The Divine Setting. An Essay on the Lifted Cross. 2026.

Sic enim Deus dilexit mundum (Joannes 3:16) For God so loved the world 

In a previous post, O Friend of God, we dealt with "Holy Cross Day", or as it is sometimes called among us, The Triumph of the Holy Cross.  We saw that the actual name of the day is The Exaltation of the Cross, that exaltation is used in its literal Latin sense of lifting up, and that neither the lifting up nor the cross lifted up refer to the triumph of the cross of Christ as the means of salvation, but to the lifting up of a supposed relic on 14 September 335 A.D in Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which still stands.

So we impose good theology over silly legends about scandalous facts to retain the feast.  This is a problem and this post addresses that problem further, not regarding that particular feast, but regarding the actual triumph of the actual cross.  Over particularly recent centuries and continuing in this one, our empirically based human view of the world, and consequently the value of its parts, has yielded an astounding harvest of knowledge, which may seem at odds with traditional Christian belief.

Thus many people who by training or temperament primarily listen to the voices of human knowledge waver regarding Christianity, either hesitating, thinking they would have to be false to themselves to embrace Christianity, or turning away from it altogether, thinking they have gone beyond it.  And some seek a middle ground by recasting Christianity, trying to both go beyond it but nonetheless preserve its veneer.

This problem is not new and not unique to our times.  It will seem so if one ignores history.  From the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in 476, we have been through several such cultural revolutions, each with increased vigour and effect.

Charlemagne's (768-814) establishment of a new social order akin to the former Empire brought a new emphasis on learning in parish schools.  Otto's (936-973) even moreso.  In the Twelfth Century (1100s), what is now traditional Scholastic theology was in its time an attempt to reconcile the Faith with the rediscovery of secular learning from the ancients.  It was hotly contested from within and without the church, yet, as Aquinas pointed out, if God is the source of all knowledge, ultimately there can be no conflict.  Then came the via moderna, the modern way, in the Fourteenth Century (1300s), seeing the previous developments as the via antiqua, the old way.

Toward the end of which another one began, starting in Florence, often dated for convenience to 1396 with the invitation by Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of the Republic of Florence, to the Byzantine scholar Emmanuel Chrysoloras to come there and teach Greek.  The fall of the Roman Empire in the East to the Muslims in 1453 brought a flood of Greek scholars in its wake.  This brought many new texts to awareness, made others known directly rather than through Latin translations, and began a shift away from the scientific orientation of the previous period to the arts as well.    Hence, "humanism", and the idea that the previous age was a "middle" age between antiquity and the rebirth of its learning, hence the terms Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In all of these, Christian faith was recast into then-current terms, which to those accustomed to the previously current terms seemed like a departure from the Faith.  And in all of them was a distinct sense of having moved forward from the limitations of the past.  Finally in the 1700s came The Enlightenment, where the dawn of modern knowledge brought this tension to a head.  One side of it, best exemplified by Descartes, Locke and Hume, sought harmony between knowledge and faith, though now not necessarily Christian faith but in a more general supreme being (Deism), but the other side of it, best exemplified by Spinoza, was exactly a rejection of Faith, seeing no need to recast what is now surpassed.

And now in our "post modern" age, what may seem a new crisis of faith and empirical knowledge is actually the same problem once again, and once again with increased vigour and effect.

The purpose of this post is to show that traditional Christianity -- Baptism, the Eucharist, and the actual lifting up and actual triumph of the Cross -- does not require any such falsification to oneself or recasting of faith.  An important note, though, as it may seem to some that this post is indeed such a falsification and recasting.  This is not the case.  The entire post is about nothing more, nothing else, and nothing less, than grace  --  the free gift of God for our salvation in the lifting up of the cross and the triumph of the cross, historically, and its fruits given to us here and now sacramentally in Baptism and the Eucharist.

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.  Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra omnia traham ad me ipsum.  John 12:32.

What Is Evolution?   

In our time this problem is nowhere more evident than in the supposed conflict between modern scientific knowledge and the account of creation in Genesis.  OK, right here is one of those ironies that this blog finds hilarious.  Wanna know what?  Of course the famous book re evolution is Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) "On the Origin of the Species" (1859).  Guess what, ya know what "genesis" means?  The English word is derived from a Latin word which in turn transliterated into Latin the Greek word for -- origin!  Hey, looks like two contradictory and conflicting accounts of origin, huh?

Well, no.  Genesis is not the name of Genesis in Genesis.  HUH?  OK, Genesis is in the Old Testament and the OT is in Hebrew, right, so why a Greek name?  Because the name in English comes not from the Hebrew Bible but from the Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek called the Septuagint, that's why.  The Hebrew name for the book is not "origin" (genesis).  Rather, as is customary in Hebrew, the title is derived from its first words, which are "in beginning", bere syt, or bereshit as it is often written in English.  Nothing about origin.  Hey, isn't the beginning the origin?  Well, sort of, but not necessarily, and, there's something in English that makes the translation a bit different than the Hebrew it translates.  Here's the deal.  There is no definite article -- "the" -- in the Hebrew.  There isn't in Latin either.  In the Latin translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate, the first words are translated in principio, at first.  And the next word is -- God (deus).  In (the) beginning, God.  At first, God.

Genesis/Bereshit starts with God.  Not with "the beginning" or "the origin", with God.  God is not proven, not deduced, not induced, not described, not defined, nothing like that.  God simply is.  It's not that there is a "beginning" or an "origin" and God either did or did not have something to do with it.  Rather, God is, before any beginning or origin.  That's why, when Moses asks God his name -- a reasonable question, all the various gods of various people have names, what's yours -- God doesn't give him one.  The "name" he gave himself in Exodus chapter three, there being no present tense of "to be" in Hebrew, can be translated as I am who I am, I will be who I will be, etc. and Moses is told to say I am sent me to you.  "I am" is not a name, it is a third-person use of a first-person statement, God is not god or a god, God just is. Thus, any beginning or origin is an action of God.  So, "the beginning" or "the origin" is not the beginning or origin of everything, it is the beginning of a creative action of God, and that creative action of God is the origin of all things.

The idea of God, of a power greater than ourselves, of something beyond our complete grasp which gives rises to a sense or idea of holy, is a universal sense as ancient as Man.  But that is also problematic.  Man has expressed this sense in a variety of ways.  Sometimes he takes natural forces beyond his control as therefore his gods, and worships them and/or prays to them to control the forces of nature, taken to be gods, in his favour.  Sometimes he posits supra-human beings who control these natural forces, and similarly worships and/or prays to them to the same end.  Sometimes this expression is applied to the totality of the universe, as an impersonal way or law that is operational throughout, within which one can learn to live in harmony.  Sometimes the universe itself is god.

Genesis confirms this universal sense as valid, but contradicts all those expressions of it.  God is not heaven and earth; heaven and earth are creations of God who preexists them and is distinct from them.  Likewise, everything else in the universe, forces like wind and rain, places like rivers, everything, are not gods nor are there gods controlling them.  Nor is God the totality of it, but they are creations of God who preexists and is distinct from them all.  Therefore, they are not objects of worship or veneration either.

The next few verses make that quite clear, as the things Man deifies are described as creations of the deity -- heaven and earth, the seas, the sun, the moon, life in any form, life in human form.  For example, the sun that lights our world is not god, not a god, nor is there a sun-god whose function it is to control the sun.

