SMU Catholic Weekly Blogs

Patriarchs and Pagans

For Catholic Christians, "tradition" or "the rule of faith" existed before the scriptures were written, contributed to their composition, and continued as a parallel stream of information about who God is, most readily identifiable in creeds, sacraments, dogma, doctrine, and liturgy. On several occasions the scriptures, especially Paul's letters, reference oral teachings that appear to be a coherent set of beliefs about Christ and the Church. The renowned Dominican preacher and theologian Yves Congar described Church tradition as "the sharing of a treasure, which itself remains unchanging; it represents a victory over time and its transience, over space and separation caused by distance." The story of Christ's descent into the grave and hell, or "hades," is part of early church tradition, echoed in 1 Peter 3:19. The Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and several local creeds pre-dating any universal professions of faith reference Jesus's descent prior to the resurrection. Why did he make the descent? Medieval commentators suggested Christ's passing through the realm of the dead solidified his identity as completely human, since all people suffer death of the body, while other theologians thought Christ might have made the journey to ransom the Hebrew patriarchs and virtuous pagans. Although church tradition drew the line at emphasizing his descent into the grave, patriarchs and pagans played a critical role in the church's interpretation of the events surrounding Christ's death and resurrection.

Francisco de Vitoria

The conquest of the Americas, the Protestant Reformation, and conflict with the Turks were together upending European society and the Church when Francisco de Vitoria became chair of theology at the University of Salamanca in 1526. Vitoria was born in Spain in 1486, and after becoming a Dominican friar he studied law, philosophy, and theology in Paris. He returned to Spain in 1523 and three years later became chair of theology at Salamanca. In 1532 he penned "De Indis" ("Concerning the Indians"), a treatise in which he argued that, contrary to popular opinion, Indians in the Americas were not necessarily damned by their social structures, religion, or lack of Christianity. De Indis was a crucial landmark in the history of human rights as well as constituting the origins of international law. Vitoria also wrote about the requirements for a just war, asserting that no war was just if it endangered the world or Christendom.

Sources: Richard P. McBrien. Catholicism. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994. P 1318.

Hosius of Cordova

In a fourth-century letter describing the unorthodox teachings of Arian Christians--who believed that Jesus was not equal to God the Father--Athanasius of Alexandria referred to a western opponent of the Arians, Hosius of Cordova, as "one who on account of his age, his confession, and the many labors he has undergone, is worthy of all reverence." Hosius was born in Hispania, the Roman province of Spain, in about 256 CE, and during the late third century he became one of many Christian "confessors" who refused to reject their faith during state-led persecutions of the church. In about 295 CE Hosius became bishop of Cordova in southern Spain. When Constantine convened the council of Nicea in 325 CE as a response to the Arians, Hosius was one of only three western bishops who helped forge the Nicene Creed in concert with several hundred Greek- and Latin-speaking bishops from North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia Minor.

Sources: “Hosius of Cordova.” Catholic Encyclopedia. www.newadvent.org

.

Simon Peter

Most Roman Catholics recognize Peter as the first bishop of Rome and favored apostle of Jesus Christ. During the fourth century the papacy emerged as a privileged post with theological authority over bishops in the east and west, and on several occasions, working in concert with the eastern Roman emperor, the bishop of Rome successfully intervened in theological debates to shape the course of orthodox Christianity.

Yet Peter was a Galilean fisherman with a Jewish faith bereft of pageantry and splendor, and his deep struggle to remain faithful to the Good News mirrored the profundity of his humanity. Peter denied Jesus three times after his arrest, and the Gospel of Mark recounts how Peter rebuked Jesus when he told the apostles the Son of Man would die and rise after three days (Mark 8:32). Like the other male apostles Peter fled Roman authorities after the crucifixion. Paul's letter to the Galatians describes how he bickered with Peter over doctrinal matters, motivating Paul to write, "I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong (Galatians 2:11)."

What are Christians to make of Peter's inconsistencies coupled with his status as a prominent leader of the first Christian communities in Palestine? The pomp and majesty of later popes is hard to reconcile with the Gospel's image of the impulsive fisherman from Galilee. It is hard to believe that early Christians depended on Peter to settle crucial church matters. Yet it is in the seeming contradictions of Peter's rich humanness that Christians can find strength in weakness, stability in chaos, and faith in hopelessness. If the brash man that the Gospels depict went on to become the first bishop of Rome, then our capabilities to serve God are truly limitless.

Empress Theodora

Christian art flourished in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, resulting in splendid churches, mosaics, and Gospel illuminations in the east and west. Christians in the west generally embraced this renaissance in church art, but beginning in the eight century Greek theologians, clergy, and laity initiated the "iconoclast controversy" in protest against visual representations of Christ and the saints. The iconoclasts claimed that Christ destroyed the power of paganism and idolatry, eliminating the need for idols. Christians who supported the use of images, called "iconodules" ("image-honorers") argued that Jesus Christ was the perfect physical image of God and that images of wood and stone merely echoed the incarnation. Both sides debated the theology underpinning their arguments for over a century, with emperors and high-ranking clergy alternating between positions. On the first Sunday of Lent in 843 empress Theodora, wife of Theophilus, ended the iconoclast controversy by staging a large procession in Constantinople and declaring the restoration of icons, marking the triumph of the images in east and west.

