Cintamani Government, Christian Style

The only ruler to whom the sixth century French historian Gregory of Tours gives unmixed praise is Emperor Tiberius (ruled 574-582) -- the ruler in Constantinople. He introduces him thus: "Tiberius was a just and charitable man, equitable in his dealings, successful in war [no word on whether these successes fit "just war theory"] and, what is more important than all his other good qualities [take that, "wise Turk" afficianados!], a true Christian" (p. 234-35).

Later on, Gregory describes in more detail his rule:

He distributed among the poor much of the treasure which [the previous emperor] Justin had amassed, and the Empress frequently rebuked him for reducing the state to bankruptcy. 'What I have taken so many years to save,' she used to say to him, 'you are busy squandering in a prodigal way, and without losing much time about it, either.' 'As long as the poor receive alms and those whom we capture are ransomed,' Tiberius would answer, 'our treasury will never be empty. This is the great treasure, as our Lord explained: 'But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.' Let us indeed lay up for the needy in heaven a share of what God has given to us, so that the Lord may deign to give us increase in this world.' As I have told you, Tiberius was a great Christian and a faithful one: as long as he continued to take pleasure in distributing alms to the poor our Lord went on providing him with more and more to give.

One day when he was walking through the palace he noticed on the paved floor a marble slab carved with the Cross of Christ. 'Your Cross, O Christ,' he cried, 'is marked on our foreheads and on our breast as a sign of protection, and here we are walking on it.' He ordered the flagstone to be dug up immediately and removed from where it was. When they had prised it up and it stood on end, they found a second one underneath, marked with the same sign. They told Tiberius what had happened and they had the second flagstone lifted. Underneath they found a third one, and Tiberius made them that up, too. Beneath it, they found a vast hoard of treasure, amounting to more than a hundred thousand pounds of gold. This was taken out of the ground and, as his custom was, Tiberius was able to make even more generous contributions to the poor. Because of his humane charity, the Lord did not ever suffer Tiberius to be in want (pp. 283-84).

High-octane prosperity gospel among sacramental Catholics, taking the politics of Jesus seriously, refusing to water down the Sermon on the Mount -- the possible titles of this little snippet are endless. But I chose to highlight this tale's exact structural identity with a similar Buddhist story of reckless generosity, which soon leads to the problem -- the supply of money dries up -- and the supernatural solution.

Unfortunately, the historians of the East Roman Empire know nothing of this story. Somehow the rulers are always more Christian on the other side of the fence.

In Honor of Trinity Sunday

Yesterday was Trinity Sunday, and the Athanasian Creed was read. Now as has long been known, the Athanasian Creed was not actually written by St. Athanasius (AD 293-373). Actually it probably first was used in Gaul around AD 500.

Gaul? AD 500? As you may have guessed, then, it has something to do with Gregory of Tours and his History of the Franks. He does not mention the creed itself, but he illustrates the environment in which it was made. The Franks made their mark in post-Roman history by converting to Orthodoxy/Catholicism. Based around modern Paris, their king Clovis then used that orthodox catholic confession to win support from the Gallo-Roman elite for driving out from southern France the Gothic kings of Spain who professed the Arian faith. So Gregory of Tours was a supporter, at least nominally, of the Catholic and Orthodox Frankish kings against the Arian Gothic kings based in Spain. Arianism may have been kaput among the Latin speaking populations of the West, but among the new barbarian monarchs and their supporters among the native Latins it was still a going concern.

Gregory records a number of theological debates, including one with an Arian and another with a Frankish king who had a new "compromise" position. Here is one debate, in honor of Trinity Sunday:

As envoy to Chilperic [a Frankish king], King Leuvigild [of Spain, a Goth] sent Agilan, a man of low intelligence, untrained in logical argument, but distinguished by his hatred of our Catholic faith. Tours was on his route and he took advantage of this to attack me [i.e. Gregory, as the bishop of Tours] concerning my beliefs and to assail the dogmas of the Church.

"The bishops of the early Church made a foolish pronouncement," he said, "when they asserted that the Son was equal to the Father. How can He be equal to the Father, when He says: My Father is greater than I? It is not right that the Son should be considered equal to he Father when He Himself admits that He is less, when it is to the Father that He complains about the miserable manner of His death, when at the very moment of His death He commends His spirit to the Father, as if He Himself were completely powerless. Surely it is quite obvious that He is less than the Father, both in power and in age!"

In reply to this, I asked him if he believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and if he admitted that He was the wisdom of God, the light, the truth, the life, the justice of God. Agilan answered, "I believe that the Son of God was all those things."

Then I said: "Tell me now, when was the Father without wisdom? When was He without light, without life, without truth, without justice? Just as the Father could not exist without these things, so He could not exist without the Son. These attributes are absolutely essential to the mystery of the Godhead. Similarly the Father could hardly be called the Father if He had no Son. When you quote the Son as having said: My Father is greater than I, you must know that He said this in the lowliness of the flesh, which He had assumed so that He might teach you that you were redeemed not by His power but by His humility. You must also remember, when you quote the words, My Father is greater than I, that He also says in another place, I and my Father are one. His fear of death and the fact that He commended His spirit are a reference to the weakness of the flesh, so that, just as He is believed to be very God, so may He be believed to be very man."

