This blog is not a collection of random musings. But maybe it should be, maybe it would be more interesting that way. In this blog, I'm aiming to explore God, religion, and human belief or non-belief in either or both. I haven't posted in awhile because I've had trouble deciding what to write about, but the truth of it is that I see God everywhere. Or at least I see God or religion or a human attempt to describe such matters in everything, especially in the literature I read for my English classes or for pleasure.
In reading about St. Ephrem the Syrian for my summer research internship, I have discovered a new way to look at Christianity. Ephrem's metaphorical, devotional approach is refreshing coming from a lifelong familiarity with the Greek Church fathers, who are sometimes much more concerned with legalism than with actual connection with God. That's not to say that Ephrem, a voice of Eastern Orthodox or more simply Asian Christianity, was always poetic and never polemical, because in some cases he certainly was.
While I'm focusing on his Hymns on Paradise in my research, last week I read several introductions about Ephrem's life and his theological perspective. In particular, I found his 31st Hymn on Faith of interest. Academically, Ephrem is interesting because he is a theologian expressing his beliefs in poetry rather than prose. So to me, his convictions seem much less specific and more free-form, and this allows for personal interpretation of his metaphors, which is what I personally find intriguing about him.
So, this 31st Hymn on Faith employs some of Ephrem's favorite imagery, that of clothing and being clothed. In this hymn, God clothes himself in humanity's language in order to make it possible for it to understand Him. (Though Ephrem demands the impossibility of understanding God.)
1. Let us give thanks to God
who clothed Himself in the names of the body's various parts:
Scriptures refer to His "ears"
to teach us that He listens to us;
It speaks of His "eyes,"
to show that He sees us.
It was just the names of such things
that He put on,
and—although in His true being
there is no wrath or regret—
yet He put on these names
because of our weakness.
Response: Blessed is He who has appeared to our
human race under so many metaphors.
2. We should realize that,
had He not put on the names of such things,
it would not have been possible for Him
to speak with us humans.
By means of what belongs to us did He draw close to us:
He clothed himself in language,
so that He might clothe us
in His mode of life.
He asked for our form and put this on,
and then, as a father with his children,
He spoke with our childish state.
3. It is our metaphors that He put on—
though He did not literally do so;
He then took them off—without actually doing so:
when wearing them, He was at the same time stripped of them.
He puts on one when it is beneficial,
then strips it off in exchange for another;
the fact that He strips off
and puts on all sorts of metaphors
tell us that the metaphor
does not apply to His true Being:
because that Being is hidden,
He has depicted it by means of what is visible.
4. In one place He was like an Old Man
and the Ancient of Days,
then again, He became like a Hero,
a valiant Warrior.
For the purposes of judgment He was an Old Man,
but for conflict He was Valiant.
In one place He was delaying;
elsewhere, having run,
He became weary.
In one place, He was asleep,
in another, in need:
by every means did He weary Himself so as to gain us.
5. For this is the Good One,
who could have forced us to please Him,
without any trouble to Himself;
but instead He toiled by every means
so that we might act pleasingly to Him of our own free will,
that we might depict our beauty with the colors
that our own free will had gathered;
whereas, if He had adorned us,
then we would have resembled
a portrait that someone else had painted,
adorning it with his own colors.
