A Christmas Reflection

Let us never tire of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study of being. It is also the study of God. It is the study of demonstration; demonstration of what is. Metaphysics teaches us about the name of God. Yahweh, which means "I am," is a unique name. Why so? Most descriptions or demonstrations are made of subject and predicate. For example: The cat is sleeping in the basket. Or: The man is a teacher, and so on. The subject refers to the substance. The predicate refers to what is said about the substance. In the theory of concept containment, the essence of the predicate needs to be contained in the essence of the subject for it to be a true statement. We can make true statements about things in the natural world because we can easily determine that the essence of the concept of the predicate is contained in the essence of the subject. You know, because we can speak categorically about things in the natural world. And we can speak about such things univocally.

 

With God however, we can at best speak analogically, or apophatically. We can only adduce characteristics for God by drawing analogies with characteristics of things in the natural world. And so, when we speak about God, we do not apply the concept containment theory. We do not say that the essence of the predicate we use to describe God is contained in his essence, because his reality lies beyond whatever description we adduce for him. If we said for example: God is good. This is true, but only analogically. We draw from what we observe good things in the natural world to be like, and we apply this observed state of affairs to God. Whereas the reality is that God is beyond good. If we said as well: God is beyond good, or: God is infinitely good; both these statements are true, but still only analogically. We have no positive idea of what "beyond good" is, or what "infinitely good" refers to. We hardly even know what "good" is completely. And so, we cannot say this truthfully about God  as we can say: The cat is in the basket.

 

One of the reasons we cannot apply the concept containment theory in defining what is true as pertains to God is because God is a simple being. His essence is his existence. Things in the natural world are by no means simple like God is. Things in the natural world, including humans, are made of matter-form-composite essences, as Aquinas would assert. We can easily adduce predicates for these things because their composite natures make such things analyzable. We can however not analyze God. Who can subject God to the art of the vivisectionist! Aha - got you, didn't I! God is beyond our human understanding. And so, perhaps the only truthful thing we can say about God is the content of his name: Yahweh, which means: I am that I am (I am I); God is God; he is what he is. In such a case, the subject and the predicate are the same. Nothing else can replace such a predicate, because no essence of anything is containable in the essence of God as to be capable of truthfully defining him. God is beyond form, as my metaphysics teacher told us. God is beyond reality. Like Plotinus' One, God is transcendent of the intelligible.

 

He is who he is. Just think about that. When you are overwhelmed by the mysteriousness of life, and it seems as if you do not understand what it means, just realize that God does. And you can trust God. But again: if you can trust God whom you do not know, then you can trust life that you do not know. Such faith makes triumphant living possible. In the burning bush, God told Moses, "I am who I am." Yahweh. The power of that name is hopefully not lost on countless generations. From the time of Abraham to the present age, God remains unsearchable, but he remains nonetheless who he is. And he is. Make no mistake about that. I am 33 years old, and so far there is only one thing I have never doubted, and that is the fact that there is in fact God. God exists. I don't just believe it, I know it for a fact, just as I know that 2 plus 2 is 4. I know that God exists. I may not be able to prove his existence in some classy way like countless philosophers have - by the way, let's mention a bunch of the philosophers that have formally proved the existence of God: Descartes, Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Scotus, Melbranche, Spinoza, and Berkeley; and this is just a handful - yet I know from private experience and thought that there is indeed a God. It is the infinity of God that keeps the universe perennially going, as if to infinity itself. "Light from light."

 

Anyway. I intend this to be a Christmas reflection. But why should it qualify as such? Because it talks about God. I know about God. I know that he exists, and because this is the only truth I know categorically of him, it is what he is. It is his essence. Because we have said that the only truth we can say about God is that God is God (He is who He is); but if we can say he exists, then "exists" defines him. He is the existing thing, if Descartes is the thinking thing. The essence of existence is the essence of God. God cannot not exist. Christ's birth is celebrated today: the birth of the existing one. This one comes to exist in our hearts and minds. He lives that we too might. We need to trust in him. He will never fail us. We must be close to him, and obey his will for our lives. It's how we're going to move forward. There can be no other way. God is God. Stay with it. Know it. Merry Christmas.

