Peter Enns - How the Bible Actually Works

Introduction

https://peteenns.com/books/how-the-bible-actually-works/

How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Peter Enns—evangelical Bible scholar and host of "The Bible for Normal People" podcast—offers a freeing approach to Bible study that helps us focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God—which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.

Controversial evangelical Bible scholar, popular blogger and podcast host of The Bible for Normal People, and author of The Bible Tells Me So and The Sin of Certainty explains that the Bible is not an instruction manual or rule book but a powerful learning tool that nurtures our spiritual growth by refusing to provide us with easy answers but instead forces us to acquire wisdom.

For many Christians, the Bible is a how-to manual filled with literal truths about belief that must be strictly followed. But the Bible is not static, Peter Enns argues. It does not hold easy answers to the perplexing questions and issues that confront us in our daily lives. Rather, the Bible is a dynamic instrument for study that not only offers an abundance of insights but provokes us to find our own answers to spiritual questions, cultivating God’s wisdom within us.

“The Bible becomes a confusing mess when we expect it to function as a rulebook for faith. But when we allow the Bible to determine our expectations, we see that Wisdom, not answers, is the Bible’s true subject matter,” writes Enns.

This distinction, he points out, is important because when we come to the Bible expecting it to be a textbook intended by God to give us unwavering certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves. The Bible, in other words, really isn’t the problem; having the wrong expectation is what interferes with our reading.

Rather than considering the Bible as an ancient book weighed down with problems, flaws, and contradictions that must be defended by modern readers, Enns offers a vision of the holy scriptures as an inspired and empowering resource to help us better understand how to live as a person of faith today.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“How the Bible Actually Works”:

A Response to Geoff Holsclaw (And Likely Others)
https://peteenns.com/how-the-bible-actually-works-works-a-response-to-geoff-holsclaw-and-likely-others/

by Pete Enns, Ph.D.

[any brackets are mine. - re slater]

*Peter Enns (Ph.D., Harvard University) is Abram S. Clemens professor of biblical studies at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He has written numerous books, including The Bible Tells Me So, The Sin of Certainty, and How the Bible Actually Works. Tweets at @peteenns.

Introduction

I would like to thank Geoff Holsclaw for taking the time to write a review of my latest book How the Bible Actually Works. The review appears in two parts. Part 1 covers the book’s contents, and I want to commend Holsclaw’s efforts there. He did a very good job summarizing the ground that I cover, and I don’t take that for granted. Too often critical reviews falter on this very point. In Part 2 Holsclaw lays out his disagreements with some of the central conclusions that I draw the book, and it is here that I will focus my comments.

It should be apparent that my response is roughly twice the length of Holsclaw’s review. I felt the review was burdened by numerous theological assertions with unexamined subtexts beneath them that needed to be teased out a bit. Also, Holsclaw’s views no doubt mirror those of other Evangelicals, and so I am hoping that by going into a bit more detail I might address nuances that others might have.

The Whole Thing in Two Paragraphs

Holsclaw is fine in principle with the idea of biblical writers reimagining God for their time and place, which is a key theme in my book. He is also comfortable agreeing that the Bible contains tensions and contradictions. However, Holsclaw is a pastor and theologian, and as such he feels that I as a biblical scholar do not go far enough in affirming the revelatory nature of Scripture. As a consequence, God is left out of the picture, which is theologically inadequate and pastorally detrimental.

In response, I feel that Holsclaw makes some points that could generate brisk discussion, but on the whole, his theological and pastoral critique of the book raises more theological and practical questions than they answer[JB1]. At numerous points, Holsclaw makes theological assertions that open themselves up to serious scrutiny. A substantive theological and pastoral engagement with the phenomena of Scripture will have to do better than what we see here in this review.

Speaking as a Theologian and Pastor

From the very beginning of the review and continuing at a steady clip throughout, Holsclaw clearly wants to drive home the fact that he is a pastor and a theologian. His response to HTBAW is, he tells us, informed by what he feels those vocations require, namely keeping ever before us the revelatory nature of Scripture wherein God “speaks.”

To illustrate, after affirming my language of reimagining God, Holsclaw immediately adds, “But what exactly has God revealed to us (to ask a theologian’s question) and what does it mean for us (to ask a pastor’s question)? “

I have to admit, this rhetoric put me on guard. In my experience, I too often hear Evangelical critics in particular claiming this higher ground as if, in and of itself, holding such constitutes an argument, which it doesn’t (see below). I find that tactic distracting, if not off-putting, and creates more clutter than clarity. Indeed, a fair amount of my response stems from a need to address this problem.

It is not the case, as Holsclaw presents the matter, that he is bringing to the table theological and pastoral concerns and I am not. We are just driven by different theological and pastoral concerns. My writing, including HTBAW, has been affirmed by plenty [of congregational, lay, and theological sources] with theological training. And many pastors have told me they are thrilled with HTBAW, are using it in their congregations, and have invited me to come speak to their churches and even synods. 

I only (reluctantly) raise the point to remind us, and Holsclaw, that appealing to his vocations does not validate his critique. Knowing that he is a pastor and theologian is not particularly revealing. More pertinent to the discussion is knowing what kind of theologian and pastor he is.

Holsclaw’s theological turf and notions of pastoral duty are not standards, simply givens in the discussion, but are as subject to criticism as any other. And while the angle he is taking on the phenomena of Scripture will be satisfying theologically and pastorally to some, to others, who have perhaps heard these answers before, it will not [be]. They have other questions entirely. I have been conversing for many years with pilgrims who are trying to recover spiritually from their conservative backgrounds and find other perspectives life-giving. They would not be as captivated by the particular kind of theological and pastoral matters Holsclaw keeps pressing.

To illustrate further, near the end of his review Holsclaw summarizes succinctly his theological and pastoral concerns with my view of Scripture:

"Theologically, if God has spoken then we can and should engage in theology, the task of asking who God is, what God is like, and how all this connects with all that is. If God has not spoken then all we have is cultural anthropology, an ancient text, university research projects, and the projection of human values onto divine fantasies."

"Pastorally, if God has spoken then we are not alone, abandoned within the angst of a life where all meaning, purpose, and significance is really just up to us. If God has spoken then there really is something stable and reliable in the world. If God has spoken that [sic] life isn’t just up to me to figure out. If God hasn’t spoken, then pastorally my advice is to sleep in and skip my next sermon and don’t worry about that daily devotion time anymore. [italics my emphasis]"

Holsclaw’s rhetoric here is overblown, and the conclusions raise some blazing theological and pastoral red flags for me.

First, note that Holsclaw has not actually answered his own question “Has God Spoken?” He has only expressed what he thinks is at stake if God has or hasn’t spoken. I’ve never warmed up to this kind of “if-then” theological argument—that position X must be false, since it undermines some imagined necessary outcome Y. This is not an argument one can respond to—because it is not an argument but an expression of a belief that is not subject to discussion. Expressing one’s beliefs is fine under other circumstances, but as a counterpoint, it is not at all persuasive.

Second, my experience yields the exact opposite observation. I know people—many people—whose spiritual lives are, or have been, in a process of deep recovery because of the unyielding theological categories their intelligence and their experience could no longer support, but who were told by pastors and theologians that their faith depends on their ignoring their experience and falling back on the very formulations that fueled their crisis to begin with. They have found greater explanatory power, and therefore renewed faith, through other models.

Holsclaw’s theological models of Scripture and pastoral care out of which he critiques HTBAW are not universal. He is welcome to have them, but as a point of theological debate, they will carry no weight. We are left to trading anecdotes.

Losing the God Connection.

Holsclaw’s pastoral and theological concerns are focused almost entirely on one issue: my failure to say something about divine revelation in addition to the biblical authors reimagining God. As he puts it, I have “totally left aside” that issue and even “refuse” to address it. In doing so, I have “turned the Bible into what humans reimagine God to be,” which is nothing less than a “lie in the big picture.”

That last bit of unguarded hyperbole notwithstanding, Holsclaw’s assessment of my work is a product of the kind of theology he embraces. There are, after all, as I’m sure he knows, different theological models for understanding the nature of revelation. I wish Holsclaw had taken some time to define—even briefly—what he means by “revelation,” given its importance to Holsclaw, and how that view helps address the phenomena of Scripture.

Judging from the review as a whole, however, I am confident that Holsclaw’s view fits comfortably within familiar Evangelical parameters. I also surmise, though Holsclaw does not use the term, that his deeper concern is to protect biblical authority (a clear subtext of his two summary statements quoted in the previous section), which is the logical corollary to his understanding of revelation.

Holsclaw is correct that I don’t address directly the matter of revelation. And the reason is that it simply doesn’t hold for me the level of theological and pastoral interest it does for Holsclaw. Nor does it need to.

Oh sure, it “interests” me as a topic of lively speculative discussion or my own internal musings. In fact, truth be told, I “imagine” all the time what revelation might mean and how it might work. I even wrote a book about it in 2005, Inspiration and Incarnation where I adopt an incarnational model as a means of framing the discussion.