Well fine.  So is Genesis just another order out of chaos myth from antiquity, all of which we should abandon now as we understand the order better and better?  Is not the ancientness of the sense of a higher power, the idea of holy, itself a sign that these are simply the reactions of men with little knowledge of their environment so they create myths of gods to explain it for lack of anything better, but now that we have something better, we no longer need the myths of earlier times?

Notice something?  We didn't even get to the "six day creation" thing before losing our faith!  In other words, the primary thing revealed, and right away, in Genesis and thus the entire Bible, which is that there is a god and everything else proceeds from the creative action of this one god, doesn't even need the six-day thing before grounds to abandon it arise, passing it off as the early attempts of man to understand his environment, which we have long since passed.

And we notice something else.  Genesis describes God's creative actions in precisely the order we understand them scientifically -- first the material universe and its unfolding, not static, organisation by God (let's call it the geosphere), then its inhabitation by biological life and its unfolding, not static, organisation by God (let's call it the biosphere), then the appearance of biological life that is both conscious and self-reflective, having a mind that shares something then of the God who created it (let's call it the noosphere, from the Greek word for mind, nous).

This is nothing other than evolution, literally.  Now before the moaning and groaning starts (is it too late for that?) let's look at what evolution literally means.  The word comes from the Latin evolutio, which does not mean "evolution" with its modern connotations, but rather an act of rolling out or unfolding.  The root is "e volvo" which means "out of the roll" (yeah, Volvo means roll, great name for a great car, let's roll!). The verb is "evolvo" which means "to unroll" or "to unfold", whose perfect passive participle is "evolutus".  Great linguistic Judas what's that?  Relax, a perfect passive participle is a verb form denoting the state of something having been subject to an action.  Here, it's having been rolled or having been unfolded, "evolutus", which as a verb is "evolutio", the act of rolling out or unfolding.

So, Genesis presents evolution.  The rolling out, the unfolding, of creation by its creator.  Therefore, the argument over "evolution" is not over whether it happened, but how it happened.  Specifically, did this rolling out, this unfolding, which both Genesis and current human knowledge agree happened, happen impersonally according to either random or chance events or laws or ways inherent in Nature, or personally, as the willed creative act of a pre-existent God.

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

So asks God in Job 38:4.  The question not only addresses Job; it can be asked of any of us, and the point is the same as to Job, which is, God's understanding, as a Being or Power greater than ourselves, is not our understanding nor can our understanding comprehend God's.  Which makes sense.  If there is a God who communicates with us, God speaks to us not as an equal since we are not God or a god, but as a part of his creation that has consciousness to receive the communication, which therefore will have its limits.  God speaks to us in terms of our experience.

This is apparent already in the first sentence of Bereshith.  "The heaven and the earth" describes the universe from Man's point of view here on the earth, not from God's point of view as its Creator.  Our point of view now has expanded, and was not available to humans at the time Bereshith was revealed.  We know that the earth and the heavens are not distinct.  Earth is but one planet revolving around one star among many, the number of which we do not know except that it is huge.  It's all heavens, and earth is part of that, but it doesn't look that way when you're on earth.

The rest of the creation account proceeds along these lines, in terms of our, not God's, experience.  Creation is creation, whether viewed as an earthbound creature seeing "heavens" above, or viewed not from earth and seeing earth too as part of the "heavens".  Heaven and earth, then, are relative terms.  In earlier times, the discovery that earth is not the centre of creation, with heavens above it, seemed to cast doubt on everything -- if Scripture is off in its very first words, why should it not also be off in the rest of it too?

What was lost in that controversy, the famous Galileo episode, was any sense of what God was reminding Job in his circumstances.  And this loss is the very same loss that will lead to what is called The Fall just a little later in Bereshith.  What is this loss?  It is the loss of the fact that God speaks to us in terms of our experience and not his, that God does not reveal to us everything of his experience because we, as created beings, cannot receive or comprehend the experience of our creator.  As Scripture will shortly put it, we are created in the image of God, but we are not created as equals, as other gods, and therefore we cannot elevate our understanding, even that part of it which is an understanding of God, to his level.

This is understandable even if one does not believe in God or any god;  IF there is one, whether or not there is or is not is not the question. that god's totality would not be fully communicable to a created being who does not also have that totality.

In this regard it is significant to note that the noun we translate as "God", singular, in the Hebrew is plural, Elohim, but the verb we translate as "created" IS singular.  Of course we can theologically abstract from this a reference at the outset of Scripture to the Trinity -- a plural God acting in the singular.  But God is not here inviting us to theological abstraction but is revealing to us the nature of our experience as conscious reflective beings.  God is not, in the Bible, providing us a divine textbook, or an algorithm, but a human user's manual, of creation.  And a user's manual is written to convey to the user, in terms his experience will allow him to understand, information he does not have, not about how something was made but about how to work with it.  IOW, it is not a "how I did it", but a "how you use it" book, what is called a vademecum, which means "Go with me", directions to be taken along as one goes about doing something.

Vade mecum.  Go With Me.

So, the revelation of the fact of creation is one thing, and the manner of creation is another, and the two ought not be confused.  God reveals the fact of creation by expressing it in terms of human conscious experience at the time of revelation.  Light and dark, heaven and earth, evening and morning, day -- all of them earth bound, not characteristic of the universe.  There is no evening and morning as we experience it here on earth anywhere else but here on earth.  There is no 24 hour day as we experience it here on earth anywhere else but here on earth.  Even in our human speaking these words have "literal" and "figurative" meanings, as in "the evening of life", "shed some light on the subject", and so on.  For that matter, time itself does not flow at the same rate throughout the universe.

Had God revealed the nature of the universe in scientific terms Genesis would have been rejected from the start.  How is a man standing on earth looking up at the heavens to be told that in fact he is not looking up at all, that there is no "up", that "up" is a sense brought about from the fact of his standing in a particular place, and that "beneath" him there is also an "up" he would experience were he standing there?  And how is a man standing on earth looking "up" at the heavens to be told that in fact where he stands is itself part of the heavens, that there are no "heavens" distinct from earth except in his experience of standing in a particular place, and that "above" him there is not a dome holding back water, that the blue he sees above is in fact not there at all, it's a visual effect brought about under the conditions of standing where he stands to look at it, namely, the scattering of light by the gases and particles in the atmosphere and blue scatters more because its wavelength is shorter?  And how is a man standing on earth looking "up" at the "heavens" to be told that not only is he looking out, not up, but he is also looking back, that the light he sees from the stars in the heavens is not what is happening there now, but light from events ages ago that is just now making its way to be visible to someone standing where he does?

All of what we now know would have contradicted his experience entirely and therefore been rejected as fantastic, literally -- a fantasy with no relation to reality, ie, his experience.  Which in turn would leave the message God seeks to communicate to Man inaccessible -- that all of what Man sees, including Man himself, is the creation of the God who seeks him and is subject to the will of God, not Man.  The fact of creation is revealed to Man via a manner of creation that makes sense within his experience at the time of its revelation.  Revelation done any other way would reveal nothing!

Fiat voluntas tua.

Thy will be done, is what that means in Latin.  The words are from the so-called "Lord's Prayer".  The Lord, Christ, in giving this prayer, stated a version of the traditional Kaddish, which exists in several related versions.  Jesus gives his version, not a new prayer.   Here in English is the Kaddish Shalem, the "complete kaddish" -- there are longer special versions for rabbis, mourners, and for after a burial.  Then followed by Jesus' version.

Kaddish Shalem, the "complete Kaddish".

