Clarification on the virgin birth

I did not mean to imply in the previous post that Leo I invented the doctrine of the virgin birth as a way for Jesus to avoid original sin. Christians believed in the virgin birth a long time before Leo. I meant that Leo joined his belief in the sexual transmission of original sin to his belief in the virgin birth in order to show how Christ could be fully human, yet without sin.

Belief in the virgin birth of Jesus is older than belief in the sexual transmission of original sin. The virgin birth shows that Jesus' birth is even more miraculous than those of other angel-announced babies: Samson, Samuel, John the Baptist.

I think the virgin birth also links Jesus' birth to the creation of the world.

Just as Adam was created from dust and spirit, Jesus was made from a human mother and the Holy Spirit. Just as Eve was drawn out of Adam's side, Jesus was born from Mary's womb.

Christ has often been called the second Adam. St. Paul came up with the idea: see Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:22-23. The virgin birth is one way of showing that Jesus, like Adam, "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" (Colossians 1:15).

Truly God, truly man

It took the Christian church more than four hundred years of constant discussion to agree to a formula explaining just how Jesus could be both God and man, without leaning too far in one direction or the other. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 issued a definition that has been accepted by most Christians ever since: Jesus is “truly God and truly man,” “consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity.”

The men who framed the Chalcedonian confession had to get past two stumbling blocks that, according to their way of thinking, made the union of God and man almost unthinkable.

First, good Hellenistic philosophers that they were, they were convinced that God is completely unchangeable. If God cannot change, he cannot suffer and he certainly cannot die. How, then, could Jesus be fully God and yet suffer and die on the cross?

Second, for reasons that I have yet to figure out, the church fathers apparently believed that all sexual pleasure is seriously sinful. A woman could conceive a child without sin, but a man could not beget a child sinlessly, and the sin of sexual pleasure transmitted original sin to the descendants of Adam and Eve. How, then, could Jesus be truly man and yet remain untainted by original sin?

Pope Leo I (the Great) came up with a way to get past both barriers. Several years before the Council of Chalcedon was convened, he had written a letter to the Bishop of Constantinople explaining how Jesus could be simultaneously God and man. His letter became known as the Tome of Leo, and the whole thing is worth reading.

Leo allowed that God might not be quite as unchangeable as the god of pagan philosophy: “The Lord of the universe veiled his measureless majesty and took on a servant's form. The God who knew no suffering did not despise becoming a suffering man, and, deathless as he is, to be subject to the laws of death.”

But Leo did not give up his belief in sexually transmitted damnation. Jesus’ birth, he wrote, was unprecedented, “because it was inviolable virginity which supplied the material flesh without experiencing sexual desire. What was taken from the mother of the Lord was the nature without the guilt.”

This is a far cry from the word of Wisdom in Proverbs 5:18–19:

Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
May her breasts satisfy you at all times;
may you be intoxicated always by her love.

Oddly, the church has often identified Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible with the Word in the New Testament. Even the dour old bishops did that, but they seem to have missed some of the connections. I'm still looking for early Christian writers with a wholesome, hearty, Hebrew view of sexual love.

What's real

She: Why is it that churches who serve real bread tend to believe it's only a reminder of Jesus, while churches who believe in the Real Presence tend to serve something that's only a reminder of bread?

He: It's one of life's imponderables, like why Calvinists take up free-will offerings.

St. Blaise, healer of throats

When I was lamenting the apparent absence of festive saints in the early church, I overlooked one thing some of the early Christians did very well. Despite their willingness for the body to be hungry, tired, cold, lonely, and nonreproductive, they did not think it should be ill.

Today's patron saint, Bishop Blaise of Armenia, was a physician. OK, he was a hermit, and he lived in a cave and walked on water, so he's not quite the earthy, festive saint I'm hoping to find. Still, he must have loved the created world, because he had a widespread reputation for healing animals. Thrown in jail during one of the early-fourth-century persecutions, he also healed his fellow prisoners, including a child who was choking on a fish bone.

A few years ago in early February, I listened as our bishop told stories about St. Blaise to a group of RCIA candidates (people who are preparing to join the Catholic church). St. Blaise, he said, is the patron saint of people with throat ailments, and every year on February 3 the church offers a blessing of the throats. The bishop explained that he would use two candles to make the sign of the cross, and any of us who wished to do so could come forward for the blessing.

At that point a young red-headed electrician could stand it no longer. "Who thinks up this stuff?" he exclaimed.

A lot of saints' stories are pretty strange, and a lot of saints appear to have needed medication that hadn't been invented yet. I'm glad to know, though, that St. Blaise valued the earthly life and physical comfort of a child in distress.

Deferred gratification

I usually feel guilty unless I'm in the process of deferring gratification. My husband, who is slightly warped, says he thinks deferring gratification is fun. He suggests that Purgatory (for people like us) will be a flood of unimaginable pleasure that we will be forced to enjoy as we are experiencing it. This prospect does not terrify him, because he doesn't believe in Purgatory.

Plastic bags

According to Elisabeth Rosenthal in this morning's New York Times, plastic bags have fallen out of favor in Ireland:

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts. Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.

We may be "frail creatures of dust," but apparently plastic bags last forever--and very few people recycle them. I hadn't realized this, but the other day I noticed a look of polite shock on the face of the Whole Foods cashier when I requested plastic. (I return my bags! Religiously! Except for the ones I dedicate to canine cleanliness, which is another way of protecting the environment . . . or so I thought.)

So I bought a Whole Foods cloth grocery bag made from 80% post-consumer waste (not sure what that would be: should I wash my hands after touching it?), and I plan to buy a Trader Joe bag as well, since that's where I buy most of my groceries. And I promise never to wear a fur coat while grocery shopping, and I will continue to clean up after my dogs . . .

. . . but wait, now I have a problem. Without plastic bags, what do I do with Tiggy and Muffin's post-consumer waste?

Plastic Madonna

Fifteen years ago David and I spent a couple of weeks in Italy. We wandered through church after church, noticing the same phenomenon: gorgeous chapels featuring paintings by medieval and Renaissance masters remained dark and unvisited, while banks of candles blazed before simpering Madonnas.

“Why?” wailed David (who is both an evangelical Protestant and a lover of fine art). He gestured toward a man lost in meditation before an apparently plastic statue of the Blessed Virgin.

I think I know. St. Peter's is cavernous and cold. Power is in its massive stones. Standing before the high altar, I sense a God who thunders and smites.

The little plastic girl, her arms open to embrace her children, does not belong in such a place.