Tolle Lege

It has become a recent trend to relate Jesus to Dionysus. For those who appeal to supposed pagan roots of Christianity Dionysus is seen as a dying-and-rising savior prototype for Jesus. These purported parallels tend to be contrived and exaggerated, exemplary of the all too common poor scholarship offered to sate our preoccupation with discovering the “true” origins of Christianity. However, a more interesting juxtaposition is provided by Nietzsche, who positions Dionysus as Christ’s foil—the pagan deity who successfully embodies the good life:

Dionysus versus the “Crucified”:  there you have the antithesis. It is not a difference in regard to their martyrdom—it is a difference in the meaning of it… The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth:  he is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets it. The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life:  it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction. (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1052, p. 542-543)

Bacchus by Caravaggio

Dionysus represents life’s embrace, replete with pagan vitality, whereas Christ represents its rejection, abnegation of earthly joys. This characterization, however, is staggeringly erroneous. While I concede that I cannot enumerate all the reasons why Nietzsche’s portrayal utterly falls short in this limited space, I hope to briefly explore why Jesus offers a far more compelling account of the fullness of life than Dionysus using a shared central typology: wine.

Dionysus provided the gift of the vine to the Greco-Roman world. His followers celebrated their God with rituals of ecstatic revelry, the bacchanalia rejoicing in Dionysus’ gift of earthly mirth. Yet the wine of Dionysus possessed a terribly sinister dimension, for Dionysus also employed the appalling violence of intoxication to torment his enemies. Dionysus’s wine maddened Agave, causing her to lead the maenads, a band of female worshipers, as they brutally dismembered her son Pentheus, and rendered her unresponsive to his desperate plea for life. Likewise, Dionysus inflicts madness on Lycurgus, who proceeds to butcher his family. One wishes these acts were only mythological but historically the intoxicated elan of the faithful produced similar horrifying deeds. The Roman historian Titus Livius recounted:

Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the sum total of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies; the matrons, dressed as Bacchae, their hair disheveled, rushed down to the Tiber with burning torches, plunged them into the water, and drew them out again, the flame undiminished, as they were made of sulphur mixed with lime. Men were fastened to a machine and hurried off to hidden caves, and they were said to have been rapt away by the gods; these were the men who refused to join their conspiracy or take a part in their crimes or submit to pollution. (Livy, History of Rome Volume V, p. 275-276)

Bacchanalia therefore engendered violence, pain, and murder. Dionysian wine, though emblematic and representative of the importance of human happiness, failed to reign in the destructive consequences of its drinkers’ drunken dissipation. His wine therefore came as both a blessing and a curse, the latter overshadowing the former in such a way that irretrievably debars it from reflecting the fulfilling life.

To many, Christianity holds—whether implicitly or overtly—a certain disdain for alcohol and natural proclivity for teetotalism; however, this is largely an idiosyncrasy of American Christianity rather than biblical mandate. In fact, while the Scriptures are unequivocal in their condemnation of drunkenness, it is largely positive in its account of wine in both the Old and New Testaments.

Those familiar with the ancient Jewish faith and the neighboring pagan mythologies of the time are often struck by the Jews’ unwavering affirmation of the goodness of Creation. As the Hebrew Scriptures attest, God saw that “it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The yearly harvest was Creation’s bounty given to man by God, a constant reminder of man’s terrestrial dependence and God’s provision. Wine was one of the chief harvest goods, a gift from God as said in the Law, “He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless… fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil…. in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples” (Deut 7:13-14). Conversely, judgment from God included privation of wine (Deut. 28:51). Wine was also used as a pleasing offering to God, who commanded the Israelites to bring tithes of their harvest, including the wine, to His dwelling place to be eaten reverently and joyfully in His presence. Lastly, wine served an integral part in both biblical feasts—e.g. Passover and Firstfruits—and weddings. Thus, the Old Testament makes clear that wine was Heaven’s gift, to be enjoyed in celebration of God and his Creation.