But as for HTBAW, I simply had no interest in meshing together what I see the biblical writers doing with what God might be doing to them, or in them, or with them, or alongside them. This was no oversight on my part, nor was it a “refusal” to address a central topic of theological and pastoral urgency.

I truly hope we can all agree that any doctrine of revelation is by its nature speculative and hard to demonstrate when push comes to shove. I am well within my theological and pastoral charge to work through the biblical phenomena (as best as I can, always looking out for my own hidden agenda) and describe what I see from a cultural point of view without also accounting for how all this fits together in the mind of God who was revealing information to the biblical writers and then to us.

It is clear that Holsclaw sees this failure of mine as the heart and soul of his critique, but I simply don’t feel the force of it. I do not accept Holsclaw’s presumption that divine revelation is a non-negotiable, even self-evident, norm by which the phenomena of Scripture need to be viewed.

I might, though . . . were he to demonstrate how the messy phenomena of Scripture (which he acknowledges) would inform and shape his doctrine of Scripture rather than be adjusted by it. Or perhaps, were he to indicate how his doctrine of revelation does a better job of accounting for the biblical phenomena I lay out in the book, such as:

• contradictory portrayals of God,

• the many conflicts between the law codes in Torah though they are all given by God in Mt. Sinai to Moses,

• the conflicting histories of Israel’s kings, various and sundry moral and historical problems,

• the unexpected nature of the Messiah dying for others and then rising

• —and more.

I’m sure Holsclaw acknowledges these phenomena, but he is obligated at this point not simply to talk the talk but walk the walk, to explain how inserting a doctrine of revelation into this discussion would actually add to our understanding of the biblical phenomena—an explanation that would certainly penetrate deeper than the “if-then” scenarios he posed above. 

But what concerned me most—if I may say, for both theological and pastoral reasons—was Holsclaw’s unguarded rhetoric in the following:

"Emphasizing the process of “reimagining God” might sound like a way to save the Bible from fundamentalism, to loosen the stranglehold of literalism and absolutism, and to appreciate the diversity within the Bible. And those are good things."

But without a doctrine of Scripture/revelation (a theologian’s question) we haven’t really saved our connection with God (a pastor’s question). [my emphasis - PE]

In other words, however correct it might be to think of the Bible as an ancient, ambiguous, and diverse collection of stories that represent how people of old reimagined God for their here and now, without a doctrine of Scripture/revelation our connection with God is not “saved,” or to put it more directly, that connection is lost.

I hope Holsclaw is just aiming for a bit of drama here, but at face value, this claim is unsettling and illustrates a type of biblio-centrism for which Evangelicalism is rightly criticized. Evangelicals tend to walk that thin line between respect for Scripture and idolizing it. If Holsclaw has not crossed that line, for me he is coming too close for comfort.

Let me say succinctly, that a doctrine of revelation does not save our connection with God. That is what the Spirit of God does working in and through Scripture (along with other means of grace) without the false sense of security offered by any “doctrine of revelation.” I truly hope Holsclaw doesn’t think the people of God need a functional definition of revelation in order for the Spirit to meet us. I can think of not a few Christian traditions that wouldn’t quite know how to respond constructively to a claim like that.

I happen to love the Bible and I think of it as, among other things, a non-negotiable “means of grace” that gives me language, concepts, and a touchstone for articulating my experience of Christ. And for the record, I at least acknowledge in HTBAW the Spirit’s presence and involvement in Scripture, even if only in a general sense. In several places in the book, I say that Scripture’s antiquity, ambiguity, and diversity are not problems to be solved but reflect God’s “design” and as such God’s invitation to us to walk the path of wisdom.

God is not “lost” because I do not fold into my view the mysterious inner-workings of revelation. God just shows up in, with, though (whatever) the human reflections of the biblical authors as we approach the text in our full humanity. Of course, I can’t demonstrate how that works (!) or prove that I am right (!), but that is where I see Scripture itself pointing. I do not see Scripture pointing to an overarching “doctrine of revelation.”

Holsclaw acknowledges these same pointers (that biblical authors do reimagine God), but how does he see those pointers pointing him to add a notion of revelation? Or has he already freighted a discussion of the biblical phenomena with a preconceived notion of what Scripture as God’s word must be? I am reminded here of C. S. Lewis’s quip in Reflections on the Psalms:

"[There] is one argument [about the nature of Scripture] which we should beware of using [when trying to define the nature of Scripture]: God must have done what is best, this is best, therefore God has done this. For we are mortals and do not know what is best for us, and it is dangerous to prescribe what God must have done–especially when we cannot, for the life of us, see that He has after all done it."

Along those lines, I suppose I should throw another card on the table: I am very comfortable with, and am comforted by, the paradox of Scripture noted by others long before HTBAW: Scripture as God’s word comes to us irrevocably through utterly ordinary means—and that fact has pressing implications for how we frame the nature of Scripture.

Over the years I’ve collected quotes from theologians and others that articulate this paradox. One of my favorites is the following by turn-of-the-century Dutch Calvinist theologian Herman Bavinck from his Reformed Dogmatics:

"[How we think of Scripture] is the working out and application of the central fact of revelation: the incarnation of the Word. The Word has become flesh, and the word has become Scripture; these two facts do not only run parallel but are most intimately connected. Christ became flesh, a servant, without form or comeliness, the most despised of human beings; he descended to the nethermost parts of the earth and became obedient even to death on the cross. So also the word, the revelation of God, entered the world of creatureliness, the life and history of humanity, in all the human forms of dream and vision, of investigation and reflection, right down into that which is humanly weak and despised and ignoble…. All this took place in order that the excellency of the power…of Scripture, may be God’s and not ours."

Bavinck, working with what can rightly be called an incarnational model of Scripture (as Christ the Word is human/divine, so too is the Bible “human/divine”). He sees the Bible’s through-and-through messy, broken, frail form as precisely what brings us to “connect” with God–the very thing Holsclaw is so fearful of losing. It is the very “humility of Scripture” that gives us glimpses of what God is like—a God who “in coming vulnerably into creation [in Jesus] . . . is not giving up the characteristics of divinity but most fully manifesting them” (William Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God). By speaking of Scripture in terms of the reimagining God as a wisdom quest, I am simply attempting to catch, as I see it, something of Scripture’s humility and God’s vulnerability.

Bavink is hardly a liberal who has lost his moorings. His thoughts here, as well as those of others I have come across, have been helpful to me theologically and pastorally. And yet none of these views represents the final word (no theology can claim that). I have some quibbles and disagreements with all of them, including the quote above—not the least of which is my annoyance that these authors do not always follow through with the implications of their insights.

Nevertheless, the kind of doctrine of Scripture Bavinck articulates here thoroughly revels in Scripture’s “humility” and incorporates that humility positively into his doctrine of Scripture rather than tacking on a notion of revelation from who knows where.

At the very least the paradox of Scripture should temper Holsclaw’s theological/pastoral claim that, though I may have “saved the Bible” from fundamentalism, I have done so while “losing God.” No . . . only if your God is bound to a particular formulation of a doctrine of Scripture that keeps its humility at a distance. And of course, Holsclaw can disagree with all this, but that is not the end of the discussion; it is only the beginning.

Nothing New to See Here

Early in his review, Holsclaw reminds us (as pastor and theologian) that struggling with Scripture is not a recent invention in the history of the church, and as a general observation, he is absolutely correct. I am less optimistic, however, about where he goes with this observation:

"So as a pastor and a theologian, I want to say, “Welcome to all you tired and weary, and you who need rest from a disappointing, constrictive, and confusing view of the Bible. Come out of your narrow fundamentalism, not into a loss of faith, but into a wider faith, a broad Church tradition that has honestly grappled with these issues for two millennia. [Emphasis original]"

To be sure, the history of Christian interpretation on the whole has much to offer Evangelicals struggling with Scripture through the hermeneutical lens they inherited from the Protestant Reformation. I have seen time and time again how simply being exposed to the rich and diverse history of pre-Reformation interpretation is a breath of fresh air for many who are “tired and weary.”

On the other hand, Holsclaw’s sentiment here strikes me as too sweepingly generous and uncritical an assessment of the “broad Church tradition.”

I often see appeals to what is also called the “Great Tradition,” especially among Evangelicals who, for instance, have discovered Orthodoxy as a promising way out of the problems that plague Evangelicalism. And let me say again that serious students of Scripture should avail themselves of the breadth of Christian thought, if anything to learn how to de-center their own theologies.

But I do not think that the “broad Church tradition” has done quite so good or complete a job of “honestly grappling with these issues for two millennia” as Holsclaw seems to intimate. There are many issues today that the Church has not grappled with at all, and not all its grappling has been necessarily helpful, or (to state the obvious) achieved any sort of unanimity. 

