In the autumn of 1997, Jamie Howison invited Robert Farrar Capon to speak at St. John’s College in Winnipeg, where he was then serving as the college chaplain. A pair of brilliant lectures and a lovely dinner prepared by the College chef were followed by late evening drinks at the hotel where Robert and Valerie Capon were staying. Bidding adieu for the night, Capon remarked, “If anything ever brings you to New York, you should come out to Shelter Island and look us up.” Three years later, Howison did just that, and then arranged a return visit in the winter of 2004, bringing with him a tape recorder and as many questions as Capon could handle. These excerpts from many hours of conversation offer a great taste of what Capon offered to Howison over those days.
(For part one, click here)
The Theology of the Cross:
The hardest thing for everybody — for me, too — is to accept what the revelation is, to accept the comfort that is given. And the comfort that is given is bizarre, because you have to go through hell to get there. It’s not a lot of fun. It’s fun to see that it is triumphant. It’s fun to believe that it is triumphant. And yet it is not easy in the dark days. And you read the psalms, and the psalms are full of belly-aching. “Why have you done this to me.” “I weep all night.”
On the Crucifixion:
The Church in its history has always hung between sentimentality in the genuine sense of the word — sentimental shock at the crucifixion and the terrible terror of it all, the horror of it all. The crucifix is a late addition to the apparatus. The early church was the triumphant Christ seated in glory; the passion crucifix is a Western invention later on. The Greek crucifix is a stylized thing, not a literal thing. That’s not to say that the Greeks always got everything right; they didn’t, but … “to your health.”
On Sobriety
So what? I just don’t feel that it’s the best thing for me. It [a health condition] is mostly gone, but I don’t feel that it’s gone enough for me to be able to mess around with it. I’m not against anything.
On Moralism
It’s one of the big, huge mistakes of the church to confound the gospel with morality.
On Getting Old:
My eyes are halfway shot, which is not such happy news. It makes writing difficult; it makes reading difficult. The other thing is that I’m just beginning to get my brains back. One of the reasons I went back to smoking so early is that I was getting feeble-minded. Tobacco helps make you not so stupid.
On Marcion of Sinope:
Marcion is the only one in the second century who understood Paul, and he misunderstood him. John is the only one who understood Paul and did not misunderstand him.
Ordinariness and God:
God can use ordinary, including sinful lives, as well as anything.
On Church Leadership:
Leader is not a good word. In the 20th century especially, because the two most notable people who were specifically called the leader were il duce and der furher. Servant, teacher, apostle, prophet, all those words. Not leader. Leader is someone you follow. And the preacher is someone who shows you him who is the way. In other words, Jesus doesn’t show us how to get to God; he is the way. He doesn’t tell us about the truth. He is the truth. He is the life. The way, the truth, and the life.
A Kitchen Tip:
The resourcefulness of cooking is that when you have onions that are over the hill and have to be thrown out, they’re always sprouting, so you cut the sprouts out and you have green onions. And they’re fresh and young and attractive.
Monergism and Sanctification:
The whole thing is done in Christ, and Christ is me. When you get to the fruit of the Spirit — one fruit — as opposed to the works of the flesh. The works of the flesh — adultery, uncleanness, lasciviousness, witchcraft, hatred, strife, wrath, sedition, all that stuff — those are all things we’re perfectly capable of doing and executing and planning and acting on ourselves. They are works that we can accomplish, every one of them. And opposed to them are simply nine, unboring fruit. Ninefold fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the spirit, of course, is Jesus. Blessed is the fruit of your womb. Therefore, the ninefold fruit of the spirit is Jesus in me and in everybody. Then it becomes interesting because it means that I already fully possess everything that is that fruit. I possess all of his love now, complete, and it is operative, active, in me.