May his great name be exalted and sanctified is God's great name in the world which he created according to his will!  May he establish his kingdom and may his salvation blossom and his anointed be near during your lifetime and during your days and during the lifetimes of all the House of Israel, speedily and very soon.  And say ye, Amen.
May his great name be blessed forever and to all eternity! Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honoured, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be he, above and beyond all blessings, hymns, praises and consolations that are uttered in the world!  And say ye, Amen.
(The Hatzi Kaddish, or "half Kaddish", ends here.  All versions begin with it.)
May the prayers and supplications of all Israel be accepted by their Father who is in heaven.  And say ye, Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, life, satisfaction, help, comfort, refuge, healing, redemption, forgiveness, atonement, relief and salvation for us and for all his people Israel.  And say ye, Amen.
May he who makes peace in his high places grant peace upon us and upon all Israel.  And say ye, Amen.

Jesus' Kaddish, the Our Father.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  Amen.

Now, Jesus gave his version of the Kaddish when his followers asked him to give them a special prayer like all the other great teachers seem to do.  Just as Moses asked God for his name like all gods have names in our experience.  And just as God gave no new name, Jesus didn't give them a new, special prayer.  He gave them a succinct version of what they already had!  His point being, besides the prayer itself, that no such carryings-on are needed before God.  And, if this is from the anointed who is prayed for -- that is what "Christ" means, the anointed one of God -- then who better to refine and focus it for our use!

Our point here though is the prayer itself and the matter of will, and whose will, ours or God's.  Voluntas, the Latin word for will, is the basis of the English word voluntary.  Voluntary means according to one's will, willing.  Which means there is a choice involved, it is a matter that is neither inevitable nor compelled.  This is exactly what Genesis reveals to us about everything, the universe.  It exists not by some historical inevitability or by an inherent following of impersonal laws, but by the will of a being, God.

In all its stages, the act of creation is spoken of in Genesis as an act of will, voluntary -- let there be, etc.  Except, and this is key, in the last stage, Man.  This is not spoken of as "Let there be Man", but rather, "let us make Man in our own image".  The creation of Man as a being in the image of God, then, is related differently than all the creation before it.  This voluntary, willed, creation culminates in the emergence of a being who himself is endowed with the capacity for voluntary, willed action.  This being, the human being, marks the entry into the unfolding of creation of a created being who himself creates, not out of nature or instinct, but voluntarily, willed, like his creator.  Man is conscious.

Which is both our glory, and our problem.  Our consciousness contains, unlike anything else in creation, the capacity for acts of will that are conscious, which is to say, self-conscious, not in the usual conversational sense, but in the sense that we are conscious of our capacity and the choices we can make.  Which is why it is not until this point in the evolution, the unfolding, of creation that God gives a commandment.  Up until this point he doesn't need to, since nothing in creation until this point has this capacity for willed action that is conscious of itself.  But Man, which the text makes clear is comprised of both male and female, is in the image of God, but is not God.  Or, if you will, this creature is in the image of the creator but is not the creator.  Therefore, the creator, or, if you will, God, gives this creature directions.

Be fruitful and multiply.  This is the first commandment (mitzvah) given to Man; the first of the 613 mitzvoth in the Law (id est, the Law of Moses, the first five books of the Bible).  This is more than a commandment to reproduce.  The animals reproduce, even care for their young for a time, by nature and instinct, and need no such direction.  So why give it to Man?  Because Man is to make a home, raise a family, and, subdue the earth.  Man is a part of creation, but apart from the rest of creation; no other part of creation is told to subdue the earth because no other part of creation could be told to subdue the earth.  Only Man, with the divine-like capacity for self-conscious willed action, could be told this.

Who Told Thee Thou Wast Naked?

And what are the results of this command?  What results has this uniquely self-conscious will-endowed creature produced in subduing the creation of which he is both part and its crown?  The results are everywhere to be seen in both the present and in history -- and in the first chapters of Genesis.  The creation of Man is different than the creation of everything else.  We saw that in the first creation account (chapter one) it is not "let there be ..." like the earlier parts of creation but "let us make ..."  And in the second creation account (chapter two), this point is made again.  God formed Man, in this chapter the male.  The Hebrew verb, yatzar, as is often commented, relates to a potter forming clay.  What is not so often commented is that this verb is written differently regarding the formation of Man than the formation of prior creation.  With animals it is written with one yod, but for the formation of Man it is written with two.

Which fits exactly.  This creature, Man, has something the others do not,  namely the image of God, which means a capacity for acts of self-conscious will.  But this is still a creature, not another god.  Therefore the formation is written with two yods, because Man is torn within himself and needs "commandments", needs direction from his creator.  Of himself, his will may not be God's will.  He has a Yetzer tob, a good inclination, and a Yetzer ra, a bad inclination.  And this condition is dealt with, as God directs Man not to be his own arbiter of good and bad, good and evil.

This is the essence of the human condition -- a being in the divine image who can will acts apart from the will of the Divine who created him.  The man is told, in the figure of tending a garden, which is to say, subduing the earth, that he may do it all, except, decide for himself what is good and what is bad, what is good and what is evil.  This is God's function alone.  For Man to assume that function, to become morally autonomous from God, is the creature assuming the role of the creator.  Which in a word, is pride.  And indeed, pride goeth before the fall.

And that is exactly what happens in the Genesis story.  Once Man assumed moral autonomy from God, ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so to speak, everything falls apart.  When the unfolding, the evolution, described in Genesis, gets to Man, its continuation becomes voluntary, literally, a matter of will, and the will is now Man's, not God's.

Having assumed moral autonomy, acting like God when he is not god, the creature acting as if he were the creator, Man gets it wrong.  Whereas they were not ashamed at their nakedness before each other, in fact did not distinguish nakedness at all, now they find it an issue.  It is not that there is nakedness, and having eaten of the forbidden fruit, now they realise it.  It is that, having claimed moral autonomy, acting like God, they define good from evil, and find something that is in fact good, evil, and devise measures to correct it -- to correct what is already correct.

This changes everything.  Now, when they sense the presence of the Lord, instead of creatures happily welcoming their creator, they hide!  So instead of the creature seeking his creator, the creator now seeks his creature.  "Where art thou?"  And the man starts making excuses -- oh well hey, I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid from you.  Just a sec, lemme put something on.  We don't have any clothing stores yet, but we sewed these fig leaves to-gether.

And God asks them, What's up with that?  Where'd you get this "naked" thing because I didn't say bupkis about it, let alone opening a clothing store.  And the sorry story continues.  Does the man say, Sorry God I blew it.  Hell no, he blames his wife.  So God asks her, and what does she do?  Same thing, does not accept responsibility for her action but blames something else, the serpent, as Genesis puts it, or diminished capacity, as she would put it now.

Genesis describes exactly what is observed in human history down to the present.  It's not that we try to get it right and fail, it's that we decide what is right and try to get that.  And the results are mixed.  For example, as Man begins to live more in cities, he finds he has a pollution problem with all the horses defecating all over town.  Then he invents another work vehicle that doesn't need horses, a horseless carriage.  Problem solved!  Except, problem not solved, as he discovers later on the fuel emissions from his horseless carriage create an even worse pollution.  Or, for example, as he subdues the earth and attains the ability to harness the power of the atom, he finds a limitless source of power, yet, should there be an accident, the results are disastrous, and, he can also use that power to either create weapons in which thousands are killed in an instant, or, to understand and treat disease at a fundamental level.

And when things go wrong, we do just as Adam and Eve, the story describes our behaviour exactly; we start blaming someone or something else, rather than recognise our own failure.

Memento mori.

