"The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD"

Wednesday, at 2:17 PM, our son John's wife Katie gave birth to their first child, Gemma Rose Twila McGahey―our 6th grandchild, and first granddaughter since our first, Mackenzie, came into this world almost 16 years ago. Mother and daughter came through the ordeal with flying colors, and so it was a day of rejoicing in the McGahey household. The truth of the old proverb was immediately felt: "Grandchildren are the crown of the aged" (Proverbs 17:6, NRSV).

But, as always in this late autumn of life, dark clouds appear and don't seem to go away. In this case they have been hovering over the southern skies for months. Teri's mom, Irene "Janie" Price Schleiden, had been in declining health, with multiple pathologies, for a long period of time. Fortunately, Teri was able to visit her for a month in April, during which time she rallied, at least for a while. Early yesterday morning, however, we woke with news that she had passed during the night, a mere 12 hours or so after the birth of her 11th great-grandchild, one whose picture she would never get to see.

Yesterday morning, while lying in bed, what came to mind immediately was the tale of Job in the book of that name in the Hebrew Bible. Job, so the ancient story goes, was a righteous and prosperous man. In a meeting of the Divine Council, God approaches "the Satan"―the "Accuser"―who had come along with the angels ("sons of God"). Upon seeing the Accuser, God immediately brings the case of the righteous Job before him; the Satan then cynically claims that Job's uprightness can simply be attributed to the self-interested response to the manifold blessings he had received from God: "Stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face" (Job 1:11, NRSV). So God grants him permission to strike everything Job has, up to but not including his life. And so he does, sending foreign peoples and natural disasters to kill his flocks and take away his servants. Finally, a tornado comes and destroys his oldest son's, and heir's, house, killing all of Job's children in the process. Job's famous response, cited above in the post's title, is remarkable, and not one I would likely make were I to experience anything comparable: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21, NRSV). Later, after God gave permission to the Satan to afflict Job with sores up and down his entire body, Job refuses the advice of his wife to curse God and die, so as to relieve himself of his misery (Job 2:9). His response, once again, is truly remarkable: "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad" (Job 2:10)?

Now, I am not saying that the death of my mother-in-law is a parallel situation, let alone one that could potentially precipitate a perceived theological problem about God's justice for people accustomed to expecting a correlation between righteousness and prosperity (e.g., Proverbs 13:21: "Misfortune pursues sinners, but prosperity rewards the righteous;" Proverbs aren't promises, after all!). The Book of Job indeed raises the question of "theodicy," in particular, the question as to why bad things happen to "good" people. What the Book of Job argues is that, contrary to the pious certainties uttered by his "comforters" Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, such a correlation doesn't necessarily exist. In the end, both Job's tormenters and Job himself are silenced as YHWH speaks out of a storm, assailing them for their presumption and ignorance. Those without knowledge―God's relentless bombarding of Job with questions in chapters 38-41 is brutal―have no grounds on which to "darken (God's) counsel" (38:2), "correct Shaddai" (40:2), or "discredit (his) justice" (40:8). In the end, God doesn't answer the question, "Why?" It is enough to rest in confidence that the all-powerful God is also a just God, no matter the circumstances and no matter the existential dissonance caused by the vicissitudes, "fair" or not, of life.

My mother-in-law's death doesn't raise questions of theodicy. She lived a long, happy and, most importantly, a good life, was married for more than 60 years, had 5 children, 12 grandchildren, and 11 great grandchildren. She enjoyed a prosperity most Americans do not experience, a prosperity of which she surely was unacquainted in her humble youth. And, like all of us caught up in Adamic humanity, she was susceptible, and ultimately succumbed, to death (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:22), lending one more piece of empirical evidence of the truth of the words of Kerry Livgren, "Give up your foolish pride/All that walk the earth have died" ("Child of Innocence" [from Kansas's 1975 album, Masque]).

Nevertheless … years ago, in the midst of a previous season of dying that affected our family, I wrote a post on Jesus' response to Lazarus's death in John 11, particularly his indignation (enebrimēsato) at death's "violent tyranny" (Warfield) when confronted with the tears of his friend Mary (John 11:33). Yes, death is a universal phenomenon, and it is one that all of us, "good" and "bad" alike, as sinners, must accept blame for as perpetrators (cf. Romans 5:12c: "And so death comes to all people, for all [have] sinned" [pantes hēmarton] [trans. JRM]; how one interprets this text theologically makes no difference to the point). And so we are entirely justified to view the death of loved ones with wistfulness, deep sadness, and the melancholy of fellow travelers on "this mortal coil" (to use the language of Hamlet in his "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy in Shakespeare's most famous tragedy). Those of us who are Christians may grieve, but not, as the Apostle Paul famously said, "as those who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We―especially those of us, like I, who work in the Reformed tradition―take comfort in the fact of God's absolute sovereignty, understanding, as the Psalmist did, that "(our) times are in (God's) hands" (Psalm 31:15), and that "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful ones" (Psalm 116:15, NRSV). And we believe, as Paul wrote in Irene's favorite Bible book, Philippians, that for God's people "dying" (to apothanein) is "gain" (kerdos) (Phil 1:21) because, as mysterious as it may be, such entails "being with Christ," a condition "better by far" (pallōi mallon) than that of remaining on earth in his service (Phil 1:23). But that's not all. Death, and the consequent "presence with the Lord" in a mysterious, disembodied "Intermediate State" (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:8), is not the "complete healing" many well-meaning Christians attribute to it (this requires a post all its own!). "Life after death" in heaven is, to put it bluntly, not the vanquishing of death. Those "with Christ" are still, like it or not, in the grave. Indeed, the real me is not some Platonically-conceived soul, but rather the embodied me. For Death to die, as John Donne put it, we must be resurrected, what N. T. Wright has cleverly deemed "Life After Life After Death."*

And this is precisely what the gospel proclaims will be the ultimate consequence of God's victory in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Paul, in his great chapter on resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, speaks of Death personified as the "last enemy" ultimately to be vanquished by Christus Victor (1 Cor 15:26). This ultimate victory, guaranteed by Christ's own resurrection as the "firstfruits" (1 Cor 15:23), will take place only at the resurrection of all his people at the "end," at his Parousia ("when he comes," 1 Cor 15: 23), when we will receive new bodies that won't "wear out" and are incapable of degeneration, decay, and death.** Paul's climactic words are unforgettable:

For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible; and we will be changed. For this corruptible body must become clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body with immortality. When this corruptible body comes to be clothed with incorruptibility and this mortal body with immortality, then the word which stands written shall come to pass: "Death has been swallowed up in victory" [Isaiah 25:8]. "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your stinger" [Hosea 13:14]? Now the stinger of Death is Sin, and the power of Sin comes from the Law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:52b-57, trans. JRM)

My mother-in-law Irene was a believer in Jesus, and had been from her youth. Paul's words, in his greatest letter, are of the utmost comfort to those of us who loved her: "And if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies as well through his Spirit, who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11, trans. JRM). Hence I can confidently proclaim the words of Job: "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD."

Soli Deo Gloria!

Bob Dylan at 80: An Appreciation

 

Bob Dylan, June 2009 (Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI)

"Bob Dylan is the father of my country." 