Agilan answered, "He who does what another commands is less than the other; the Son is always less than the Father because He does the will of the Father, whereas there is no proof that the Father does the will of the Son."

"You must not understand," I replied, "that the Father is the Son and that the Son is in the Father, each subsisting in one Godhead. If you want proof that the Father does the will of the Son, consider what our Lord Jesus Christ says when He comes to raise Lazarus
-- that is, if you have any faith in the Gospel at all: Father I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I know that thou hearest me always, but because of the people which by I said it, that they may believe that thou has sent me. When He comes to His Passion, He says: And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Then the Father replies from Heaven: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. Therefore the Son is equal to the Godhead, and not inferior in anything else. If you admit that the Son is God, you must agree that He is perfect and that He lacks nothing. If you deny that He is perfect, then you do not admit that He is God."

Agilan answered: "It was after He was made man that He began to be called the Son of God; there was a time when He was not."

"Listen to David speaking in the name of the Lord," I replied, "Out of the womb have I borne thee, before the morning star.* John the Evangelist says: In the beginning was the Words, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, by whom all things were made. You are so blinded by your poisonous heresy that you do not understand the Godhead."

Agilan answered: "Do you believe that the Holy Ghost is God and do you maintain that He is equal to the Father and the Son?"

"In the Three there is one will, one power, one action," I replied, "one God in Trinity and three Persons in unity. There are three Persons, but one kingdom, one majesty, one power, one omnipotence."

Agilan answered: "The Holy Ghost, who is equal to the Father and the Son, according to you, is clearly less than either, for we read that He was promised by the Son and sent by the Father. No one promises anything which is not in his power, and no one sends any person who is not his own inferior. Jesus himself says in the Gospel: If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you."

I replied, "The Son does well to say before His Passion that if He does not return in victory to His Father, having redeemed the world with His own blood and having prepared a habitation in the heart of man, the Holy Ghost, which is God, cannot come down from Heaven into a heart which is idolatrous and spotted with the stain of original sin. As Solomon says: The Holy Ghost will flee deceit.** As you hope for resurrection, do not speak against the Holy Ghost. As the Word of God puts it: Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come."

Agilan answered, "God is He who sends; he who is sent is not God."

Then I asked him if he believed the doctrine of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

He answered: "I do believe."

"When the Apostle Peter accuses Ananias of behaving fraudulently over the field which he sold," I replied, "he asks: Why hath it seemed good to thee to lie to the Holy Ghost? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. When Paul is differentiating between the dogmas of spiritual graces, he says, But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to each man severally as he will. The man who achieves what he has set out to do is under an obligation to no one. [i.e. if the Holy Ghost has the freedom to distribute spiritual gifts as He wills, then he is not under obligation to the Father or Son.] As I have said already, you are absolutely wrong about the Holy Trinity and, what is more, the way your founder, Arius, met his end shows just how perverse and wicked your sect is."

Agilan answered, "You must not blaspheme against a faith which you yourself do not accept. You notice that we who do not believe the things which you believe nevertheless do not blaspheme against them. It is no crime for one set of people to believe in one doctrine and anotehr set of people to believe in another. Indeed, it is a proverbial saying with us that no harm is done when a man whose affairs take him past the altars of the Gentiles and the Church of God pays respect to both."

I realized what a fool the man was. "You are, I perceive," said I, "at once a defender of the Gentiles and a champion of the heretics. You not only defile the dogmas of the Church, but you also advocate the worship of pagan abominations. You would do much better to arm yourself with the faith which Abraham found near the oak tree, Isaac in the ram, Jacob in the stone, and Moses in the bush; the faith which Aaron wor in the ephod, which David knew when he danced with the timbrel, and which Solomon proclaimed by his wisdom; the faith which all the patriarchs and prophets, and the very Law itself, have celebrated in their oracular pronouncements and represented symbolically in their sacrifices; the faith which our own Martin, as is witnessed still today, possesses in his heart and manifests in his miraculous power. If you were converted to Catholicism, you would believe in the indivisible Trinity, you would be able to receive my blessing, your heart would be cleansed of the poison of false belief, and your sins would be washed away."

Agilan lost his temper and ground his teeth, almost as if he was going off his head. "May my soul leave the confines of my body," he muttered, "before I ever receive a benediction from a priest of your religion!"

"May the Lord never permit my religion or faith to grow so tepid," I answered, "that I waste His blessing upon dogs, or cast the sacredness of His precious pearls before filthy swine!"

At this Agilan gave up the discussion, rose to his feet, and marched out.

Some time later, when he was back again in Spain, he fell seriously ill: as a result he felt a compulsion to accept conversion to our religion (pp. 307-310).