Remember that you will die.  That's what the Latin means.  It comes from the triumphal processions in ancient Rome, where as the conquering general as he rode in his chariot through the throngs of cheers and accolades, his servant behind him would keep saying to him, Remember that you will die.  The idea was to not get carried away with all the pomp and circumstance and remember that even though you have gotten this by your accomplishments, you will die like any other man.

Death.  We know we are going to die, and we don't like to think about it very much, yet we do because it happens to those around us and we know it will happen to us.  Death is first mentioned in the Bible here in Genesis, in connexion with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  In the day you eat of it you will surely die, God says to Man.

No you won't, says the "serpent".  In fact, you will not only not die, you will become like God, he adds.  So Man eats of the fruit, and guess what -- he does not die!  So the "serpent" was right and the Bible even bears that out?  What's up with that?  Or with this -- does the Bible contradict itself even on its own terms right in its first pages, first saying God tells them they will die in the day they eat the fruit, then saying they don't?  If so, why bother with it then?

OK.  Manifestly, physical death did not enter creation with this original sin.  For one thing, to threaten a consequence which does not exist and of which therefore Man has no knowledge would be meaningless to Man.  For another, as we saw Man eats and does not die.  Something else happens instead that is "death".  For another, nothing in the preceding text gives any basis for thinking creation was meant to be eternal from creation on.  For yet another, a few verses later God becomes concerned that Man, having eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and having become like God -- having declared his moral autonomy and now functioning like a god instead of a creature -- will now eat of the fruit of the tree of eternal life and live forever.  If he were not already going to die at some point, it would be meaningless for God to be concerned that he won't die at some point.

So, the death spoken of is not physical death, it is the something else that happens.  And what is that something else?  The order of creation is broken.  Man is not going to function as he was created to function.  Since he is going to follow his own will, make his own choices, determine what is good and evil, he will have trouble in fulfilling his commandment.  Subduing the earth will be difficult, and so will being fruitful and multiplying.  Just as Scripture says, Man does not experience physical death from his sin, he experiences the death of the order of creation as it was intended, including the death of his role in it.  IOW, spiritual death, and I don't mean "spiritual" in some vague general "spirituality" but literally; his spirit dies and Man will henceforward have broken that image of God in which he was created.

It's still there, but it is broken, and it cannot repair itself.  Or better, a spirit, having been alive, is now dead and cannot bring itself back to life again.  The consequence for assuming moral autonomy from God is -- assuming moral autonomy from God, which shatters the image of God in which he was created and kills his spirit.

Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.  

Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.  That's what the Latin means.  It expands on the Roman memento mori.  It is from the service for the beginning of Lent, called Ash Wednesday, from the custom of imposing ashes on the foreheads of the faithful in the shape of a cross.

Hey, when you gonna talk about Adam?  OK, now.  Adam, the word for the creature, comes from the word for the "dust" or soil from which he was formed, adamah.  When "Adam" is first used (1:27) it is not as a name, a proper noun, for one man.  It means Man, both male and female, and not just one male and one female.  It becomes a personal name in the next chapter (2:7).  And Adam names his wife Eve, Havvah in Hebrew, from hayah, to live, as no human lives who is not born of "woman".  The collective use rather than reference to one person returns in Genesis 5:1-2, where the collective Man is specified by sex, male and female.  Adam is Man.

Huh?  So whaddawe got here, two conflicting accounts?  Sure looks that way, and not just re Adam either.  Looks like in one account a male human was created, then all the animals, not before humans as in the other account, and since none of them was a suitable partner for the male, a female was created from the male.  Biblical scholarship generally posits two sources that were combined by a later editor for the book as we know it now.  So then what?  Dismiss Genesis as a combination of two related but separate creation myths, is that what Past Elder is saying here as his professors taught?  No, and hell no.  It doesn't even matter whether that literary theory is true or not, because it does not change what God is revealing to Man.

Just as with creation itself, the revelation is not a treatise from God on HOW he did it, but a revelation THAT he did it, and communicated in terms comprehensible to Man at the time of its revelation.  Not a textbook, not an algorithm, but a user's manual, a vademecum.

And here again, the creation of Man is different than the creation of everything else.  Not a Let There Be but a Let Us Make.  Unlike everything else, Man is revealed as created from something that already exists, dust.  The crown of creation is himself created from Creation.  This act of creation Genesis calls formation.  Man is related as formed from something that already exists, dust.

O felix culpa.

So, the appearance of a self-conscious being capable of voluntary acts of will marks a fundamental change in the unfolding, the evolution, described in Genesis.  We saw this in four ways:

One, the divine act of will is not "Let there be ..." but "Let us make ...".
Two, the Hebrew verb is written here with two yods instead of one, indicating that this creature's will is his, which may or may not align with God's.
Three, after this creature emerges, commandments are given for the first time, since no other creature needs them.
Four, this creature unfolds not from nothing, but from existing Creation.

And then, this product of a fundamental change fundamentally changes how the unfolding unfolds, so that it is now no longer unfolding according to the will of God, or if you will, so to speak, according to its nature.

What?  What kind of God is this?  Is God then a creator who creates a creature who can fail then says "Here you go, follow the directions"?  And, if this God is all knowing, he knows the creature will fail.  If this God is so great and loving, why didn't he create Man so he could not fail, why not create a creature that is happy and stays that way, including, not die? 

O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem.  O happy fault which gained us such and so great a Redeemer.  That's what the Latin means.  It's the famous verse of the Exultet (more recently given by the ever-changing but oh-no-nothing-really-changed Roman Catholic Church as Exsultet), a sung poem of praise, though not sung by a praise band, at the Easter Vigil after the procession with the Easter Candle.  Though one will search in vain for this verse in the cobbled up version of the Exultet offered in Lutheran Service Book.  Why its most famous phrase was cobbled out of it remains one of the enduring quirks of LSB, but I digress.

It comes down to this.  All the storm and stress about Creation and Evolution etc is just unnecessary, and fuelled by nothing but misunderstanding and fear.  Genesis presents the unfolding of God's creativity and that is evolution. The unfolding is laid out with utter precision in the succession of geosphere, biosphere, then noosphere.  And with the emergence of the noosphere, a new aspect enters creation, a being, Adam, who is distinct from the rest of creation in having the image of the Creator but distinct from the Creator in not being a god himself.  His participation in the continuing unfolding, which is to say, evolution, is literally voluntary, subject to his will, and he blows it, shattering the image of his Creator he bears beyond repair through his own will.

This is exactly what the "creationists" and the "evolutionists" both miss, with opposite yet similar consequences.  The "creationists" assert creation by God, the "evolutionists" assert evolution, and both are right.

The evolutionist misses two things.  One, that evolution is not a push, but a pull, not an impersonal push of natural law or chance, but an intended personal pull exerted by a Being we usually call God.  Two, with the emergence of Man, co-operation and participation in the pull becomes voluntary and is thwarted by Man's own voluntas, will.  The origin of the species is not the origin of life; there is nothing to fear here.

The creationist misses that in Scripture God is not writing a scientific treatise or algorithm of how he did creation, but a revelation that he did creation.  Meaning that our understanding of the "how" of creation is no more to be made into a god, into the basis for our self-understanding, than more obvious forces such as thunder, our sun, etc were to be made into gods in earlier times.  The origin of the species is not the origin of life and not the origin of everything; there is nothing to fear here.