So wrote Bruce Springsteen in his autobiography, Born to Run, back in 2016. He continues:

Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home were not only great records, but they were the first time I can remember being exposed to a truthful vision of the place I lived. The darkness and light were all there, the veil of illusion and deception ripped aside. He put his boot on the stultifying politeness and daily routine that covered corruption and decay. The world he described was all on view, in my little town, and spread out over the television that beamed into our isolated homes, but it went uncommented on and silently tolerated. He inspired me and gave me hope. He asked the questions everyone else was too frightened to ask, especially to a fifteen-year-old: “How does it feel… to be on your own?” A seismic gap had opened up between generations and you suddenly felt orphaned, abandoned amid the flow of history, your compass spinning, internally homeless. Bob pointed true north and served as a beacon to assist you in making your way through the new wilderness America had become. He planted a flag, wrote the songs, sang the words that were essential to the times, to the emotional and spiritual survival of so many young Americans at that moment.

Today the great Bob Dylan turns 80. He is, without question, the greatest songwriter of the rock era, a period that now encompasses more than 65 years. He is a living, breathing museum of Americana and roots music in all its forms―country, rockabilly, and especially the folk and blues that populate so much of his recorded output. In the 21st century he has even dabbled in pre-rock popular music, both writing original songs in that style and recording albums of songs sung by none other than Frank Sinatra. His lyrical sensitivity and profundity likewise famously won him the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. 125 million of his records have been sold between the release of his eponymous 1962 debut album and his notable 2020 release, Rough and Rowdy Ways. All this while sporting a singing voice described by David Bowie as "sand and glue" and, somewhat less charitably, by bluegrass bassist Mitch Jayne as sounding "very much like a dog with his leg caught in barbed wire" (others, for example the estimable Mick Jagger, beg to disagree). Over the past 59 years, many a "new Dylan" has come and gone. Only one, Springsteen, has forged a career approaching Dylan's greatness―and that only after abandoning his Dylanesque verbosity after his third, and in my opinion still his best, album.

As a somewhat late-born Baby Boomer, I, unlike the Boss, wasn't around for the beginning of the Dylan phenomenon. Indeed, by the time I got around to following "popular" music in 1970, Dylan had already released his first 9 (!) classic albums in 1962-69, when he was all of 20-27 years of age. He had begun as the darling of the Greenwich Village folk revival set, releasing timeless albums like The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963, socially conscious songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," and performing "Only a Pawn in Their Game" at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington on 28 August 1963. His 1964 single, "The Times, They Are A-Changin'," even served as an unofficial generational anthem.

Then, in what would prove to be the first of many re-imaginings of his persona and musical style, Dylan made an abrupt about face, going "electric" on side 1 of his March 1965 release, Bringing It All Back Home, leading off the record with the blistering "Subterranean Homesick Blues." When, on 25 July 1965, he appeared on stage with Al Kooper and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival and ripped into "Maggie's Farm," the crowd, feeling betrayed by their erstwhile folkie hero, almost drowned out the performance with boos and jeers worthy of the old 700 level Eagles fans at Philadelphia's late, hardly lamented Vet. Never mind that his next two releases, 1965's Highway 61 Revisited (featuring the immortal "Like a Rolling Stone") and 1966's Blonde on Blonde (featuring my own favorite, "Visions of Johanna"), both full-on electric blockbusters, remain Dylan's two greatest albums, both of which, in my estimation, rank among the 20 top records in rock and roll history. He then promptly changed tack with the much quieter John Wesley Harding in '67 and the country-laden Nashville Skyline (with the classic, crooning "Lay Lady Lay" and the Johnny Cash duet, "Girl from the North Country") in '69. 

By the time I started following music in earnest in 1970, Dylan was, along with the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin, one of the dominant forces on the airwaves, initially on WIBG-AM and later on WMMR-FM and WYSP-FM in Philly. Over the years, I have purchased dozens of his albums, both the sublime (1975's Blood on the Tracks, 1975's The Basement Tapes [with The Band], 1976's Desire, 1997's Time Out of Mind, 2001's Love and Theft) and the not-so sublime (most of his 1980's output, except for 1989's rather good Oh Mercy, 2009's Christmas in the Heart). This past year's aforementioned Rough and Rowdy Ways, featuring the epic "Murder Most Foul" and "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)," is, in my judgment, his best work since 2005's Modern Times, despite the toll the ravages of time have exacted on his voice over the years. Of all my heroes in this musical genre, Dylan is the only one whose late career work even comes close to that of their creative and/or commercial peak. That in itself is the mark of genius and an ever-fertile mind.

Dylan's body of work is so prolific and so well known that Sony's official series of "Bootleg" recordings, consisting of live performances, alternative versions (sometimes quite revealing), and outtakes of songs that never before saw the light of day, now numbering 13 multi-disc sets, has taken on increasing importance as a retrospective of Dylan's remarkable legacy. As I wish Bob a Happy 80th Birthday, with well wishes for a long and profitable future, I leave you with three such outtakes, "The Death of Emmett Till (from a 1962 live performance on Chicago's WGES radio), "Blind Willie McTell" (from the 1983 Infidels sessions) and the heartbreakingly beautiful "Red River Shore" (from the 1997 Time Out of Mind sessions).

The Unimaginable Glory of the Gospel: 1 Corinthians 15:3

Fundamental to Christian theology, particularly a theology based on the writings of the Apostle Paul, is that "salvation" from sin and, consequently, eschatological "ruin" (the middle verb apollumai [Romans 2:12; 1 Corinthians 1:18; 8:11; 15:18; 2 Corinthians 2:15; 4:3; 2 Thessalonians 2:10]) comes only by God's "grace" (charis). As John Barclay has recently demonstrated, Paul consistently uses the term "grace" to refer* to an unconditioned, indeed incongruous gift, one based on the Gift par excellence, i.e., Christ, and given without regard to the perceived or, indeed, actual worth of the recipients who, in the nature of the case, are undeserving of such divine favor.** Another helpful aspect of the "conceptual grammar" of Paul's theology of grace had previously been articulated by Anthony Thiselton, who declared "fundamental" the notion that "someone else has done something for us that we are incapable of doing for ourselves.***

Paul indeed used the term "grace" as a handy summary term to refer to the complex of ideas associated with both God's gracious act in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and the saving effects of that act (cf. Romans 5:15-21; 2 Corinthians 8:9).**** Indeed, since the apostle himself is able to summarize what he calls the traditional "gospel" in terms of the theological significance of Christ's death and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-5), this gospel itself is not incorrectly described as, fundamentally, a gospel of grace.

This notion that the "good news" about Christ is, at its heart, a message about God's gracious initiative is, of course, ingrained in the consciousness and worldview of those who, like I, have been raised and trained in Protestant orthodoxy―so much so, indeed, that the unimaginable glories of this conception are too often taken for granted. This was brought home to me a couple of weekends ago as I reread Simon Gathercole's helpful little book, Defending Substitution,***** one of the chapters of which is devoted to 1 Corinthians 15:3 and its affirmation that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures."

The importance of 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, especially verses 3-5, for an understanding of the Christian faith must not be minimized, not least because Paul explicitly claims the message summarized here is one he himself received, most likely two years after his conversion when he first made his way to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18-19), as authoritative tradition.****** In other words, this message, which the apostle deems "of first importance" (en prōtois, v. 3), is not a peculiarity of his own teaching or creative imagination, but rather is the theological bedrock of the "Christian movement" as a whole. In short, this "gospel" consists of the historical events of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, theologically interpreted as the climax and fulfillment of God's saving designs adumbrated in the Old Testament scriptures.

