And from his fulness have we all received
I am currently on paternal leave, for the rest of January and February, but sometimes I will still publish homilies here. So this is a homily for the third Sunday of Epiphany (year III) in the Church of Norway. I did go to a Divine Service yesterday, to witness the bishop install our new dean or rural dean (Norwegian: prost). As I have explained here, we have this unfortunate tradition of not only celebrating Epiphany on the nearest Sunday to Epiphany (6th January) but also to call the following Sunday the second, third, etc. Sunday of Epiphany, which means that unless the day falls on 6th January or later, we end up saying “3rd sunday” when virtually every other church celebrates the 2nd Sunday.
The readings are as follows: Exodus 3:13-15; 1 Corinthians 8:5-6; and John 1:15-18. When quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version (RSV), unless otherwise noted.
Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):
Let us Pray:
God, our Creator, you offer us to drink from the spring of life. We pray: Make us thirsty for what you will give us, so that we may worship you in spirit and truth through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.
This day, the readings all concern God, Christ, and what we receive in Him. In the first reading, from Exodus, God Himself saus that His name is simply “I Am,” neither more nor less. God is simply existence itself, in its fulness, while we, as humans, and all of creation, have existence, being, in an analogical way, almost as an image of God, because we are created and are completely dependent on him. We only have existence because we share God’s, almost in an “improper” manner.1 What is created only exists because God shares His with them. When Scripture, for example, say that God is “Father,” this is not an image, an analogy, where we extrapolate an idea of paternity from earthly fathers and apply it to God, so as to say that God is “Father.” No, it is actually the other way around. God the Father is the reality and earthly fathers are only fathers in that they relate to God and show us an image of His Fatherhood, a shadow of the true Father. As St. Paul puts it, in Ephesians 3:14-15: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.”2
In the second reading, from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul admits that there probably exists beings whom people call “gods” or “lords.” But there is only one true God. We do not believe that God is a spirit among spirits or a very big and strong man. I have met many atheists who say they do not believe in a “magical daddy up in the clouds”. And then I reply, “Neither do I.” For we do not believe God is like us – only much bigger and much stronger. No, as has been said by a theologian from the 5th or 6th century who went by the name Dionysius the Areopagite, God is beyond existence as we understand it, he is completely beyond our categories. God, he says, is “beyond being” (above everything which has being or existence), “beyond divinity” (above what St. Paul calls “gods” in our second reading), and “beyond goodness” (above that goodness which He has given us and creation as a whole). And He is so because all this has Him as their source. God, he says, is “the super-unknown and super-brilliant,” the one above everything.3 But at the same time, God is close because He, who is completely different, can be as close as He wants. In Ephesians 4:6 it is phrased like this, that there is “one God and Father of all, who is above all things and through all things and in all things.”4 He is thus above or beyond everything, as creator, but yet close to us, to all of creation. We all participate in God, according to who we are and what we are. God is no closer to you than he is to your dog. And he is no closer to the angels than he is to us. But he is close to us all where we are, according to our capacity. Above all things, through all things, in all things. This is important, as it disabuses us of any idea that God is a “being” who resides somewhere “up there,” like an old man in the clouds. No, God is the One who is above all things, precisely because He is not part of our reality, but is beyond it, as its origin. He is not one being amongst others, in competition with all other beings. If we can imagine a set of of falling dominoes, God is not merely present with the first domino. No, He is equally present to all of them, as their direct cause. Everything has a direct and immediate relation to God.5
But then something new happened, in history, a little over 2000 years ago. Jesus came and in Him, God is revealed to us, in a very special way. Jesus is not just someone who has a special relationship with God, like Abraham or Moses. No, in Him, God Himself became man. God became flesh. We read from today’s Gospel:
And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.6
Here we find the essence of the gospel; that Jesus came to give us His fulness, to give us grace and truth, and to show us who God is. No one has ever seen God but in Jesus, we find out who God is. We do not find out what God is, for God is completely beyond all our categories. He is simply unknowable. But we can find out who He is, especially from what He has done for us.