Nkembo Olikolo

Let us praise God! Nkembo, nkembo, na tata; nkembo, nkembo; olikolo! God is so good. He never forsakes his own. Here is a song we used to sing as children:

 

Jesus, Jesus (2ce)

If you really love me

Don't leave my heart (2ce)

I can't sleep without you

I can't do without you

If you really love me

Don't leave my heart

 

Nkembo is a hymn of glory to God. Nkembo olikolo is an affirmation of praise to the almighty. Indeed we must praise God. But why must we praise him? What are the reasons for which it is right and necessary to praise the Lord?

 

For the gift of life. I recall that as a child when we prayed we used to say: "Many slept without waking up, but we have, and so we thank you, O Lord." We sojourned for hours in the world of dreams but we did not stay there. It happened by the power of God, and so it is fitting to praise him. There were evil spirits that competed for possession of our soul, but God did not grant them custody of it, and so we must praise God. We lay semi-conscious to unconscious in the state of sleep, not knowing what was going on around us, but God did not allow our environment to overwhelm or squelch us. We should praise God. We were vulnerable to fate, but nothing chanced to do us in. We need to praise God. Nkembo olikolo! Nkembo na tata.

 

For the gift of family. God gave us a first participatory framework, the family. We need to praise him for it. These are the people that love us no  matter what. These are the people that we recourse to when the whole world treats us ill, as the title sequence of 7th Heaven says. They are the ones that know us the most and love us the most. They are the ones that gave us our very first home, and our very first global orientation. They are the ones with whom we shared our earliest selves, and mistakes and hopes. We pray with our families. We stay with our families. We derive succor from them, and we pledge our deepest allegiance to them. "Home is where the heart is," as they say. Our hearts are with our families. God gives us our families to support us in the turmoil and trial of life. Our families are gifts to us; we should be gifts to them as well. And so, for the gift of family, we should praise God. We should sing: Nkembo na wana. Nkembo li sanga; nkembo olikolo!

 

For the gift of faith. What is life without faith of some kind? We need faith with which to continue to move in spite of difficulties. Without faith, the difficulties of life will overwhelm us. Without faith, the difficulties of life will do us in. We are encouraged to "trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding; in all our ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct our paths: not allowing our feet to be moved; he that keeps us not slumbering; being near as he is to all of us that call upon him, we that call upon him in truth" (Prov. 3: 5-6). Without faith, life will be too hard for us to live. Without faith, we will be unable to progress. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. It is what keeps putting one foot in front of another, dragging us steadily to those hoped-for things. It is with faith "as small as a mustard seed" that we can surmount any difficulty and remove from our way any mountain of obstruction (Matt. 17:20). Our faith sets us apart from the world. It gives us a character. And it is a good reason for which to praise God. Nkembo nkembo; nkembo na ta e!

 

For the gift of hope. Faith bears hope. Because God has answered our prayers made through faith in the past, we hope for more. And hope predisposes us to believe all the more. Hope makes us set our sights on the transcendent. Hope gives us a reason to go on living. It paints a picture of heaven in our mind. Hope sustains us. Hope is the opposite of despair. Hope is the antidote to the nothingness of Heidegger. Hope gives us peace. Hope consoles us. Hope paves the way for progress. The Catholic Act of Hope states: "O God I hope in you for grace and for glory; because of your promises, your mercy and your power." Hope is true beauty. Indeed what could we possibly accomplish in life without hope! God gives us hope in order to build us up for the beauty of heaven, the grace of the afterlife. How could we look to such afterlife without hope! Impossible. We definitely need hope. We cannot do without hope. And for this indispensable gift of hope, we praise God: Nkembo na wana!

 

For the gift of love. Love is the beginning and end of life itself. Everything ends in love, dissolves into love. We live for love. We live in, through and with love. Love is the life of the soul. Love is the ultimate religion, the ultimate spirituality. Love makes us call God father, and everyone else our brother or sister. St Paul extols love in 1 Cor. 13. He calls love patient and kind; humble and forgiving; universally hopeful, and universally true. Love conquers all. Love endures all. We need love to live. The love of our parents brought us into this world in the first place. The love of our family saw us through our formative years. Their love, and the love of our friends continued to guide us through life, especially  in times of difficulty. And the love of God ultimately watches over us. Love lifts us up. "Behold what manner of love the father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God" (1 John 3:1). And so for this identity of love, let us praise God: Nkembo olikolo!

