What does "He Descended to the Lower Parts of the Earth" Mean: Interpreting Eph 4:8-10

"In saying, 'He ascended,' what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?"

Paul speaks of this little piece of interpretation as if it's almost commonsense, but it seems to the modern reader to be one of the strangest of the many strange things that Paul says. Why is it at all commonsense that "He ascended" means that "he descended" to the lower parts of the Earth? Where are the "lower parts of the Earth"?

I think that the answer to this question is that Paul is referring to what we would call 1) the Incarnation, 2) the universality of the Church, and 3) Christ's descent into hell. But we must look at this in terms of what Paul is trying to say, in Paul's language and worldview, to get the point. Let's start by looking at context.

1) Paul has been talking about how the Messiah has made one Jew + Gentile people. Paul is writing to Gentiles, and he wants these people to remember their story. "You were dead," he tells them, "through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience." (Eph 2:1-2) "At one time you Gentiles in the flesh... were separated from the Messiah, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in the Messiah Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of the Messiah. For he is our peace, who has made us both [Jews and Gentiles] one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end." (Eph 2:11-16, RSV with slight modifications). For Paul, then, the story of the Gentiles in the Ephesian Church is the story of how the God of Israel sent his Messiah who, on the Cross, rendered the divisions between Jew and Gentile obsolete by abolishing the old ceremonial restrictions that separated Jew from Gentile, replacing them with the blood he shed on his Cross.

2) This also implies that Jesus is the New Adam, and that in him there is a new humanity, which has ascended to the right hand of God. Paul tells the Jesus story from this angle in several places in Ephesians. The phrase from Eph 2:15 which is rendered "one new man" by the RSV might as well read: "That he [Jesus] might create in himself one new Adam in place of the two." That is to say, in Ephesians Paul is telling the story of a New Creation in which the human race, originally ripped asunder in Adam and his sin, is now set to right by the creation of a new humanity in a new Adam. Paul gives us other hints of where he is going with this by quoting Psalm 8, one of the greatest and most influential Psalms of Creation theology, in Eph 1:22. Jesus' Resurrection has placed him at God's right hand, and God "has put all things under his feet." (Eph 1:22 quoting Ps. 8:6) Paul's use of this verse recognizes that its original context is a celebration of the Creation of man and of his rightful place as ruling, under God, the created order and thus making God's glory known throughout the earth. But it also seems to take into account later readings of the Psalm, particularly the later usage of the phrase "son of man" that is used in the Psalm. Later Old Testament tradition would see this "son of man" as a figure within Israel (which itself was to be a renewed humanity) who particularly displays and enacts God's original purpose for humanity, being perfectly obedient to God and thus ruling over Creation and over the Gentile nations in his name (the beasts defeated by the Ancient of Days and the son of man in Daniel 7, for example, are Gentile kings and kingdoms).

3) Finally, Paul tells the story of the Gentile Ephesians as a story of Temple Building. God is building a New Temple. You Ephesian Gentiles, he says, "are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, the Messiah Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." This is a particularly telling verse in interpreting Eph 4:8-10, because the original context of Ps. 68, which Paul is quoting, is that of a triumphal military/liturgical procession into the Temple of God after a victory over the pagans.

Thy solemn processions are seen, O God,
the processions of my God, my King, into the sanctuary --
the singers in front, the minstrels last,
between them maidens playing timbrels:
"Bless God in the great congregation,
the LORD, O you who are of Israel's fountain!"
There is Benjamin, the least of them, in the lead,
the princes of Judah in their throng,
the princes of Zeb'ulun, the princes of Naph'tali.
Summon thy might, O God;
show thy strength, O God, thou who hast wrought for us.
Because of thy temple at Jerusalem
kings bear gifts to thee. (Psalm 68:24-29)

4) Finally, Paul is telling the story of the wedding of heaven and earth in the Messiah. The Messiah, Paul tells us, comes as part of God's plan to "to unite all things in [Jesus], things in heaven and things on earth." (Eph 1:10) The Messiah is now sitting at God's right hand (Eph 1:20), and God's people also (Eph 2:6) have already been made to sit with him at God's right hand, a position which, nonetheless, must be won by conquest (Eph 3:10, 6:12). Paul also speaks of this union as the Messiah filling all of the Cosmos (Eph 1:23, 4:10) and also filling his people, who at the same time grasp the love of the Messiah, which fills the Cosmos. (Eph 3:17-20).