For our present purposes, I will focus only on the first half of the formulation: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (Gk. Christos apethanen hyper tōn hamartiōn hēmōn kata tas graphas). This summary statement of the atoning significance of Christ's death******* clearly defines the significance of Jesus' death in terms of expiation. Jesus' death dealt with our sins or "removed them" in the sense that it expunged the guilt and liability to judgment resulting from the sins we have committed.******** Most shockingly, most assuredly not least to the former Pharisee Paul, this expiatory, Messianic death is said to have taken place "according to the Scriptures." While many have surmised that the Fourth Servant Song of Isaiah 40-55 (i.e., Isa 52:13-53:12) is in view here,********* the phrase, at the very least, indicates that the Old Testament scriptures as a whole provide the lens through which we are able to understand the significance of Jesus’ death.**********

What interests me, however, is what we might term the "conceptual grammar" of the notion of expiation, particularly as it applies to the death of Christ. Gathercole (70-71) facilitates this by pointing to a number of Old Testament texts, primary among them being an instructive example found in 1 Kings 16:***********

When Zimri saw that the city was taken, he went into the citadel of the king’s house; he burned down the king’s house over himself with fire, and died―because of the sins that he committed, doing evil in the sight of the Lord … (1 Kings 16:18-19, NRSV).

Compare the LXX of the highlighted words with the confession quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3:

• [Zimri] apethanen hyper tōn hamartiōn autou hōn epoiēsen
• [Christ] apethanen hyper tōn hamartiōn hēmōn

Zimri died as a consequence of the sins he committed in the sense that death was the penalty incurred for his transgressive acts. Likewise, it is salutary to realize, as Thiselton reminds us, that the terms "cross" and "crucifixion" belong to the conceptual domain of punishment for crimes committed.************ Accordingly, Christ died as a theological consequence of our sins because, by implication―and, as was said about the Isaianic "servant" in Isaiah 53:4―he bore the sins we had committed. As Paul says elsewhere, this death was an act of God in Christ "reconciling" the world and "not counting their trespasses against them" (2 Corinthians 5:19). Christ's death "for our sins" thus spares us, who had committed them, from the theological consequences we had thereby earned. In other words, because Christ died for our sins, we will not die for them.

This, of course, speaks eloquently of God's grace. We, who are inveterate sinners, are unworthy of the favor shown us on the cross. Moreover, as people "dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1), this act of divine grace does for us what we could never do for ourselves.  What we don't often remember, and which Gathercole reminds us, is that Christ's death "for our sins" runs counter to the Torah itself:

Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for their own crimes may persons be put to death (Deuteronomy 24:16, NRSV)

ouk apothanountai pateres hyper teknōn kai huioi ouk apothanountai hyper paterōn hekastos tēi heautou hamartiai apothaneitai (Deuteronomy 24:16 LXX)

"In this sense," Gathercole wryly notices, "Christ's death is not according to the Scriptures."************* Note also Jeremiah 31:29-30, which, using Deuteronomic language, speaks of the days when the people would be restored after their return from exile: 

In those days they shall no longer say:

"The parents have eaten sour grapes,

and the children's teeth are set on edge."

But all shall die for their own sins (hekastos en tēi heautou hamartiai apothaneitai); the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes will be set on edge (Jeremiah 31:29-30 [38:29-30 LXX], NRSV)

Here lies one aspect of the unimaginable glory of the gospel of God's grace in Christ. The "biblical" position, as articulated in the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, is that each person dies as a consequence of his or her own sins. In other words, we die for our sins. The "good news" of the saving righteousness and grace of God, on the other hand, adumbrated by the mysterious words about the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, is that Christ died for our sins so that we don't have to. This, as Gathercole says, is a "miracle."************** And so it is. Soli Deo Gloria!

Stephen Fry: Martin Luther Redivivus?

Stephen Fry, the towering, crooked-nosed, Oxford-educated British polymath, may be may things: comedic actor (Blackadder, A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster), accomplished dramatic actor (Wilde, Gosford Park), Game Show Host (QI), author, public intellectual. But theologian? As a humanist and professed atheist, such would be hard to imagine. 

But something he said in an interview with David Marchese earlier this month in the New York Times struck me as profoundly correct both philosophically and theologically, cohering with what I used to teach my own undergraduate theology students, much to most of their consternation. In response to Marchese's question, "You said earlier you've been reading philosophy. Is there a particular idea that you're tickled by lately?" Fry responded:

I suppose the real biggie is free will. I find it interesting that no one really talks about it: I would say that 98 percent of all philosophers would agree with me that essentially free will is a myth. It doesn’t exist. That ought to be shocking news on the front of every newspaper. I’m not saying we don’t look both ways before we cross the road; we decide not to leave it to luck as to whether a car is going to hit us. Nor am I saying that we don’t have responsibility for our actions: We have agency over the body in which our minds and consciousness dwell. But we can’t choose our brains, we can’t choose our genes, we can’t choose our parents. 

This, as I said above, strikes me as profoundly correct. He makes necessary distinctions so as to be definitionally precise. More strikingly, he uses the same illustration―"we can't choose our parents"―that my famously Calvinistic dad used to use in his theology classes almost 50 years ago.

Most significantly, Fry's evisceration of the foundational, well-nigh subconscious American axiom of the freedom of the will rhymes to the point of mimicry with the argument made by Martin Luther in his 1525 treatise De Servo Arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will). Luther, whose works fill 61 volumes in the standard Weimar edition, thought so highly of this work that, in a 1537 letter to Wolfgang Capito, said, "You can burn all of my books except for two, The Bondage of the Will and the Small Catechism" (one might add to this list his Commentary on Galatians, a masterpiece of theological contextualization). The point is that of course human beings are not automatons, and that they make real, not merely apparent, choices, in every day matters. But―and here Fry and Luther are in agreement―human choices are constrained by human nature. For Fry, it's the brains and genes we get from our parents. For Luther, humans are likewise constrained by their inheritance. But Luther's focus is derived from his interpretation of the New Testament, mediated at least in part through the grid of the writings of St. Augustine. For Luther, like Augustine, humanity is a massa peccati ("mass of sin") and thus a massa perditionis ("a mass of perdition"); because of this people are incapable of turning away from sin to God. For a human being to be "saved," then, it takes an invincible act of God's grace to change the recalcitrant will, which otherwise would be incapable of cooperation because it is in bondage to sin.

In his treatise, On Rebuke and Grace, chapter 33, written in either 426 or 427, Augustine made a four-fold distinction which remains helpful to this day:

• posse non peccare―Humanity's state prior to the Fall: able not to sin

• non posse non peccare―Humanity's state "in Adam" after the Fall: not able not to sin

• posse peccare, posse non peccare―The church's state "in Christ" while still living in the present world: able to sin, able not to sin

• non posse peccare―The eternal state of the blessed: not able to sin

In each state, of course, people have the capacity to make choices. What differs are the abilities and natures that inform and limit those choices. Thus all people have "free will" in the sense of the power of alternative choice. What is at issue, theologically speaking, is whether or nor people have the power of contrary choice, that is, the power to overcome their natures and make choices contrary to their inherent "bent." Fry, following in the train of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin―though I'm sure unwittingly!―says "no." And, I would maintain, the New Testament confirms this denial.