Wine must be understood within the rich context of the Jewish faith, the context in which Christ lived and acted, as when he attended the yearly Passover at the Temple (Luke 2:41). In addition, wine assumed the significance of not only being a symbol of Creation’s bounty but also of redemption. Christ, in his Incarnation, not only came to redeem man but all of fallen Creation, establishing his authority over nature by calming storms, restoring the lame, giving vision to the blind, etc. To inaugurate this ministry of restoration, Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding of Cana; and at the close of his ministry, the Last Supper, Jesus used wine to inaugurate the New Covenant. This wine is the “emblem of the beauty of creation”³ and redemption of all. It is true that Christ gave up his life. But it was not out of the weakness of will or desire as Nietzsche asserts. It was out of love. This is the biblical Christ, not the Nietzschean portrayal, and rather than see one who despised his life, we see a Savior who “came eating and drinking” (Matthew 11:19), restoring the natural order, and reconciling man with God—knowing that it would cost his life.

The wine of Christ is the bounty of God, a holy offering, the firstfruits of Creation, the image of restoration, and the sign of the Covenant. The wine of Dionysus is merely the means of maddening frenzy and violent excess—for many, the inebriate escape from the harsh political and social realities of the Greco-Roman world. The Dionysiac pagan whose wine could only create chaos would blush before the wine of the Christian which brought fellowship, peace, and agape among believers. Contrary to Nietzsche’s portrayal, the true Jesus embodied the fullness of earthly life. In truth, at the Last Supper, Christ said, “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25). This is the promise of life, that Christ would be resurrected and again meet His disciples at the table, this time the banquet table. Indeed, the final image presented in the Book of Revelation is one of a wedding banquet for the Lamb, the marriage between Heaven and Earth. What better choice for celebration than the first fruits of the newly restored Creation?

“For now, we take on faith that if S is a subset of the integers such that 1 is an element of S and if n is an element of S then if n + 1 is an element of S then S is the set of positive integers.” Thus began one of my Abstract Algebra classes earlier this term. My professor wrote this out on the board in symbols while speaking the sentence, resulting in some smiles and laughs from my classmates and me. We more or less knew the statement to be true. That’s just how math works, we thought. It was as if he said “1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 1 = 4,” etc. Well yeah… that’s how you count. Yet had he asked us to prove that statement, I know I could not have. Hence, I had to take it on faith. However, he promised us that we would prove it later in the term. I look forward to that day.

But what was the essence of this so-called “faith” I had? And who or what was the object of it? Did I have faith in my professor? Did I have faith in all of the mathematicians who had come before him? Did I have faith in mathematics itself? Or was there no “faith” involved at all? Surely I trusted my professor but why? I suppose because he teaches at Dartmouth. He probably had to have a good amount of education and training to get to my class that day. As far as I knew, he had not made any uncorrected mistakes in our class yet. But wait, I thought, who am I to trust my professor’s professors? Oh dear. I quickly saw where this was going in my head. Yet, my trust in what he had written on the board had not decreased at all. But was this trust in my professor really at the heart of this “faith” he spoke of?

It seems clear to me that it was. Though undoubtedly some of that faith, or trust, has its roots in the science of mathematics itself as well. You cannot convince me that 2 + 2 = 5. Period. It’s engrained too deeply. Furthermore, mathematics seems to make sense of the world. Its explanatory power has been demonstrated over and over again.  For example, no one questions Newton’s Laws on the grounds that his calculus is wrong.  But are these three elements – trust in my professor’s authority, trust in the principles of mathematics, and trust in my intuitive appreciation for math’s explanatory power – sufficient ground on which to trust my professor’s claim: “we take on faith…”?  It seems obviously so.