But here I want to add a critique of the nynorsk translation we use in the Church of Norway. There, it says (in John 1:16) that we have received “from his abundance.” In itself, “abundance” is a good word and it creates an image of God who abundantly pours out His gifts. It shows us that we are rich in God. I heard someone once say that there are three types of people in the world. You have the pessimist, who says “my cup is half empty” and the optimist, who says “my cup is half full.” But then you have the psalmist, who says “my cup is overflowing” (from Psalm 23).
But “abundance” is still not the best word, because it does not quite make clear what this word means in this context. The Greek word is plḗrōma, and in older translations they used fullnad (“fulness”). For to translate it as “abundance” can become problematic because it can create the idea that what we receive is a kind of divine “bonus,” something extra, something outside God. “Fulness” is better, precisely because it shows us that what we receive is God in His totality, His fulness, nothing more, nothing less. God is indivisible, unchangeable. He cannot be “divided.” And that means that when we share God with others, we do not get less God. No, God gives His whole being, His whole fulness, to everyone He comes to. And we receive this first and foremost in Jesus. For in Him, divinity and humanity are fully united, in one and the same person. In Colossians 2:9-10, St. Paul writes: “For in him [in Jesus] the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” Here, the Norwegian translations actually used the word “fulness.”
But how do we receive this “fulness of deity”? In the next two verses, Colossians 2:11-12, St. Paul continues: “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.” In baptism we received new life, something we can grasp in faith. But faith in what? The verse says that it is “through faith in the working of God.” For our faith is not placed in the unknown essence of God, which is beyond being and intelligibility, but in God’s activity, the working of God, which is made manifest, first and foremost, in Christ. We believe in God on the basis of what He has done for us and revealed to us, not through speculation about what God is. The point is therefore the divine act. We have received a participation in Christ, who always works, as He says in John 5:17. And this is given us through the means of grace, completely free.
By grace, through faith, we become partakers of God, fully and completely. We do not need to strive to reach Him or be as “spiritual” as possible. We receive the fulness because God came to us, because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” as we read in John 1:14, the climax of the gospel on Christmas Day. Jesus meets us precisely in the concrete and tangible. We believe that God can come to us in many ways, but that He has given us very specific places where he has promised to be present for us.
He comes to us in his word, in baptism and not least in the Eucharist. In something concrete we receive the Holy, Spirit who creates faith in us, so that we may be saved. There, in the very ordinary bread and wine, we receive a share in the fulness of divinity. But it does not happen in a way where we are lifted away from the concrete and physical. No, God meets us precisely through the concrete and physical.
For God, who is immutable, cannot be comprehended. He is “the super-unknown and super-brilliant,” the one above everything, beyond all thoughts we can think. And the only way we can partake of him is precisely through concrete things we can see, hear, taste, feel and smell. When God became flesh, creation was made to partake in God in a very special way. And through the means of grace, especially the word, baptism and the Eucharist, we meet him, where we are. Through these everyday things – written words, water, bread and wine – we receive what God wants to give us, here and now, through what we can grasp, not intellectually, but physically and spiritually. For God is not comprehensible in Himself, but we can meet Him in the concrete, for that is what He has promised us. There we Christ Himself, the fulness of God, “grace upon grace.” And when we get this, we can break out in thanks and praise.
Notice the order. We do not praise God to “achieve” anything, but because He has let us take part of His fulness, so that we can live in love and trust. We do not have to struggle, but when we receive grace and the Holy Spirit, we can thank and praise God, because he is working in us. We thank, praise and glorify God for who He is and for what He has given us and done for us. And the season of Epiphany, in which we find ourselves now, is precisely about celebrating what God has done for us, especially what he has given us in Jesus. Imagine that: the eternal, unchanging, and truly incomprehensible God became a human being for you, for me, for us all. God the Father gave us His Son as a newborn child. And through his means of grace He gives us a share in the divine fulness, grace upon grace.