In the Fourth Gospel (see my posts here and here) Jesus shockingly tells his opponents that their unbelief was due to their not belonging to his sheep (John 10:27). Indeed, earlier in the Gospel Jesus had made the claim that no one is able to come to him unless effectually drawn and given to him by the Father (John 6:43, 65). A generation earlier the Apostle Paul had made an equally clear affirmation of human inability: "The person without the Spirit* does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14, NIV). What is needed is the Spirit's effectual "call" (e.g., Romans 8:29; 1 Corinthians 1:9, 24), for God to "[shine] his light in our hearts to bring the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6, trans. JRM). Once he has done this, and the believer has been united to Christ in faith and baptism (Romans 6:1-14), the believer, having once been enslaved to Sin, is now freed from that bondage to be enslaved to God (Romans 6:15-23; cf. my post here). While "Sin" still can, and does, rear its ugly head in "this present evil age" (Galatians 1:4), its definitive power over a believer has been severed; to use Paul's language, the believer has undergone a "death to sin." This "death" and the attendant transfer of ownership/allegiance has necessary ethical consequences. Indeed, Paul argues that this "ability not to sin" must find its expression in what he terms "righteousness" and (progressive) "sanctification" (Romans 6:19), which leads to the "eternal life" (Romans 6:22) and "glorification" which will mark the final state of those "foreknown" by God (Romans 8:29-30).

The point is that what Christians generally refer to as "salvation" is entirely an act of "grace," an unconditioned gift from God.** "Free will" plays no part in it. Augustine, explicitly following Cyprian, was particularly taken by one striking text in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: "For who differentiates you from anyone else? And what do you have that you have not received? And if indeed you have received it, why then do you boast as if you hadn't" (1 Corinthians 4:7, trans. JRM)?*** Now that's a good question.

Kate Winslet, Mare of Easttown, and the "Delco" Accent

HBO's Mare of Easttown, four of its seven episodes having already aired, is getting a lot of press these days―or, as we would say in Philadelphia, "anymore." Part of the reason for this is that creator Brad Ingelsby, son of Villanova basketball legend Tom Ingelsby and native of Berwyn on the Main Line, has provided us with a crackin'―once again, as we would say it in Philly―good mystery and a highly complex and morally conflicted lead character plagued with grief and, consequently, depression. It's also a poignant study of place. The fictional Easttown, located in Delaware County ("Delco") to the immediate southwest of Philadelphia, is a dreary place: sun rarely shining; people, socially and geographically stuck in the mud, as it were, mired in bleak, dead-end jobs; opioids readily available to wreak havoc on the populace; homes that, while not ramshackle, could certainly use some loving care and a bit of renovation. As a portrayal of the problems of working class America, it has few peers. 

[As an aside, it is interesting that real-life Easttown Township, located in Chester County on the border with Delco, is an upscale community on the Main Line and home of the prestigious Devon Horse Show. Indeed, for those unfamiliar with the area, Delaware County, though geographically small (184 sq. mi.) and densely populated (ca. 567,000), is a divided place; the northern part, consisting of Haverford, Newtown, and Radnor Townships, is characterized by middle/upper middle/upper class suburbs and boasts not one, but two, world-class golf courses: Aronomink and the storied Merion; the southern part is far more working class, with boroughs like Darby and the city of Chester even farther down the economic scale.  Implicitly, the show is centered in this southern part of the county. Indeed, the opening scene, in which the titular character responds to a personal call from an old lady about a prowler, is filmed in working class Marcus Hook; Mare's own middle class house is located in Wallingford. To emphasize the working class grit of the fictional Easttown, Ingelsby has utilized scenes from Phoenixville in neighboring Montgomery County and the hardscrabble steel town of Coatesville in neighboring Chester County. Rarely is a place portrayed with such unrelenting bleakness (one thinks as well of the rain-soaked Seattle in the estimable The Killing). It is tempting to believe that only a congenitally self-deprecating native Philadelphian would deliberately portray his hometown the way Inglesby has.]

Another reason for the amount of press Mare is receiving is the uncommon quality of the performances. This, of course, is not unexpected from the show's star, the Oscar-winning Kate Winslet. Once again, with this performance Winslet demonstrates herself one of the era's greatest actors, with an emotional elasticity and transparency few others can match. The supporting cast is likewise admirable: Julianne Nicholson as Mare's best friend, Lori ("Lor") Ross, Evan Peters as Detective Colin Zabel, Guy Pearce as love interest (and more?) Richard Ryan, Angourie Rice as daughter Siobhan, Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin) as daughter-in-law Carrie, and especially Jean Smart as her tart-mouthed mother Helen. The performances all lend a sense of authenticity, and at times genuine humor, to the show.

But nowhere is this authenticity more surprising, and more discussed, than in the matter of the supposed "Delco" accents attempted by the cast, most notably the famously British Winslet. Let me be honest. I was raised in Haverford Township, Delaware County, from the age of 7 and lived there until I was married at age 22 and moved away from the Philadelphia area to attend graduate school in Texas. Having moved back to Pennsylvania, I regularly go back both to the city and to Havertown, where my daughter and her family now live in the house in which I was raised. I know what a Philadelphia accent―in truth, a white Philadelphia accent―sounds like. Most linguists will also say that the same "Philadelphia" or "mid-Atlantic" dialect emanates from the city east to South Jersey, north to the Lehigh Valley, south to parts of Delaware and Maryland, and west to Delaware and Chester Counties in PA; the slight variations which may be found have less to do with geographical location (e.g., Delco versus South Philly) than to socio-economic class and the age of the speaker. Delco indeed has a large population of working class whites whose families have lived there for generations, and thus has a high percentage of people who speak with the classic accent. Studies have shown that the strongest, most recognizable Philly accents occur in people whose parents both hail from the area. The rest of us certainly speak the same dialect, but the relative strength is often diminished. 

I myself am a known, some would say "infamous," practitioner of what is colloquially termed "hoagie-mouth." During my long years of "exile" in Texas I consciously worked hard to retain my native dialect as an element of my fierce hometown pride. And it has always been one of my pet peeves that Hollywood has historically ignored the dialect when ostensibly filming in the city or its environs. What is the most famous movie set in Philly? Rocky, of course. What do we hear? Sylvester Stallone's New York tongue. Burgess Meredith's New York tongue. Bert Young's New York tongue. Infuriating! In Kensington, of all places! Yes, Sly made famous the favorite Philly call, "Yo," but, even though he graduated from Lincoln High in Northeast Philly, he never lost the Gotham accent he had assimilated earlier in life. The same goes for Silver Linings Playbook, filmed only a couple of miles from my old Havertown home in Upper Darby, Delaware County. What do we hear in that fine film? Robert DeNiro's famous Bronx accent and, even worse, Philadelphia-area native son Bradley Cooper's anodyne general American diction. M. Night Shyamalan famously shoots his films in the Philly region, but rarely do we hear any recognizable Philly-speak from the casts. The Australian Toni Collette made a valiant attempt in The Sixth Sense, and South Jersey native Bruce Willis still retains a sanded away tinge of one in Unbreakable. But little else. TV shows? The less said about The Goldbergs, the better.

