God's Acre

Tuesday, 2 October 2012

Hope and Justice

Giving the best of human work to God in Malta
© Godric Godricson

An Israelite belief in the afterlife is evident over time and amplified in II Maccabees and I Enoch. In effect, it could be argued that in the centuries immediately preceding Jesus, the idea of a bodily resurrection was well understood and would not have needed a detailed explanation. The association of death, religion and burial was already made and understood.

The question seems to be "What was it in the conceptualisation of the Resurrection of Jesus that unified earlier Jewish beliefs in a physical resurrection?" What was contained within post exilic and apocalyptic traditions which had the power to inspire gentiles with no knowledge of such religious traditions? It seems that a new facet gained prominence in Jewish beliefs surrounding resurrection as a concept and specifically in the Resurrection of Jesus. This new facet departed from the emphasis of the earlier Hebrew Bible and this new facet was the idea of ‘Hope’. The dark, vague and forbidding Sheol of the earlier Hebrew Bible was sometimes ameliorated by positive, or hopeful, images although the most optimistic post exilic and apocalyptic imagery surrounding resurrection did not contain such ideas of hope as made manifest in the Resurrection of Jesus. In this Christian death we see something better than life on earth and something to be desired,

The success of The Resurrection as an idea is that it unites ‘hope’ with ‘justice’ and ideas of theodicy. It may be that an early belief in God; without hope of reward is subsequently seasoned by ideas of ‘justice’. This development in theology evidences a change in the way that the relationship between mankind and God is perceived by humanity. We now have a positive carrot to encourage humanity and to balance the stick.

Putti

18th Century Putti - King's Lynn [Link]

Monday, 1 October 2012

Westminster Abbey

"Westminster Abbey slowly became the place of sepulture for men who had claims to eminence other than the adventitious circumstance of royal birth. In the last year of the sixteenth century Spenser was buried in the spot now known as the Poets' Corner. Next followed Beaumont, Drayton, and Ben Jonson. It is, however, in the present century that the Abbey obtained the peculiar place in English history which connects it with the roll of supremely great Englishmen. Pitt and Fox were both buried there within the same year. Brinsley Sheridan was buried in 1816. To what strange uses the noble fane might still be put is shown on turning over the record by finding that in the next year there was buried in the Abbey a still-born daughter of their royal highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. Grattan was buried here in 1820; Canning in 1827; Wilberforce, 1833; Lord Chatham, 1835; Thomas Campbell, 1844; Stephenson, 1859; Macaulay, 1860; Outram and Clyde, 1863; Lord Palmerston, 1865; Dickens, 1870; Lord Lytton, 1873; Dr. Livingstone in the following year, and Lord Lawrence and Sir Rowland Hill in 1879, whilst in 1881 Dean Stanley, who during the term of his deanship had watched over the building with infinite solicitude, had a place found for him in Henry VII.'s chapel".

Saint Rigobert of Rheims - Corporal relics

Rigobert was abbot of Orbais, afterwards bishop of Rheims, was favored with the gift of miracles, and suffered an unjust banishment under Charles Martel. He was recalled by Pepin, but finding Milo in possession of his see, retired to Gernicour, a village four or five leagues from Rheims, where he led a retired life in the exercises of penance and prayer. He died about the year 750, and was buried in the church of St. Peter at Gernicour, which he had built. Hincmar, the fifth bishop from him, translated his relics to the abbey of St. Theodoric, and nine years after, to the church of St. Dionysius at Rheims. Fulco,

Hincmar's successor, removed them into the metropolitan church of our lady, in which the greater part is preserved in a rich shrine; but a portion is kept in the church of St. Dionysius there, and another portion in the cathedral of Paris, where a chapel bears his name.