Holsclaw seems to be telling his worried readers simply to join the club, for the answers to their questions eventually are found therein. I hope that’s not what he is saying. If all he is saying is that the broad Church tradition welcomes deep and honest discussion that could potentially redirect, adjust, or even reform our thinking, even on such key points as the nature of revelation, then perhaps there is a place even for HTBAW at that table.

The grapplings with Scripture throughout the history of the church are culturally shaped iterations of Christian thought. Theologians of the 2nd through 4th centuries, for example, were reimagining the God of old through the lens of the philosophical heritage of Greco-Romanism. And I would expect nothing else—this was their world. But it is not ours.

To be in conversation with that profound past is simply good common sense, and as I said rewarding and even life-giving for some, but that does not relieve us of the responsibility–what I call in the book our “sacred responsibility”–of also doing theology here and now, which might mean having to put things differently when addressing the unique challenges of our day. Saying so is not a dismissal of earlier voices but a commitment to owning our own.

I don’t see the “broad Church tradition” being a place where our questions can safely come to rest. Rather it challenges is to face the inevitability of accepting this “sacred responsibility” as well.

If a Claim is Trans-historical Does that Make it Revelation?

In the section entitled “Staking a Claim, not Reimagining One,” Holsclaw asserts that, as revelation, the Bible “drives some stakes in the ground beyond the right now of culturally engaged wisdom informed reimagining.” He supports this claim by citing John 1:1 and 14 of John’s prologue and Hebrews 1:1-3.

Holsclaw rightly states the John 1:1 is a reimagining of Genesis 1, and v. 14 of the tabernacle. He also acknowledges that John’s act of reimagining God reflects the “here and now of a contingently cultural moment.” This is promising, but he adds quickly that these culturally conditioned acts of reimagining God nevertheless “transcend history,” meaning there is something more happening here than John merely reimagining. God must be revealing something somehow in addition to this act of reimagining.

I am not at all sure how one can acknowledge the human act of reimagining as also an act of revelation. Explaining that would take a lot of fleshing out. But more to my point here, I am puzzled why Holsclaw thinks that John’s trans-historical claim necessarily indicates divine revelation.

For one thing, the very heart of John’s trans-historical utterance lies in his dependence on Neo-Platonism’s notion of the transcendent logos (“word”). John’s trans-historical claim about Jesus is more than tangentially a product of his time and place.

Of course, John sees Jesus as that logos, but on what basis can Holsclaw say with such confidence that this claim can only come to John through direct divine revelation? Rather, John might simply be applying the language of the divine logos to Jesus to express his Christian faith in that “contingently cultural moment.”

John’s unique twist is that this logos “became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). But did this come to him through revelation? John is not the first Christian writer to claim that Jesus is “God with us.” That notion came to him from antecedent Christian tradition, did it not?

I am not at all clear why Holsclaw would think that a trans-historical claim is a mark of revelation. We see for example in the religious literature of the Second Temple Period, particularly the Pseudepigrapha, all sorts of trans-historical claims. Are these trans-historical claims also necessary indications of divine revelation? Or what about such claims made by every religion of the ancient Mediterranean going back three millennia or so? Or does this hold only in the Bible?

I’m not saying that the Spirit of God is absent in John’s prologue. All I’m saying is that we have no idea what role the Spirit plays. This is one reason why I have leaned toward an “incarnational” model of inspiration: it allows for mystery without feeling the pressure of fleshing that out (pardon the pun), and it does not try to do a theological circumnavigation of historically rooted explanations for why the Bible does what it does.

Rather than trying to resolve in my book what is hardly self-evident—what exactly God is “doing” as the Gospel writer is writing. I am more than content to respect my limitations without thinking I have to get into God’s head first. Echoing Bavinck, for a doctrine of Scripture to have any explanatory power, anthropological explanations for biblical phenomena need to be given their due weight, not suppressed, or—as I feel Holsclaw is doing—given lip service to.

The same objection holds for Holsclaw’s use of Hebrews 1:1-3. He makes much of the fact that this writer says that God “spoke” first through the prophets and now “by his Son.” And so, if I am catching Holsclaw’s meaning, such “speaking” by God is by its nature revelatory and therefore not simply an act of human imagination.

It is worth noting, though, that by speaking “by his Son,” God’s speech is a person, not the Bible, the latter containing diverse interpretations of the Son. But more important, as with John 1, it is not at all clear to me why this statement must be seen as a propositional revelation of God rather than, say, as with John’s appropriation of the logos, an act of the writers “sanctified imagination” for his time and place. I would like Holsclaw to articulate, even briefly, why Heb 1:1-3 can be nothing other than a demonstration of God’s direct propositional revelation.

Holsclaw overestimates the implications of these passages when he asserts that they “make trans-historical claims about Jesus, claims that transcend the merely human process of re-imagining God.” He is free to believe that, but not assert it as a given, nor treat the absence of such a claim elsewhere as a failing.

Reimagining God—But Not Too Much

At more than one point, Holsclaw acknowledges (with qualifications) the value of accepting our “sacred responsibility” to reimagine God, just so long as it is not done in a “one-sided” fashion. Similarly, he does not “necessarily disagree” that I use the language or reimagination to explain inconsistencies in the biblical portrayals of God, or that the history of Christian theology is really successive projects of reimagining the God of the Bible further still.

What Holsclaw seems to mean is that this sacred responsibility to reimagine God must be balanced, so to speak, by the higher controlling notion of biblical revelation. I would contend, however, that by phrasing the problem this way, Holsclaw is revealing that he has not really taken to heart the problematic nature of the biblical phenomena that the language of “reimagining” is trying to address.

I don’t think grafting “revelation” onto the biblical phenomena balances anything. I am reminded here of the analogous situation of how Evangelical theology has sometimes handled evolution vis-à-vis the creation of Adam in Genesis 2. I have often heard confident claims that there is no real tension between evolution and the Bible—provided we retain a “historical Adam,” which I’ve always felt was an exercise in missing the point. I do not think that one can simply pin the evolutionary tail onto the Evangelical donkey.

Likewise: contradictions and historical conundrums of the Bible don’t really affect an Evangelical bibliology—provided we manage to retain the language of revelation, inspiration, and authority (often further freighted with the language of inerrancy). I do not think the biblical phenomena can be so easily squared with the terminology that Holsclaw wants to keep, not without some careful reframing of those concepts, which Holsclaw does not do. As I asked earlier, how might “revelation” help us with the very contradictions in Scripture Holsclaw affirms?

At any rate, Holsclaw’s affirmation of the language of reimagination seems to have a ceiling:

". . .our ‘sacred responsibility’ isn’t just to continue the reimagining process, but to faithfully witness to these realities as if they are true for the whole world, all of reality."

But to bear faithful witness is precisely to accept the sacred responsibility of reimagining God, because bearing witness always has a context, is always particularized in time and space, including in the Bible.

“Faithful” does not mean following a theological abstraction. In fact, even in those passages, Holsclaw adduces above, I am seeing the revelation of the mystery of Christ, i.e., Christ is the mystery that is revealed. Faithfully witnessing to this paradoxical “revealed mystery” requires embracing our sacred responsibility to imagine how the Spirit is active among us.

The question before us is What will faithful witness-bearing look like here and now? How will that witness be articulated as “true for the whole world” as Holsclaw puts it? Working toward that end is precisely why “sacred responsibility” is not a theological liability but a theological and spiritual necessity—not to mention simply unavoidable.

And My Last Point

The review ends as follows:

"Conservatives focus too much on revelation. And Progressives focus too much on wisdom (and/or love). What we need is both. Only then will the church grow up into all maturity in Christ by the power of the Spirit to the glory of the Father. (my emphasis)"

I disagree. To repeat my earlier point—conservatives don’t focus too much on revelation but on particular models of revelation. Progressives don’t jettison revelation but conceive of it differently. I don’t think combining somehow conservative and progressive ingredients will solve the problem since they are operating from very different theological starting points. We can’t just duct tape the two together.

I don’t think that either [evangelical - res] theologians or biblicists have a better handle on truth than the other. But if I may put yet another card on the table, I believe Holsclaw and others who would champion this kind of theology and pastoral care, will need to reframe, recalibrate—reimagine—how we think of revelation given the rather complex and messy nature of Scripture from a historical point of view.

Doing that well is how I believe “the church [will] grow up into all maturity in Christ by the power of the Spirit to the glory of the Father.”

I appreciate the exchange here and I am grateful for Holsclaw taking the time to engage my book. But in my estimation, the theology of Scripture out of which he critiques How the Bible Actually Works is not the theological and pastoral corrective he poses it to be….

Whitehead in 5 Minute Videos, Lessons 1-20

Five Minute ​Whitehead Videos

Lessons 1 - 20

by Jay McDaniel

Website Link

Reading Whitehead's Process and Reality

with help from Twenty Short Videos

SEE ALSO PROCESS RESOURCE PAGE

Process Thought is an Attitude and Outlook on Life, International in Scope, Influenced by the

Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead

The introductory video introduces process thought and explains the purpose of the series. Dr. Jay McDaniel (the narrator) introduces himself and presents process thought as an attitude toward life emphasizing creativity, interconnectedness, and respect for life. He gives you a sense of who and where process thinkers are, and he introduces a diagram -- the Tree Diagram -- which compares process thought to a growing tree.