For as in Adam all die so in Christ are all made alive, it says.  And so it is -- in Adam, Man, we men (don't get goofy here, it means male and female) lose the image of our creator and lose any ability despite our best efforts to successfully co-operate and participate in the unfolding, the evolution, God has begun.  Yet, the emergence of such a being, Man, cannot be otherwise -- an unfolding into increasing complexity, from geosphere to biosphere to noosphere, will with the emergence of the noosphere become voluntary, a matter of will.  The cruel God would be not one who creates it so, but one who just leaves it so.

But God does not leave it so.  Nor is there a general "theistic evolution".  Rather, this theos, this God, reveals that he turns this fault, this inevitable voluntariness, without which Man would not have the image of God but simply be an android rather than an anthropos, into a happy fault, by himself becoming Man so that the evolution may continue, the pull continues not by the efforts of Man's will but by faith in the assumption by God the Creator of the brokenness of His own image in the creature.  THIS is who dies as a result of assuming willed control over good and evil -- not Man, but God become Man in Christ!

Now that's something to exult -- should we now spell it exsult, Rome? -- about, just as the Exultet says.  The Creator is creation's Redeemer too!  Such and so great a redeemer indeed!  I make all things new, he says.  Not just all people, all creation.  Ich mache alles -- nicht nur alle -- neu.  The pull of evolution revealed in Genesis is restored in the cross of Christ, he who was God made Man, and when lifted up in the cross suffered the death that is our consequence so that we might regain the image of God which was intended, willed, by God.

And not only that.  There's more!  Not something else, but more to this same something.  That sacrifice of God on behalf of Man in Christ, is not just words in a book, or something that happened a long time ago, but it is offered to us here and now!  In the Divine Setting -- which is to say, the universe -- precisely because there is no universal such as a 24 hour day, a disruption in the ordinary operation of matter, such as say a resurrection, also is a disruption in the ordinary operation of time.  Therefore, that one sacrifice, that one lifting up of Christ on the cross drawing all men to himself, which is to God that sacrifice of his body and blood, is given to us outside the normal operation of time and matter, in, with, and under the elements he instituted of bread and the fruit of the vine (vine being a grapevine).  The sure pledge of our salvation and redemption!

Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra omnia traham ad me ipsum. 

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.  (In case you forgot.)

The "literal meaning" of Genesis has absolutely nothing, nothing, to do with creation in six twenty-four hour earth days, nor with a single first human named Adam being made from dust.  AND, the fact that creation did not happen in six twenty-four hour earth days and that Man did not descend from two individuals named Adam and Eve in no way, no way, overthrows the literal meaning of Genesis or proves either Genesis specifically or the Bible generally false and/or irrelevant.

In fact, what God revealed to Man in Bereshit (that's Genesis, in case you forgot) in terms of Man's experience at the time and place it was revealed, is confirmed over and over again by the astounding harvest of knowledge resulting from our empirically based view of the world that is now our experience.  The phenomenon of Man, the human phenomenon, is nowhere presented more exactly than Bereshit, as we have discussed above.

Why then fear or repudiate the progress of the world?  Why multiply warnings and prohibitions, as if there were nothing more to venture or to learn?  Nihil intentatum (Nothing unattempted).  All over the world, Man yields an astounding harvest, in laboratories, in studios, in factories, wherever he labours.  Embrace it, since without the sun revealed in Scripture, this astounding harvest disperses wildly into sterile shoots, and this vast crucible would never learn its source and destiny in the crux (cross) of the Creator incarnate in Man who overcomes all and when exalted, that is, lifted up, on the cross draws all to himself.

The divine setting.

Holy Crap Day. 14 September 2026.

In many places a commemoration we Lutherans usually call Holy Cross Day is observed on 14 September. Its actual name is Exaltatio Sanctae Crucis, which in Latin means "Exaltation of the Holy Cross".  Thing is, exaltatio in Latin does not mean what its derivative exaltation has come to mean in English.  It means raising aloft, so the name actually translates as "Raising Aloft of the Holy Cross" which is pretty close to its Greek name "Raising Aloft of the Precious Cross". I ain't getting into the Greek. I also ain't getting into all the other "Holy Cross Days" on 13 September, 12 October, 6 March, 3 May and 1 August either!

But I am getting into making clear that the literal exaltation, the lifting up, of the cross for which this "feast" was instituted is not a reference to either Christ or the cross of Calvary as the means of salvation or its triumph, but to the lifting up of a supposed relic.  Here's the deal.

So What's a Holy Cross Day?

Glad you asked. But before getting down to that, let me be clear about two things. None of what follows should be construed as knocking the historic liturgy and things related to it.  I consider it one of the great treasures of "Lutheranism" that they are retained except where they contradict, as distinct from are commanded by, Scripture. 

It should be construed as what it is, knocking the retention of this "feast" as in any way aiding either the work of zealously guarding and defending the liturgy or of deepening the awareness of and reverence toward what was accomplished for us by Christ on the cross.

The Origin of Holy Cross Day.

So why a Holy Cross Day on 14 September? Because on 14 September 335 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was concluded.  The dedication itself was the day before, then on 14 September the "cross" was brought outside for veneration by the people.  And, the Roman Emperor, Constantine, made it a feast day.  That's why. What in all church planting Judas does that mean? And what cross? Why, the "true" cross, discovered by the Emperor's mom Helena on a dig funded by the Imperial treasury, that's what cross! Huh?

So why ain't the church called the Church of the Holy Cross then? Well guess what, there was already something standing there, which was another church, well a temple actually, to the goddess Aphrodite, known to the Romans as Venus, she from whom the planet, and also Friday, is named. Some say the place was originally a Christian worship site, for reasons that will presently be clear, and that the temple was later built by Emperor Hadrian in his rebuilding of Jerusalem.

Why Jerusalem Had To Be Rebuilt. Again.

Now why rebuilding? Well, Jerusalem was completely trashed by the Romans in 70 AD. Why?  We need to back up a bit to get back to Hadrian.  Here's a summary of the events as related to out topic here.  They have  much wider effect and significance than this topic, and that is covered in our post Temples, Taxes, Vespasian and Now, also this month.  It started in 66, when some Greeks started offering pagan sacrifices outside a synagogue in Jerusalem. At first, the Roman soldiers stationed in Jerusalem did not get involved in this local matter.  But next thing you know, the Jewish priests quit offering token sacrifices to the Emperor.  The Roman Empire generally left you alone as long as you paid tribute to the top and didn't rock the boat, which is how its surviving state church still pretty much operates.  And then next thing you know there's protests against Roman taxes, call it an ancient Tea Party, and muggings of Romans living there.  Finally, when some of the boys from duty stations in the area go in to intervene they get their butts kicked by a bunch of Jews (that's the Battle of Beth Horon) and that clean pisses off the Roman Emperor, guy named Nero.

Old Nero tells General Vespasian -- who had distinguished himself in the Roman invasion of Mother England (OK Britannia at the time) in 43 as commander of Legio secunda Augusta (Second Augustan Legion), one of the four legions deployed -- to go in and open up a major can of whoop-ass on Judea. Which he commences to do along with the forces of his son, Titus, also a general, in April 67, with total forces of about 60,000. By 68 they had pretty well cleaned house in the north, and in the south the Jews pretty well cleaned house on each other with infighting, so about all that was left was Jerusalem.

