Historical setting: 589 C.E. In the Vosges Mountains
We have many more things to talk about than chastity and lust, so the wise Ana can capture my imagination in a way that the beautiful Ana is immune. Now we were talking about doctrine.
Ana adds, “Daniel said I’d best stick with what I’ve been taught and not make a stir.”
“Sure that’s what he’d likely tell you having Colletta as his mother with most of the Christianity he was raised more on creed than gospel.”
“So Laz, you mean you don’t think creed and gospel converge?”
I look at Ana, and there is a glint of tease in her blue eyes — hardly the sparkle of angel.
“You already know my mind, don’t you Ana.”
“I know you will always speak of Jesus, as teacher and friend, and that Jesus was Jewish, with only one God who is of a spiritual substance.”
“Ana you read my heart and my mind. Jesus was Jewish and he followed the rising cults of Jewish mystics in his time. He had no thought of separating God into a triune god like the Celtic pagan god Bridget.”
Ana adds, “Bridget are Christian now, you know. They’ve come over from the Pagans. So they are Saint Bridget now. [footnote] I’ve heard the Irish monks praying to saints on their way here. So, Laz, why did those early church fathers making creeds bend the gospel to meet Augustine, instead of simply following the Jewish Jesus law to love God and one another?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot in these times when it seems the polity shapes the teachings instead of the gospel of love shaping the polity as we once believed could happen. Maybe it got backwards for too simple a reason; the gospels were still in Greek when the world was already speaking Latin. And the bible is laid out like a collection of scrolls, each with its own telling. So in a time of books with pages only one right answer seems to appear on the page instead of a continuing thread of questions and answers as dialogue. One right from among the many wrongs — a singular creed fit Roman order better than it fit the many-faceted dialogues of Greek or Hebrew scholarship.
“And also, I think it’s an amazing holy miracle that God continues to empower priests and bishops with love, so the Jesus love seeps through anyway, regardless of the politics, at least now and then.” Thank you God.
[footnote] Depending on the source, Bridgid is either Pagan or saint. Stoestedt, Marie-Louis Celtic Gods and Heroes, Dover, 2000. p. 21, but Bridgid of Kildare is more thoroughly discussed by Cahill, Thomas How the Irish Saved Civilization New York: Doubleday, 1995, pp. 172-179.
(Continues Tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 