Introductory Video

The roots are Whitehead's philosophy; the trunk consists of twenty key ideas that flow from his philosophy; and the branches consist of application. The twenty key ideas can be found in English and Chinese on the Open Horizons website: Twenty Key Ideas. JJB also introduces many applications of process thinking on a wide variety of topics: ecology, education, culture, spirituality, science, art, music, and food culture, for example. 

For example, if you are interested in practical applications to ecology, see John Cobb's Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet. Or if you are interested in spirituality, see Replanting Yourself in Beauty or Trust in Beauty. 

However, this course focuses on the roots as developed in Whitehead's Process and Reality. As you take the course it is helpful, but not necessary, to have a copy of Whitehead's Process and Reality alongside you, making sure that you read the selected pages. It is best to read the text very slowly, without rushing. Do not worry if there are phrases you do not understand. If you watch and reflect upon these videos, you will have a good understanding of many ideas in Process and Reality.

Lesson One

​Lesson One

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, pages xi-xii

Key Theme: There are four sources for wisdom: Science, Art, Religion, and Ethics.

This lesson focuses on the first two pages of the preface to Process and Reality. With help from highlighted texts, it presents Whitehead's aims in writing the book; explains that Whitehead spoke of his philosophy as a philosophy of organism; and talks about four kinds of experience Whitehead wanted to unify: scientific, aesthetic, moral, and religious. At the end Dr. McDaniel explains that, for Whitehead, the wisdom of the perspective he develops will lie in the overall scheme, and that this scheme is gradually developed throughout the book.

Lesson Two

Lesson Two

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiii

Key Theme: Thinking and feeling and decision-making form a whole.

Following a brief review of the previous lesson, this lesson turns to a list of nine fallacies which Whitehead lists in the preface found on page xiii of the Preface. These are fallacies which Whitehead seeks to avoid. This lesson focuses on three of them: (1) the fallacy of distrusting speculative philosophy, (2) the fallacy of trusting that language is an adequate expression of ideas, and (3) the fallacy of thinking that the human mind can be divided into mutually external compartments or faculties.

Lesson Three 

​Lesson Three

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiii (cont.)

Key Theme: Reality does not conform to subject-predicate grammar.

Lesson three continues in explication of nine ideas repudiated or rejected by Whitehead as he begins to develop his philosophy. After a short review of the previous lesson, Dr. McDaniel discusses one of the most important "fallacies" Whitehead sought to avoid. It is that of thinking that the world in which we live, and our experience of it, can be understood on the analogy of the subject-predicate mode of grammatical expression. 

In so doing the lesson introduces an idea that is central to the process tradition: namely that "entities" emerge out of their relations with other "entities" and that there are no entities existing in isolation. The emphasis on relationality is one reason that Whitehead called his philosophy a philosophy of organism.

Lesson Four

Lesson Four

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiii (cont.)

Key Theme: In philosophy no form of experience should be excluded.

Lesson Four presents Whitehead's idea that the starting point for philosophical thought is experience and explains that, for Whitehead, all kinds of experience must be taken into account: experience anxious and carefree, experience happy and grieving, experience emotional and experience intellectual, experience normal and abnormal, experience asleep and experience awake. This lesson also introduces the idea that Whitehead was a radical empiricist, rejecting the sensationalist doctrine of perception in the interests of recognizing the potential wisdom of many forms of experience.

*Lesson Five

Lesson Five

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiii (cont.) 

Key Theme: There are no vacuous actualities; nature is alive.

With help from visual images from the French artist and post-Impressionist painter, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), this lesson introduces Whitehead's idea that the whole of the universe is "alive" in varying degrees and ways, and that there are no vacuous actualities. A vacuous actuality is an actuality which lacks any interiority or agency; it is a mere thing. 

Whitehead's philosophy is known for its proposal that all genuine actualities in our universe prehend their actual worlds from their own perspective, and that the objects we see in our world are either genuine actualities in their own right or nexus (aggregates) of such actualities. Mountains, for example, are aggregate expressions of actualities with prehensive vitality. 

One well-known process philosopher, David Ray Griffin, speaks of this as panexperientialism. In this website we sometimes call it panprehensionality. Whitehead's notion of prehension is dealt with in a subsequent lesson.

Lesson Six

​Lesson Six

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiv

Key Theme: We all have worldviews, but no one has the final word. 

Lesson Six introduces four impressions that dominate Whitehead's thinking as he writes Process and Reality: (1) The age of criticism has done it's work, and it is time for construction, (2) the true method of philosophical construction is to frame a set of ideas, drawing from many forms of experience, and see if they help interpret and illuminate experience, (3) all forms of thought are influenced by a philosophical scheme of one sort or another, acknowledged or not, and (4) when it comes to sounding the depths of things, all schemes are finite and fallible. "The merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly."

Lesson Seven

Lesson Seven

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 7

Key Theme: Creativity is the ultimate reality of the universe

Lesson Seven explores four key themes, based on a very important paragraph in the first chapter of Part One of Process and Reality. The ideas are that (1) the ultimate reality is Creativity, which is ultimate by virtue of its actualizations; (2) God is the primordial self-actualization of creativity, but not the ultimate reality itself, (3) the emphasis on Creativity resembles Asian -- Chinese and Indian -- ways of thinking; and (4) when it comes to thinking about ultimates, some process thinkers (but not Whitehead himself) speak of different kinds of ultimates around which different cultural and religious traditions may be centered.

Lesson Eight

Lesson Eight

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 22

Key Idea: The actual entity is a process of prehending the actual world. 

Lesson Eight begins the process of explicating the eight key "categories of existence" as adumbrated in Whitehead's Process and Reality. Among Whiteheadians there are two complementary ways of understanding an actual entity. One way begins with submicroscopic matter and works "up" to human experience. It presents actual entities as very tiny energy-events with the depths of matter. The other way begins with a single moment of human experience and works "down" to submicroscopic matter. It presents actual entities as activities, or processes, amid which, in the moment at hand, a human being feels the presence of the actual world. This lesson begins in the second way. It embodies what philosophers might call a phenomenological approach to Whitehead's idea of an actual entity. In the tradition of Whiteheadian scholarship there are many approaches: phenomenological, speculative, and post-structural. 

Phenomenological approaches begin with lived human experience; speculative approaches begin with speculations about the universe; post-structural approaches begin more general sensibilities concerning multiplicity, difference, interconnectedness, and flow. In these lessons we often begin phenomenologically, but feel free to turn in the other two directions. And so it is with most Whiteheadian thinkers.

Lesson Nine

​Lesson Nine

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 21

Key Idea: The many become one and are increased by one.

Lesson Nine considers selected passages from six paragraphs in a section of Whitehead's Process and Reality called The Category of the Ultimate. One of the most important ideas presented in these passages is that Creativity is, in Whitehead's words, "the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matters of fact." His idea is that every actual fact in the universe -- every actual entity -- is a "production of novel togetherness." This means that an entity is not simply "one" but also "many." It is the many becoming one. The video uses the example of a child's relationship to her parents to illustrate the point. Her parents are part of who she is, and in her very inclusion of them within her own life, she is more than them. Always she is becoming herself, and the self who becomes at any given moment becomes part of a many which influence her in the future.

Lesson Ten

Lesson Ten

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 18

Key Theme: Everything - even God -- is an act of experiencing.

Lesson Ten focuses on a unique paragraph in Process and Reality, where Whitehead proposes an answer to the question: What is everything made of? Whereas some traditions in the world might way that everything is made of something like matter and whereas some might say that everything is made of consciousness; Whitehead proposes a more Buddhist or Chinese response. Everything is made of events or, to be more specific, drops of experience, complex and interdependent. Here we find a vivid instance of Whitehead's event-cosmology. In traditional Chinese thinking philosophers speak of the totality of all that exists as wan wu (萬物) sometimes translated as the Ten Thousand Things. In a Whiteheadian context the Ten Thousand Things are Ten Thousand Events. There is nothing more real than events, and they are themselves drops of experience. At any given moment we ourselves are events composed of our own experience, yet related to everything else in the universe. God is an event, too. And so is a puff of energy in outer space. The universe is a vast unfolding network of inter-being or, perhaps better, inter-events.

Lesson Eleven

Lesson Eleven

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 39

Key Idea: There are two kinds of reality: actuality and potentiality.

