Death is Swallowed Up in Victory

Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Those who sow in tears, shall reap joy
He who goes forth and weeps, bearing precious seed,
Shall come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls away.

Therefore be patient, dear brothers, unto the coming of the Lord.
Behold, the husbandman waits for the precious fruits of the earth
And is patient for it, until he receives the morning rain and evening rain.

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De-Theologizing Harry (or, The Death of the Death of Death)

On Thursday night, I had the privilege of seeing the final Harry Potter movie in the city where the books were conceived and written, so I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on how faithfully this last crucial film reflected the rich theology of J.K. Rowling's creation.  I should mention that I was, until the very last book, something of a Potter skeptic, unconvinced that the books were anything more than a fun and overhyped story.  But in the final chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was bowled over by the overt and profound Christological elements, which were so prominent that it seemed impossible that they could be integrated without overwhelming the story and turning it into a sermon.  That they did not do so is a remarkable tribute to Rowling's literary prowess.  Following the logic of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the final book revealed that the magical world of wonder that Harry inhabited was not all there was--there was a deeper magic, which overturned all the calculations of the magical world. 

But the question was, could Hollywood grasp this deep magic?  It had failed abysmally in the recent Narnia adaptations, sucking all traces of theology out with startling efficiency.  The less overt theology of Lord of the Rigns had escaped somewhat more intact, though still crucially undermined at points.  Whether intentionally or simply out of blindness, Hollywood shows itself remarkably adept at de-theologizing stories, and converting them, so far as possible, into some kind of feel-good humanism.  I had a suspicion, especially after Deathly Hallows Part One, that this supremely theological tale would be no exception.  Alas, I guessed rightly. (WARNING: Spoilers ahead!)

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Beyond Space and Time: O'Donovan on the Ascension

Today is Ascension Day, which, although one of the great feasts of the Church calendar, is not something most Christians give much heed to.  Perhaps that is because we don't really know what to make of the ascension.  We confess it in the Creed, to be sure, we believe it happened, to be sure, but we don't really give much thought to how it happened, or to what on earth--or in heaven--it means.  The former, perhaps, we can't really know.  But the latter we should know.  Oliver O'Donovan offers some very thoughtful reflection on both in On the Thirty-Nine Articles (of which, apparently, a new edition is coming out in a few months!):

"For the meaning of Christ's resurrection is that the renewal of creation has begun. In a body that represents 'the perfection' of man's nature we see the first-fruits of a renewed mankind and a sign of the end to that 'futility' which characterizes all created nature in its 'bondage to decay' (Rom 8:19-21). There are two aspects to this renewal which have to be kept in a proper balance. On the one hand we must not understand the newness of the new creation as though it implied a repudiation of the old. The old creation is brought back into a condition of newness; it recovers its lost integrity and splendour. In the resurrection appearances of Jesus the disciples were offered a glimpse of what Adam was always meant to be: lord of the elements, free from the horror of death. On the other hand, restoration is not an end in itself.

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The Descent to the Dead

"The central meaning of the descent to the dead is that Christ's identification with mankind in death is at the same time a proclamation of God's favour, to those who are already dead, and also to those who have still to die.  The link between the cross and the resurrection is explicit.  Already the conquest of death is preached.  By making himself one with us in the darkness of God's wrath, Jesus brings us out from darkness into the light of God's favour.  And in particular he brings those long dead: the place of St. Peter speaks of the generation who died in the primaeval flood, because they, alone among all generations, had no symbolic prefiguring of the Paschal Mystery to instruct them.  They stand appropriately for all who have died without hearing the message of hope.  To all who have lived and died in every age the one perfect work of identification and vindication extends its summons to rise from the grave and be alive for evermore."

--Oliver O'Donovan, On the Thirty-Nine Articles

Forgiving Dualism

We are all accustomed to lament the stark dualism of many pre-modern theologians and to advocate a much more holistic, “incarnational” approach to the Christian life.  N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope is one of the most recent, most lucid, and most thoroughgoing of recent critiques of Christianity’s otherworldly tendencies, and summons us back to the New Testament doctrine of the resurrection of the body rather than the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul.  Those of us who have embraced the contemporary call to “incarnational” Christianity often find ourselves taken aback by just how deep the dualism seems to run in the Christian tradition, and find ourselves frustrated at times when we encounter starkly dualistic statements that seem to evince a Gnostic contempt for the body.  (I, for example, have often been frustrated by such statements in Reformation political theology.)

Perhaps, though, we ought to be more forgiving, as Margaret Miles pointed out in a lecture at the recent St. Andrews conference on Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture.  Her observation was not original, I’m sure, and once stated, it was blindingly obvious, but I confess I had given it very scant attention before: when pre-moderns speak of the body as weak, corrupt, prone to decay, as a prison to be escaped, when they seek to focus our attention on the life of the soul and to draw us away from affairs of the body, much of this reflects the very simple fact that for them, the body really was all these negative things. 

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