Then we can sing hymns of praise to God, as we have already done and which we will continue to do after the homily. And that is precisely what Dionysius the Areopagite holds up as the most central aspect of Christian life.7 We cannot understand what God is, but we can marvel at his works and shour out in thanksgiving and praise. This does not mean that we understand God, but that we can thank Him for His work. For worship is simply an expression of the faith, the trust, we have in God, the One who created us, saved us, and lifted us up. We acknowledge that he is God, that we are his fallen creatures, and that we need his help. That is simply the essence of the gospel. God is God, we are His creatures, and He calls us into a fellowship with Him. The late Norwegian Christian philosopher Egil A. Wyller has said a lot of good things about this. He talks about what he calls “henology,” which derives from the Greek word, hén, meaning “one.” God is the One, the only one who is one with himself. Wyller calls this “oneness” (No. enhet). And he says that we need God to give meaning to everything else, what he calls “otherness” (no. annethet).8 What is created finds its origin in the One (in “oneness”), that is, in “the super-unknown and super-brilliant,” the one above everything, that which is the origin and to everything else (“otherness”), that which gives it meaning. Therefore, when God has called us in and given us His gifts, He sends us back, because what we have received from Him should not only be expressed in praise, but in our relationship to our fellow human beings. Yes, as it says in Colossians, you should “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” and you should “your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” for “you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (3:1-3). But when you have done that, and have become partakers of God, He sends us back into the world and gives it back to us, as the place where God is and where He is especially present in other people. That is how we must understand the Divine Service or the Mass, as a place where we receive the word of God and the sacraments of God, before we are sent out again into the world.9 When we understand that God is the creator, who has created us in His image, who sees us and loves us, and who has granted us salvation in Christ, then we gain a completely new perspective on the world and on our fellow human beings. The well-known (in Norway) late Catholic priest Arnfinn Haram said it well:
When was the last time you looked at a person and thought: Here I see an image of God? We live in a time when our view of man is greatly obscured – by ideologized evolutionary theory, by materialistic philosophies, by secularised psycho-disciplines and by our own selfishness, not least. We are surrounded by fellow human beings whom we either reduce to useful tools for our own happiness or overlook, despise or hate because they have done something reprehensible or are simply unsympathetic and uninteresting. As Christians, we should instead see our human society as an iconostasis; a wall of images where something of the divine reality shines towards us. Behind the smallest human being stands the Almighty as protector, as creator, as originator. Every human is the apple of his eye, every living soul was worth his blood. And precisely when we see humans at their most degraded and crippled, that is precisely when we need a vision that sees the divine signature. Such a vision, such a view of humans brings us closer to humans – and closer to God. “I meet God when I go on a hike,” many say. I ask: What about when you go to the city…?10
When we meet people, we meet the image of God, yes, that is where God is present, because he is not just “above all things,” He is also “through all things and in all things.” Here in the Divine Service, God calls us to Himself, and then He sends us back into the world, so that we can live there for each other, in trust and faithfulness. I think the apostle John puts it best, in 1 John 4:7-12, where he, as in today’s gospel reading, says that we have not seen God, but we can still live in His love. I give him the last words:
Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.
Simon Oliver, Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 64-75.
I have changed the RSV rendition slightly, from “every family” to “all fatherhood.” I think that is the metaphysical, theological, and rhetorical point St. Paul is making.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Mystical Theology (De Mystica Theologia), I, 1, 997AB. For critical editions of the Greek, see Corpus Dionysiacum I, ed. Beate Regina Suchla (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990) and Corpus Dionysiacum II, 2nd ed., eds. Günter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012). There are two complete translations in English: Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid with Paul Rorem (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987) and The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, 2 vols., trans. John Parker (London: James Parker, 1897, 1899). I use and recommend Parker's translation. See Kjetil Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation: On Theurgic Participation in God (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2023), xiii.