With this context out of the way, we can now consider what Paul meant in Eph 4:8-10.

A) Eph 4:8-10 is first of all speaking of the Incarnation, that is of God becoming man. Christ, we are told, descended. For an ancient Jew, this kind of descent, especially spoken about in the context of Ps. 68, must have meant a descent from the Temple Mount. This means that Christ, when he ascended into the presence of God after his Resurrection, was going to where he already had been. This is not true of humans in general; humans in general didn't pre-exist in heaven, but it is true of Christ. Indeed, it is telling that Paul speaks of the Church as filled both with God and with his Messiah, and says that it is because the Ephesians know the love of the Messiah that they know God, a piece of theology which sounds almost Johannine. (Eph 2:19-22, Eph 3:17-19, c.f. 1 John 4:7-10) It's true that one could not "prove" the later doctrine of the Incarnation from this verse - although, to be honest, the idea of the Messiah filling his God's Temple just as God does is about as close to a biblical "proof" of the Incarnation as one can think of - but the theology of the Incarnation makes better sense of all the pieces of Paul's picture than any other theological idea could.

B) Eph 4:8-10 is secondly speaking of the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the Person of Jesus the Messiah and in his Church. One thing is for sure, the descent that Paul is referring two is a descent down a Temple Mount. For Jews, this meant leaving Jerusalem and - especially for Jews in the dispersion - returning to the Gentile world. This new Jew + Gentile people is a New Temple, which is filled with Christ and knows his love, and is therefore filled with the fullness of God (you must have in your mind here the Shekinah glory of God overshadowing the Temple, which is a key Old Testament component of Temple theology) (Eph 2:19-22, Eph 3:17-19).

C) All the themes we've been speaking of point toward this third meaning of Eph 4:8-10, Christ's descent into hell. Recent scholarship has shown that the Creation story in Gen 1-2 is the story of God building a Garden that is actually a Temple and putting within that Garden-Temple a man who is actually a Temple. Indeed, it might be said that, in the ancient world view, the Cosmos itself was a big Temple, or that the Temple was a small image of the Cosmos. The same thing might be said of man, who himself was meant to be both a Temple and an image of the Cosmos. But if God is building a new Adam, a new humanity, and a New Temple through his Messiah, it is most fitting that that new Messiah should redeem, sanctify, and save the old Adam and the old humanity, which were then languishing in Sheol under the curse of death. This salvation, of course, won't be complete until the Resurrection on the Last Day, but it started here with Christ descending into Sheol. Later tradition would be enticed by this intriguing hint, and flesh out the scene of Christ's descent into hell. It would be appropriate to end this post by quoting the most prominent example of this in the Western liturgy, an ancient sermon for Holy Saturday.

Jesus goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam's son.

"The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: 'My Lord be with you all.' And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

"I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.

"I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person."

Franciscan Theology of Creation

This post is my summary of St. Francis' theology of creation. I made this up as a handout for my students, but I think that it will be a great resource for anyone looking for a short summary of what St. Francis thought about Creation.
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1. St. Francis’ Theology of Creation -In the Canticle of the Sun, St. Francis gives praise to God for all of the material creation. Even though things like fire, water, air, and the sun can be harmful to man, Francis sees that they are good in themselves and praises God for their beauty, goodness, utility, and majesty. The way in which God uses them to care for the human race shows his goodness.

-Francis sees himself as related to all of creation in some way because all of creation comes from God; thus he calls things that are made “Brother” and “Sister.”

2. St. Francis Theology of the Animal Creation -St. Francis gives praise to God for the animals, and declares that they give God glory.

-In his sermon to the birds, St. Francis notices how God even shows his power and goodness in the way he cares for the birds. The birds too, show their praise for God and declare God’s goodness in their very way of existing.

-Finally, the way in which St. Francis interacts with the birds – the lack of fear they show toward him, their listening to him, etc. – shows that harmony that God wants between human beings and the rest of creation.

3. As seen in St. Francis' use of the Christmas creche, the Incarnation shows that God shares St. Francis’ appreciation of the material creation. God is good, and he shows that his material creation is good by becoming a man.