Henry Chadwick. The Early Church. Revised Edition. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Pp 283-284

Cyril of Jerusalem

"If you should be in foreign cities, do not simply ask where is the church...but where is the Catholic Church, for this is the proper name of this holy Mother of all." Cyril of Jerusalem preached these words to his congregation in about 347 CE. Several catechetical texts composed by Cyril survive, including lectures on the mass and the sacraments of baptism, communion, and confirmation. Cyril preached that the sacraments, especially the Body and Blood of Christ, were a crucial sign of Christ's ongoing work in the church and in the world. He engaged in fiery polemics with Christian communities who preached that Christ was not born in the flesh, pointing to the Eucharist as the foundation of Catholic sacramentology in which God is profoundly invested in material reality. God redeemed the visible and invisible world through a human, Jesus Christ, an ongoing work whose fullness continued in the Catholic Church. He attended the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE, which ratified the Nicene creed, and was made a Doctor of the Church in 1883.

Sources: See "St. Cyril." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04595b.htm

Paul of Tarsus

"I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal 2:20)." St. Paul of Tarsus penned these lines to the Christian community at Galatia soon after the resurrected Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus, an event he wrote about as the moment when "Christ Jesus...made me his own (Phil 3:12)." After his conversion Paul committed himself to preaching the Gospel to Jews and gentiles in Europe and the Mediterranean, leaving detailed written accounts of his travels which the Church later included in the New Testament canon. In his letters and preaching Paul returned again and again to Jesus's death on a cross: "We preach Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:23)." Paul focused on the crucifixion because as a pious Jew he knew that if Jesus was the messiah, then Jesus had not been bound to accept death as all other humans must do. Jesus had chosen to die, making his death the key to his life and the new life of all baptized Christians.

Sources: Jerome Murphy-O'Connor. Paul: His Story. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp 36-37.

 

St. Anthony of Egypt

Once when Greek philosophers tried to impress St. Anthony with their knowledge, St. Anthony said to them, "Which is older, the book, or the wisdom it contains?" Anthony was born to wealthy parents in a town near Cairo, and on his twentieth birthday he renounced his family’s affluence and became a contemplative. At first he practiced fasting, prayer, and works of piety at home, but after a while he retreated to a monastery in the Egyptian desert. Soon pilgrims flocked there to imitate his contemplative lifestyle. After he moved to an abandoned Roman fort on a mountain near the Nile River, his followers built a whole colony of monasteries there, systematizing and recording his guidelines for monastic life. Many of the orthodox bishops at the Council of Nicea (325 CE) were Egyptian Christians, and they invited Anthony to attend and assist them in the debates against Arian bishops who claimed Jesus Christ was not God. Athanasius of Alexandria, who played a pivotal role in the orthodox victory at Nicea, penned a biography of Anthony.

Sources: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01553d.htm

Saint Christopher

The origins of the St. Christopher story are obscure and stretch back to the period when Christianity began to replace paganism in the European countryside. Tradition tells us that a large man, or a perhaps a large hominid of some sort, converted to Christianity and decided to dedicate his life to Jesus Christ. The man retreated to the countryside to live as a contemplative, and one day a small child appeared and asked the man to carry him across a fast-flowing river nearby. The further the man waded into the river with the small child on his back, the heavier the child grew, nearly drowning him when he reached the middle of the river. Thoroughly perplexed and mystified, the man inquired who he was. The child responded that he was Jesus Christ carrying the weight of humanity and the whole world. The Christ-child gave the man the Greek name Christopher, meaning "Christ-bearer," and ever after Christians have venerated St. Christopher as the patron saint of travelers.

Sources: “Catholic Online.” http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=36

The Woman at Bethany

"And during dinner a woman came in carrying an alabaster jar of very expensive ointment…and shattering the alabaster jar, she poured it over his head (Mark 14:3-4)." Marks description of the encounter between the anonymous woman and Jesus at Bethany illustrates the cosmic significance of just one small act of kindness. When the woman broker the alabaster jar and poured the oil on Jesus's head, his disciples and some of the Pharisees berated her for wasting such a lavish gift worth an entire year's wages. Yet the original Greek text of Mark's Gospel relies on the words "kalos" and "agathos" to convey the beauty and honor, the gracious humanity, of the woman's actions. Jesus rebuked his disciples and the Pharisees, telling them the woman's actions would be remembered wherever the Gospel was proclaimed throughout the world.

Sources: Donahue, John R., and Daniel Harrington. Eds. Sacra Pagina Series, Volume 2: The Gospel of Mark. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2002. Pp 383, 387.