This last note is crucial to understanding Gregory's point. What convinces heretics? The Bible? No, because even though all our arguments are based firmly on the Bible, the heretics are blinded and like Agilan will not listen to truth. What convinces heretics is Pentecostal power -- the direct and miraculous intervention of God. Arius seems wrong according to the Scriptures, but what really makes the case decisive is that how he died: his guts spilled out his anus in the lavatory (p. 135). He must be a heretic! After Agilan hears and denies all the arguments, he gets sick and has to believe. That is why of the witnesses of the Trinity, it is St. Martin who is placed in the last and best place: his miracle-working power is alive as Gregory speaks, through the relics in his church.

*An alternative reading from Psalm 110.
**In the Wisdom of Solomon, a deutero-canonical work.

"A Great Many Things Keep Happening"

A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad. The inhabitants of the different countries keep quarrelling fiercely with each other and kings go on loosing their temper in the most furious way. Our churches are attacked by the heretics and then protected by the Catholics; the faith of Christ burns bright in many men, but it remains lukewarm in others; no sooner are church buildings endowed by the faithful that they are stripped again by those who have no faith. However, no writer has come to the fore who has been sufficiently skilled in setting things down in an orderly fashion to be able to describe these events in prose or in verse.

Thus St. Gregory of Tours begins his History of the Franks, and it is, for my money, the most engaging beginning to any history book I have ever read. And despite the dull moments to be expected in 604 pages of small print, the rest of the book mostly lives up to this beguiling beginning.

Quoting from memory here, C.S. Lewis once began an essay like this (more or less).

Some people say that while the pagan finds no meaning in history, the Christian historians knows that all history has a direction, that it is going from Creation, and Fall, through Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, to full and final Redemption. For the Christian historian, history has a purpose and a direction. To which I respond (says Lewis, if I remember aright), that most Christian historians aren't nearly that bad.

He goes on to point out that while the biggest possible picture may be plain to the Christian, getting from that to the hear and now, to the events actually recorded is something not at all plain. C.S. Lewis didn't mention him, but Gregory of Tours knew that long ago.

One barrier to proper appreciation is the widespread idea, rightly debunked by Walter Goffart, that Gregory is only telling the story of "barbarians." All those bad things keep happening, the conventional-minded historians say, because Rome has fallen. Implication: normally things don't fall apart. Gregory would not agree. All those bad things happen because that's what always happens. That's the way kings act. That's the way soldiers behave. And the rich -- that's what they do. And the poor -- well, what can you expect? But there's also normal life, which can be pleasant -- as long as you don't expect any moral improvement.

People talk a lot about "Constantinianism" and its pernicious effects. What about Gregory of Tours, bishop two centuries after Constantine? He's a man of influence and social power, scion of an old Senatorial family most of whose relatives were called saint this or that, confidant of kings on numerous occasions, and extoller of Clovis as Catholic against the Arian Goths. Isn't he a natural "baptize the current social order, bless the king's wars" kind of guy?

Not at all. In fact, he is shockingly "irresponsible," taking absolutely no responsibility for the continuance of government, and praising virtually none of its functions. Support the death penalty? If Gregory had his way all the prisons would all be emptied:

One night in the gaol at Clermont-Ferrand the chains holding the prisoners came undone by the intervention of God, the gates of the lock-up were unfastened, and they all rushed out to seek sanctuary in a church. Count Eulalius had them loaded with fresh chains, but no sooner had these been placed in position than they snapped asunder like brittle glass. Bishop Avitus pleaded for his prisoners to be released, and they were given their liberty and sent home (p. 553).

Torture is routine in every criminal investigation. Does Gregory ever speak against it? Of course not. But does he ever think releasing any criminal would be a bad idea? Of course not again.

As for taxes, he's always against them.

At the request of Bishop Maroveus King Childebert sent tax inspectors to Poitiers: Florentianus, Mayor of the Queen's Household, and Romulf, Count of hi own Palace. Their orders were to prepare new tax-lists and to instruct the people to pay the taxes which had been levied from them in the time of Childebert's father. Many of those who were on the lists had died, and, as a result, widows, orphans, and infirm folk had to meet a heavy assessment. The inspectors looked into each case in turn: they granted relief to the poor and infirm, and assessed for taxation all who were liable (p. 515).

Well that sort of responsible collaboration with the king was not Bishop Gregory's style -- and elsewhere his portrait of Bishop Maroveus shows a man seemingly uninvolved in the properly religious functions of his diocese. Here's Gregory's approach:

After this they came to Tours. When they announced that they wre about to tax the townsfolk, and that they had in their possession tax lists showing how the people had been assessed in the time of earlier kings, I gave them this answer: 'It is undeniable that the town of Tours was assessed in the days of King Lothar. The books were taken off to be submitted to the King. Lothar had them thrown in the fire, for he was greatly overawed by our Bishop, Saint Martin [dead by the way for about a 150 years, but throughout a living presence and the real hero of Gregory's history]. When Lothar died, my people swore an oath of loyalty to King Charibert, and he swore in his turn that he would not make any new laws or customs, but would secure to them the conditions under which they had lived in his father's reign. He promised that he would not inflict upon them any new tax-laws which would be to their disadvantage (pp. 515-16).