4. God, the Creator, is good --> Creation is good --> The material creation is good --> The animal creation is good --> Humans are good --> Jesus Christ is human --> God wills to save human beings, body and soul, therefore he sent his Son, who has a body and a soul --> God wills to save people through matter. Christ had a real physical body, he really died, and he was really raised from the dead IN HIS BODY, and now he saves us through material things: water, oil, wine, bread

-Nothing could be more anti-Catholic, more anti-Christian, more anti-Creation, more anti-God, then the idea that God cannot save us through material things. To miss this is the miss the heart of Christianity, the idea that Creation, the material creation, is a result of God’s goodness and love.

-For Christianity, the idea of SPIRIT GOOD, BODY BAD is the FOULEST OF HERESIES; it blasphemes against the person of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, and against the nature of God, our Creator.

-For Christianity, the idea is that: -The BODY is GOOD, VERY GOOD, because the spirit is EVEN BETTER.

-For Christianity, the BODY, which is GOOD and the GOOD MATERIAL CREATION are SYMBOLS of the SUPREME GOODNESS OF GOD and of the SPIRITUAL WORLD.

For My Students: Study/Homework Resource

Here is a link to the study resource you will need to use for your homework.

http://quizlet.com/user/mattkennel

For My Students: To Study for Chapter 8 Test

Here is a presentation I created on the beginning of the Feudal system and the setup of that system.

The Feudal System on Prezi

Even our Doubts: Doubt, Afterlife, and Resurrection

Even our doubts reflect the truth of the Resurrection. I know that there are times when I don't feel like life after death will be real; it seems so distant. And yet, perhaps that is because a disembodied life after death is not the fullness of what God wants for us. Human beings are not complete creatures without their bodies, and so even though humans in heaven have the beatific vision, and therefore the fullness of overflowing happiness, they still don't have all that God means for them. They still "groan inwardly as [they] wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of [their] bodies" (Rom 8:23). I know in this I disagree with St. Thomas Aquinas' later statements, but on the whole I find his earlier statements on the topic more biblically sound. I reproduce them here:

It is manifest that the happiness of the saints will increase in extent after the resurrection, because their happiness will then be not only in the soul but also in the body. Moreover, the soul's happiness also will increase in extent, seeing that the soul will rejoice not only in its own good, but also in that of the body. We may also say that the soul's happiness will increase in intensity. For man's body may be considered in two ways: first, as being dependent on the soul for its completion; secondly, as containing something that hampers the soul in its operations, through the soul not perfectly completing the body. As regards the first way of considering the body, its union with the soul adds a certain perfection to the soul, since every part is imperfect, and is completed in its whole; wherefore the whole is to the part as form to matter. Consequently the soul is more perfect in its natural being, when it is in the whole--namely, man who results from the union of soul and body--than when it is a separate part. But as regards the second consideration the union of the body hampers the perfection of the soul, wherefore it is written (Wisdom 9:15) that "the corruptible body is a load upon the soul." If, then, there be removed from the body all those things wherein it hampers the soul's action, the soul will be simply more perfect while existing in such a body than when separated therefrom. Now the more perfect a thing is in being, the more perfectly is it able to operate: wherefore the operation of the soul united to such a body will be more perfect than the operation of the separated soul. But the glorified body will be a body of this description, being altogether subject to the spirit. Therefore, since beatitude consists in an operation, the soul's happiness after its reunion with the body will be more perfect than before. (Supplement, Q. 93)

So, it seems to me that even our doubts when we think of a life after death can reinforce the Christian idea that our real destination is the Resurrection of the Body.

God is greater than the Emperor!: Part 1

Yesterday, I was at the March for Life in Austin, TX with over 70 students from John Paul II High School. It was a wonderful day of holy political activity! Yes! Holy... political... activity! I spent much of the day thinking about the philosophical and theological underpinnings of what we were doing. It is true that Christianity does not, in and of itself, propose a specific political program, but that does not mean that Christianity is indifferent to politics or to political life. Quite to the contrary, the Cross has political implications. I also believe it to be true that, even though we must respect persons (and associations of persons) and their political beliefs, including atheistic and anti-Christian persons and associations, that politics and religion are intricately connected and that the Jeffersonian idea of separation of Church and State is itself part of a secularist civil religion with an eschatology which specifically rivals that proposed to us by Christ and his Church!