While the analogy is imperfect, there are strong parallels here to the Christian faith. First, the intuition that the world was created also seems to be engrained deeply in human experience:

“For what can be known about God is plain to them [mankind], because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”[i]

Second, the Christian’s appeal to the idea that the faith has been passed down carefully from generation to generation, beginning with Jesus’ disciples, is analogous to the passing down of mathematical truth from historical mathematicians through my professor’s teachers and then into my classroom. Finally, there seems to be a parallel explanatory power found in Christianity, described by C.S. Lewis:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.[ii]

Thus, while I indeed look forward to the day I see the proof of my professor’s claim “we take on faith…,” even more do I look forward, trusting with even greater faith, to the day I see God.

In the eyes of many across Western Europe, the year 1378 marked the onset of an “execrable plague.” Poets and theologians spoke of a “contagious plant,” a “cruel beast, laying waste, consuming and destroying everything.”[1] Such apocryphal imagery[2] was commonly used in reference to the Black Death that had swept the continent mid century. In this case, however, the subject was a man-made one: a politically charged dispute that split the Catholic Church along nationalistic lines and permanently reduced the spiritual and moral prestige of the papacy. The Great Western Schism, as it came to be known, was the natural result of growing tension between French and Italian segments of the Church following the Avignon Papacy. The crisis directly resulted from a double pontifical election, but its seeds were buried much deeper. As Louis Salembier writes in his Catholic history of the conflict published in 1907, “All the past trials of the Church appear to revive, all her future crises exist in embryo in this unfortunate schism.”[3]

Above all, the Great Schism marked the beginning of the end for a unified Christendom. Scholars have argued that during the Middle Ages, “Europe was a factious family of nation-states, not a harmonious corpus Christianum.”[4] Nevertheless, the dream of a common mystic tradition, of a powerful Church wielding temporal and spiritual authority from Rome, was deeply entrenched in the popular imagination of the age. This is undoubtedly evidenced by the Christian elements of period literature, such as the bawdy tales of clerical indiscretion in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, or the more elevated presentation of redemption in Dante’s Paradiso. In addition, the societal implications of authentic Christendom were specifically enunciated in Boniface VIII’s 1302 papal bull Unam Sanctam.

Though arguably extreme in tone, Boniface’s decree that “it is altogether necessary for salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff”[5] did not propose anything revolutionary. It was simply a statement of the Church’s temporal power and a reassertion that membership within the body of Christ was necessary for deliverance. Clement V would later send a letter to Philip IV of France that clarified this very point: “And we do not wish that through this declaration, the aforesaid king, kingdom and its inhabitants be more subject to the Roman Church than they had been before,”[6] he writes. Still, Unam Sanctam was universally seen as a power grab. For Catholics, the great tragedy of the 13^th and 14^th centuries was that in failing to recognize the changing tides of the age, in attempting to incorporate emergent secular society into an authentic utopian Christendom, pontiffs eventually became embroiled in the same temporal partisanship that they hoped to circumvent.

It was in bringing a number of these latent problems to public attention that the Great Schism paved the way for democratization. Democratization came in the form of both conciliar theory and Gallicanism, the idea that French civil authorities had control over the Catholic Church within their own nation. The Church had always been political; its long history of temporal meddling proves that much. However, the usurpation of papal authority at Pisa and Constance seemed to foreshadow the rise of a democratic “priesthood of all believers” during the Reformation. Rome ultimately retained its ecclesiastical supremacy, but the Great Schism forever shattered the romantic, though decidedly unorthodox[7], view of popes as unblemished rulers with a license to do as they wished. The Church’s pragmatic solution to the split actually had much in common with the Machiavellian ideals of the Renaissance.