Well, some one of the townsfolk produced tax rolls for Tours, but by the power of Saint Martin, the malefactor died of a fever and

an official letter came back almost immediately, confirming the immunity from taxation of the people of Tours, out of respect for Saint Martin (p. 517).

Just war? Well, the Bretons keep raiding and sacking Frankish cities.

In this year the Bretons ravaged Nantes, Rennes, and the neighborhood. They stole the wine-harvest, destroyed the cultivated fields and carried off as slaves those who lived on the country estates. They kept none of the promises which they had made. Not only did they break their pledges, but they even stole property belonging to our Kings (p. 512).

Crusade time? No quite.

While these things were happening, the Bretons were busy ravaging the open country around Nantes and Rennes. King Guntram put Duke Beppolen and Duke Ebrachar in charge of an army, and ordered them to march against the Bretons. Ebrachar had an idea in his head that if he and Beppolen were to win a victory Beppolen would usurp a dukedom. He therefore started a quarrel, and the two enlivened the whole march by abusing, taunting, and cursing each otehr. Wherever they passed they burned, slew, and sacked, committing every crime in the calendar . . . . (p. 556).

With the ambiguous help of Bishop Regalis peace was patched up between Ebrachar and the sly Breton leader Waroch, and the Frankish army retreated.

As they passed through the Tours region they are said to have collected a great deal of booty and to have robbed a great number of people, for they caught the local inhabitants unawares.

But just when you thought justice unattainable, some else keeps happening:

Many of those who took part in this expedition went to King Guntram and alleged that Duke Ebrachar and Count Willachar had been bribed by Waroch to lead their troops to disaster. When Ebrachar appeared at court the King reproached him bitterly and ordered him to leave his presence. Count Willachar fled and went into hiding (p. 558).

Slavery? Taken for granted; not a word of abolitionism. But one time, two Frankish kings took hostages from the senatorial families. Some escaped, but Attalus the nephew of Saint Gregory (another saint and bishop, this time of Langres, great grandfather of our historian friend) was enslaved to a Frankish nobleman around Trier (in today's Germany) and made a groom. With the help of another slave, Leo, he escaped and after thrilling adventures got to Rheims:

They went in and found a man, whom they asked to tell them where the priest Paulellus lived. He gave them the necessary directions. As they crossed the city square, the bell rang for morning prayer, for it was the Lord's Day. They knocked at the priest's door and went in. Leo explained whose servant he was. 'My vision has come true, then,' said the priest. 'This very night I dreamed that two doves flew in and perched on my head. One was white and the other black.' Leo said to the priest: 'May the Lord grant us indulgence for [eating before communion on] His holy day. We beg you to give us something to eat. The fourth day is now dawning since we last tasted bread or meat.' The priest concealed them and gave them some bread soaked in wine. Then he went off to morning prayer. Later the Frank [i.e. the owner] put in an appearance, still looking for his two slaves. The priest told him a lie, and he went off once more. The priest was an old acquaintance of Saint Gregory. When they had eaten, the two slaves felt stronger. They stayed two days in the priest's house. Then they went on again and were brought before Saint Gregory. The Bishop was delighted when he saw them both. He wept on the neck of his nephew Attalus. He made Leo a freedman, and all his progeny, too, and he gave him a piece of land of his own on which he lived in freedom with his wife and children all the days of his life (p. 179).

And while Gregory hails King Clovis as a Catholic champion against the Arians, he concludes with such a story of hypocrisy, greed, and treachery on the part of the newly baptized king that makes it impossible to take unironically his concluding assertion that Clovis

walked before Him with an upright heart and did what was pleasing in His sight (p. 156).

But then again, Clovis always made sure to stop his ravages on the borders of Saint Martin's bishopric.

Gregory of Tours truly took no responsibility for Caesar: and that lack of responsibility included abdicating any responsibility whatsoever for social reform or melioration. His church advocated no positive social change, or progressive reform of the laws. That would come later, with the great reforming movements of the eleventh century to the present.

But he and his fellow bishops with few exceptions would harbor just about any escaped slave, plead with the King for just about any prisoner, argue if possible to have just about any community spared of taxes, and expect nothing but the worst whenever the King took up arms against marauding Bretons or peaceful Gothic heretics. This was his version of "Constantinianism". Because he took no responsibility for reforming the kings, he had no compunction about supporting any of their victims, and always told the truth about them, even of those whom he more or less liked (such as Guntram).

It was the earnest reformers who got slavery abolished and torture banned -- it is hard to say that the bishops of the early Middle Ages used all the opportunities they could for doing good. But abjuring reform had one attractive by-product -- it meant abjuring the hypocrisy that earnest reformers always embrace when the progressive regime they've have fought for finally becomes law. By accepting his world entirely as it was, he could tell the truth about it, not in bitterness but in love, indignation, and pity.