Patience Pays

St Augustine tried to understand the quantification of time. But not just he: many other thinkers over the years have tried to understand things like: "There are twenty-four hours in a day." Or, "There are seven days in a week," and so forth. The calendars that have been created over the years have been as a result of humans trying to control the most uncontrollable thing in the world. They have been about humans trying to make objective sense of a seemingly senseless phenomenon. A statement like: "Time and tide wait for no one" shows how it is that, in the bid to understand time, characteristics have perennially been adduced by which to conceptualize it. And yet time remains unknowable, unsearchable and all-powerful. Time remains the controller of destiny, and the "healer of all wounds." Time remains the measure of existence and the announcer of progress or deterioration.

 

We should wait for time. Awed by its power, we cannot afford to challenge time. We must rather wait for it. We must give time its due respect and its mastery. We cannot overtake it. We may anticipate it, but never overtake it. By the way, isn't the word "anticipate" such a beauty? By way of etymology, it comes from the Latin words: "ante," and "capere." Ante is a pre-fix that means before. Capere is a verb that means to take. In ancient Rome, learning or knowing or understanding was considered a form of taking. I guess it is in this spirit that when we say we grasp something we mean we understand it, and grasp is a form of take. And so ante-capere refers to taking before, or better still knowing before, or simply foreknowledge: knowing what will happen before it actually does happen.

 

Anticipation should be done with humility, though. We can never be so proud that we become clairvoyants, knowing and seeing the future in such clear and predictable terms that we begin to dictate for it. Even when we anticipate, we should carefully allow for time and the course of events to proceed differently, if time so chooses. We simply need to be patient. Patience in this regard may be defined as the humility we experience in cognizance of the awesomeness of time, and the realization that we may never overtake it and, even when we anticipate it, we may never alter or best it. Patience is an attribute of the scientific mind. This is the sort of mind which, in contrast to the artistic one, plans and organizes and then carries on. It is the sort of mind that, in cognizance of the awesomeness of time and the realization that we can never overtake it even if we may anticipate it, always creates paradigms for more easily understanding what may be accomplished in a given period.

 

Patience is important for progress. All things happen in time. And so, progress is related to time, and if our attitude toward time is one of respect, then our attitude toward progress will be one of respect as well. This means that patient people achieve more than people who are impatient. Patient people don't give up. They are not the sort of people who miss something because they failed to wait just one more day for it. They are not the people who throw in the towel when the treasure was just one more inch below the ground. Had they rather used the towel to wipe their face and continued digging, they would very likely have struck the gold. Patient people are never tired of waiting. They know that life itself is a sort of endless wait. And concerning waiting, the bible says: "Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and shall not be weary. They shall walk and shall not faint" (Isa. 40:31). Let us all be patient, and in our patience, let us keep blessing the Lord God, and fervently praising him all our days. Amen.

"The Stone the Builders Rejected"

In every way that humans have evolved over the years, rejection has always preceded perfection. All people start out doubting. And they don't just doubt themselves: others doubt them as well. Their potential is perennially called to question. Heidegger has, unlike Aristotle and Aquinas, seen potentiality to be pre-eminent to actuality, since it is the possibility that what is lives up to. You probably have heard it said for example: "Mr. Y is not living up to his potential." In Mark 11: 12-25, we see Jesus cursing a fig tree. The tree was not living up to its potential, and did not deserve to subsist, and so Jesus cursed it and it died. It is the same with us. We must endeavor to be useful. We cannot become nihilists, by embracing and living out the nothing. Rather, we must live out Dasein. And this demands, for Heidegger, creativity. We must think creatively. We must act creatively. This means that, rather than complain about situations that ape the nothing, we must participate and create networks and paradigms that hold what is up to the teleology of what can be. Through creative thinking and acting, we can shape a mental reality that gives a moral imperative to what is.