Before the Great Schism and Avignon Papacy, however, Rome’s power was unquestioned. In a sense, the fickle subjects of Rome had replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people in proudly Christian Europe. For some, then, French domination of the Church during the Avignon Papacy undermined its claim to catholicity. “In quitting Rome, their cradle, in separating themselves from the scared sepulcher of the Prince of the Apostles, in ceasing to reign over the land which had been hallowed with the blood of martyrs, the Popes seemed to hold cheap the support they received from memories so august,”[8] writes Salembier. Accordingly, Gregory XI’s return to the Eternal City at the urging of Catherine of Siena initially seemed to indicate good times ahead. Despite the long of history of intrigue, nepotism and scandal in the Papal States, a pope grounded in Rome was a much more legitimate successor to Peter than one controlled by the House of Valois in Avignon.

Pope Urban VI

When Gregory died in March 1378, fear of a papal return to France struck the general populace in Rome. As the conclave of sixteen cardinals deliberated, mobs roamed the streets outside and even invaded the Vatican, demanding the election of an Italian. The cardinals acquiesced, unanimously electing Bartolomeo Prignano on April 8. Formally, all seemed to be in order, but the cardinals soon realized that they had made a horrendous mistake. The new Urban VI, previously lauded for his prudence, proved to be an awful ruler. He displayed contempt for just about everyone, and publicly upbraided the very cardinals who had supported him. Many believed that Urban had gone mad and was unable to deal with the great temptations of his office. It was not long before the exasperated electors reconvened at Fondi and elected Clement VII as a suitable alternative.

The swift escalation of the schism left Catholics searching for answers. According to Philip Hughes, both papal lines had equally prestigious supporters, including doctors of Canon Law and an equal number of miracle workers. While Vincent Ferrer supported the Avignon popes throughout most of his life, others like Catherine of Siena and the visionary Constance de Rabastens supported the Roman pontiff. Initially, dialogue was strained to say the least. In a letter to the French cardinals, Catherine had only harsh criticism: “I tell you, you have done ill, you and the anti-pope, and I repeat that it is a member of the devil who has been elected. Had Clement been a member of Christ, he would have rather died than have consented to so great an evil, because like us he knows the truth, and cannot plead ignorance as an excuse.”[9] While such appeals to spirituality and virtue were noble, papal control over benefices and clerical taxes had created a situation in which a pope’s national affiliation was increasingly relevant. The schism was thus along national lines, with France, Spain and Scotland supporting the Avignon popes, while England, northern Italy, the Holy Roman Empire and most regions in northeastern Europe pledged allegiance to the Roman popes.

Faced with the prospect of a permanent split, lay theologians, ambassadors and a multitude of clergy assembled for a General Council at Pisa in 1409. Philip Hughes notes that the discussion had heretofore focused not only on practical means of ending the schism, but also on the philosophical questions it raised. Did bishops, for example, have the right to convene a council in the absence of an authoritative pope? Initially, Jean Gerson had argued that the cardinals could resort to epikeia, interpreting the legal language of papal supremacy according to intent rather than by the letter. Though radical, the scholar’s position was not beyond philosophical rationalization. Today, for instance, some vernacular translations of the Roman Missal utilize a related hermeneutic approach called dynamic equivalency.[10] However, Gerson had also suggested that theological justification for a summons was unnecessary given the desperate circumstances! Like William of Ockham and in stark opposition to Aquinas, he believed that theology and revelation ought to remain independent of man-made philosophical concepts. Gerson was a deep thinker, but one who valued the spirit and preservation of Christianity more than its hierarchical structure. As John Morrall writes, “it seems most plausible to suppose that his actions were guided not by any carefully–sought theory of ecclesiology, but by the living exigencies of his practical work as teacher and director of souls…he felt keenly the mischief wrought by the Schism upon the prospects of individual salvation and was determined to end it by the most practical means…one is tempted to say that, for Gerson, the peace and unity of the Church justify all means toward their achievement.”[11]

Thus, the decision to convoke the Council of Pisa was essentially a pragmatic one. Despite its revolutionary and inclusive nature, however, the grand synod ultimately failed to end the crisis. Both rival pontiffs, who still controlled large factions within the Church, had been immediately deposed, excommunicated, and replaced with the newly elected Alexander V. Nevertheless, Alexander’s reign was short-lived; he died in the spring of 1410 and was succeeded by Baldassare Cossa, John XXIII, whose inexperience and questionable morals only made things worse. John’s blatant nepotism was readily apparent, and his support dwindled quickly. It was not long before he agreed to abdicate. At the demand of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, he begrudgingly called another General Council to be held at Constance in the fall of 1414. As at Pisa, the council was to be open to scholars and representatives of the various Estates of Christendom. This time, however, the council would be organized by nation, with each delegation possessing one vote on crucial issues.