But then something else happened back in Rome. Nero was getting too bizarre for even the Romans (more about that in the post for 22 February), the Senate and the military went against him, he was declared an enemy of the people, so he bolts and commits suicide in 68. All hell breaks loose and in 69 Rome goes through four emperors! First, the new emperor, guy named Galba, gets assassinated by a guy named Otho who wants to be the new emperor so he bribes the Emperor's bodyguards, the Praetorian Guard, to kill him.  Then a guy named Vitellius, with the best legions in the Roman army on his side, defeats Otho and inspires him to commit suicide, but then Vitellius pisses everybody clean off by having so many feasts and parades that he about bankrupts the Empire. So in July 69 Vespasian gets hailed as emperor by his army and other Roman armies -- Roman armies did that sometimes, that's also how Constantine would later get his start as emperor -- and, thinking maybe that isn't such a bad idea, Vespasian heads to Rome and his allied armies kick the living crap out of Vitellius' forces and kill him, and the Senate proclaims Vespasian emperor 21 December 69. Helluva year.

Vespasian had left crushing the Jewish rebellion to his son Titus, which he bloody well does, so thoroughly destroying Jerusalem that Jospehus, the Roman name of the great Jewish contemporary historian Yosef, says you wouldn't have even thought the place was once inhabited. This includes the destruction of the Temple, which happened on 29/30 July 70. In the Hebrew calendar it was Tisha B'Av, or the 9th of Av (a month in the Hebrew calendar) and guess what, it was on exactly that date that first Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians, leading to the Babylonian Captivity (the one of the Jews, not the church) some 656 years earlier.

Why the Destruction of the Second Temple Is a Big Deal.

The destruction of the Second Temple has enormous consequences for both Christianity and Judaism.  To have the centre of one's worship and people's identity destroyed for the second time was catastrophic. And this time there wasn't even a captivity in which to be carried off. Worst of all, with the Temple, its priesthood and sacrifices now gone, it would now be impossible to fully follow the Law. How does a religion and people based on the Law continue when observing the Law is no longer fully possible?

There's only two answers: one, the Law could now pass because it had been fulfilled, or two, something else would take the place of the Temple sacrifices until such time as they could be restored. The second answer was forthcoming from Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai. During the siege, he was slipped out in a coffin, and knowing the destruction was coming, and sensing Vespasian would become Emperor, negotiated from him three things: 1) sparing the city Jamnia, 2) sparing its sages, who were students of Rabbi Gamaliel, grandson of the great Hillel, and whom St Peter mentions as having argued against killing the Apostles for their messianic beliefs about Jesus, and among whose students St Paul counts himself, 3) a physician to attend an old rabbi (OK, his name was Tzadok) who had fasted for forty years hoping to ward off any destruction such as has just happened. It was here that Judaism as we know it, in the absence of the Temple, began to take shape. Basing himself on Hosea 6:6, he concluded that our mitzvoth (good works) and prayer would now take the place of the sacrifices commanded in the Law.

The other answer is that the sacrifices had culminated in that to which they pointed, the sacrifice of Jesus at Calvary, who is now both priest and victim, and temple, and the destruction of the Temple is what was meant when Jesus said some of those living would see the end, meaning the end of things as they knew it -- which some of them did.

Hadrian Rebuilds Jerusalem.

The story goes that, as Hadrian, who had become Emperor on 10 August 117, was rebuilding Jerusalem, which began in 130, there was a site that had been a Christian church reportedly on the site of Jesus' burial, so Hadrian, who hated Christians, ordered dirt brought in to cover the site, then had a temple to Venus (Aphrodite to the Greeks) built on top of the earth on top of the old church site.  So Constantine ordered the temple destroyed and the earth underneath it moved back out!

Makes for a nice story, but the story is pure bull. Hadrian located the forum for the new Jerusalem where Roman fora were always located, which is, at the meeting of the main north-south road through town and the, or one of the, main east-west roads. In Jerusalem it was the latter case, and the forum was located in the space between the two east-west roads and along the north-south road, and the temple to Venus was part of that. So far from being a special action against Christians, it was just a following of standard Roman practice anywhere.

And, that the site is that of Jesus' tomb is so unlikely as to be nearly surely false. The Bible says Jesus' tomb was outside the city walls of Jerusalem, and this site is within the walls of Jerusalem. Oh well, some say, the walls of Jerusalem in Jesus' day were different. Two problems with that. If they were east enough of the current walls to make the site west of them, Jerusalem would have been quite a narrow city, which it wasn't. Also, building a tomb west of the city is highly unlikely, as wind in Jerusalem generally blows from west to east, and thus would blow over the tombs bringing ritual impurity, not to mention a possible stench, to the city and in particular to the Temple Mount. So, graves go to the east of the city.

Also, these bogus legends obscure the fact that while Hadrian did see Christianity as an uncouth superstitious cult dangerous to a humane social order, that was nothing compared to his regard for Judaism, of which he wanted to remove all traces altogether.  What Hadrian actually did do has nothing to do with temples to Venus on Christ's crucifixion or burial site.  The rebuilding of Jerusalem was as a new city with no Jews, called Aelia Capitolina, Aelius being Hadrian's clan name (nomen gentile) and Capitolina referring to Jupiter Capitolinus, which is the great temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in Rome and from which comes the English word capitol, btw.  He built a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Temple site, forbade observance of Jewish law or its calendar, especially circumcision which was held to be utterly barbaric, publicly burned the Torah scrolls, and attached Judaea to Syria and renamed it Syria Palaestina, Philistine Syria, in 135.

Helena.

And, to those unlikely to be true legends, add those about Helena and the finding of the "true" cross. Helena was the mother of Constantine.  His father was Constantius, however, it is unclear if she was a legal wife or a concubine, which then meant an extra-legal wife, since the marriage was between social classes (he was noble, she was not), and that was prohibited by Roman law (same problem Augustine had with "the one" who was mother of his son). Helena's unclear status was controversial for both husband and son, and Constantius later dumped her in a power deal to solidify his political position to marry another (Theodora), which he did in Trier, then called Augusta Treverorum and his new capitol. Son Constantine the "Great" would later do the same thing for the same reasons. Once her son became Emperor, Helena returned to public life and was made Augusta Imperatrix, and was given unlimited access to the imperial treasury to locate objects of Christian veneration.

The story is, after the Temple of Venus was torn down and the land removed, excavation found three crosses at what was supposed to be the site of Jesus' burial. So a woman near death was brought in, and did not recover on touching the first two crosses but did on touching the third, which Helena then proclaimed was the cross of Christ. Problem is, for one thing contemporary accounts of the excavation (Eusebius) do not mention Helena being there at all, rather unlikely for the Augusta Imperatrix to not be mentioned if she were there.  For another,  the legend about authenticating the true cross appears not only later, but in at least three distinct versions, the one just related, and one where a dead man was touched to each of the three and came back to life at the right one, and that the inscription put on the cross was still on it.

Take Your Pick. Or Not. Exaltatio Sanctae Crucis.

What a wretched mess, most of it legend of the most spurious kind and the rest of it fact of the most disgusting kind. A verifiable total confusion of the Two Kingdoms (left and right hand) surrounded by unverifiable legends that don't even agree with each other. This honours the cross of Christ? Such a miserable excuse for piety should be shovelled out and thrown away just like Constantine shovelled out what Hadrian shovelled in. The object of our veneration is not the cross per se, or toothpicks from it, or legends about finding it, or big fancy churches built at state expense on the supposed site of it, or a feast day established by a Roman Emperor, but Christ and his action on it for our salvation, whose body and blood he gives you right in your own parish in Communion at Divine Service.