The Apocrypha and Evangelism

A while after I wrote this about the Apocrypha and the Old Testament canon question, Bill Tighe sent me two articles by Albert C. Sundberg, which retailed in much more accessible form the ideas described in the festschrift paper I referred to there.*

The basic thrust of his argument, as I've said, is that the Christian Old Testament was not inherited directly from the Jews, but was rather shaped in the second and third centuries AD. The Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel-Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the minor prophets) were already canonical by the time of Jesus and the Apostles, but deciding which of vague body of Writings (Hagiographa) were canonical and which were not took place independently in the Christian and Jewish communities. Thus both Jerome's doubts over the deuterocanonical works (i.e. those accepted by Catholics and Orthodox, but not by Protestants or Jews) and the Protestant decision to adopt the Jewish canon and reject the deutercanonical/apocryphal works were groundless, he argues. The early Christian community included the deuterocanonical books and all Christians should accept that community decision.

These two articles, however, bring out two important points to his argument.

1) A historical point: Jewish influence was already at work in defining the Catholic and Orthodox Bible. As he demonstrates, those Church Fathers who were familiar with the smaller Jewish canon (St. Melito of Sardis, Origen, St. Jerome) generally wished to adopt it (see no. 2, pp. 148-49). Moreover, the apocrypha (i.e. those works like Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, etc., which are rejected by all Jews and Christians today) were eventually rejected by the Christian church precisely because no Hebrew originals of them circulated among the Jews.** With the deuterocanonical works on the other hand, Hebrew copies were still in use among the Jews, even if they were technically no longer canonical. In other words, the Church Fathers rejected Enoch and the Assumption of Moses on exactly the same -- factually mistaken -- grounds that Reformers rejected Sirach and 1 Maccabees. All four had been accepted by Jews (Nazarene and non) of the first century; the first two were rejected by the Church Fathers because the Jews of the third to fifth centuries no longer read them, and the second two were rejected by the Reformers because the Jews of the sixteenth century no longer read them (see esp. no. 2, pp. 151-52). Both were based on a misunderstanding, but Sundberg believes the decisions of the fathers should stand and that of the Reformers should not.

Let us draw out the implication: the Church Fathers are treated as formers of the normative community heritage in a way that the Reformers are not. But for those in the historical community formed by the Reformation it's contradictory to reject that community decision in the name of an earlier community decision. In other words, to use this argument consistently, one has to have already stepped out of the community of the Reformation (whether Evangelical or Reformed) and into the community of the non-Reformation.

2. And this brings up his theological point. The above history, he argues means that "No viable history of canon, whether of Apocrypha or OT or NT, can be written on the doctrine that Scripture is its own attester. The process of canonization is a community process. This is equally true in Judaism and in Christianity" (no. 1, p. 201). Thus he declares whatever he says about the deuterocanonical works "is in no sense to slight the validity of the so-called Jamnia canon for Judaism; it is only to observe that Judaism and Christianity came to a historical parting of the ways prior to the post-70 activity leading to the closing of the canon about the end of the first Christian century" (ibid.). Thus as he points out, his conclusions challenge Tridentine Catholic views of inspiration as much as those of Reformation Protestantism (no. 2, pp. 143-146, 153-54). Both agreed that placing works outside the canon was equivalent to declaring them uninspired; they just differed on where to draw the line. But he disagrees with this whole way of thinking. Indeed, without explicitly saying so, he seems to have no real use for the concept of inspiration at all. Jewish and Christian communities decided which works to live by and both were equally valid decisions. Scripture depends on community, not on the nature of the works in question.

And here we find the problem with the idea of defining the Christian Bible's Old Testament as something canonized by us Christians (a view apparently gaining traction in Augsburg Evangelical quarters; see here). If the Bible -- Old and New -- is the church's Bible, then the Christian Old Testament has the same relation to the Hebrew Bible that the Qur'an does to the Christian and Jewish bibles. It draws on it extensively, yes, but it is both formally and materially different. That the Christian Old Testament points to Christ becomes no longer a demonstration of the truth of Christianity; instead it's just a tautology. By definition, an Old Testament formed and created by an community dedicated to proclaiming the Risen Christ proclaims the Risen Christ. The Jew can accept that with a smile, since the converse is also true: a Hebrew Bible formed and created by a community that rejects the Messianic claims of Jesus of Nazareth necessarily rejects the claims of Jesus of Nazareth. We have our Nazarene Old Testament, they have their anti-Nazarene Hebrew Bible and that's the end of it. Let each follow his or her community guidelines.

Thus next to Sundberg's explicit conclusion -- Christian churches should unite on the patristic consensus -- we find an implicit one: they should stop trying to convert Jews, since Judaism is just as valid a community as the Christian church.