In Whitehead's philosophy something is "real" if it can be experienced as an object of one sort or another and thus, as an object, make a difference in experience. Lesson Eleven introduces the idea that some objects of experience are possibilities rather than actualities. They are real but not actual, because they do not feel or prehend their surroundings and do not make decisions. The most abstract of these objects are what Whitehead calls eternal objects. They are pure potentials which may be actualized in some universe or cosmic epoch, even if not our own. These objects are similar to Plato's Forms, and Whitehead was indeed influenced by Plato. The lesson concludes with remarks concerning the creative and performing arts and the natural sciences, suggesting that they are ways of exploring and presenting potentialities.

Lesson Twelve

Lesson Twelve

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 23

Key Idea: Propositions are not simply statements of belief; they are lures for feeling.

Lesson Twelve discusses Whitehead's idea of a proposition -- or lure for feeling -- showing how propositions are means by which novelty enters the world. By way of illustration, this segment plays some of the music of the jazz musician, John Coltrane, and presents propositions in light of the innovative spirit of jazz. Whitehead proposes that, at every moment of our lives, we are improvising responses to given situations, adding our own voice to the very history of the universe. Other creatures are doing this, too. We live in an improvisational universe, in which indeterminacy is as real, and as important, as determinacy. Thus, for Whitehead, the future is always open, and the future is never entirely pre-determined by the past or the present. This is the case even for God, who knows what is possible in the future, but not what is actual until it becomes actual.

Lesson Thirteen

Lesson Thirteen

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 51.

Key Idea: Prehensions are the means by which entities are present in others. 

Lesson Thirteen introduces two of the most important ideas in Whitehead's philosophy: prehensions and subjective forms. . Every actual entity, every moment of experience, consists of acts of experiencing or prehending many realities which "become one" in the act of experiencing them. The realities can be other actual entities or pure potentialities, or combinations of them. Prehensions may be conscious or unconscious; in human life most are unconscious. Consciousness is but the tip of the experiential iceberg. Prehensions are the most fundamental element in actual entities, the means by which the universe is held together and things are present in one another. Lesson Thirteen takes a conversation between a mother and her daughter as a way of illustration prehension and their complementary notion: subjective forms.

Lesson Fourteen

​Lesson Fourteen

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 34.

Key Idea: Reality is thoroughly social. Molecules and atoms, planets and stars are societies, too. There are no self-contained facts.

Lesson Fourteen introduces the ideas of nexus and society to readers. Most of the macroscopic objects that we perceive around us are not single actual entities, but rather aggregates of actual entities unified by their prehensions of one another (nexus) and perhaps also by a common characteristic which they inherit from predecessors in the the nexus, thus giving them more specific definition (society). There are many kinds of societies. A human being is a society too. She is a personally-ordered society who consists of many moments of experience (many actual entities) in succession, each inheriting from the predecessors with special intimacy. There is no single person who underlies the change; there are many subjects in succession. The idea is very Buddhist: "No thinker thinks twice and no experiencer experiences twice." Lesson Fourteen ends by offering the idea that perhaps the universe as a whole is gathered into an ongoing Life, too. This is what Whitehead means by the consequent nature of God.

*Lesson Fifteen

Lesson Fifteen

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 81.

Key Idea: The body plays an essential role in human life: the withness of the body.

Lesson Fifteen introduces three ideas that are important to Whitehead in Process and Reality: the withness of the body, experience in the mode of causal efficacy, and experience in the mode of presentational immediacy. Experience in the mode of causal efficacy is visceral experience. It occurs when we feel affected or influenced by bodily states and by realities outside our bodies in direct, energetic ways. It is an important part of bodily experience and serves a perpetual reminder that, in our daily lives, we are with our bodies and our bodies are with us. Whitehead calls it the withness of the body. This does not mean that our minds are precisely identifical with our bodies; we can have attitudes toward our bodies which are healthy or unhealthy, and these attitudes occur in our minds. But our bodies are marvelously intricate and complex systems of energy which nourish us, give us a sense of direction, offer us wisdom, and connect us with the world. And ultimately, says Whitehead, the whole world is like a body to us. Even God -- if God exists-- is embodied. The universe is God's body.

Lesson Sixteen

Lesson Sixteen

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 43

Key Idea: Decision is the very meaning of actuality

Lesson Sixteen focuses on Whitehead's idea that the very meaning of actuality lies in the notion of decision. In Whitehead's philosophy a decision is not a "conscious" decision, but rather a subjectivity activity -- conscious or unconscious -- in which some possibilities for responding to a given situation are excluded or cut off, while others are then actualizes. A woman climbing a mountain, movement by moment, is making conscious decisions which constitute her very actualityi in the moment at hand. And so, thinks Whitehead, are the energy-events within the very depths of atoms. Understood in this way, decision is one of the primary expressions of the ultimate reality of the universe: creativity. Decisions may be wise or unwise, productive or destructive, violent or graceful -- whatever their nature, they are the very reason why things unfolds as they do. From Whitehead's perspective the universe is not simply an unfolding of abstract ideas. The world is not the outcome of mathematical formulas. It is the outcome of decisions.

Lesson Seventeen

Lesson Seventeen

Key Text: Process and Reality, pages 48-51.

Key Idea: Every moment of human experience is a concrescence of the universe.

Lesson Seventeen offers the most systematic summary of Whitehead's idea of experience available in this series of videos. The diagrams were created by a student at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, USA. There is a danger in diagrams, insofar as they can lead people into overly-static and linear ways of looking at the world. Whitehead's philosophy is more holistic and dynamic. This means that, when we think of experience, we need to hold onto diagrams with a relaxed grasp, fully aware that experience is always more than images. Nevertheless, the diagrams may help viewers more fully understand Whitehead's concept of experience. In the narrative the experiencing subject is imagined as a human being, but it is important to remember that, in Whitehead's philosophy, there is subjectivity everywhere: in the infinitely small and the infinitely large. Even in the depths of atoms, and even in the depths of God, there is something akin to what is depicted in the diagrams: prehending, subjective form, and decision. However, in God, as Whitehead understands God, there is no perishing of immediacy. God is the inclusive and everlasting act of concrescence who shares in all finite moments such as those depicted above. (See Lesson Nineteen.)

Lesson Eighteen

​Lesson Eighteen

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 229

Key Idea: The beauty of life is felt in contrast; the aim of life is to weave them.

Lesson Eighteen introduces an idea which is extremely important to Whitehead, and which he lists as among the eight categories of existence he seeks to illuminate in Process and Reality. This is the idea of contrasts. For some in the English-speaking world, the word contrast can suggest conflict; but for Whitehead it suggested complementarity. The yin-yang diagram in traditional Chinese thinking offers a helpful image of contrasts. Whitehead was interested in how we can experience objects in the world through contrasts, and also in how we try to weave our own emotions -- our subjective forms -- into contrasts. He believed that all experiencing subjects, anywhere in the universe, are seeking contrasts or, to use another word important to him, beauty. They - we -- seek harmony and intensity, neither to the exclusion of the other. In the very seeking there is a zest or vitality which, for Whitehead, is part of life's meaning. Even the adventure of the universe as One -- even God -- is enriched by and forever seeking a harmony of contrasts.

Lesson Nineteen

​Lesson Nineteen

Relevant Text: Process and Reality, pages 342-351

Relevant Idea: God is a non-coercive guide and a fellow sufferer who understands.

Lesson Nineteen presents Whitehead's understanding of God. This is an aspect of Whitehead's cosmology which which many religiously-minded people find especially important: whether Jewish or Muslim or Christian, Hindu or Taoist or Buddhist. In Whitehead's philosophy God has two aspects: a non-coercive but guiding aspect which is home to all the potentialities which the universe can actualize, and which is within each experiencing subject as its own innermost lure toward full aliveness; and a receptive side which shares in the experiences of all living beings, anywhere and everywhere, and is affected by all that is felt. God is, as it were, the deep Mind and the deep Listening. Whitehead thought it more rational to believe in God, thus understood, than not to believe in God; and he believed that this way of thinking about God is consonant with the view of the universe we gain from post-mechanistic science. In a later book, Adventures of Ideas, he speaks of the guiding side of God as an Eros by which the universe is lured into adventure, moment by moment, epoch by epoch; and the receptive side as a Harmony of Harmonies within which, in certain moments, the restlessness of adventure drops away and people feel deep peace.

Lesson Twenty

​Lesson Twenty

Relevant Text: Process and Reality as a Whole

Key Idea: Why Whitehead? So many reasons.

Lesson Twenty brings the series to a close by articulating various reasons why people in different parts of the world are attracted to Whitehead's philosophy. To the many reasons identified in the video, one very important reason should be added. Many scholars in the academic world believe that Whitehead's philosophy can advance knowledge in specific disciplines: chemistry, physics, psychology, sociology, biology, philosophy, economics, business, culture studies. The work of the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California, can introduce readers to developments in these and many other areas. It is the best single, online resource for finding resources and keeping abreast of developments within the disciplines. 