The true Raising Aloft of the Holy Cross is not like some empty fiction, for example the story about Dietrich von Bern, or these miserable True Cross legends, imperial-sponsored liftings-up thereof and feast days commemorating them.  Or in trying to rewrite the narrative so the facts are whitewashed out and a new narrative put in place.  The true raising aloft of the holy cross is as St John says in John 12:32 "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra omnia traham ad me ipsum. The Alpha and the Omega, and his Omega Point, through whose exaltation, lifting up, we are drawn from the Alpha and raised aloft to the Omega.

More on that in our next post.

Arminius, Herman the German, Us and Now. 8-11 September 2026

As we commemorate a world changing even that happened on 11 September 2001, we might learn something from a world changing even that happened on 8-11 September 9AD.  And you gotta wonder why no-one ever said there's an inherent contradiction between being so big on the Romans as I am (the Republic, not the Empire nor the Church) and having an image of the Hermann Heights Monument in New Ulm MN, which is a copy of the Hermannsdenkmal in Germany, as a cover photo on my former blog as I did.  Well actually it's no wonder, which we'll explain later.  The wonder is, this monument commemorates one of the most decisive events in world history that changed all subsequent history to the present, but now, hardly anyone knows about it, and there's reasons for that.

Huh?  What does that even mean?  OK let's start with Who's Hermann. 

Who's Hermann?,

Hermann is a name given, possibly first by Martin Luther, to a guy named Arminius. Great, who's Arminius?  Arminius is the Latin name of a hostage from a Germanic tribe called the Cherusci, who lived right around present-day Hannover.  Hermann was the son of the tribal chief Segimerus (in Latin, in German it's Segimer).  He was taken hostage, raised in Rome, given military training, made a Roman citizen, and made a member of the ordo equester, the order of knights.  This is not knights in the European mediaeval sense, but a property-based class below the patricians.  Patricians are so-named as the descendants of the patres, the founding fathers and families of Rome.  The ordo equester was originally based on the ability to provide men and horses for military service, so that's how horses come in, and also where we get the word equestrian.  In Arminius' time the ordo equester was just below the ordo senatorius, the order of Senators and their families.  Arminius was about eighteen when Jesus was born in another part of the Roman Empire.

Arminius turned against Rome and united various Germanic tribes against Roman direct rule, and sometime in September 9 A.D. inflicted arguably the worst defeat ever suffered by Rome in its entire history.  In German this is called die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald. Holy crap, what's a schlacht, what's a wald, and what's this Teutoburger thing, some kind of hamburger at Five Guys?  OK, die Schlacht is a battle, der Wald is a forest or woods, and Teutoburger is the name of the forest.  However, the German name only dates from 1875, centuries after it happened, and the reasons for that reflect not so much the ancient battle but its continuing influence even up to the present time.  Yet that influence, though there, is hardly known now, and there's reasons for that.  Which is why I'm posting about it.  Here's the deal.

Why the Battle Was a Big Deal Then.

The Latin name for this event comes from when it happened.  It's called clades variana, the Varian Disaster, after Publius Quinctilius Varus, the losing general.  Arminius lured his former ally into a trap, and defeated three Roman legions (Legions XVII, XVIII and XIX) plus six cohorts of associated non-citizen auxiliary troops and three squadrons of non-citizen cavalry (alae), with a total Roman loss of somewhere between 15 to 20K men.  It was so bad that as it was ending Varus, following custom, committed suicide by falling on his sword, as did a number of his sub-commanders.  The rest were killed, including his second in command, the Legate Numonius Vala, who tried to run away. The others were either killed in action, or, Tacitus records, later cooked alive in native German religious rituals, and many captured soldiers were made slaves.  Arminius had Varus' head cut off and sent it to another German king, Maroboduus of the Marcomanni, to propose an alliance, but that king stayed out of it and sent the severed head to Rome for disposition.  Topping it all off, in what the Romans considered a great shame and humiliation, each legion had its aquila, eagle standard, captured.

No Roman account tries to minimise the extent of the loss.  Bear in mind that in 9 AD the Roman Empire was just 36 years old, under its first emperor, Caesar Augustus, and eager to establish itself over the former Roman Republic, for which some still held sympathy, so it was not in any mood to sustain catastrophic defeats.  Suetonius records in The Lives of the Caesars, sometimes called The Twelve Caesars, original Latin title De vita caesarum (On the Life of the Caesars), that Caesar Augustus was so upset at the magnitude of the loss that he repeatedly banged his head on the wall shouting Quintilius Varus gimme back the legions (well, he actually said Quintili Vare legiones redde, I translated).

OK so where did this happen exactly?  The precise location of the battle was not known for centuries and is still not settled, and, the whole engagement happened in several places over several days, but in general it was just south and east of Hannover, Arminius' tribe's area, which is east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, or Rhein and Donau in German; or Rhenus and Danubius in Latin.  In present-day Germany, it's in the states of Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia), and Niedersachsen (Neddersassen in the local dialect), Lower Saxony, both created 23 August 1946 by the British military administration of their occupation zone following World War Two.

After the clades variana, from 14 - 16 AD under Tiberius, who succeeded his stepdad Augustus as Emperor, Roman forces under the command of Tiberius' nephew Germanicus inflicted some severe but local losses on the Germans, including recovery of two of the three lost eagle standards.  That's how Germanicus got the name by which he is known; it's a victory title (that's called an agnomen btw) conferred by Rome.  With this, Arminius and his Germanic allies were defeated and honour recovered, but that didn't restore things, and the ongoing effects have a lot to do with what happened next.  Which is, Tiberius ordered operations to cease; he was satisfied with the result and thought that anything to be gained from further expansion frankly was just not worth what it would take to gain it.  That changed everything.  Details in the next section.

After their impressive victory, the unruly Germans descended into internecine war.  Tacitus records that a plot to poison Arminius by Germanic rivals was proposed to Tiberius but he rejected it, saying Rome does not avenge itself by secret plots but by open arms.  And guess what, in 21 AD, just 12 years after the battle, Arminius was killed by rivals in his own tribe who thought him too powerful. The Romans continued to hold him in high regard and respect, as Tacitus and others record, as one who had the skill to beat them even at the height of their power.  Typically Roman.

The third and last eagle standard (aquila) was recovered in 41 AD by forces under the command of Publius Gabinius, by which time Claudius, Germanicus' brother, was emperor.  Yes, the Claudius of the famous historical novel "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves.

Why the Battle Was a Big Deal Later. 

So how did Rome's decision to never again attempt direct rule of Germania, though it may make treaties and arrangements with client kings, shape the course of all subsequent European history and American too?  How does that happen?  And how does it happen that hardly anyone will hear of it in general education?  Here's the deal on that.  

The impressive stand against Rome forever determined the culture of subsequent Europe.  Rome's decision that further expansion was just not worth it began a military boundary across continental Europe (which is to say, Europe) that would last 400 years, with the effect that Latin and Germanic cultures remained distinct.  To this day there is a palpable difference in the "feel" of those parts of Europe which were part of the Roman Empire and those that weren't, as those areas which Rome never directly ruled did not absorb Roman culture into their identity.

Had Rome expanded, here's how Europe would have become much different than it is.  Kind of like dominoes.  The rest of Europe would have been under direct Roman rule.  

-  So the German language would have evolved as another Romance language.  

-  Then later on in the Roman Empire, when it replaced traditional Roman religion by creating its state church the Catholic Church in 380 AD, that church, though present because by that time it was the only one, would have been much more secure in its presence with a more unified state and culture behind it, which in turn would not have allowed the conditions in which the Reformation happened.  

-  And thus the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, which devastated all of continental Europe to an extent not surpassed until WWII, and was between the Protestant of various kinds states of northern Europe and the Catholic ones in southern Europe, which they still are, though nominally, even now, would not have happened.  