Of course, the reality is, it is the would-be Christianity of Sundberg's which has "broken away from its historical heritage," not the Reformation. Because, of course, if one knows anything about patristic Christianity at all, one knows that it was permeated by the conviction that their Jewish scriptures testify to our Jesus. Since I'm reading Gregory of Tours, let me just cite his dialogue with the Jewish community leader Priscus:

At this [argument from Priscus] the King [Chilperic] was silent, so I took up the debate in my turn. 'The fact that God, the Son of God, was made man,' I said, 'resulted from our own necessity, not His. For had He not been made flesh, He could not have redeemed man from the captivity of sin, or from the servitude to the Devil. Just as we read that of old David slew Goliath, so will I pierce you with your own sword, producing my proof not from the Gospels, nor from an apostle, neither of which you believe, but from your own scriptures . . . (History, VI.5)

And where did the bishop Gregory get this idea that the Old Testament was somehow property of the Jews? From Paul of course in Romans 3 and 9:

What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.

. . . Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.

Anyone who knows patristic Christian debates with the Jews, from Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho onward (search the text for "your scriptures" and you'll see), knows that no other view of the Old Testament is ever found there. Their scriptures prove our beliefs: rightly or wrongly this is the pre-nineteenth century Christian view of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.

And this is why all patristic authors who knew the Hebrew canon were nervous about not following it. Because they wished to avoid doing things like Gregory of Tours, who says he's going to prove Christianity from the Jews' own Bible and then cites Baruch, a book not recognized by the Jews. (Perhaps that is why Priscus did not convert.)

Sundberg is adopting here the community standard of truth, a mainline cousin of the John Henry Newman hermeneutic that it is not scripture that is self-attesting, but the church. This strategy brilliantly neutralizes any possible challenge of higher criticism ("the church has decided this is scripture and even if her premises were wrong her word -- enunciated by constituted authority -- is law for her children"). In its Newmanian form it also works powerfully to turn doubt-striken Protestants into Catholics.

But it is fatal for Jewish evangelism. Richard Neuhaus's bemused condescension toward the kind of proof-texting polemics engaged in by Justin Martyr and Gregory of Tours, among many, many others is its natural result:

Only some Messianic Christians and Jews such as Klinghoffer think that the truth of Christianity stands or falls on whether, without knowing about Jesus in advance, one can begin with Genesis 1 and read through all the prophecies of Hebrew Scripture and then match them up with Jesus to determine whether he is or is not the Messiah. . . . Christian thinkers, including Paul, viewed Christ and the Church as the fulfillment of the promise to Israel not because they were engaged in tit-for-tat exegetical disputes with Jews over what Klinghoffer recognizes are often ambiguous and enigmatic Old Testament prophecies.

And is it fatal for evangelism in general? Because every Christian community that has adopted this "only the church authenticates the Bible" viewpoint seems to end up focusing on proselytizing other Christians much more than evangelizing non-Christians. Somehow the idea that "God has given mankind a book like no other; read it and see!" actually seems to work with atheists and Buddhists and pagans in a way that "God has given mankind a community like no other; join it and see!" doesn't. (Of course as Gregory of Tours attests, "God has given His chosen holy men power like no other; experience it and see!" seems to work best of all.)

*No. 1: "A Symposium on the Canon of Scripture," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 28 (1966), 189-207
No. 2: "The 'Old Testament': A Christian Canon," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30 (1968), 143-155.

** It's also true (see no. 1, p. 198) that the claim (embraced in Tridentine Catholic polemics) that the Greek Septuagint (see the picture) defined a pre-New Testament canon, likewise on the basis of inspiration, likewise fails, because all Septuagints that contain the Catholic-Orthodox canon were demonstrably copied by Christians.

Gregory of Tours: Historian with the Pentecostal Problem

I have begun reading Gregory, Bishop of Tours (AD 536-594), known generally for his History of the Franks. Fortunately, however, I am also reading Walter Goffart's Narrators of Barbarian History (ah, now you see the connection to the Mongol empire), which puts the work much more effectively in context than the translation's introduction. Goffart points out that as it left Gregory's pen, the work was titled simply "The Histories" and was not particularly focused on the Franks. Nor was his intended audience Franks, but rather the Gallo-Romans of what is now central and southern France. I'll probably blog a few parts of it later, but I'd like to blog some of Goffart's introductory comments, where he uses Gregory's other works to define his position and aims as an author and Christian.

Its [i.e. Gregory's "The Course of the Stars"] wider interest stems from Gregory's disproportionately long introductory paragraphs about the Seven Wonders of the World, commentaries that enjoyed a small medieval circulation apart from the treatise they head. Here . . . Gregory is concerned with miracula "wonders," as distinct from more individualized virtutes, "miracles," worked by God through saints and their relics. Gregory sets out a straightforward argument: philosophers, in their learned leisure, have singled out seven miracula "as more marvellous than others"; they include Noah's Ark and Solomon's Temple as well as classical splendors, such as the Colossus of Rhodes, the Theater at Heraclea, and the Pharos [lighthouse] of Alexandria; these wonders, even if some were built pursuant to God's command, were "none the less established by men" and therefore have perished or are subject to destruction; there are other wonders, however, that come directly from God, "which in no age grow old, by no accident fall, by no loss are diminished, except when the Maker shall have ordained that the universe be destroyed"; these are

the tides,
the annual fruitfulness,
the phoenix,
Mt. Etna,
the springs of Grenoble,
the sun, and
the moon and stars.