There is a reason for this, of course. The Philadelphia accent is famously the most difficult American dialect for non-natives to assimilate or copy. Winslet, herself a master of accent assimilation, has said the "Delco" accent is one of the three hardest she has ever had to learn. Indeed, upon examination, the seemingly impenetrable complexity of its patterns is intimidating. Better, so the thinking goes, to be lazy and substitute the more famous accent from Philly's larger neighbor 90 miles to the northeast. But―and this is no small thing―Winslet and her fellow cast members actually made the attempt to pull it off. And, even more surprisingly, they even succeeded to a certain extent (to my ears, Evan Peters, surprisingly, was the most successful). Indeed, what is shocking to me is the degree to which people even recognize the accent as alien or unusual. None of the accents used are overly strong and, if I'm not listening too carefully or critically, most of the time they sound like they could be my neighbors. At the very least, it is a pleasure not to have to hear declarative clauses ending on an upswing or, what is worse, the phonetic scourge known as "vocal fry," both of which have seemingly become de rigueur in many varieties of today's American English. Winslet herself made the wise decision not to do the accent too hard so as to allow it to slide into parody (see last week's hilarious SNL "Murder Durder" Mare spoof [though how does "dawwter" turn into "durder?"]; better yet the 2017, pre-Super Bowl sketch featuring Upper Darby native Tina Fey).

As I said, to a large extent Winslet and other cast members, particularly Evan Peters and Sosie Bacon, succeeded. Perhaps the two most instantly recognizable features of the accent, the pronunciation of "water" as "wooder" and the infamously fronted and rounded long O's―Winslet's pronunciation of "overdose" near the beginning of episode 1 was a thing of beauty―were faithfully done. Yet genuine Philly-talk has a certain nasal inflection, cadence, fronted vowel sounds and swallowed L's that, together, are simply well-nigh unattainable for outsiders to master. Indeed, having watched each episode twice, I have detected an authentic, old-school Philadelphia accent only in two minor characters, Pat DeFusco's Officer Tommy Boyle and Patrick McDade's Glenn Carroll. When they talked, it sounded like I was back in Haverford High in the early '70's. Somewhat less strong, though clearly legitimate, native accents are also delivered by Connie Giordano ("Patty Del Rasso") and Jeremy Gabriel ("Steve Hinchey").

Winslet herself is particularly good when she just lets a sentence rip unselfconsciously ("Ma, we don't know what's gonna happen, alright?"; here both the "going to" = "gonna" and the raised long I in "alright" are perfectly done). She's also excellent in executing both the smashing together or elision of consonants in multi-syllable words and the hard to emulate multiple glottal stops characteristic of the dialect (e.g., the Walt Whitman Bridge = the "Wal(t) Whi(t)man Bridge" = the "Wall Women Bridge"). Famously, the people of the city often pronounce its name as "Filelfia" (or, as the city's infamous former mayor, Frank Rizzo, used to say, "Fluffya"). Along the same lines, Winslet's pronunciations of "probably" as "pro(b)ly" and "didn't" as "din(t)" were spot on. Another is the way she authentically pronounces "something" as "sum(p)n'." "Allatime" for "all the time" is yet another triumph on her part.

Another peculiarity of the Philadelphia accent which Winslet nailed was the propensity to elide syllables when one ends with a long vowel and the next follows with a short vowel or schwa sound. Thus "towel" = "tal;" "poem" = "pome;" "crayon" = "cray-in," "cran," or even "crown;" and "mayor" = "mare" (indeed, when I heard the name of this show for the first time, and learned it would take place in the Philadelphia suburbs, I immediately thought the story was about the town's mayor!). Also, the name "Graham" is pronounced "Gram," as she dutifully does when meeting with the therapist of that name to whom she is sent for counseling.

One area where Winslet sometimes falls short is her inconsistent application of the region's complicated a-split system. For example, the classic Philadelphia accent uses a tense "a" sound, often bordering on a diphthong ("eh-ah"), in many non-prevocalic syllables, especially those ending in -f, -th, and -s (e.g., "bath" and "pass"), as well as other words such as "bad," "mad," and "glad" (but not, inconsistently, and contrary to New York, "sad;" you have to be raised there, I guess!). Unfortunately, Winslet, while nicely pronouncing such terms as "pass" and "ass," reverts to the typically American lax "a" when incorrectly pronouncing "mad." On the other hand, Philadelphians have traditionally used a lax "a" before a prevocalic "m" or "n" (e.g., "planet" or "animal"), whereas general American English uses a tense "a" in such instances. Thus, while at times she nicely used the lax "a" with words like "examiner" and "January," it was disappointing to hear her use the tense "a" in her pronunciations of "family," "nana," and the officer's name "Trammel."

Another area of inconsistency was in her application of the au/o split (hence, Philadelphia's traditionalist aversion to the general American "caught"/"cot" merger). Hence, whereas most Americans will pronounce both "caught" and "cot" something like "kaht," Philadelphians will pronounce the former like "kawt," often with a very pronounced, hard, "aw" sound (Similarly with the word "coffee," my pronunciation of which has often―in Philadelphian, "awffen"―attracted the attention of people unused to it; two years ago, while traveling out west, I was asked where I was from by servers in both Vancouver and Olympia because of how I said the word). Winslet does a good job at times, such as in her pronunciation of "call," "law," "fought," "and "dogs," but at other times, such as in her pronunciations of "awesome," "autism," "talk" and "saw," the pronounced "aw" sound isn't nearly strong enough.

Much more could be said, but I will limit myself to one, namely, the predilection of older Philadelphians (those born before 1983) to pronounce "er" as if it were "ur;" hence, the "merry"/"Murray" merger. My wife's name is Teri, and her Pittsburgh-raised parents howled when they first heard me call her something akin to "Turry," "Tur" for short. Winslet is inconsistent here, but considering this is rarely picked up as a Philly distinctive by outsiders, even this is a triumph of sorts. Thus she does well in her pronunciations of "ceremony" and, at times, "therapist" (she is inconsistent here). The one place she falls short consistently is in the name of the murdered girl, Erin, which, like most Americans, she pronounces along the order of "Airin." To be sure, this is the direction most younger Philadelphians are taking, so it isn't a big deal. But someone of Mare's age and social location would almost certainly pronounce the name, at best, "Errin," with a pronounced short "e."

All in all, I would judge Winslet's portrayal of the "Delco" Philly accent to be largely a triumph. It is certainly better than any other portrayal of a Philadelphian on film. Indeed, she sounds like nothing less than a transplant who has lived in the city for a long time and picked up a number of its prominent vocalizations. And that's not bad indeed.

To close, I would like to provide some clips of authentic Philadelphia speakers. These include Las Vegas Raiders GM Mike Mayock, a member of the Haverford School Sports Hall of Fame; retired political journalist Chris Matthews; Old Testament scholar Walt Kaiser (when I first met him and heard him speak, the first thing I asked was, "Where in Philadelphia are you from?" His answer: Glenolden, a working class town in southern Delco such as is portrayed in Mare); and actor Kevin Bacon.