At the same time, Whitehead's philosophy offers a way of moving beyond the disciplinary fragmentation that has separated academic disciplines from one another and from forms of practice, in real world, which might help guide the world toward sustainable communities. When it comes to practicing process thought, some Whiteheadian thinkers turn toward particular questions of public policy: economics,agriculture, manufacturing, education, governance. In this website, John Cobb's Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet and Foundations for a New Civilization offers an intimation of the policy-oriented directions. There is also much work being done today using Whitehead's thought encourage cross-cultural dialogue, including inter-religious dialogue. Why Whitehead? So many reasons.

This does not mean that Whitehead's philosophy has all the answers. For Whiteheadians the world needs many points of view, including many which offer critiques of Whitehead's own thinking. Whitehead hoped that his own ideas would be tested, applied, revised and, where necessary, replaced.  And he did not want his philosophy to be turned into a dogma. Recall the point he makes in the preface: "How shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly." (xiv) Process philosophy is more -- much more -- than Whitehead. It is an ongoing tradition, inspired by Whitehead's ideas, but moving beyond his thinking, too, fully cognizant that there are no final answers, only lures for feeling.

Easter Week - The Stations of the Cross

I know my sheep. They hear my voice and follow.
Their names are written upon my heart.

Now The Green Blade Riseth

The Stations of the Cross

Waiting at the Stations of the Cross

Amazon Link

Reference Sites

Malcom Guite - Good Friday, The Stations of the Cross

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2020/04/10/good-friday-the-first-12-stations-of-the-cross-4/

Malcom Guite - Maundy Thursday

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2020/04/10/a-new-maundy-thursday-poem/

Malcom Guite - Father Forgive Them

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2020/04/10/father-forgive-a-poem-for-good-friday/

Malcom Guite - Good Friday

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/good-friday-the-stations-of-the-cross/

Malcom Guite - Holy Saturday

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/tag/stations-of-the-cross/


Malcom Guite - A Holy Sonnet

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/a-sonnet-for-easter-dawn-4/

Malcom Guite - A New Easter

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/easter-2020-a-new-poem/

Stations Of The Cross In Poetry & Prayer

A Poem by Rosalinda Flores Martinez

2010

Station 1: Jesus is condemned to death

You were betrayed Jesus

Even by trusted friends
Still shows us charity
Life for us you mend

Your power brings to serve
People you call your own
Condemned to death, for us
A Father’s promise sown

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 2: Jesus bears his cross

Cross, you bear means love
Almighty’s gift to the world
Jesus, brother, keeper
To journey with us, Lord

You became man
Mercy for humanity
Sky and earth unite
Miracle flowing sanctity

Jesus on the Cross, by your love heal us.


Station 3: Jesus falls the first time

Lord, let us hold you
Lord, let us rise with you
Power in humility
Shows us to be true

No man is perfect
Only God - is
Lord Jesus, as example
If fallen, hold to peace

Jesus on the cross, by your love heals us.

Station 4: Jesus meets his mother

What grief for a mother
What grief for a child
What grief for a beloved
Alone in sorrow, Jesus guides

Feel us Jesus
In sorrow and isolation
But God’s will is best
Have mercy in temptation

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 5: Jesus is helped by Simon

Simon of Cyrene, hail to God
Courage and cross you lifted
Bridge to us from heaven
Angel signs we’re gifted

And so we come in prayer
Flesh, thoughts, and our hearts
Your holy cross dear Jesus
To us don’t ever part.

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 6: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

Saint, Oh Saint Veronica
Ring bells to God’s workers
Crown of thorns on Holy face
Hope and bliss, His blood carves

O, poor Face we love you
Face of beauty, Face of light
In suffering and brokenness
Sacred Face of might

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 7: Jesus falls a second time

My Lord! My God! My Savior!
We trust our lives in Thee
You know how weak we all are
We beg, we beg, we plea

My Lord! My God!
Be here to servants frail
Hold me, hold us
O’er wind we fly, on sea we sail

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 8: Jesus speaks to the women

Help us to love Mother Mary
You longed your parents, too
The crowd, are us, your family
How precious all to you

Speak to us, we long for Thee
The bravest soldier frees
From sin and wars
Your words a bomb and keys

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 9: Jesus falls a third time

Race and blows
The third’s the final count
Your sacrifice, a painful lash
Forgive our sins abound

Hold tight hold, dear Jesus
Please - do not let go
These eyes are full of tears
Wash us white as snow

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 10: Jesus is stripped of his garments

When all is done for love
So fair and pure the nakedness
And all that Christ gave
T’ was peace for all and happiness

Strip all, be all
We ask You for nothing
Let You alone fill us
Christ, O Christ be everything!

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 11: Jesus is nailed to the cross

Nails piercing us
First pierced on you
Nations already won
Sacred Cross on earth anew

Man and tides pushing rocks
When life cries in pain
Trials come harrowing
Lord let Your Kingdom reign.

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

How You loved us, Jesus; How great, You are God’s Son
How You loved us, Jesus; How great, You are God’s Son:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do
Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise
Woman, this is your son. And this is your mother
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
I thirst
It is finished.”

Then, Jesus cried out in a loud voice
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 12: Jesus dies on the cross

Tomorrow’s death so scary
Life today we pray
Us - forever with you Jesus
With Almighty Father lay

Jesus how we love you
Let us see Thy face
Forgive us in transgressions
A Holy Cross wins grace

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 13: Jesus is taken from the cross

God’s justice stark in love
Priests on temples pray
Breath of Holy Spirit blows
Forever brothers all we stay

Body whole and pure
No evil can defeat
The triumph of the cross
For holy workers banquet

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

Station 14: Jesus is laid in the tomb

Love never fails; never ends
The Holy Bible writes
Wake us up dear Jesus
At dawn, resurrect flight

We adore you O Christ
Have mercy -
Your holy cross be salvation
Hearts with Thee forever, have mercy.

Jesus on the cross, by your love heal us.

We love you.
I love you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Easter Sunday Service: April 12, 2020

Office of Religious Life Princeton

Easter Sunday Worship Service

Rev. Alison L. Boden, Ph.D.

will be preaching on Easter Sunday, and

the service will also have magnificent music,

with soloists, Jennifer Borghi '02

and Samuel Duffey '19,

Eric Plutz, University Organist, and

Penna Rose, Director of Chapel Music.

Online Concert

https://www.princeton.edu/events/2020/online-concert-stations-cross

The Stations of the Cross

View our organ concert online Friday, April 10 at 7pm! “The Stations of the Cross” by Marcel Dupré. Featuring organist, Ken Cowan, the poetry of Paul Claudel, and Rev. Alison L. Boden, Ph.D. as narrator. The link is available here and the program is below.

Organ Concert: “The Stations of the Cross” (Le Chemin de la Croix) by Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) with poetry of Paul Claudel, organist, Ken Cowan and reader, Rev. Alison L. Boden, Ph.D.**

Poem: “The Way of the Cross” by Paul Claudel, translated by J. Eric Swenson, and read by Rev. Alison L. Boden, Ph.D.

First Station: It’s all over. We have judged God and we have condemned him to die. We don’t want Jesus Christ with us any longer, for he exasperates us. We have no other ruler than Caesar! No other counsel than blood and gold!

Crucify him if you like, but get rid of him! Get him out of here! “Take him away! Take him away!” Since it can’t be helped, let him be sacrificed, and give us Barabbas! Pilate sits in judgement at the place called Gabbatha. “Have you nothing to say?” asks Pilate. And Jesus does not answer. “I find no wrong in this man,” declares Pilate, “but, let him die, since you insist! I give him to you. “Behold the man.” Here he is, a crown on his head and dressed in purple. One last time these eyes turn towards us, full of tears and blood! What can we do? There is no way to keep him with us any longer. As he was a scandal for the Jews, he is among us an absurdity. Besides, the sentence has been pronounced, lacking no detail, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. And one sees the crowd clamor and the judge wash his hands.

Second Station: They return his clothes and bring him the cross. “God be with you,” says Jesus. “O Cross that I have long desired!” And you, Christian, watch and tremble! O what a solemn moment in which Christ first accepts the eternal Cross! O day of consummation of the tree of knowledge! Look, sinner, and see what your sin has led to.

No more crosses without Christ, and no more crimes without a God upon them! Certainly man’s misery is great, yet we have nothing to say, for God is now here, come not to explain, but to fulfill. Jesus receives the Cross just as we take Holy Communion.

As prophesied by Jeremiah, “We give him wood for his bread.” How long, how ungainly, how massive weighs the cross! How hard, how stiff, how heavy the burden of a useless sinner! How long to bear, step by step, until one dies upon it! Are you going to carry that all alone, Lord Jesus?

Make me patient, in turn, with the wood you wish me to bear. For we must carry the cross before the cross carries us.

