My love is like a red, red rose.

I suppose the one thing that unites all religious believers is a view of the world that understands human beings to be more than just “flesh and blood”; that there are more things in heaven and on earth than the mere mechanistic cause and effect of scientific explanation.

A scientist could go a long way to explain how all the instruments in the orchestra make the sounds that they do. Another scientist could explain what is happening in the human body and mind when we listen to music. But no one can explain or define the experience completely because the total music experience is more than the sum of its parts. This is, I suppose, similar too – if not part of – that which we call “religious”.

But the “religious” dimension is more than mere emotions. Religion is some sort of explanation for the whole experience we call life; an explanation coupled with prescriptions for making life meaningful, purposeful and, in some sense, “successful”.  Religious explanations are in so many ways totally different from scientific explanations and yet people – particularly in our modern world – are mixing them up.  Amazingly frequently people talk about religious explanations as if they were scientific explanations and then reject them because they fail as scientific explanations. This has led, in our own society, to a tragic loss of the religious sensibility, and in the States and elsewhere a terrifying fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism, very simply, assumes that the religious and the scientific explanation are the same type of explanation and are therefore competing with each other. The obvious example is the stories of Creation in Genesis (yes there are two creation stories).  Seen as scientific explanations they directly compete with theories of Evolution though there is absolutely no scientific evidence that they are true as science  Irrational religion: terrifying!

But worse, the person who sees these stories as mere science misses the profound and important truths which they do contain. As “religious” stories they convey such truths as: that we are dependent upon God; that the relationship between man and woman reflects something within the Godhead; that men and women need the Sabbath rest and (even more important) that the six day world of striving and work only finds its fulfilment when it comes to rest in God. And I could go on. Those creation stories are bursting with meaning as “religious” stories that the “scientific” explanation is incapable of conveying.

I passionately believe that, as human beings, we need these religious explanations to make proper sense of who and what we are. A religious explanation often presents itself to us in the form of a story or a picture. The ultimate religious picture, I would suggest, is the picture of something we call heaven. (It is really worth reading Tom Wright’s book “Surprised by Hope” to help us see that our popular “folk religion” view of heaven is nothing like the Biblical promise of Resurrection). In the New Testament we have the very beautiful and simple story of Jesus’ Ascension. It is a story we know so well that we often forget to ask what on earth it means.

Our mind’s eye picture of the Ascension – reinforced by pop religion and religious art – is of Jesus taking off like Elton John’s Rocket Man to find his new home somewhere “up there”. Of course our mind’s eye picture is not faithful to the picture painted by St Luke in the Acts of the Apostles: “and a cloud took him out of their sight”. We ought to know our scriptures well enough to know that the cloud here represents the presence of God: (The Pillar of Cloud in the Wilderness, the Cloud on Sinai and on the Mount of Transfiguration etc). 

In other words, our mind's eye wants to paint a literal picture. But the truth which is conveyed is NOT a scientific truth. This is NOT a story of Jesus growing wings but, rather, a story about his life reaching its fulfilment in God’s presence. (This hope is held out to us all). If we say that he is “up there” without explaining that we are using language in a different way from the way in which a scientist uses language, then the end result will be that people will simply conclude that religion is not true. They will have shut themselves off from so much of what life is really all about.

Nobody would dream of interrogating the poet to ask him exactly how his love is like that red rose! We need to get ourselves out of the habit of assuming that religious and scientific explanation is the same. Religion is dealing with exactly the same world as the scientist, but it is offering an entirely different type of explanation.

© Peter Bolton

Dogma and Religious Language

I did promise something on the Blessed Virgin Mary – and that piece will be forthcoming – but as I was struggling to write it I realised that there was still a bit more to be said about Dogma. The very word will send a shiver down the spine of the intellectual liberal (even though she has one overriding dogma she adheres to) and it usually appears in the form of an adjective describing one who is less than open minded. Though, as I have already suggested, the whole point of Christian Dogma is to insist on a sort of open-mindedness; to preserve the Catholic “and”.

