knowledge!”

4.

I can’t think how often I’ve heard Christians bemoaning their prayers: “I ask for thus-and-so and He does not give it”; “I desire that this-or-that be removed and He does not remove it.” Instead:

“Prayer is the mother, and then the daughter, of tears. Prayer is an expiation of sin, a bridge across temptation, a bulwark against [later doing others harm]. Prayer wipes out conflict. It is the work of angels and the nourishment of everything spiritual.”

My soul exalts the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God

my saver,

… his name is Holy,

and his mercy is for generations and generations,

for those who fear him.

He has taken power into his arm,

and scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has pulled down the dynasts from their thrones,

and raised up the humble;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

He has reached out his hand …

“Oh that you would rend the skies, that you would come down so that the mountains flowed at your presence — the way an iron-melting fire works or the way fire causes water to boil — and make your name known to your enemies so that the nations tremble at your presence! As [long ago] when you did terrifying things that we expected not, when you came down and the mountains flowed at your presence.

“For since the beginning of the world mankind has not heard or perceived or seen, O God, what you have prepared for those who wait for you. You meet those who rejoice and work righteousness, those who remember you in your ways — see, you are wroth, for we have sinned — but in those is continuance and we shall be saved.

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. And there are none who call your name, who stir up themselves to take hold of you: for you have hid your face from us and have destroyed us because of our iniquities.

“But now, O Lord: You are our father; we are clay and you are our potter; we all are the works of your hands! Be not wroth very fiercely, O Lord, nor remember our iniquities forever: See, we beseech you, that we are all your people!

“Your holy cities are a wilderness, Zion a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful House, where our fathers praised you, is burned up with fire. And all our pleasant things are laid waste.

“Will you restrain yourself in spite of these things, O Lord? Will you stay silent and [continue to] afflict us very fiercely?”