Mike Mayock:

Chris Matthews:

Walt Kaiser:

Kevin Bacon:

Bob Dylan, Theologian

 

(Bob Dylan on Saturday Night Live, 20 October 1979)

You may be an ambassador to England or France

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

You may be the heavyweight champion of the world

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes

Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody

You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage

You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage

You may be a business man or some high-degree thief

They may call you doctor or they may call you chief

[Chorus]

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk

You may be the head of some big TV network

You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame

You may be living in another country under another name

[Chorus]

You may be a construction worker working on a home

You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome

You might own guns and you might even own tanks

You might be somebody's landlord, you might even own banks

[Chorus]

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride

You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side

You may be workin' in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair

You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir

[Chorus]

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk

Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk

You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread

You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

[Chorus]

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy

You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy

You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray

You may call me anything but no matter what you say

Still, you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes

You're gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody

I was reading Romans chapter 6 the other day, and what the Apostle Paul says there brought to mind, as it always does, Bob Dylan's classic "Gotta Serve Somebody" from 1979. Back in the fall of that year, I was newly married and had pulled up our stakes to move from Philadelphia to Texas for my first semester of seminary in Dallas. Rumors of Dylan's apparent conversion to Christianity were swirling following the August release of his new album, Slow Train Coming, but I was too busy with my studies to look too deeply into it. That is, I was too preoccupied until I took time off from my books to watch Saturday Night Live on October 20, hosted by Monty Python's Eric Idle. When Dylan, his tight backup band, and backup singers appeared on stage, I was blown away, and not merely because of the atypical, funky sound of the song. The lyrics! Dylan is, without question, the greatest songwriter of the rock era, and had often written prophetically as one of the primary voices of his generation. And here he was again, penning a song in an entirely unexpected vein. "Gotta Serve Somebody" is unmistakably a "gospel" song, but it isn't overly preachy, let alone self-righteous. It is direct and to the point, but not overtly confrontational in its message, to wit, that none of us are truly autonomous beings; each of us lives his or her life in service to a power or powers to whom we must render obedience.*

In making this claim, Dylan was doing nothing more―or less!―than paraphrasing the words of Paul in Romans 6:16, which the apostle assumes his Roman readers would readily understand by experience. Verses 15-23 read as follows:

What then? Should we sin, because we are not under Law but under Grace? Certainly not! Don't you know that to the one you habitually hand yourselves over** as slaves for obedience―you are slaves to the one you obey, whether of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God! You once were slaves of Sin, but now have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were handed over. Now, having been set free from Sin, you have been enslaved to Righteousness.

I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you used to hand your bodily members over as slaves to Impurity and Lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now hand your members over as slaves to Righteousness, leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of Sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then―things of which you are now ashamed, for their end result is death! But now, having been set free from Sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit leading to sanctification, and their end result is eternal life. For the wages of Sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (trans. JRM)

Paul is being deadly serious here. For him, there are two options for human existence, and two options only, both of which are cast in terms of the subservience of a slave to a master.** These two masters, in the apostle's scheme, are Sin**** and God.***** These relations of bondage bear diametrically opposite fruit (lawlessness/"righteousness"****** and "sanctification") and inevitably lead to contrasting ends ([eternal] death/"eternal life"*******). Ironically―and it is here that Western presuppositions about human autonomy can become particularly unhelpful ―manumission from the former slavery leads to a freedom consisting in a transfer of ownership and, hence, allegiance, namely, slavery to the one who secured that freedom. Because of the deadly seriousness of this contrast, Paul makes sure to emphasize to his "freed" readers the necessity of placing themselves at the disposal of the God who freed them from their former servitude to Sin.

As always, it seems, Paul is walking a theological tightrope here. "Justification"―acquittal at the bar of God's justice and the proleptic declaration that a person is a member of his covenant family―comes by grace alone, through faith in Christ alone, without contribution from either "works of the law" (i.e., works done as the entail of the Mosaic covenant; Galatians 2:16; Romans 3:20) or "works" of moral righteousness (Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5). Yet at the same time Paul insists that "eternal life" at the end of the line only comes as a consequence of ethical "righteousness" and sanctification which are the fruit of obedience in servitude to God. This is a tightrope that many Protestants fall off in their zeal to maintain the first of Paul's emphases. How, then, does Paul maintain this tension?

The key is to understand what the apostle is arguing in chapters 5-8 of Romans. In short, his aim is to argue that Jews and Gentiles alike, who are in the present already "justified" by faith in fulfillment of God's covenant promises to Abraham, have a sure hope of eternal life (cf. the inclusio of Romans 5:1-11 and 8:28-39, which tie together the whole section). The basis for his seemingly brash confidence is to be found, not in some naïve belief in human ability to persevere or in some magical understanding of the efficacy of a "once-for-all" decision of "faith," but rather, and only, in Christ himself, in particular his role as an inclusive representative of his people, on analogy with the role of the first man, Adam (5:12-21). Just as Adam's sin led to the reign of sin and death over all his progeny, so Christ's one "righteous act" of obedience resulted in "justification leading to (eternal) life" (dikaiōsis zōēs) for the "many" he represented (5:18). The introduction of the Law into the Adamic situation, as difficult as this must have been for the former Pharisee Paul to learn, was (deliberately!) counterproductive, simply aggravating the problem of sin until "Grace" came in Christ to "superabound" (hypereperisseusen, 5:20) at the point of Adamic humanity's―both that of Gentiles and Jews (cf. 3:19-20)―spiritual nadir (5:20-21). For Paul, Adam and Christ thus must be understood as representatives of two "ages" or "aeons:" the old humanity and the new, eschatological humanity, the latter of whom are the beneficiaries of the fulfillment of God's covenant promises.

But this begs the question, which Paul immediately asks: If indeed "Grace" superabounded in the context of the Law's failure, should we not persist in sin so that grace could abound even more (6:1)? It is here, in answer to this question, that one of Paul's fundamental theological convictions becomes evident: Because God's "grace" is actualized in Christ's inclusive, representative act, this grace which justifies also necessarily transforms those taken up in its grasp.******** He first answers his rhetorical question with a characteristic "Certainly not" (mē genoito), and then follows by asking the penetrating question, "We who have died to sin (hoitines apethanomen tēi hamartiai)―how can we possibly still live in it" (6:2, trans. JRM)? Later, in verse 6, the apostle explains this "death to sin" in terms of our "old man," that is, the person we were, before we were converted, in solidarity with Adam,********* being "co-crucified" (synestaurōthē) with Christ (6:6a). He then describes a sort of two-tiered purpose (hina) to this co-crucifixion: first, that "the body of sin," in other words, the person we are in our interaction with the fallen, Adamic world, might be "rendered ineffective;"********** and then, secondly, that as a result we should no longer give service as slaves (douleuein) to Sin (6:6b). 

When did this "death" occur? It is tempting to suggest that this co-crucifixion, being an event of corporate solidarity, refers to the historic, once-for-all death of Christ at Calvary itself.*********** But Paul makes it clear in verse 2 that this "death to sin" occurs at baptism, the moment when a believer is existentially united with Christ, and therefore the moment when Christ's representative, salvation-historical act becomes the baptisand's own death. Thus united with Christ, his resurrection also both guarantees the believer's future resurrection (6:8) and, what is vital for our present purposes, means that we should now "walk in newness of life" (6:4). Paul's point to the believers in Rome is a simple one: You are no longer the persons you once were; therefore, you can no longer live the way you once did. Thus they must "reckon themselves" to be dead to sin and alive to God by virtue of their being "in" Christ Jesus (6:11).