Years earlier, Henry of Lagenstein had written that,  “When schisms continue, new heresies arise.”[12] The social turmoil of the schism had clearly led to a breakdown of doctrinal communion and split Christendom along secular lines. As one historian remarked about the council, “It is verily a tower of Babel. At Constance, as many different tongues are spoken, as many contradictory opinions are shown, as there are representatives of various nations to be met with,” Both Pisa and Constance addressed reform and heresy within the Church itself, but the gravity of the crisis at hand made these issues secondary. Complete reunification was instead the most important goal. Thus, while the Council of Constance condemned John Huss as a heretic, it ironically seemed to adopt his view that “the true Pontiff was Jesus Christ alone.”[13] The conciliar theory that soon evolved was attractive because it was feasible; it seemed to be the only way of fixing an impossible situation.

Council of Constance

And indeed, the situation did become quite desperate; Reading the writing on the wall, John fled Constance under cover of darkness in March of 1415 in hopes of provoking chaos and undermining the council’s legitimacy. His rash actions, intended to assert influence, quickly backfired. In a fervor of antipapal sentiment, Sigismund brought the disorganized council under control and passed the Sacrosancta decree, overturning centuries of Church tradition. Sacrosancta affirmed that an ecumenical council of the Church is superior in authority to any pope and that, “lawfully assembled in the Holy Sprit… it holds power directly from Christ.”[14] In addition, the Council established the Frequens rule, which stipulated that future pontiffs would be required to convene councils at regular intervals. It was not long before the French cardinals abandoned Benedict, the Avignon pope, and joined the emerging Church hierarchy of believers. Gregory XII of the Roman line resigned, although not before officially establishing the legitimacy of the council, though he refused to support its findings on supremacy. The council would elect a new pope, but his position as the supreme head of Christendom had been directly called into question. Gone were the days of Unam Snactam; The Vicar of Christ, the moral and spiritual shepherd of the flock, had transformed into an administrative figurehead limited by the partisan theological interpretations of competing nation states.

On November 11, 1417, amidst the pious chanting of hymns, Pope Martin V was elected by a conclave of cardinals and representatives from the five great nations. The Great Schism had essentially ended, though the controversy was by no means over. In the following years, reformers riding on the wave of conciliar success repeatedly attacked the institution of the papacy. The popes fought back, hoping to reconcile conciliar theory with their own belief in the primacy of Peter’s chair. Martin, following Frequens, did call a council at Pavia in 1423, but it was rather badly attended and he used this fact as a rationale for dissolving it. Eugenius IV, his successor, dutifully presided over the Council of Basel, but never approved any canons upholding the power of an ecumenical council over the pope.

Eventually, the Magisterium of the Church would reject conciliar theory at the Fifth Lateran Council, reverting back to the orthodox understanding of Rome and upholding the view of the pope as the visible representation of Christ on earth. Regardless, the damage had been done. According to Salembier, “the germs of opposition sown at Constance and Basle increased and turned kings and peoples aside from accepting reforms favorably, when their initiative was found in Roman authority.”[15] Writes Hughes, “The theologian will find it an easy matter to explain exactly how far this council, with its forty-six sessions, is truly a General Council lawfully summoned in the Holy Spirit, with a real claim to have been divinely guided in its acts. But at the time it dispersed, its prestige, immense and unquestioned, covered (for the ordinary man) all the council had enacted.”[16]

