It is Epiphany. On January 6, we remembered the coming of the Magi to the Christ Child and worshipping him. This event signifies the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. And Epiphany comes from the Greek for manifestation. As we travel from Epiphany to Lent, we shall be looking at God’s revelation to us.
Thus, tomorrow night we are going to look at how we read the Bible, for the Bible is the inspired word of God, or, as some say, God’s word written. The Bible is a special book in the life of the Church and of the individual Christian. Cassian will be our guide.
(St.) John Cassian was a fifth-century monastic writer who lived in Egypt with the earliest monastic communities before moving to Gaul (France) where he established, according to tradition, two monasteries. At the request of a local bishop, he recorded the wisdom of the Egyptian Fathers for a Gallic context, first their means of life in his Institutes, and then their teaching in his Conferences. This week, it is the Conferences we shall turn to, specifically to the eighth, chh. 3 & 4 (find Chapter 3 here, follow link to 4). We shall look, not at the authority of Scripture (the sort of thing we Protestants argue in favour of all the time), but, rather, taking that as an underlying assumption, we shall observe how to interpret Scripture.
It will be a good time! We might even pull in some St. Augustine.
Posts here about Cassian (the first three are also about the Bible; (St.) John Cassian 1-4 are my intro to him):
Killing Enemies and Bashing Babies on Rocks: Reading the Difficult Psalms, Part Two
Killing Enemies and Bashing Babies on Rocks: Reading the Difficult Psalms, Part One
Cassian & You – (St.) John Cassian, Part 4
John Cassian & the Desert Fathers
John Cassian’s Legacy – (St.) John Cassian, Part 3
John Cassian on Grace & Freewill
Rehabilitating John Cassian – (St.) John Cassian, Part 2
The Life of John Cassian – (St.) John Cassian, Part 1
A Quotation from Cassian on the Eucharist
[…] out God in the story of Martin Luther in film; we have seen His revelation to us in the Bible with John Cassian as guide; we have seen God’s particular revelation to St. Paul and been exhorted to read and […]
[…] We know that he was Archdeacon in the 430′s when he commissioned my friend John Cassian (this post gives a list of my major posts about Cassian) to write On the Incarnation of the Lord Against […]