 

But this task is by no means easy. Rejection abounds: rejection of the self; rejection by the community, and rejection by one's family. And yet, rejection is not the final verdict of destiny. "The stone the builders rejected has become the corner stone" (Psalm 118:22). The Bible describes the event as "a marvel in our eyes" (ibid.v.23). Indeed, the creativity of existence in spite and instead of the nothing is a true beauty to see. But what are the grounds for rejection? Isolation is one. The fault here lies with the individual who, rather than embrace the phusis with faith and love, sets himself contrary to it. But other factors cause rejection as well, such as: misunderstanding, jealousy, hate and acrimony. Rejection leads to the nothing; paves the way for it. And the nothing is the principle of depression and annihilation. Our struggle as humans is to overcome the nothing. But where and when we are rejected, we are forced to encounter and stay with the nothing. And we often stay too long, in the pain and suffering of it all. But creativity helps and saves us eventually, if we try.

 

Even if the community rejects us, we must not reject ourselves. We must patiently continue to create. We must persist with faith. We must never lose sight of what can be, our potential, even if what is seems like the nothing. For, Heidegger would remind us that potential precedes the actual. And even if the actual seems to thrust us out of happiness and into the nothing we must still hope in the ought; in the possibility. To them that believe, all things are possible, as the bible tells us. The moral imperative to hold what-is accountable to what can be remains a vocation for as many as are rational; for as many as are truly human. In the quest to live authentic, happy lives, we must always reach out to touch the possible; we must always reach out to touch the ought. In spite of our being sometimes rejected in so doing. Yet, no matter how many times we are rejected - and even if it seems our whole life is one collection of rejections - we must persist. We must continue to think and act creatively and hold the what is up to the possibility of what can be. We must always have faith. We must never fall into the abyss of the nothing. We must always be. Be, instead of not be; be in spite of the nothing.

 

That is where happiness lies: in not rejecting the self; in not succumbing to the nothing. The marvel of Dasein is the perennial holding up to a teleology the potential of the phusis. This is done by creative thought and action. In this poetic creativity lies the answer to the question: "Why is there being instead of nothing?" It is a question Heidegger severally asks in his Metaphysics. The refusal to fall into the abyss of the nothing, but rather to creatively pursue our calling; to submit our actions to the scrutiny of the moral imperative; to be - this is authentic, happy living. The many people that visit psychiatric hospitals for one so-called mental illness or another; the people who fall into deep depression; the people who despair - these individuals have succumbed to the nothing. They have neglected to hold the status quo up to the teleological standard of the ought and, in so doing, have neglected to obey the moral dictate of rational human conscience. They have neglected to participate in the concert of living, the universal struggle to apply a moral yardstick to what is. Yet we must realize that even the stone rejected by the builders stayed put. And it became very useful where it did.

"Perfect Love Drives Out all Fear"

Who are you? Can this question be adequately answered by merely looking into the mirror? I doubt it. You need to ponder. Now, I'm not talking of the kind of pondering I saw on Family Guy, where a Griffin character sat on a stool with head in hand, thinking. His wife came up to him and begged him to go look for a job, and he raised his hand carefully to heaven, struck a very contemplative pose and said, "Why?" No, definitely not that kind of questioning. The sort I mean is that which refuses to lie to the self. Heidegger calls this authentic existence, or Dasein. It is observing three ethical codes, which my uncle describes as the measures of good living: don't deceive yourself; don't deceive other people, and don't keep bad company. Words to live by indeed.

 

A story was once told of a woman that went to see a voodoo priest. She told him that she was having problems with her husband, and their marriage was suffering. The voodoo priest said he could help, but he needed five strands of hair from the mane of a lion. The woman was alarmed, but she knew there was a lion that lived not far from her village. She knew she could get five strands of the hair of its mane. But she needed to tame it first. The voodoo priest understood. He told the woman that she could in fact tame the lion. She was to go toward the lion each morning, taking with her a large portion of raw meat. She was to throw the meat at the lion and watch the animal devour the meat from a safe distance. From that safe, vantage distance, she was to speak and sing to it. The woman agreed. Each morning, she would draw close to the lion with some raw meat, and throw it to the animal to eat. While she watched the beast eat from a safe distance, she would speak and sing to it. She did this for many, many days. And when the lion became used to her, it allowed the woman to draw close and sit with it. The woman stroked the mane of the beast and, carefully, pulled five strands of hair from it. She brought the hair strands to the voodoo priest. He told her, "In the same way you treated the lion, treat your husband and you will be fine."