I have changed the RSV translation here by substituting frå «all things» for «alle» («who is above all things and through all things and in all things»). I have done so because I think the point is that God is creator (of all things) and there is nothing that says that the adjective pãs has to be understood as masculine instead of neuter. See Ernest Best, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians (International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T&T Clark International, 1998), 370-371.
I have borrowed the image of dominoes from a friend of mine, William Grosås. He talked about this (in Norwegian) in the podcast Ulest, episode 57, on Egil A. Wyller.
I have changed the Norwegian translation to be more in line with the translation used in the Church of Norway. This is also more accurate, I think.
See Kjetil Kringlebotten, “Apofasis, teurgi og kristologi: Om delaktigheit i den ukjente Gud” (Teologisk tidsskrift 13:4, 2024): 213-226; Thomas Plant, The Lost Way to the Good: Dionysian Platonism, Shin Buddhism, and the Shared Quest to Reconnect a Divided World (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2021), 271-286, cf. R. M. van den Berg, Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translations, Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Dionysius called this “hymning.”
See Egil A. Wyller, Enhet og annethet: En historisk og systematisk studie i henologi (I-III) (Oslo: Dreyers forlag, 1981), 38-130, 177-283, cf. Egil A. Wyller, Den sene Platon: En studie i Platons henologi, trans., Jørgen Gaare and Jon-Alfred Smith (Oslo: Tanum-Norli, 1984), 24-53, 153-186; Egil A. Wyller, Der späte Platon (Tübinger Vorlesungen 1965. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1970), 9-28, 90-112; Egil A. Wyller, “Plato’s Parmenides: Another Interpretation” (The Review of Metaphysics 15:4, 1962): 621-640. Also see Gerd Van Riel, “The One, the Henads, and the Principles,” in All From One: A Guide to Proclus, eds. Pieter d’Hoine og Marije Martijn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 73-97; Henri-Dominique Saffrey, “Neoplatonist Spirituality: II. Iamblichus to Proclus and Damascius,” in Classical Mediterranean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, ed., A.H. Armstrong (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 250-265. Also see this excellent article on German Wikipedia: “Das Eine.”
Knut Alfsvåg, Divine Presence: An Introduction to Christian Theology, Kindle version (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2021), 175-180. For the Norwegian original see Knut Alfsvåg, Det guddommelige nærvær – en innføring i kristen teologi, 2nd ed. (Stavanger: VID/MHS, 2021), 115-118.
Arnfinn Haram, “Å leve i medvit om Guds nærver,” in Lat namnet ditt helgast: Fire foredrag om Den heilage og dei heilage (Arken-hefte, nr. 1 - ny serie; Kyrkjeleg Fornying / Classica forlag, 1993), 2-9 (here: 4), translated from Norwegian. Original:
Når såg du sist på eit menneske og tenkte: Her ser eg eit bilete av Gud? Vi lever i ei tid der vårt bilete av mennesket er svært fordunkla – av ideologisert utviklingslære, av materialistiske filosofiar, av sekulariserte psykodisiplinar og av vår eiga egoisme, ikkje minst. Vi vassar i medmenneske som vi anten reduserer til nyttige reidskapar for vår eiga lukke eller overser, foraktar eller hatar fordi dei har gjort noko kritikkverdig eller rett og slett er usympatiske og uinteressante. Som kristne skulle vi istaden sjå på vårt menneskelege samfunn som ein ikonostas; ein biletvegg der noko av den guddomelege røyndomen strålar mot oss. Bak det minste menneske står den Allmektige som verje, som skapar, som opphavsmann. Kvart menneske er hans augnestein, kvar levande sjel var verdt hans blod. Og nettopp når vi ser mennesket på sitt mest fornedra og forkrøpla, nettopp då treng vi eit syn som ser den guddomelege signaturen. Eit slikt syn, eit slikt blikk på mennesket fører oss nærare mennesket – og nærare Gud. “Eg møter Gud når eg er på fjelltur,” seier mange. Eg spør: Kva med ein bytur…?
At the time Fr. Arnfinn had not yet become Roman Catholic. He was, however, already Catholic.