First: to the political implications of the Cross (once again, I am dependent here on N.T. Wright) Imagine that you are St. Paul. You are writing a letter to the Christians in the capital of the Roman Empire, to Rome itself. In that city, of course, lives the Roman Emperor. He claims to be the son of the divine Augustus. The good news (evangelion) of his reign, he claims, brings salvation (soteria) to the Roman Empire. All nations have been brought into obedience to this king, this son of a god, this lord of the whole world. Yes, he has established peace in his empire, even suppressing the enemies of Rome by the use of the cross. Then, knowing that all of these things belong to the Imperial rhetoric, imagine writing these words.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ (Christos, Heb. Messiah), called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel (evanglion) of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ; To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom 1:1-7)

If you had written these words, would you have been writing a politically neutral piece of rhetoric about private religion? God forbid! Religion and politics were married, and they would not be divorced for eighteen centuries (if even then)! The cult of the Emperor was the fastest growing cult in the first century Roman Empire. No, this Jesus was the real lord of the world, the true king, the messiah, the Son of David. His reign was the real good news, the real evangelion, bringing the real soteria, the real salvation through accepting death, even death on a Roman cross. It was he, not Caesar, who was truly the son of divinity, and not just of any divinity, but of the one true God, the God of Israel. And now Paul, his apostle, is trying to bring about the obedience of faith to this new king in all the nations. As if this point wouldn't ring loud enough in Roman ears, Paul also writes it at the end of his letter: "The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles hope." (Rom 15:12, quoting Isaiah 11:10) He wrote this, I repeat, to Rome!

What does this mean practically and politically? It means that Jesus Christ is the true Lord of the world, the true king. It is ultimately to him that every knee must bend. "God," as one early Christian martyr to the Romans put it, "is greater than the Emperor!" This martyr's cry expresses the politically charged side of what Paul is saying in Rom 13:1: "For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." The authorities are not there on their own authority: they are stewards set in place by God and subject to his rule! A wonderful example of this was a tradition started by King George II surrounding Handel's Messiah. British tradition dictated that one stand when in the presence of the ruler. When listening to Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, declaring Christ to be "King of Kings and Lord of Lords," King George himself stood in the presence of the superior royalty of Jesus the Messiah (Christ), the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And, following tradition, everyone else stood with him. Now, at performances of the Messiah worldwide, people stand to recognize the lordship of Jesus Christ. God, indeed, is greater than the Emperor!

Practically, this does not mean that we must advocate for a theocracy, certainly not imposing our religion or even our ideas by the sword. For, part of our religion is accepting the human dignity, including the right to conscience, of every person from conception to natural death. But what it does mean is that we must act, both as private citizens and as public servants in accordance with the truth we have received through Jesus Christ. Our private and our public lives must demonstrate that Jesus Christ is Lord of the whole world! A Christian person must act in accordance with his well-formed Christian conscience, recognizing that it is his strictest and most solemn obligation, as a servant of the true King, Jesus Christ, to defend the life and dignity of every human being, from conception to natural death.

This includes and extends to Christians in politics. It is not good enough to say that one is personally opposed to abortion; if one truly believes abortion is wrong one must act in accordance with this belief! It is true that the mothers (and the fathers, who often are the real perpetrators in all this, shaming and often almost forcing mothers to get abortions) of these children retain their right to conscience, even a conscience so ill formed as to allow for abortion, but that does not mean that the law must recognize their right, falsely so-called, to foist the results of their ill-formed conscience on society by robbing their children of life, by siphoning off public tax monies to ensure their ability to do this, etc. Abortion is not a private decision, even though it impacts the most private places in a family's life; it is a decision with deep public implications. In fact, because it involves the life of a child, the shape of the medical profession, and the political and economic activity of government and of large corporations, it is an inherently public act. The bare fact of the matter is that if we do not have a pro-life political order we will have a pro-abortion political order. If we pro-lifers do not win the political fight, they will, and this will result in the inevitable snuffing out of pro-life activity and pro-life laws. Why, if they really believe in "choice," do pro-abortion organizations fight sonogram laws?