Third Station: March on! Victim and oppressors together, everything shudders toward Calvary. God led by the collar, suddenly falters and slumps to the earth. What do you say, Lord, of this first fall? Now that you know it, what do you think of this moment? When one falls, pushed by the sway of an unbalanced load! How do you find it, this earth which you created? O not only is the righteous path harsh and rough, the evil path also proves treacherous and dizzying! It is not followed quickly and easily, for one must learn stone by stone, and the foot often slips, although the heart perseveres. O Lord, by these blessed knees, these two knees which together failed you, by the sudden nausea and fall at the beginning of the gruesome Way, by the trap which succeeded, by the earth which you have known, save us from the first sin, which one commits inadvertently!

Fourth Station: O mothers, who have watched a first and only child die, remember that last night beside the moaning little being, the water not taken, the ice, and the thermometer, and death, which comes little by little, no longer to be ignored. Put on his old shoes and change his clothes. Someone is coming who will take him away from me and put him in the ground. Goodby my dear little one! Goodby, flesh of my flesh!

The Fourth Station is Mary, who has accepted everything. Here on the street corner she awaits the Treasure of absolute Poverty. There are no tears in her eyes, her throat is dry. She says not a word and watches Jesus approach. She accepts. One again she accepts. Her outcry severely repressed in her firm, strict heart. She says not a word and watches Jesus Christ. The Mother watches her Son, the Church her Redeemer, her soul goes out to him as violently as the wail of a dying soldier! She stands before God and lays bare her soul. There is nothing in her heart which protests or draws back, every fiber of her transfixed heart accepts and consents. And as God himself is there, she is also present. She accepts and watches this Son she conceived in her womb. She says not a word and watches the Saint of Saints.

Fifth Station: The moment comes when one simply cannot go on. That’s where we fit in, and you allow that we be used also, perhaps coerced, to carry your Cross. As Simon of Cyrene, who is harnessed to this piece of wood. He grasps it firmly and walks behind Jesus, so that none of the Cross may drag on the ground and be lost.

Sixth Station: All of the disciples have fled. Peter himself passionately denies all! A woman throws herself into the thick of insults, into the arms of death, finds Jesus and holds his face in her hands.

Teach us, Veronica, to defy human respect. For he who sees Christ not merely as a symbol, but as a true person, to others soon appears offensive and suspect. His way of life is inside out, his motives are no longer theirs.

Something in him always seems to escape elsewhere. A mature man who says his rosary and impudently goes to confession, who abstains from meat on Friday and is seen among women at mass, is laughable and scandalous; amusing, but also irritating. He had better watch what he is doing, for others see him. He had better watch each step, for he serves as a sign. For each Christian shapes the actual, although unworthy, image of his Christ. And the face he shows bears the trivial reflection of the abominable and triumphant face of the God in his heart!

Show it to us once again Veronica, on the cloth with which you comforted the holy countenance of the Last Sacrament. This veil of pious wool Veronica used to hide the face of the Vintager on the day of his intoxication, so that his image might cling to it forever. An image made of his blood and tears and our spit!

Seventh Station: It is not the stones under foot, nor the halter overstrained; it is the soul which suddenly fails. O in the middle of our life! O the spontaneous fall! When the magnet no longer has a pole and faith no longer a heaven, because the road is long and the end distant, because one remains alone without any consolation! How slowly time passes! Nurturing a secret hatred for the uncompromising injunction and for this wooden companion! This is why we stretch forth both arms at once like someone swimming! No longer do we fall on our knees, but on our face. The body falls, it is true and in the same moment the soul consents. Save us from the Second fall, which one takes willfully and out of boredom.

Eighth Station: Before he ascends the mountain for the last time, Jesus raises his hand and turns toward the people following him, a few poor women in tears with their children in their arms. Let’s not simply look, let’s listen to Jesus, for he is there. It is not a man who raises his hand at the center of this pitiful illumination, it is God who, for our salvation, has suffered not only in paintings. Thus was this man Almighty God! It is true then! There was a day when God truly did suffer for us! What is this danger, from which we have been spared at such a price? Is man’s salvation such a simple matter that the Son must tear himself away from the Father to attain it? If that is Paradise, what is Hell? What shall be done with the dead wood, if green wood is treated like this?

Ninth Station: “I have fallen again, and this time, it’s the end. I would like to get up again, but it’s impossible. For I have been squeezed like a fruit and the man on my shoulders weighs too much. I have done evil and the man who died in me is too heavy! So let’s die, for it is easier to lie down than to stand up, harder to live than to die, more difficult yet, on the Cross than beneath it.”

Save us from the Third sin, that of despair! Nothing is lost as long as death has not been tasted! I have finished with this piece of wood, but the nails are yet to come! Jesus falls a third time, but he is at the top of Calvary.

Tenth Station: Here is the barn floor where the grain of the holy wheat is ground. The Father stands naked, the Temple veil has been torn away. God is manhandled, the Flesh of the Flesh trembles, the Universe, attacked at its source, shudders to its very core! Now that they have taken the tunic and seamless robe. We raise our eyes and dare to look at Jesus, pure and unadorned. They have left you nothing, Lord, they have taken everything, even the clothes which cling to the flesh, for today they pull off the monk’s hood and the blessed virgin’s veil. They have taken everything, there remains nothing for him to hide in. He stands totally defenseless and stark naked. He is delivered to mankind and revealed. What! That’s your Jesus! He is ridiculous! He is beaten and covered with filth. He belongs with the psychiatrists and the police. “Gross beasts have besieged me. Deliver me, Lord, from the mouth of the dog.” He is not the Christ. He is not the Son of Man. He is not God. His teachings are false and his Father is not in heaven. He’s crazy! He’s an imposter! Make him talk! Keep him quiet! Anne’s servant slaps him and Renan kisses him. They took everything. But the scarlet blood remains. They took everything. But the open wound remains! God is hidden. But the man of sorrows remains. God is hidden. My weeping brother remains! From your humiliation Lord, from your shame, take pity on the defeated, on the weak oppressed by the strong! From the horror of that last garment taken from you, take pity on all those who are mutilated! On the child, operated on three times, encouraged by the doctor, and on the poor invalid whose bandages are changed. On the humiliated husband, on the son beside his dying mother, And on this terrifying love, which must be torn from our heart!

Eleventh Station: Now God is no longer with us. He lies on the ground. The mob has taken him by the throat as dogs take a stag.

So you did come! You are truly among us Lord! You have been sat upon, your heart has been knelt upon. This hand forced by the executioner is the right hand of the Almighty. This Lamb has been tied by the feet, the Omnipresent is bound. His height and span have been marked on the cross. When he feels our nails, we’ll watch his expression.

Eternal Son, limited only by the bounds of Infinity, Marked here among us by that narrow space which you have controlled! Here is this body Elijah stretches out in death, here lies David’s throne and Solomon’s glory, here is the bed of our cruel, powerful passion with You! It is difficult for God to assume our stature. They tug, and the half-dislocated body snaps and cries aloud. Drawn with the tension of a wine press, he is hideously quartered. So the prophecy might be fulfilled that: “They have pierced my hands and feet, they have numbered each of my bones.” You are captured Lord, and can no longer escape. You are nailed on the cross, hand and foot. Like a heretic or a lunatic, I seek nothing more from heaven. This God held by four nails is enough for me.

Twelfth Station: A moment ago he was suffering, it is true, but now he is going to die. The Great Cross sways faintly in the night to the pulse of God’s breathing. Everything is ready. One can only leave the Apparatus alone, to inexhaustibly draw from the bond of man’s double nature, from the hypostatic union of body and soul, all of his inherent potential for suffering. He is all alone as Adam was alone in Eden. For three hours he remains alone and savors the Wine, the unconquerable ignorance of man in the absence of God! Our guest grows weary and his forehead slowly droops. He no longer sees his Mother, and his Father abandons him. He tastes the cup, and the death, which slowly poisons him. Have You not had enough of this bitter wine diluted with water, to cause You to suddenly straighten up and cry: “I thirst”? Are You thirsty Lord? Are You talking to me? Do You still need me and my sins? Am I needed so that all may be consummated?

Thirteenth Station: Here the Passion ends and the Compassion continues. Christ is no longer on the Cross. He is with Mary, who has received him; as she accepted him in prophecy, she receives him consummated. Christ, who suffered before all, is again cradled at his Mother’s breast. The Church forever embraces and watches over her beloved. That from God, that from the Mother, and that which man has done, all of this is with her forever under her habit. She has taken him in; she sees, touches, prays, weeps, and admires; she is the winding sheet and the ointment, the sepulcher and the incense. Here ends the Cross and begins the Tabernacle.

Fourteenth Station: The tomb where Christ is put, having suffered and died, the hole hastily unsealed so that he might spend his night there, before the crucified revived and ascended to the Father, this is not merely a new tomb, it is my flesh, it is man, your creature, more profound than the earth! Now that his heart is open and his hands are pierced, there is no cross among us on which his body will not fit, there is no sin in us to which his wound will not correspond. So come to us, from the altar where you are hidden, Redeemer of the World!Lord, your creature is rent open and how profound he is!