-  And in turn the colonisation of the Americas would not have seen such intense rivalries to appropriate wealth to pay wartime debt.  Thus the "French and Indian War" that began in 1754 between the French and British over American colonies would not have happened.  

-  Which in turn would not have helped ignite and become part of the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763, which as Winston Churchill commented was the world's real first world war, as it was fought in Europe, both Americas, Africa, India and the Philippines.  That war did not change the various belligerent states per se (status quo ante bellum, status as before the war) but did produce a massive shift in alliances largely as a result of changes in colonial jurisdictions.  That shift in alliances brought about a complete change of the balance of power in Europe; Britain emerged as the world's superpower, Prussia emerged as the driving German power, a drive for independence emerged in the British American colonies, followed by France's decline and eventual internal revolution, and finally, the Thirty Years' War, fuelled a desire among Germans for a unified state (nothing like modern Germany existed before 1949), all of this evolving from Tiberius' decision in 16 AD not to pursue further expansion into Germania, and none of which would have happened without that decision. 

-   Which takes us back to Arminius.  

Arminius and his victory continued its influence in the Germanic sagas that formed a Germanic sense of identity.  Not in historical record but in literary sagas; Arminius is the basis for the character Sigurd in the Volsunga Saga and the Niebelungenlied.

By Luther's time (1483-1546), about 1500 years after the battle, the Roman Empire was long gone but its state church, the Roman Catholic Church, was not, and it continued as the state church in what understood itself as the restoration of the Roman empire, what is now, but was not then, called the Holy Roman Empire.  At the same time, Europe was experiencing a massive transformation.  The "Black Death", which was called the Great Plague at the time (1346 - 1353), had wiped out roughly half of Europe's and the Middle East's population.  Food prices and land values dropped and the demand for workers rose.  Also, beginning in Florence in the 14th Century (1300s) and extending to Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, all cities within the ancient empire, and eventually to Rome itself, feudal society, which, based on land and class, began giving way to a mercantile society, based on trade, capital, goods and services.  There being no explanation for the plague catastrophe, theories abounded, and there was an awareness of the emergence of a via moderna, a modern way, across the board, in society, theology and philosophy, art, science, everything.  Adding to this transformation was the arrival of scholars with classical Greek texts fleeing the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire to the Muslims on 29 May 1453.

Manuscripts long tucked away in monastic libraries were examined, and among many other discoveries, Tacitus' histories were found and with that recovery of information about Arminius.  Thus Luther found in Arminius a figure for a successful stand against Rome, this time not militarily or politically, but religiously, against the necessity of control by Rome's church of ultimately everything.

Later, Arminius also became an important figure in German opposition to French control, once again of the ability of Germans to stand against great empires, Roman or otherwise.  From 1792 through 1802, the French, who killed their royalty and had a revolution to establish Liberty, Equality, Fraternity but instead got a Reign of Terror then Napoleon, were at war with pretty much everyone else in Europe.  Not to mention within themselves.  Napoleon had ended the 1,000 year run of the "Holy Roman Empire", in which nothing like modern Germany existed, and with his final defeat in 1815, the battle and Hermann became a symbol for a concept of a united German people free of non-German control.

The Congress of Vienna (1815), much like the EU would do after WWII, attempted to establish a balance of power so that Europe would be at peace, but it did not result in a German nation.  The original monument was begun with an idea in 1834, the foundation stone was laid in 1838, the finished base was dedicated in 1841, but the 1848 German revolution did not result in a unified German state either and work (and money) stopped.  Prussia's victory over Austria in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 rekindled the ideal, and the victory in the Franco-Prussian War (1870) brought even more enthusiasm for the ideal.  The completed monument was dedicated 16 August 1875, with Kaiser Wilhelm I, the first head of the German Empire, the first united German state ever, in attendance.  That's why the German name for Arminius' battle in 9 AD only dates from 1875.

Upon this completion a society for the aid of German immigrants began work on a replica, to be located in New Ulm, MN, which as the name indicates, was heavily German and not coincidentally the home of the society's head.  The cornerstone was laid in 1888, and was dedicated in 1897.

Part of the united Germany free of foreign control thing was not just latter-day "Romans" to be free of like the French and Austrians, but the Kulturkampf against the control of the Roman Catholic Church of university and church/state positions.  Thus Catholic Germans were not altogether on board, later joined by others.  On the 1,900th anniversary of the battle in 1909, there was a large event from 14-23 August, and during World War I the monument became a symbol for hoped-for eventual German victory.

After the defeat, in the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) it became a meeting place for those hoping for a restoration of the old order, and plain old tourism began as well.  With the Nazis, they used it somewhat, but turned it down as any official symbol, preferring to have their own events and monuments.  Quite in character, as much of the initial support for the Nazis was in the hopes of a successful restored Germany only to find the Nazis had a very different Germany in mind and despised the old order.  After World War II, insofar at it was promoted at all it was purely as a tourist attraction.

On the 2000th anniversary of the battle, 2009, the Germans, who will likely take 1000 years to recover, especially in their own minds, from the taint of the "1000-year Reich" (Tausendjähriges Reich), Hitler's vision of the endurance of his German state, the whole thing was downplayed.  Der Speigel reported that even in the deliberately small scale re-enactments, most of those participating wanted to play Romans, not Germans.  The battle or Hermann is barely mentioned in German schools.  Why?  Association with Hitler in particular and with nationalism in general, which it is feared could lead to someone like Hitler. The reality is, Hitler had little use for Arminius, and Arminius had nothing to do with what others later made of him.

Why the Battle Is a Big Deal Now and Going Forward. 

So we have choices.  As to Arminius himself, there is no contradiction in using the Herman the German monument on the old blog.  Arminius was a Roman.  Meaning, he was a Roman citizen, which takes no regard of ethnicity, race, national origin or anything else.  A citizen is a citizen.  That's where we got the idea.  Moreover, in Roman society he was made an eques, a member of the equites just under the senatorial class, and had a Roman education as well as military training.  Which shows that even successful opposition to Rome is Roman.

As to our choices.  We could continue doing what we are doing, which is either or both of 1) thinking ourselves more advanced and/or intelligent than those who came before us and since they did not experience life as we do now therefore we need not pay them much attention, and 2) suppress anything that does not fit or confirm our narrative or contradicts it, and/or rewrite it so it does.

This will work --  in the same way a self-fulfilling prophecy works.  As we follow part two it confirms part one, and so we fall in line with centuries and millennia who have done the same thing, quite unaware both that they did it and we are doing it, and quite unaware that there is not a modern narrative or meta-thought that one or another ancient Greek did not express and comes to us through the Romans, also quite unaware that we are doing the same thing with new labels and better technology, sure that our new labels and better technology make it something new, and last, quite unaware of what brought us to where we are now thus we misunderstand where we are and misidentify who we are, seeing none of this.  This is the course of most of our present educational, ecclesiastical and societal institutions.

Or, we could give up our box that we don't see is a box because we believe it to be not a box and beyond boxes, and learn from them.  Not to know what happened before one was born is to be forever a child.  Thus said a great figure of the Roman Republic (Cicero). It's a motto of this blog, and for good reason.  Those who would establish the Empire in place of the Republic in 27 BC and were in power in 9 AD had him proscribed (proscriptio) as an enemy of the state and executed him in 43 BC.  They had to.  Just as those who follow either or both of the paths away from the heritage given us by the Roman Republic must either ignore or falsify him and that heritage, our heritage.