Augustine and First John (1)

 

 

Life is short, and Augustine’s writings are so massive! Well, we do what we can with Augustine and the Fathers. I note that a man just found a nine-carat diamond in Arkansas (at first he thought it was just a piece of glass), you’ll never know what you’ll find unless you make searching a way of life.

 

In his first homily on First John, Augustine writes, “And the life was manifested, and we have seen and are witnesses…” (1 John 1:2). Picking things up into the homily:

 

“Where have they seen? They’ve seen in the manifestation. What does “manifestation” mean? It means in the sun, that is, in the light of day. How should He be seen in the sun who made the sun, except as ‘in the sun He has set His tabernacle; and Himself as a bridegroom going forth out of his chamber, rejoicing as a strong man to run his course’ [Psalm 19:1 – 6]?

 

“He is before the sun, who made the sun, He is before the daystar, before all the stars, before all angles, the true Creator, (for all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made [John 1:1 – 3] ) that He might be seen by eyes of flesh which see the sun, set His very tabernacle in the sun, that is, showed His flesh in manifestation of this light of day…”

 

Augustine not only points us to the Incarnation, the obvious context of 1 John 1:1 – 4, but he takes us back to Christ as Creator, and to Psalm 19 with its complementary witnesses of the Creator and the Creator’s Word, and to John’s Gospel which also portrays the Word and the Word’s creation. In other words, the Incarnation occurs within the world which the Word created. The Son is seen in the light of the sun which the Son created. Or, the Son created the light within which His greater light might be manifested (compare Acts 22:6; Psalm 36:9). Augustine sees the Son in the sun of Psalm 19 (see also Malachi 4:2). When Augustine reads the Bible, he sees Jesus Christ everywhere.

 

            However, Augustine isn’t finished, he isn’t satisfied with his exploration, and so he continues:

 

            “…and that Bridegroom’s chamber was the Virgin’s womb, because in that virginal womb were joined the two, the Bridegroom and the bride, the Bridegroom the Word, and the bride the flesh; because it is written, ‘And the two shall be one flesh’ [Genesis 2:24]; and the Lord said in the Gospel, ‘Therefore they are no longer two but one flesh’ [Matthew 19:6].

 

            But he still isn’t finished, “And Isaiah remembers quite well that they are two: for speaking in the person of Christ he says, ‘He [Yahweh] has set a miter upon me as upon a bridegroom, and adorned me with an ornament as a bride” [Isaiah 61:10].

 

            “One seems to speak, yet makes Himself at once Bridegroom and Bride; because ‘not two, but one flesh:’ because ‘the Word was made flesh, and dwelt in us.’ To that flesh the Church is joined, and so there is made the whole Christ, Head and body.”

 

            I will add that all of this echoes Ephesians 5:22 – 33, where we see that the “one flesh” of marriage speaks to us of Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride, the Church.

 

            In a few sentences Augustine weaves a tapestry of Psalm 19, John 1, Genesis 2, Matthew 19, and Isaiah 61 – with 1 John 1 as his portal. Not only that, but the patterns that he weaves portray facets of the Incarnation that reflect the glory of God in the Son, the glory of the Son in the Church, the glory of the Bridegroom in the Bride. This movement, this dance, in Christ and the Scriptures is typical of the preaching and writing of the Church Fathers. They lived in the mansion of the Bible and their people were called to live in that same mansion – this enabled them to preach and teach in an expansive fashion that leaves the North American church in the dust. We find much the same expansive experience in subsequent Christian history, but this Niagara seems to have dried up in our own day.

 

What does Augustine mean when he says, “One seems to speak, yet makes Himself at once Bridegroom and Bride; because ‘not two, but one flesh:’ because ‘the Word was made flesh, and dwelt in us.’ To that flesh the Church is joined, and so there is made the whole Christ, Head and body.”?

 

Consider Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 12:12, “For even as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, thought they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.”

 

When Augustine writes, “One seems to speak, yet makes Himself at once Bridegroom and Bride” he is asking, “Is this Christ, the Head of the Body speaking? Is this the Church, His Body speaking? Or, is this the unified Voice of the Body of Christ speaking – as both the Bridegroom and the Bride?” Perhaps you have not pondered this before, but as Paul says in 1 Cor. 12:12 – “so also is Christ”. The Head and His Body are joined together in an organic union (see also Ephesians 4:14 – 16; Colossians 2:18 – 19). The Bride is bone of the Bridegroom’s bone, flesh of the Bridegroom’s flesh.

 

This is one of the ways that Augustine lives in the Scriptures. In his exposition on the Psalms, he takes his hearers and readers along with him as he works through various passages with the three questions noted above – all of which are asking, “Who is speaking? Whose voice do we hear?” There are times when Augustine concludes, “Well, it could be one, it could be the other, or it could be the third.” In essence Augustine says, “They all three reveal Christ, enjoy them!”

 

            This raises a question that we seldom consider, but which is at the forefront of Augustine’s Biblical thinking, “What is the nature of the relationship of the Bridegroom and the Bride? What is the nature of the relationship of Christ and the Church? What is the nature of the Body of Christ?”

 

            The nature of life, of the Trinity, of Jesus, of the Church, was at the center of Biblical thinking in the time surrounding Augustine. The question of the nature of life is one that ancient philosophers pondered again and again. The fancy word for this is “ontology” – what is the nature of God, of the universe, and of all that is in it? If we don’t understand the nature of a thing, including ourselves, how can we understand the purpose of a thing? How can we understand the unfolding purpose of a thing? How can we understand its intended trajectory?

 

            When Paul wrote that in Christ we are new creations, that old things have passed away and all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17), this was, among other things, an ontological statement that actually meant something in the ancient world! We fail to grasp the Bible’s ontological truths because, at least in part, we are conditioned to live by our natural minds and natural eyes, rather than by faith (2 Cor. 4:16 – 5:10).

 

            When Jesus makes statements concerning his disciples such as “they have kept your [the Father’s] word” (John 17:6) just before the disciples abandon Him, Jesus is seeing something that we would not naturally see; He is seeing the ontological reality of those men in Him, He is seeing His Divine Nature in them. This is why, in a manner of speaking, Jesus can use the language of Trinitarian intimacy in the Upper Room (John chapters 13 – 17); as Peter says, we are partakers of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4).

 

            Augustine sees this, he believes it, and he rejoices in this Divine mystery. The Incarnation that was manifested in Bethlehem, should be continually manifested in us, it should be ongoing – for this is the Divine Nature of the Bridegroom and Bride, the Head and the Body, Christ and His Church.