Music: “The Stations of the Cross”

(Le Chemin de la Croix),

by Marcel Dupré (1886-1971)

performed by organist, Ken Cowan.

I. Jesus is condemned to death. Opening with a trumpet solo evoking Pilate’s command, “Gardes, saisissez-vous de cet homme,” (“guards, seize this man”) the music becomes increasingly tumultuous, depicting an agitated crowd shouting for the release of Barrabas, and for Jesus to be put to death. The theme for “Barrabas” is the rhythm of the name, (if pronounced BAR-ra-bas) played on trumpet stops. The crushing two-note climax, “To death,” which precipitates the quick dispersal of the mob, is heard again in station XII.

II. Jesus receives His cross. The March to Calvary begins, and the melodic theme of the Cross is heard repeatedly on reed registers; the stumbling steps of Jesus are illustrated in the accompaniment.

III. Jesus falls for the first time. The march continues. Labored sounding two-note groups describe Jesus’ weariness. The theme for Suffering is heard high in the treble. Finally Jesus’ strength fails and He falls under the weight of the cross. In the last few bars, the theme of Redemption is heard for the first time, pianissimo.

IV. Jesus meets His mother. A flute solo with string tone accompaniment depicts the Mater Dolorosa. The rather chromatic harmonies of the accompaniment might suggest her emotional turmoil. The same music will be heard again in Station XIII as she receives her son’s lifeless body. The theme of Agony is heard because Mary’s suffering is great.

V. Simon the Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the cross. Dupré evokes here a completely different atmosphere-we are in the countryside. The piece opens with pastoral sounding music played on flute stops. Simon, on his way into the city from the countryside, lends reluctant assistance bearing the cross, and does not find it easy at first. He is first depicted clumsily helping Jesus carry the cross and trying to get into step as the procession moves. A series of canons between the outside parts depict Simon’s attempts to assist. Finally the Cross theme is heard united over a range of two octaves, above and below the accompaniment. Finally he has synchronized his steps with those of Jesus. The Cross theme is inverted, and near the end there is a brief appearance of the Redemption motif.

VI. Jesus and Veronica. Veronica comes out of the crowd to wipe Jesus’ brow with a cloth, evoking the melodic theme of Compassion. The theme of the Cross is heard in the bass as Jesus pauses for a moment. As the movement ends the Redemption motif is heard again, beautifully harmonized.

VII. Jesus falls a second time. This station begins in the same slow, march-like rhythm heard at the beginning of the third station, but the accompaniment soon becomes more agitated. This is a more grotesque event than the first fall, and the horror of the scene is matched with ever more grinding dissonance.

VIII. Jesus comforts the women of Jerusalem. There are some women present who feel pity for Jesus, and the theme of Pity is a beautiful cantilena which pervades the entire movement, and will be heard again in Station XIV. The theme for Consolation is heard in the tenor register played on a reed stop, representing Jesus’ voice.

IX. Jesus falls a third time. The crowd, now exasperated by the slow pace of the procession, fervently clamors for blood, and shouts insults. The principal theme here is Persecution- three repeated notes followed by an ascending diminished triad. A busy chromatic accompaniment recalls a frenzied crowd. The third and final fall is sudden and devastating, but now the place of execution, Calvary has finally been reached, and a brief period of calm follows before the final indignities are inflicted.

X. Jesus is stripped of His clothes. The executioners strip Jesus of His clothes, and throw dice for His seamless coat. Dupré accompanies this scene with a rhythmic, sinister sounding piece played staccato on string stops. After a pause there follows the music of the Incarnation as if to remind the listener that for this purpose Jesus had come into the world. Jesus awaits His end, a pitiable figure indeed.

XI. Jesus is nailed on the Cross. Hammering fortissimo chords expressing the violent cruelty of the executioners become the theme of Crucifixion. The theme for Suffering (from Station III) is combined in longer phrases. The repetitive pedal line is an extension of the Cross motif, inverted.

XII. Jesus dies upon the Cross. The agony of the slow passing hours is represented with a still sounding introduction containing a theme similar to that of Redemption. The dying Jesus speaks His seven last words. A sudden and violent crescendo by the organ represents the earthquake, and the rending of the veil of the temple. Jesus has been put to death. An uneasy stillness follows the final tremors.

XIII. Jesus’ body is taken from the cross and laid in Mary’s bosom. A fluid and unsettled sounding arabesque on flute stops evoking the whirling of ropes accompanies the descent from the cross and the slow sliding movements by which the body is brought down. The theme of the now-accomplished Redemption is present. Mary’s music from Station IV is heard again at the end of this meditation as she holds the body of Jesus in her arms.

XIV. The body of Jesus is laid in the tomb. Pity, the theme of the eighth station, is the dominant theme of the cortege preceding Jesus’ entombment. The theme of Suffering also accounts for a large portion of this final scene. The epilogue contains some subtle musical inspiration. A heavenly stillness envelops the scene. The theme of Suffering, is now transformed into the Fruits of the Redemption. Flute melodies played high above illustrate the gates of heaven opening to those who participated in the events of that first Good Friday. As pointed out by Marcel Dupré’s biographer Graham Steed, the last two notes of the flute melody in the final station, G# and B natural are the same two notes, enharmonically changed and inverted that began the first station. The work ends as if to say “As for the way of the wicked, he turneth it upside down.”

Eighteen themes or leit-motifs

employed by Dupré in his work.

Twelve are melodic and six are rhythmic.

Melodic Themes:

The Cross (Stations II, V, VI, XI): Two (sometimes three) ascending or descending leaps of perfect fourths, preceded and followed by a major second, rising or falling as the case may be.

Suffering (Stations III, IX, XIV): A conjunct, descending triplet within the interval of a diminished fifth.

Redemption (Stations III, IV, V, VI, XIII): An ascending group of four stepwise notes.
Mary (Stations IV, XII): A descending major triad.

Compassion (Station VI): Two disjunct intervals of the third, the second repeated.

Pity (Stations VIII, XIV): An ascending group of four notes, preceded and followed by a dotted-note figure of repeated notes.

Consolation (Stations VIII, XII): A perfect fifth, ascending, the second note dotted; drop of a fourth, rising to the major third, sounded on a reed stop.

Persecution (Station IX): Three repeated notes followed by an ascending diminished triad.
Incarnation (final section of Station X): Minor thirds ascending, 2 by 2 with repetition of each second note, the repetition conveying the idea of suffering accepted.

Crucifixion (Station XI): The Cross motif inverted, and extended to a third downward jump of a perfect fourth. Agony: Similar to Redemption theme, with the second note dotted, and with a fifth note added to the upward progression.

The Fruits of Redemption (Station XIV): Suffering theme altered, the theme rising instead of falling.

Rhythmic Themes:

The Crowd (Station I): Intervals of major and minor thirds and fourths rising chromatically by semitones.

Barrabas (Station I): The rhythm of the name. (pronounced BAR-ra-bas)
Stumbling Steps or Jostling (Station II): Iambic short note on the beat followed by a dotted note.

Weariness (Stations III, VII, IX): Descending seconds, with repetition of the second note, suffering accepted.

Flagellation (Station X): Pairs of triplets made up of a descending fourth followed by a rising seventh, the second triplet starting on the last note of the first.

The Ropes (Station XIII): Four groups of triplets in a sliding chromatic outline.


Biographies:

Ken Cowan is one of North America’s finest concert organists. Praised for his dazzling artistry, impeccable technique and imaginative programming by audiences and critics alike, he maintains a rigorous performing schedule which takes him to major concert venues and churches in America, Canada, Europe, and Asia.

Recent feature performances have included appearances at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa California, Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall, Spivey Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall, as well as concerts in Germany and Korea. In addition, Mr. Cowan has been a featured artist in recent years at the national conventions of the American Guild of Organists held in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, has performed at many regional conventions of the AGO, and has been featured at several conventions of the Organ Historical Society and the Royal Canadian College of Organists.

Ken received the Master’s degree and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music/Institute of Sacred Music, studying organ with Thomas Murray. Prior to attending Yale, he graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with John Weaver. His major teacher during high school years was James Bigham, Organist/Choirmaster at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, in Buffalo, NY, which is not far from his hometown Thorold, Ontario, Canada.

In 2012 Mr. Cowan joined the keyboard faculty of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University as Associate Professor and head of the organ program. Previous positions have included Associate Professor of Organ at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, NJ, where he was awarded the 2008 Rider University Distinguished Teaching Award, and Associate Organist and Artist in Residence at Saint Bartholomew’s Church in New York City

The Rev. Alison L. Boden, Ph.D. has served as Dean of Religious Life and of the Chapel at Princeton University since August 2007. Dean Boden is the author of numerous articles and chapters on religion and social justice in addition to a book, Women’s Rights and Religious Practice (Palgrave 2007). Her course offerings have included such topics as religion and human rights, the rights of women, the history and phenomenology of prayer, and religion and violence. She has served in an advisory capacity to a variety of non-governmental organizations and is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.