 

In the Lion King, Simba initially refused to go home. He was afraid of his uncle, Scar. He was afraid of embracing himself and fate. But when the baboon, Rafiki, confronted him, Simba realized that it was time to begin to return home. Sometimes a person treats a foreign land with more respect and reverence than he ever treated his, but just imagine if that person were to treat his own nation with the same love and reverence he treated another nation with. Just imagine, indeed. Of course his own nation might not be developed or fancy, but it is home. It truly is home.

 

Heidegger talks about the un-canniness of existence, and how the threat of the nothing scares us. Yet he insists that isolation is never the solution to the nothingness, to the threat of depression. Rather, embracing the present, the reality, the phusis; what is, with love, is the best way to endure and survive, and underscore the reality of being in spite of nothing; instead of nothing. Because, after all, as Paul would ask: "What can separate us from the love of God?" We must participate in spite of fear. We must return home and help our kin. We must be a gift to our people, to our nation.

 

"Perfect love drives out all fear," I have been told. It drives out the fear of oneself; it drives out the fear of the nation. It drives out the fear of one's family; one's truest family. For there is nothing wrong with the nation. All there is something wrong with is my perception. I can never know the nation; all I can know is what I think of it. And if I think and speak positively of the nation, treating it like God and Lord, in quite the same way I treated another nation; acting only good toward it, always, then I can begin to thrive, and be happy in my own land. And I am willing to try.

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 8

In conclusion, this paper has dealt with the event of the anointing of Jesus by a (sinful) woman, or Mary, in Bethany. This woman felt that she owed (ὤφειλεν) Jesus a debt of gratitude because she claimed in faith as reality that he had forgiven her many sins, even before he actually spoke the words of absolution. (Recall in this regard that faith has been described as “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not yet experienced.”) She poured costly ointment on Jesus and drew criticism from those around who claimed she was being wasteful; but Jesus claimed she was doing good, and preparing him for burial; and that she would be well known because of her action. In the course of this paper, we have shown the literary similarities and differences in the different gospel accounts of the event; how for example Matthew and Mark tell the story in pretty much the same way, but Luke and John tell it a tad differently.

The paper has in this regard shown how Matthew and Mark state that the woman poured the costly ointment on the head of Jesus, whereas Luke and John state that she poured it on his feet. Luke in particular talks about the woman kissing and weeping over his feet, and with John mentions her drying Jesus’ feet with her hair. We have shown as well how John edited the story to include the names of Jesus’ friends, Lazarus, Mary and Martha. John it was that specifically named the woman as Mary, unlike in the three other gospels, where she is simply called woman, or sinful woman, as is the case in Luke’s Gospel.

The paper also mentioned that a central motif in the event as recorded in all the gospels is one of money. Mark, Matthew and John treat this issue from the point of view of waste when viewed against the backdrop of need. In Mark and Matthew, individuals in the house of Simon the Leper complain bitterly that the costly ointment could have been sold and its proceeds given to the poor and the needy. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is concerned that the woman shows greater love to him than Simon the Pharisee does, very likely because the sinful woman is more convicted of her sin and her indebtedness to God than Simon is. She as the greater sinner, the one with the greater debt to God, is drawn more to Jesus in her realization of his forgiveness of her great amount of sin than Simon is, because his indebtedness (sinfulness) is apparently less. It is in this regard that Luke mentions the Parable of the Two Debtors.

The paper used the Greek word, ὤφειλεν, as a signpost in this paper, and it hints at our universal indebtedness to God, especially because all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Unlike the Pharisee in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, our realization that we have sinned and so owe God a significant debt should make us feel a sense of gratitude to him when through faith we realize that he has forgiven us, in other words has let go of the debt that we otherwise could not pay by ourselves.