Later, in part two of this post, I will comment on the absurdity, the logical self-contradiction, of secular humanism's endless lectures on the separation of Church and State.

Christmas in the Light of Psalm 22

We know from all four gospels that the twenty second Psalm was deeply intertwined with the fate of Jesus, so deeply intertwined that, according to Matthew and Mark, Jesus himself took it upon his lips as he died to express his trust in God, even as he was nailed to the Cross.

Yes, Jesus was not claiming that he had actually been separated from God on the Cross, but, rather, that God's help was not evident to him, that he was going through dryness, or, rather, the greatest of all aridity, the greatest of all feelings of abandonment ever known to man. But all this he did in trust to God. If Psalm 22 expressed the plight of Jesus in moving terms, it also expressed his belief in his ultimate vindication by God with the greatest confidence.

You who fear the LORD, praise him!
all you sons of Jacob, glorify him,
and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted;
and he has not hid his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.

If all of this seems to have only a slight connection with Christmas, it may be because we haven't thought it through yet with sufficient clarity. What or who was on Jesus' mind on the Cross as he meditated on the twenty second Psalm? On the one hand, we might take our cue from the very end of that Psalm.

All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the LORD;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him. (Ps. 22:27)

Certainly, Jesus meant by his death to draw all nations to worship the God of Israel. "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (Jn 12:32) We see this solicitude for the right ordering of the world in the repentance of the Good Thief. Actually, the Good Thief was not a thief, but a revolutionary (Gk. lestes), meaning that he was in the business of bringing about the freedom of Israel from the Roman oppressors by force. In receiving the repentance of the Good Thief, Jesus was showing that conversion of the Gentile nations to the God of Israel would now take the form of following his way of loving service, of self-giving, and not the way of violent revolution against Rome.

But if Jesus, meditating on and acting in accordance with Ps. 22, looked forward to the Gentile nations coming to the worship of the God of Israel, he must also have looked backward to the events of Christmas.

Yet thou art he who took me from the womb;
thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts.
Upon thee was I cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God. (Ps. 22:9-10)

Yes, in the mysterious providence of God, the Mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, played a special role. In meditating upon Ps. 22, Jesus must have seen his holy mother as the special locus of God's activity. It was her womb from which God took him. It was on her breasts that God kept Jesus safe. It was by the nourishment provided from her breasts that God made him grow. From his very birth, he must have thought, he was dedicated to God, a reference not only to his own willful obedience to the Father, but to that of his Mother, who brought him to the Temple to be circumcised on the eighth day, fully identifying him with God's covenant people, Israel.

Jesus, although greater than a prophet, was a prophet, and prophets in Israel used symbolic actions to express the message that God had given them for Israel. If, indeed, Jesus was meditating on God's past faithfulness to him through his Mother, and if Jesus was meditating on and enacting the new future, in which Jew and Gentile alike would share in God's kingdom, it only makes sense to see Jesus as intentionally connecting his other great action from the Cross with these two themes. God, who had been faithful to him in the past through his Mother, would be faithful to him again through his Mother, by bringing, through her, many sons to glory (c.f. Heb 2:10). Thus, acting in the mode of a prophet, he acted in the following way:

When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!"
Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (Jn. 19:26-27)

The Psalmist, reflecting on God's action through his mother, recalled God's faithfulness and trusted in God's ultimate vindication. Jesus, reflecting on God's action through his Mother, recalled God's faithfulness and trusted in God's ultimate vindication; trusted in it so much that he prophetically enacted it by setting up a new spiritual relationship between Mary and John, who in this case, symbolizes all the disciples of Jesus (c.f. Raymond E. Brown, The Anchor Bible vol. 29, Pp. XCIV-XCV). And so, from the Cross, Jesus gave us his Mother to be the mother of all his beloved disciples; he gave us his Mother as our Mother. The events of Christmas, in which God's faithfulness to Mary and to Jesus are intertwined, lead us to the events of Easter and Pentecost (cf. Acts 1:14), in which God's faithfulness to Jesus and to Mary are once again intertwined. God, who acted once through Mary to bring Jesus into the world, will act again through Mary to bring Jesus into the lives of his disciples, and thus into the world.