It is said that in politics, perception is reality. And indeed, the Great Schism certainly changed popular perception of Rome. In his commentary on Simon de Cramaud and Gallicanism, Howard Kaminsky writes that, “if Europe’s powers responded to the events of 1378 by choosing sides, thereby making the Schism great, it was not because the case for either contender was so overwhelming as to compel adherence. The Schism was created by acts of the will, a will to pursue one’s own interests and sympathies even though doing so meant destroying the unity of the church.”[17] To scholars, it is clear that Clement VII had gained authority simply because he was supported by the French monarchy. Accordingly, the people of the day began to see the Church as corrupted by politics, marked by the “odour of hell” rather than a “paradise of virtue.” [18] They blamed the failure of the Church on the machinations of its leaders and thus lost hope in the sanctity of the institution itself.

Some have argued that the Great Schism actually proved the papacy’s strength and divine right to command the faithful. Le Maistre suggested that, “It proves that St. Peter’s throne is unshakeable, for what human institution could survive such a trial?”[19] Still, the popular hope in the organized Church as the vehicle of salvation had been shattered. The papacy would continue to exert influence in secular affairs; Alexander VI negotiated the controversial Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, for example. Nonetheless, its ability to act with impunity and without question had been eliminated. The questions that soon did arise, of course, would directly lead to the Protestant Reformation.

I simply cannot get the scene out of my head. It is from Shakespeare’s comedy Measure for Measure. A novice sister named Isabella, whose brother will be put to death for fornication, protests against a cold-hearted Angelo, the stand-in duke of Vienna:

“Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder;
Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.” (II.ii)

These are words of sharp protest, especially coming from an aspirant to the cloistered life. Indeed, her rage is not just against the great mass of power standing before her; it is against the state and its claim to uphold justice, and the arrogance of humans before God. Her words are so startling that Angelo, admonished for being so cold-hearted, finds that he has fallen in love with Isabella: “never could the strumpet,/With all her double vigour, art and nature,/Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid/ Subdues me quite.” It is Shakespearean comedy at its finest.

But out of Isabella’s soliloquy the line “Who, with our spleens, would all themselves laugh mortal” is of particular significance. It may have to do with the august nature of the angels she mentions. Aquinas writes in the Summa (Question 55, Article 2) that angels are creatures of pure intellect who do not comprehend things through the human faculty of reason: “The higher substances–that is, the angels–are utterly free from bodies…consequently they attain their intelligible perfection through an intelligible outpouring.” Whereas humans use stages of logic to understand things, angels are able to understand things through the very movement of their minds over a thing–an “intelligible outpouring.” That said, when Isabella mentions “the angels” she invokes the image of not a postcard cupid but of a blaze of pure mental power.

Given the chance to become human, what do the angels do? They laugh.

There is something to be said, then, about the significance of comedy. In his essay on the comic, aptly named Laughter, Henri Bergson remarks that “the comic does not exist beyond the pale of what is strictly human. A landscape may be beautiful…it will never be laughable” (Bergson, Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York p. 62). So, in this strange angel-become-man universe, the angels have grasped the “glassy essence” of man, his grasp of the comic. Bergson goes on to say that the comic is an appeal “to intelligence, pure and simple. This intelligence, however, must always remain in touch with other intelligences…you would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself isolated from others. Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo.” A distinction should be made here. While angels are pure intelligences, they are not human intelligences; so Bergsonian thought would exclude the idea that angels, before taking on “our spleens,” could laugh. But the statement that a comic “intelligence…must remain in touch with other intelligences” suggests that laughter is a social action; and to borrow from Aristotle, one of the things that constitutes man as a “political animal” would be his laughter. All in all, when Isabella invokes the image of the laughing angels-become-man, she not only attempts to justify her plea for her brother’s life, but also campaigns for a politics of comedy.