. . . Before detailing the reckoning of time from the stars, he wished to remind readers emphatically that stellar motion, like the tides and courses of the sun proceeds from God and is not an inevitable operation of nature (pp. 131-32).

Regardless of the distinctions pre-Christian sages might make, [in Gregory's view] ostensibly ordinary and regular operations of nature did not differ from sudden, arbitrary acts of divine power; a continuum existed between expected and unexpected aspects of God's providential rule; and these facts dissolved human pretensions to wisdom and proved them vain. Opennness to wonders was the true and only science offering men liberation from the death-bringing life they endured.

In this perspective one should not expect the eight books of Miracula to be a record of amazing happenings . . . To grade wonders by degree of supernaturalness hardly concerned Gregory; his object, rather, was to multiply them; "no [ecclesiastical author] has related more miracles than Gregory of Tours." One basis for disbelief had always been that miracles were a thing of the past, richly documented in the Gospels but vanished from the world of everyday experience. The whole thrust of Gregory's Wonders is to illustrate the ordinariness of the miraculous, available today, near at hand, in the most commonplace objects. Far from wishing to stake out a monopoly for [the miracles done by the relics of] his own St. Martin of tours, his narrative celebrate a host of saints, great and small, ancient and modern, and portray the dissemination through every part of Gaul of their holy graves and powerful, wonder-working relics. Gregory himself, who laid no claims to special merit, details personal experiences of the miraculous at every stage of his life and thrusts himself forward as a leading witness to divine generosity. Unlike the miser's hoarded treasure, the riches of heaven were profusely poured out upon humanity, only to be reached for in order to be grasped. Both the Martyrs and the Confessor close with tales of avarice, the message of each book underscored by its contrary (pp. 134-35).

Gregory's determination to multiply the holy is nowhere more apparent than in his positive and uncritical approach to authentication. In the famous foruth-century Life of St. Martin by Suplicius Severus, the first miracle that the saint performs after becoming bishop of Tourse involves the discrediting of a false cult; the people venerated a tomb, thinking its occupant to be a martyr, but Martin summoned up the dead man's spirit and made him confess that he was only an executed robber. Much as Gregory loved the patron of his see, this example went unheeded in his Wonders. . . . St. Martin himself, in his only personal appearances in Gregory's Confessors, calls forth a bishop and religious lady from their graves, lending his prestige to the certification of their holiness and animating their cult. The episcopal authority Gregory wielded, far from being exercised to restrain popular devotion, stoked the delicate flames of belief by increasing the objects of reverence (p. 135).

. . . He may have known that popular piety discriminated among holy objects, just as it preferred martyrs with passion narratives to those without; but Gregory gave no encouragement to such fastidiousness. Where relics were concerned, anything would do: a little dust, a shred of bark, oil from a lamp, wax from a candle, a bit of rope (p. 135) . . . . Early chapters of the Confessors successively celebrate miracles by a stone on which St. Martin sat, a tree that he moved, a chapel at which he prayed, oil from a lamp at his tomb, a grape from a vine that he planted, and a modern apparition of his close to Langes. . . . . (p. 136).

Gregory's lack of discrimination vis-a-vis miracles and relics is consistent with his view that the tides and heavenly bodies were directly and continually actuated by God, not just set in motion at the Creation. Properly, that is, uncritically understood, sudden miraculous events were hardly less frequent or common than the predictable happenings that philosophers called natural phenomena. The ubiquity of miracles is not an idea incidentally reflected in the Wonders. It is the work's central teaching, an unstated lesson conveyed by sheer repetition (p. 136).

As Goffart points out, the usual interpretation is to see this as the result of the age's credulity. Gregory was an able man, but the superstition and credulity of the age infected him as it had everyone else. But Goffart shows that this is not plausible. Gregory's works were directed at an audience which was actually full of skepticism and shrewd common sense, who found it hard to believe or benefit from (as he admits is true for himself as well) from the words of Scripture. Words on a page don't convince, because nobody believes what's written in books. Only what appears before your very eyes, right now, can be believed. And that desire certainty only miracles, especially posthumous miracles, performed by a relic, can give.

As reflected in Gregory's works, his contemporaries in all walks of life credulous and uncritical, but they were also guided by practical common sense. They knew that, as a rule, nothing untoward occurred when one committed perjury, seized church property, oppressed the poor, worked on Sundays, or otherwise offended against divine precepts. To them, as to us, the absence of a thunderbolt from heaven, smiting the offender, was as predictable as tomorrow's sunrise. That comfortable certainty was precisely what Gregory sought to counteract. In opposition to the view of a predictably indifferent nature, operating as it was bound to do, he did not conjure up a contrary philosophy. Their basis was philosophy; his was history -- the evidence, preferably of an eyewitness, recording the multitudinous factual moments when, in defiance of human wisdom and alleged natural necessity, the unexpected occurred (p. 137).