But, as always, things are not as simple as they might appear to be at first glance. Yes, we are "dead to sin" by virtue of our union with Christ. Our "old man" was nailed to the cross with him. We are now "alive to God" by virtue of our solidarity with Christ in his resurrection.  We are, in a word, people of the new aeon who have definitively been severed from identification with Adam. But this "eschatological" identity doesn't deliver us from the inexorable physical death associated with Adamic humanity. Nor does it preclude the vestigial effects of the sin connected to it either. Hence Paul exhorts us not to let Sin reign in our mortal bodies (6:12), nor to hand our "members" over to sin as "weapons" of unrighteousness (6:13). 

Anyone who has spent time in Paul's letters will recognize that this "indicative/imperative" dynamic is characteristic of the apostle's moral exhortation, and I believe it provides a window through which to peer clearly into the fundamental theological substratum of his thought. God had, in Christ, acted apocalyptically to inaugurate the eschaton, the "last days" in which he would fulfill all his promises to Abraham and the people of Israel. The church, for Paul, is the eschatological people of God, the "true circumcision" whose hearts have already been circumcised, the "Israel of God" who receive the Spirit as the promise of Abraham, and who have proleptically received the verdict of "not guilty" in advance of the judgment on the last day. But this new age to which we belong is not yet  present in its entirety, but exists in a sort of "eschatological" tension with the continuing old age, the age of Adam, the age of sin and death. In the meantime, God's people, who have been united with the crucified and risen Lord through faith/baptism, must continue to present themselves to God for his service. In other words, the "newness of life" made possible and necessary for believers by Christ's resurrection doesn't occur automatically, but only through concerted moral effort on their part.

Many have summed up the apostle's inner logic in terms of "become what you are." Better, in Jimmy Dunn's words, to see it in terms of "becoming what you are becoming."************ There is no room for complacency in Paul's vision for the Christian life. Christians must remain ever vigilant and work daily so as not to fall back, treat their justification as a legal fiction, and succumb to their erstwhile master, Sin. And, I believe, it is salutary to linger a while on Paul's implicit warnings in Romans 6:15-23 in order to feel their full force. Dylan, long ago, said "You're gonna have to serve somebody." He was right. The question is, whose slave are you?

Willie Mays at 90

Willie Mays in Spring Training at Casa Grande, Arizona, March 1964 (AP Photo)

I remember the day as if it were yesterday: May 13, 1964. I was 7 years old and in the 2nd grade, living on Balwynne Park Road in the Wynnefield Heights section of West Philadelphia. Though I had watched sports (mostly football and basketball) on TV with my dad and played wiffle ball in the alley behind our apartment, I had only the previous month started following Major League baseball, largely as a result of my mom's listening to the nightly radio broadcasts of the Phillies, with rookie phenom "Richie" Allen, that fateful season. That month dad also started buying baseball cards for my brother and me from the Jack and Jill ice cream truck that came down our street a couple evening a week. I well remember asking dad who the best player in baseball was. He mentioned two: Mickey Mantle in the American League and Willie Mays in the National League (He knew his stuff!). Since the hometown Phillies were in the National League, I became a National League guy. And Mays, in the spring of 1964, at the ripe old age of 33, was off to the most torrid start of his storied career. When I got home from school on the afternoon of May 13, I found the afternoon's edition of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin to read the box scores from the previous day's games. Then I saw the headline on page 2 of the Sports page: "Mays Raises average to .478 as Giants Shut Out Houston." Indeed, Mays had gone 3-5 with 2 home runs and 4 RBI to lead Juan Marichal to his 6th win without a loss and the Giants to their 16th win in the season's first 23 games. In these 23 games, Mays had hit 13 home runs, scored 27 runs and driven in 34. From that day forward I had a new sports hero, to this day still the top one on my list. When, a couple of weeks later, I got the Willie Mays All Stars coin in my pack of Topps baseball cards, I was overjoyed. It remains to this day one of my most treasured pieces of sports memorabilia.

Mays's 1964 Topps Coin

Apart from my dad's hero, Babe Ruth, who not only excelled at both hitting and pitching, but entirely changed the game to boot, I consider Mays the greatest all-around player in baseball history. And I am not alone. Former ballplayers say the same thing: Bill White, Joe Morgan, Felipe Alou, Tim McCarver, Joe DiMaggio, and countless others. Ditto announcers such as Vin Scully, Curt Gowdy, and Harry Kalas. His first manager with the Giants, the irrepressible Leo Durocher, claimed that no one had ever combined Mays's skills so perfectly in the non-pitching aspects of the game: hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning, fielding, and throwing. In the almost-70 years since Leo said that, no one has done so since, either. He remains the standard by which any putative "5-tool player" is measured and thus, implicitly, falls short. His career numbers are legendary: 3283 hits, .302 career BA, 2062 runs scored, 1903 RBI, 660 home runs, .557 slugging pct., 156 OPS+, 338 stolen bases, 12 Gold Glove Awards (which would have been 16, had the award been given prior to 1957), 156.1 WAR. For his 13 peak seasons (1954-66), Mays batted .315, slugged .601, and averaged

Mays's 1966 Topps Card

 117 runs, 40 homers, and 109 RBI while never striking out more than 85 times in a single season (indeed, he never struck out as many as 70 times in a season until 1960). In those 13 seasons, he compiled a cumulative 124 WAR, surpassing 11 in both 1964 and 1965, and 10 in 1954, 1958, and 1962-63. (By contrast, his only real peers, Mantle and the Braves' Henry Aaron, surpassed 10 WAR 3 and 0 times, respectively; today's best player, Mike Trout, has done so twice). In those 13 years, he led the Major Leagues in that category a staggering 8 times. Rarely is a slugger renowned as much for his defense as for his offensive exploits. Mays is the rare exception. Of course, he will always be famous for "The Catch" he made in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds, when he took off at full speed and hauled in Vic Wertz's 430-foot drive over his shoulder as if he were Tyreek Hill hauling in a Patrick Mahomes bomb, stopped on a dime, and threw the ball back to the infield, with only one runner advancing on the play. Characteristically, Mays downplays the catch, saying he "had it all the way," and pointing to others, such as his 1952 grab of Bobby Morgan liner at the fence in left-center at Ebbets Field as superior (Scully calls that one the greatest defensive play he has ever seen). I too remember watching, on the Game of the Week, a grab he made at Candlestick Park in April 11, 1970 when, less than a month before turning 39 (!), he sprinted to the fence in right center and jumped over (!) a hesitant Bobby Bonds to rob Bobby Tolan of a home run.