The Yoke of Christ:
You’re not nice, I’m not nice, we have our days when we’re really not nice at all, and maybe more than not … I don’t know. But the niceness of Jesus, the gentleness of Jesus. Gentleness is odd, for example — Δεῦτε πρός με πάντες οἱ κοπιῶντες καὶ πεφορτισμένοι — “come to me all you who are laboring and struggling, laden down with burdens” — κἀγὼ ἀναπαύσω ὑμᾶς — “and I will give you rest, I will give you rest” — ὅτι πραΰς εἰμι — “because I am gentle, good, nice, wonderful” — καὶ ταπεινὸς τῇ καρδίᾳ — “and humble in heart” — καὶ εὑρήσετε ἀνάπαυσιν ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὑμῶν — “you will find rest for your souls” — ἄρατε τὸν ζυγόν μου ἐφʹ ὑμᾶς — “take my yoke upon you” — μάθετε ἀπʹ ἐμοῦ — “learn from me” — ὅτι πραΰς εἰμι — “because I am nice, I am tasty” — taste and see that the Lord is good — the Lord is gracious, the Lord is χρηστὸς — he is a yummy dish — “for you will find rest for your souls” — ὁ γὰρ ζυγός μου χρηστὸς — “for my yoke is nice, gentle, easy” — God is easy — καὶ τὸ φορτίον μου ἐλαφρόν ἐστιν — “and my burden is a joke, is light, is happy.” His yoke is the cross, and the cross is our joy in our sorrow, our joy in our perplexity, our confidence.
Aging and Sanctification:
This has been a year for me to realize that I am not getting this, I am not called upon to get this, I am not called upon to improve. I am not called upon to get better. In the toils of the medical establishment, you are always told that you will get better, you must get better, you can get better and so on. I know I’m not going to get better permanently; nobody is. I’m going to end up dead permanently.
On Life After Death:
Life after death is a blind alley, in terms of an existence somewhere else than here. My life is in Christ, and therefore in life and in death I am in him. It’s all him. That’s all we know. We don’t know any recipes. You can image it in terms of a transfer into heaven; that’s not totally iniquitous and not bad. But the real thing is that it’s all because it’s in him. WE are in him, and he is in us, and that is the whole thing. You don’t have to feel good about it, you don’t have to know good about it, you don’t have to be confident in any way about it. You just have to be; where you are, as you are, when you are. Which means dead wrong, totally despondent, totally confused, screwed up, and he has you.
On Circumcision:
In the Father’s incarnate son, in him we are all born. By his circumcision we are all circumcised; the whole world becomes Jewish in the circumcision of Jesus.
On Salvation:
From the foundation of the world, he saved all the gentiles, and the gentiles are in Christ from the foundation of the world. In other words, the circumcision of Christ circumcises everyone, and the whole world becomes Jewish in Jesus’ circumcision.
The Bible as a Movie:
You see, the thing is I’m totally serious about the Bible as a movie, and totally unserious about any particular reaction anyone has to it. Except that you must not get serious about it; you must not get solemn about it, you must not get accurate about it, or precise.
The Bible and Myth
You will not have poetry until
The poets among us can give us imaginary gardens with real toads in them. (Marianne Moore)
That’s a wonderful thing, because the Bible is an imaginary garden, with ultimately the divine frog himself appearing throughout. It is a very relaxed and very precise way of coming at it. Imaginary gardens, with real toads in them. That’s the whole point of Aesop’s Fables, for example. The hare and the tortoise, two characters and so on; you don’t have to literalize them. But it certainly in an imaginary garden, with a real toad of human nature in it.
On the Incarnation:
The incarnation is not a transaction; it is the revelation of a mystery. It is not the poking in of the Word into a world from which he was previously absent. It is not the Word doing anything new, except making all things new by doing nothing new. He really does nothing new. He suffers and dies, and rises and says, ‘there; make what you can of that.’
The Hands of God:
Irenaeus said that the two hands of God are the Word and the Spirit. The right hand and the left hand. And I make Jesus the Word the left hand. The left hand is the power that does the strange work — the opus alienum. [Martin Luther, the strange work of God]
On Calvinism:
See, the reformers got so much right. Calvinism is the most wonderful insight into the intolerable, unbearable, inexpressible, sovereignty of grace. Where Calvin went sour was when he had to answer the medieval question, ‘well, what happens to those he doesn’t do it to?’ assuming that God didn’t do it to some. He does it for all. He takes away the sins of the world, not just the sins of the cooperative. He takes away the sins of everybody — bar none — while they’re still sinners, as a result of no improvement on their part. He really does. It’s wild. So everything Calvin said about the elect was absolutely on target, and then he decided he had to deal with the damned.
God and 9/11
In every person, in every girder, in every ounce of airplane fuel that blew up, in all the fire, in all the horror, he is in all of it. God is God. The Word is God. The Word is present.
[…] (For part one, click here, and for part two, click here) […]