It comes as a surprise to anyone reared on the idea that Merovingian Gaul [i.e. AD 500-750] marks a low point in humane letter that Gregory should still have considered it timely to place himself at the service of Christianity in its combat with the allurements of classical culture. Yet the first preface of the Wonders -- that to the Martyrs -- invokes the locus classicus of Jerome's repudiation of Cicero, amplified in Gregory's rendition into "the clever arguments of Cicero and the false tales of Virgil" (p. 137).

The pastorate he undertook to exercise through his writings could hardly have been directed elsewhere than among the educated, Roman-descended, and hereditarily Christian elements of the Frankish kingdom. The palpable events they were being invited to contemplate were mainly those occurring in their own neighborhood. Addressed to such ears, the [cautionary] tale of Jerome's attachment to classical letters was not wholly anachronistic. Neither were Gregory's efforts to combat "philosophy" (p. 138).

Gregory's miracle stories have three characteristics: 1) they are in his lifetime; 2) they are simply presented one after another; and 3) they make no attempt to hold up the saints as models of conduct. Why?

His reason for appealing to the span of living memory is set ou in the preface to the first book about St. Martin: "The miracles that the Lord our God [performed through] St. Martin in the flesh He now deigns to confirm daily to strengthen the belief of the faithful . . . . Therefore let no one doubt past miracles when he beholds the gift of present signs given forth, since he sees the lame made straight, the blind given sight, etc." (p. 139). . . . The Incarnation was an academic notion if located in the days of Caesar Augustus; it was credible if the miracle of the Word taking flesh occurred repeatedly in the present (pp. 139-40).
Even when connections are obvious, as in the five chapters of Martyrs featuring Arian heretics, Gregory simply runs on from one episode to the next. He plainly asserts that sheer quantity will have greater impact than any verbal at persuasion, such as a thread of argument woven through a more compact whole; as he puts it, the eloquence he lacks will be compensated for by "the very accumulation of numerous miracles" (p. 140).

The lesson of recent miracles was one of deeds, not words. For words in books were futile, incapable of convincing or of occasioning changes in conduct. Gregory claims to have personally experienced their impotence. Tutored by the priest Avitus at Clermont, he had bent over the Scriptures, but "they did not bring me to discernment . . . because I am unable to heed them." If words could move, and not just entertain, men would be living by the Gospel, as they manifestly were not (p. 140) . . . . The verbal recreation of forgotten examples of conduct was a pointless exercise among men possessing rich stores of skepticism (p. 141).

"Therefore because those things which St. Illidius carried out [while alive] before this time [=the present] have, we believe, been forgotten and not come to our knowledge, we shall set out those [miracles done by his relics] which we have experienced by the witness of our own eyes or have learned were perceived by faithful men." Gregory's time frame was very narrow. The past beyond the observer's memory was as good as lost . . . but within what was left, there were were . . . affirmation of divine power that were apprehensible to the sense. And such facts were anything but rare (p. 142).

Goffart points out how both Gregory of Tours and his more or less contemporary Pope Gregory the Great were dealing with the legacy of attacks on the smooth language of the pagan philosophers. Gregory the Great used the analogy of the cave like Plato, but unlike Plato, it was not philosophy that brought to mind the truths beyond the sense but willingness to belief some concrete message.

For both Gregories, however, there remained the grave pastoral problem of how to penetrate the skepticism and doubt of their congregations, of how to overcome the understandable reluctance of men to grasp anything except visible experience. It was very well for divine revelation to be the source of truth, but how else was that revelation to be communicated if not through books? The point of departure for Pope Gregory's allegory [of the cave] is that the Scriptures and Christian letters are unconvincing. Men hear what they say about heaven, but the readings remain mere talk, at best conveying what others, but not the listeners, have experienced (p. 144).

. . . . The foundation of humanistic culture had been the faith [Plato] pioneered in the potential of language -- the inherent power of properly constructed verbal sequences to compel assent. Together with many other Christians, Gregory of Tours celebrated the Lord's "destruction of the vanity of worldly wisdom"; but, where the persuasive force of language was concerned the destruction cut both ways . . . In a baptized world, discourse no longer persuaded as it once had. For the language in which Christian truth was clothed was indistinguishable from, and no more credible than, the language in which philosophical "vanities" were expressed. By undermining the instrument it shared with pagan culture, Christianity had, in its triumph, created a population of skeptics. Few witnesses are more forthright than the two Gregories in testifying to the vanished force of properly constructed verbal sequences. Only experience, not words, commanded credence (pp. 144-45).

[Gregory] would set before them the wonders of today. God's free, inexplicable, and unexpected intrusions into daily life, served up "hot off the fire," were Bishop Gregory's challenge to the skepticism of his audience; and history, conceived in the Wonders as an aggregate of such episodes, was the form he gave to his militant anti-intellectualism. . . . Because words on a page were futile, he would turn his back on style and assign persuasiveness to facts (p. 145).

This is the Pentecostal problem -- how to make people who routinely discount all book learning believe a book, even if it is God's book. And this is the Pentecostal solution: make experience of God's miraculous power a daily affair.