Mays sliding into Pat Corrales, 12 July 1965 (AP Photo)

The most underappreciated aspect of Mays's game was his baserunning. Of course, he led the league in stolen bases four consecutive years in the late '50's, was the second player to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases in a season, and the first to hit 300 homers and steal 300 bases for his career. In 1970, at age 40 (!), when his batting skills had eroded due to age and the fatigue of a long season, he became the prototype of the modern player by walking 112 times in only 537 plate appearances. Not only that, but he revived his base-stealing ways, swiping 23 and being caught only 3 times. But where he really excelled was his fearlessness as a baserunner. This could take the form of emulating Ty Cobb, such as when he used his left foot to dislodge the ball from the Phils' Pat Corrales while sliding into home at Connie Mack Stadium on July 12, 1965. That time, Corrales ended up in hospital for absorbing Mays's aggression. Other times it could go the other way, such as on March 12, 1959 when, during a meaningless Spring Training game, he needed 35 stitches to heal a wound he incurred on an ill-advised slide. Most often, however, his prowess as a baserunner was seen in his routine taking the extra base on hits, an index both of his speed and his alertness to defensive laxity. Recent research has shown that he took the extra base (2 bases on a single, 3 bases on a double) an incredible 63% of the time—compare this with Rickey Henderson (55%), Mickey Mantle (54%), Maury Wills and Lou Brock (53%), Joe Morgan and Hank Aaron (51%), and (from a later time) Ichiro Suzuki (41%—no doubt today's bandbox stadiums account for this lower number). Most stunningly, on multiple occasions Mays scored from first base on a single. I remember Harry Kalas telling the story of the time Mays did it on a ground ball single by Jim Ray Hart to Dick Simpson in left field (!) when he hadn't even taken a big lead (research earlier this week pinpointed the date as July 20, 1968; Mays's run was the lone score of the game). Further research pointed me as well to a game on May 8, 1956, when he pulled the trick, not once, but twice! The 1962 World Series famously ended when Willie McCovey smashed a liner to Bobby Richardson with batters on 2nd and third and two outs in Game 7 at Candlestick Park, with the Yankees leading the Giants, 1-0. The runner at 2nd was Mays, who had doubled with 2 outs off Ralph Terry into the right field corner. Roger Maris made a great play to cut the ball off before it reached the fence, preventing Matty Alou from scoring on the play. A couple of years ago I was reading James Hirsch's fine biography of Mays, and I was struck by Mays's regret that it wasn't he who was the runner at first base instead of Alou: "I would have found some way to score." And who's to doubt him? Certainly not me.

Mays, after hitting 4 homers against Milwaukee at
County Stadium, 30 April 1961 (AP Photo)

Today, when the great Willie Mays turns 90, I am 64 years old. The mind is brought inexorably to the words of the old Hebrew prophet: "All flesh is like grass, and all its beauty is as the flower of the field" (Isaiah 40:6). As the great Johnny Bench said recently while reminiscing on all his friends and peers who have died over the past 12, horrible months, "the warranty runs out on all of us." Time spares no one on this mortal coil. But memories persist. A lot of time has passed under the bridge since I first heard the name "Willie Mays" from my dad 57 years ago, but the vividness of the memories of what he accomplished on the field plays some happy tricks to make it seem like yesterday. To me, Willie still remains a 33-year old Giant roaming center at Candlestick or, for the many, happy days and evenings I saw him play in Philly, old Connie Mack Stadium. And it will ever be that way. So, I say, "Happy Birthday, Say Hey. May you have many more."

U2's "40": A Theological Reflection

 

Years ago, one of my Bible students at an evangelical college, upon discovering my distinctively unusual, if not contrarian, tastes in music for that subculture―no insipid, saccharine "Contemporary Christian Music" or blues-stripped "Christian Rock," let alone no Christian Rap―asked in disbelief, "Don't you listen to Christian music?" I replied, "Sure I do. I listen to Bach … and U2." Of course, this was an exaggeration. Besides the sacred works of Bach, Handel, Beethoven, and others in the Western canon, I also love the hymns of such venerable men as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, not to mention the long, storied tradition of English choral music. And I also love the early, 1980s, output of the Irish rock band U2, three of whose four members are professing Christians.

This was a fact of which I was unaware when their anthem, "New Year's Day," made its way onto the AOR radio waves in early 1983. The song was so riveting that I immediately went out and picked up the album, War, which to this day I still consider the band's best, rawest work. And my jaw dropped when I listened to the record's closing cut, simply titled "40:"

I waited patiently for the Lord
He inclined and heard my cry
He lift me up out of the pits
Out of the miry clay

I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song
How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long, how long, how long
How long to sing this song?

He set my feet upon a rock
And made my footsteps firm
Many will see
Many will see and fear

 

These were the words of the first three verses of one of my favorite psalms since childhood, Psalm 40, a song of thanksgiving for YHWH's rescue of the psalmist from an undisclosed calamity. Interestingly, Bono's lyrics extended only to those first three verses. Far from simply being lazy or happy to recite the words without context, a la so many sappy evangelical "praise choruses," Bono, I think, has set his own context for the words within the album itself.

The key is to be found in the question Bono introduces after his rendering of Psalm 40:3: "How long to sing this song?" Those with ears to hear will remember this lyric from the album's epic opener, "Sunday, Bloody Sunday:" "How long, how long must we sing this song?" These nearly identical questions bookend the album, forming a literary inclusio of sorts and encouraging the listener to hear the songs as mutually interpretive.

Psalm 40 is an unusual psalm, in that it reverses the normal structural order found in the classic psalms of lament (i.e., lament, petition, assurance, praise). Here the psalm famously opens with thanksgiving, and only later introduces the themes of lament and petition (Psalm 40:11-17), in which the psalmist's plight is implicitly linked to "sins" that have "overtaken" him (verse 12). Whether the psalm, as it is currently configured, is the result of the merging of two originally discrete songs, or the introductory thanksgiving is written in anticipation of forgiveness and restoration, is neither here nor there. What I would like to suggest is that Bono has used the earlier "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" as the "lament" for which "40" is the response of praise for the anticipated deliverance.*

The harrowing "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is one of the band's most famous songs. It harkens back quite obviously to the awful "Bloody Sunday" of 30 January 1972, when British soldiers inexcusably shot 28 unarmed protesters, killing 14, in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Less well known is the additional, implicit, allusion to the "Bloody Sunday" of 21 November 1920 precipitated by Michael Collins in Dublin during the Irish War of Independence. Though the song is often labeled as a "political" anthem, its point of view is that of a weary observer of the barbarity, and it is deliberately nonsectarian. The singer sees the unimaginable carnage―Bono brilliantly weaves in an allusion to Matthew 10:35 ("And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart") and an ironic twist to Isaiah 22:13/1 Corinthians 15:32 ("we eat and drink while tomorrow they die")―yet "won't heed the battle call" while he insists that "tonight, we can be as one."  Indeed, in one of the most profound observations of the song, Bono notes that sectarianism is futile because the indictment at the heart of human hate and violence is universal: "The trench is dug within our hearts." And whatever "victory" one side might seem to achieve will inevitably prove illusory, simply feeding the perpetual cycle of violence: "There's many lost, but tell me, who has won?" Indeed, the real battle has only begun, "to claim the victory Jesus won." And how did Jesus win this victory, you might ask? The answer is profoundly simple: By enduring violence rather than inflicting it; by suffering all the onslaughts of Sin and the various other "principalities and powers" and thereby exhausting them. "Victory" is only possible by following Christus Victor and implementing, peacefully, the victory he won at the cost of his very life at Calvary.

Bono's use of Psalm 40 fits nicely in this context. He praises the Lord for his rescue of him from the hate and violence that universally mars humankind and distorts the "image of God" which is the human vocation. But the struggle is real. "How long?" he asks. Well, the victory was won by Christ on the cross, but it is not total, at least insofar as its implementation is concerned. Jesus himself gave us the answer to this question, when he told his followers to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Even so come, Lord Jesus.