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 7

We have in any case seen that all four gospel writers touch on the issue of money. Matthew, Mark and John approach this motif from the point of view of waste or extravagance as observable in the woman’s, or Mary’s, lavishly pouring otherwise expensive ointment on the head, or feet as the case might be, of Jesus; especially when this situation of waste is juxtaposed with the existence of poor people in society who could very well benefit from the material cost of the ointment. We related this to present day socioeconomic issues. Money is a major issue in all the books of the bible. In several passages, the love of money is seen to be in marked opposition to the Christian faith and conduct. Statements like: “you cannot serve both God and money,” (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13) or “the love of money is the root of all evil,” (1 Tim. 6:10) seem to point to the need for Christians to be vigilant in their dealings with money.

In the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, we see Jesus encouraging Christians to use material wealth to gain spiritual capital. This sort of exchange seems to be similarly recommended in this pericope. The woman, or Mary, or sinful woman as the case might be, is not interested in how expensive or not the ointment is. All she is interested in is pleasing Jesus, and ensuring that her sins are forgiven. Convicted of her sinfulness and cognizant of her great need for salvation, the type that Jesus affords, the woman is ready to throw away all the expensive oil in her possession to obtain in return a shot at heaven, through her sins being forgiven. This is unlike the case with Simon the Pharisee, and the Pharisee in the Parable named after him and the Publican.

According to Fitzmeyer, “The sense of the Lucan passage as a whole is not difficult. Repentance, forgiveness of sins, and salvation have come to one of the despised persons of Israel (the sinful woman); she has shown this by an act of kindness manifesting a more basic love and faith, love shown to Jesus and faith in God himself; implying that the forgiveness shown her is the result of her love.” Fitzmeyer goes further to state: “The parable of the two debtors, inserted into the pronouncement-story, not only carries its own message about the relation between forgiveness and love (that the sinner turns out to be the one who manifests to God greater gratitude than the upright, critical Pharisee), but also allegorizes the narrative: repentance for the sins of the woman's life has made her more open to God's mercy than the stingy willingness of the host who wanted to honor Jesus with a dinner.” The foregoing reiterates our earlier thesis concerning the superiority of spiritual works of mercy to corporal ones.

The foregoing also bears relevance in the parameters by which we judge others. The Jerome Biblical Commentary states in this regard: “While Simon silently condemns Jesus for not divining the character of the woman, Jesus proves himself to be a prophet by reading the secret thoughts of Simon.” Whereas Simon judges the woman by her reputation, Jesus judges by the unseen state of her heart. According to Fitzmeyer, Jesus is able to contend with the physicality of Simon, and to chide him for his meanness when he is confronted with the superabundant love of the woman. The Catholic Commentary on Scripture in turn states exactly thus: “A further conclusion Simon is left to draw for himself: he has treated the woman with contempt as one separated from God, but if Jesus may conclude from the woman's behavior that God has forgiven her, Simon too may conclude from his own behavior toward Jesus that God has not forgiven him.” Again, the Catholic Commentary on Scripture further states: “Simon objects that Jesus must be ignorant of the woman's character; Jesus replies that he knows very much about her, even that her sins have been taken away. Faith here and elsewhere in Luke is not mere intellectual assent to truths about God under the influence of the will, but an attitude of the whole man toward God; a compound of faith, hope and charity.”

The Jerome Biblical Commentary sin this regard is of the view that Jesus in his participatory relationship with the people of faith symbolically gives us of himself, when he reclines with the people of faith at table. Guijarro states in this regard: “Two peculiar elements of the Markan account of the anointing of Jesus in Bethany—the anointing of the head and the mandate to remember—suggest that the evangelist has transformed this memory into a rite by which Jesus is anointed as Messiah. This new ritual redefines the traditional rite of royal anointing to give new significance to the messianic character of Jesus. The mandate to remember the woman’s gesture and the critical moment in which Mark has placed the scene reveal that this new understanding of what it means to be the Messiah is key to the true identity of Jesus and of his followers.”