Today, Christians are in love with poetry and imagery, art and iconography but far les comfortable with Dogma. I want to suggest that they are two sides of the same coin and that the Dogma preserves the iconography and imagery and purifies it. (At the same time, the art and image prevent the Dogma from becoming merely dry, empty intellectualism).

You can, perhaps, already see how I might be thinking about Mary here but I am going to put her on one side for now and look briefly at another idea in Christianity which presents itself to us as a Creedal statement and very frequently in art, iconography, music and poetry and so on. As I write I am looking at an icon representing the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. In the top half of the picture Jesus is seated in the heavens (blue circle) which are held up by an angel on either side. The bottom half depicts Mary and the Eleven. Mary too is accompanied by two angels and whilst she looks directly at us whilst pointing upwards to her Son, the eleven are looking all over the place, still in utter confusion before they receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Mary and Jesus have halos the Eleven do not. Mary is dressed in the blue of heaven and the red of martyrdom.

It is a powerful picture but it is not my favourite depiction of the Ascension. My favourite representation is that over the Altar of the Mystery of the Ascension in the Shrine Church of Our Lady in Walsingham. There, the feet of Jesus are seen simply disappearing into the clouds. Perhaps slightly less theologically informed – and I have to say that it is my favourite because it makes me laugh not because it is a good art or good theology!

But the truth is the second image could be hugely misleading. It is too literal, certainly, but in its literalism it depicts the Absence of Jesus and not his presence. In the first picture, the icon, there is no doubt about Jesus presence in the picture. He dominates the picture. And although the Eleven cannot see him there is a serenity in the posture of Mary who seeks to assure us who also cannot see that her Son is indeed present always.

I want to suggest that the first picture is of more use to us precisely because it is faithful to the Church’s understanding of the meaning of the Mystery. The icon needs the dogma. Without sound teaching our religious representations (like the disappearing feet of Jesus) become nothing more than misleading cartoons.

So,what are the Dogmas that inform the image? Well, obviously the statement in the Creed: “And Ascended into heaven.” But who ascended?  And it is the dogmatic answer to this question which is crucial. It is He whom the creed has already affirmed as the Eternal Son of the Father and who had taken human flesh and was crucified. The Jesus sat in the blue circle is the eternal Son of God who had assumed human flesh. The picture depicts the destiny of humanity. This picture is precisely about the destiny of those confused men who are looking all over the place in the icon. Mary’s steady gaze reminds us that although we, like the Eleven, cannot see Him we must trust. Look, she says, he is only there!

The Dogmas that the picture draws on are Dogmas concerning the Incarnation and the Church. The picture is about the destiny of human flesh; it is about the fate of the poor; and here the Eleven - that is us - can be reassured that where he has gone we shall surely follow.   We are reminded of what the Eastern Churches know so well, that the heart of this picture is heaven where all women and men can call home.

So something odd happens in the promulgation of Dogma. If we were asked we would probably say that Christian Dogma is about God. But actually there is not much dogma which is directly about God. Most dogma is about Jesus but even then the dogma is really about the human beings at the bottom of the picture. Why do we want to insist that Jesus, true God and true man ascended body and soul into heaven? Why does it matter? It matters because the Eleven – us – matter.  Dogma says we MUST say THIS about Jesus because to deny it would be to say something untrue about human beings. To deny that Jesus has ascended body and soul into heaven is to deny the destiny of humanity.

Interestingly, when we come to talk about dogmas concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, we are usually doubly under-scoring, for dogmas about Mary are usually affirming a truth about the rest of humanity (we say it about Mary because it is true of all Christians) but we are usually also affirming something about the person of Jesus. Dogma about Mary has, in this sense become a double check: if we say this, what are we saying about the rest of humanity and what are we saying about Jesus? (And if we are saying this about Jesus, what are we saying about humanity?)

So, when we say what we shall say about Mary it will matter. It will matter because really it is about us and about the fact that we matter.

© Peter Polton