Christmas and Philanthrōpia
Etymologies
Titus 3:4--7
. . . when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.
This passage from Paul's Epistle to Titus was the second reading at the Mass at dawn on Christmas day. The word translated "loving kindness" is φιλανθρωπία (philanthrōpia) in Greek. It literally means love of mankind or love of one's fellow men, but also benevolence, kind-heartedness, or humane feeling. For ancient Greeks, philanthrōpia was symbolized by the figure in the image above: a type of statue known as a kriophoros, which means one "bearing a ram."
To Christians, the image is more familiar as that of Christ the Good Shepherd, as described in John 10:11--15 or in the Parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15:3--7. The early Christians who constructed the catacombs of Rome adopted the kriophoros as an image of Christ.
Both Paul's attribution of the virtue of "loving kindness" to God and the early Christians' appropriation of the kriophoros as an image of Christ are characteristically Christian gestures. They exemplify a quality of Christian culture which Robert Louis Wilken discusses in this beautiful essay: secondarity. (Wilken borrows the term from Rémi Brague's Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization.) Secondarity "means not simply that an earlier culture is given as a historical fact, but that those who come later honor and cherish what went before." So honoring and cherishing what went before is one way of practicing what St. Paul advises in another letter: "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (Philippians 4:8).
An Epiphany Hymn
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This ancient Roman was participating in the creation of a new thing. He was putting pieces – even traditions – together in a fresh way. Cassiodorus recognized the utility of such a well-rounded liberal arts education. His own career provided ready evidence of the heights to which such an education could take a person with connections. But the goal of the learning conducted near that fishpond in southern Italy was not worldly success. It was, in the Christian mind at least, something far better. Cassiodorus urges us to immerse ourselves in our studies, to dedicate ourselves to “what we have received,” and to range across and ascend ever higher within the disciplines – sacred and secular – because through these efforts we increase the avenues through which to seek the face of God. On this model, our task in the years ahead is not simply to deliver a cargo to future generations; it is to keep the wide-ranging investigations open. We should preserve our long-running practices. Yet we should also look for new lines of inquiry. For as Cassiodorus taught his monks at the Vivarium, God’s lurking places are manifold.
An interview with Alan Jacobs on his new book, Breaking Bread with the Dead
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