Canter Bridge

The Johannine presentation is not shy about making exalted claims on Jesus’ behalf. The categories are large: he is light, he is life, he is the way, he is truth. One anticipates apotheosis rather than degradation of the gospel’s central figure. Indeed, apotheosis might be considered a guest too late for this party, since Jesus is presented from the outset in categories so fulsome and pristine that in the history of interpretation they’ve (mostly unhelpfully) been explained against a Platonic rather than a Hebraic background.

Yet one finds neither pristinization, re-pristinization, apotheosis, or an untroubled crescendo of recognition of Jesus’ glory and celestial origins. (more…)

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A handful of well-received twentieth-century writers were particularly adept at probing the deep structure of reality and the meaningful juxtaposition of suffering and redemption that resides there. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis come to mind. These men spun tales nourished by the notion that deep suffering lodges itself in the anteroom to liberation and even to glory. (more…)

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There was a time in the circles of my youth when too much talk of love in connection with ‘the things of God’ was taken as the surest sign that one had ‘gone liberal’. This is a deep shame.

To be sure, people who speak critically in this way have seldom set out to pursue bloody-minded hatred. They are usually quite loving people, particularly with others whose profile is proximate to their own. Their intention is to be faithful stewards of a truth that comes from God. Having observed others merrily casting away sacred things for the sake of happy Groupfeel, they have become incensed and mistakenly fallen back upon a suspicion of love itself. (more…)

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Jesus’ grief-stricken followers cannot imagine life without him. So absorbed are they in their loss that they fail even the courtesy of asking him how he is negotiating these turbulent waters. Yet Jesus is convinced that the Advocate (traditionally, Paraklete) will more than compensate for the kind of ‘absence’ that he foresees:

But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

It is difficult to accept that this will be. Will this Advocate illuminate their lives with prescient teaching? Will he heal ugly, oozing disease? Will he restore demented minds to their prior clarity? Can an Advocate restore the sight of blind people, make lame ones dance? (more…)

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Jesus’ agricultural metaphors are both vivid and harsh. A vineyard keeper doesn’t wince at every stroke of his knife. He does not sentimentalize his vines, else he’d make little wine.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.

The formal difference in the Greek words translated as removes (airei) and prunes (kathairei) is a mere preposition, a modestly elided form of kata. Yet the experience of the respective branches could hardly be more remote. One is thrown into the fire, the other made more productive. Destruction and production are the two fates. (more…)

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Peace is elusive.

I used to imagine that most people lived peaceful, satisfied lives and that a minority of turbulent outliers were the exception that proved the rule.

Now I know hardly anyone who lives peacefully, who moves and speaks from a tranquil soul. Least of all do I. (more…)

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