For all the policy buffs out there, all of this is not to say that, based on a Shakespeare play, our members of congress should spend more time joking around instead of making laws or that the President should “laugh it up” in the Oval Office instead of proposing bills and signing them into law. It is merely to propose that this nun offers a poignant reflection on the nature of government: with all the authority men are given on earth, it is still “little” and “brief.” She is trying to say that the contrast between the magnitude of man’s political power and the brevity of man’s life is so stark that it is almost comical.

Besides this, the Bergsonian mind would see the comic nature of government reflected in Angelo’s stubborn refusal to show mercy on Isabella’s brother. As Angelo insists that “Your brother is a forfeit of the law, and you but waste your words” and that “Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, it should be thus with him:…Be satisfied; your brother dies to-morrow; be content,” (II. i) he is performing the “mechanical inelasticity” of the comic situation: “that which is brought from without…lends us its own rigidity” (p. 70).

There is much debate in the world of Shakespearean criticism over whether or not Measure for Measure is rightly called a comedy. Isabella’s brother is in fact executed, and Isabella is herself forced to renounce her aspiration to the cloistered life in order to marry the original duke of Vienna. For what it’s worth, this writer thinks that the play is comedy enough: it is a story of lawmakers–“angry apes”–obsessed with their own power. In the grand scheme of things there are few things more laughable.

Only as a senior have I mastered the art of being a college student.  It’s a basic formula: heavy academic concentration diluted with social interaction, online procrastination, and limited sleep.  It was during a procrastination phase that I fell upon an online “What is YOUR Spiritual Gift?” quiz.  A few clicks later and I discover, “CONGRATULATIONS!  You possess the spiritual gift of hospitality!”  Other results included leadership, giving, or even celibacy.  Evidently The Voice of God has become one of countless online applications.

As humans, it’s tempting to categorize ourselves by occupation, major, instrument we play, place we’re from, etc.  The categorization is both comforting- there exist others we can identify with- and gratifying in that we possess this unique characteristic or skill.  A friend recently raised the question of whether this categorization can affectively be applied to spiritual gifts.  Is it right or useful to pigeonhole our spiritual gifts, those abilities given to every Christian to glorify God?  Or to assume we are given few and therefore must solely devote our time and energy to our highest-score spiritual gift?

Although Romans 12:4-8 reveals that God grants these gifts to all Christians, it is not obvious how many he grants to each or in what proportion:

“Just as each of us has one body with many members and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.  We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.  If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.  If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously, if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”

Just as faith itself is a gift, the abilities possible through the amounts of faith we possess are also gifts.  In a sermon on spiritual gifts, John MacArthur observes,

“[Because] the church has been endowed by the Spirit of God with supernatural gifts for its ministry of edification and evangelism, they then become critical to its operation… The church is a living, breathing organism that functions as life and breath. And it is functioning on the basis of the ministry of each member within that church to minister to the other and that’s why it’s seen as a body. And everyone of us is like a member of that body. We have a function in harmony and symphony with every other member.”[i]

If we consider the spiritual abilities we possess as gifts from the Holy Spirit, then it is strange to classify ourselves by what we are given.  As members of the living church, it’s about the equivalent of comparing oneself to a body part (CONGRATULATIONS!  You are an index finger!).

Furthermore, living things are not immutable.  Similar to living creatures, the church grows, gives birth, and changes.  Is it not therefore natural that our spiritual gifts change to accommodate the change within Christ’s church?  Or to accommodate the changes within ourselves as we mature spiritually?

As an illustration, for one comfortable with expressing God’s love though hospitality, are they not also responsible for teaching others God’s word when the opportunity arises?  Or in showing mercy and forgiveness?  While these abilities are perhaps less agile than our self-perceived spiritual gift, willingness to exercise them is crucial to the church’s health.

Having a favorite skill to serve God should inspire joy and thanksgiving.  God not only loves and forgives us; he also integrates us into his master plan and uses us to further his will.  However, we must also prepare for situations that test our other spiritual gifts.  If you hit the refresh button later, your test results might come back differently.