My daughter will be baptised soon. I was baptised. So was my wife. My mother is a protestant, my wife is catholic, so is my mother in law. My father left the Catholic Church with very deep convictions, that I will not dive into here, and my father in law was a protestant. Now, being catholic or being a protestant sounds very active and descriptive. Going to church on Sunday was not something any of us did. We never went to church for Easter and I cannot remember the last time we went to church for Christmas. My wife went to the children service on Christmas until she graduated high school. Now on paper we have these affiliations, but we don’t participate in church life or religious communities, nor do we pray on a regular basis.
When my wife and I got married, we made a simple deal, with that we both live very happily with. My name. Her religion. A compromise that simply showed, about which we cared less.
So we had a civil wedding with the outcome of one last name for the both of us and one catholic church wedding with the outcome of (as we read in the catholic code of canon law)
the matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptised.
A marriage that is ratum et consummatum (if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh) can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death. My mother in law just makes a throat slit gesture when talking about the catholic way of divorce. Anyhow…
So. Her religion. Naturally, after the birth of our daughter we were discussing her baptism. I was reserved at first. Generally I believe that everyone should have the right in actively and consciously choosing their own faith or broadly speaking recreational club. Although I was discussing this with my wife and I myself did not chose to go to the sports club I found my later passion in. It was not an active and conscious choice, but rather my mom taking me to two different sports team practices when I was 6 and then driving me to one of them for the next 10 years or so. So, no objection to the baptism on these grounds.
I was frank in telling my wife that I support her in going through with the baptism of our child. But I wanted to know why and asked her on different occasions, after her mother just said during one dinner conversation: “Of course she is getting baptised.” End of discussion. I was dumbfounded as I had not even the slightest idea how to counter this and I let it slide.
“Tradition”. “The family and closest friends coming together”. “She can have a sponsor, like I am for my brother”. “I want our child to be raised with christian values”.
All these reasons my wife gave me, I bought into. But they all nagged me, as they were not inherently linked to a catholic baptism. Sure you can achieve it with a catholic baptism, but we can also make our own traditions, have family and friends over for a welcoming-to-the-world festive occasion or raise our child with christian values. I also want my closest friends be part of my daughters life and we will achieve this by inviting them on birthday, vacations and other occasions to get away from mom & dad.
but christian values?
What were those again? The 10 commandments? I was not even able to recite half of them. Don’t steal, don’t kill and don’t sleep around. Just be good, I guessed. Although these values did not seem to be exclusively christian to me, as I read that all major religions have some sort of code of being a good person based on the environment 2.000 plus years ago. Furthermore they are part of the Old Testament, which is also part of the jewish Tora.
So I embarked on a little research trip to rediscover what christian values are and what I can make of it. I only want to highlight fundamentals here. I will try to refrain from doctrines and teachings, as there are so many different interpretations of what (modern day) christian values are (and I believe some are not christian at all…), so that I will start with the Bible. Hopefully a good way to start as it should be one of the most basic common denominators.
I bought a Bible recently during the 2021 “re-heating” of the Middle East conflict. I bought Luther Bible (I will reference to the King James Bible in this text not to mess up German and English). I also bought the Talmud and the Koran (the Amazon algorithms must be completely confused by now). I wanted to know what really is written in the texts that so many people use as an excuse to disagree and in the extreme, kill each other. I started to read a couple of chapters here and there, but that is for another post.
Now if you internet-search (there are apparently plenty of search engines other than the big one fighting for about 10% of the remaining market share…) christian values you come across the so-called theological virtues. They go back to a guy named Paul. Also called Saint Paul or Paul the Apostle, not part of the 12 Apostles but still a significant one. He was 5 years younger than Jesus and spread Jesus’ teachings in the regions spanning from modern day Egypt, Lebanon to Greece. More than half of the 27 books in the New Testament are attributed to him (he wrote 13 epistles or letters).
Now Paul wrote a letter to the Corinthians. He wrote 2 letters actually. Corinth was an important city in ancient Greece and still exists today. The original was written in Greek, naturally. This first letter was co-authored with a man named Sosthenes.
Part or chapter 13 is about these virtues. The 13th and last verse in the original greek (if I can trust my online source) is:
Νυνὶ δὲ μένει πίστις ἐλπίς ἀγάπη τὰ τρία ταῦτα μείζων δὲ τούτων ἡ ἀγάπη
Nyni de menei pistis elpis agapē ta tria fauta meizōn de toutōn hē agapē
So what struck me first is, that the bible was not in latin at first. I always thought it was in latin. I started this post with the latin subtitle and have decided to to revert it to greek. So, Old Testament: Hebrew. New Testament: Greek. A Saint called Jerome translated the Bible into Latin around the year 400 (it took him some 20 years apparently). Now in this latin version of the Bible, called The Vulgate (affirmed by the catholic church as their official latin bible at the Council of Trent in the 16th century), Chapter 13, verse 13 read like this.
Nunc autem manent fides, spes, caritas, tria hæc: major autem horum est caritas.
The King James Bible, published in 1611 reads:
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
In 1941 the translation to “basic English” by Professor S. H. Hooke was published reading:
But now we still have faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
My Luther Bible text from 1912 reads:
Nun aber bleibt Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe, diese drei; aber die Liebe ist die größte unter ihnen.
Now taking to the latin first, because it is the basis that Luther originally used in 1522 for his translation and King James ordered about 100 years later. While fĭdēs (feminine noun in 5th declension, not the instrument in the 3rd declension…almost forgot, how much I loved latin…) and spēs are rather unambiguous in their meaning of faith and hope respectively, cārĭtās made me pause for a while, because according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary, cārĭtās can be translated to either:
charity
dearness, high price
love, affection, esteem, favour
King James went for charity, while Luther (and Hooke) went for love. Now, both are valid and good virtues. But should christians focus on charity (giving to the less fortunate) or love (really liking somebody). While there is an overlap and the definition of love does the word no kind of justice, it is in my opinion not the same thing. Thankfully no one went for “high price”.
Now the original Greek votes with agapē in favour of love, which brought some form of closure at least for myself.
Faith, hope, love. These virtues are called theological because of a catholic philosopher named Thomas Aquinas, who lived about 1,200 years after Paul. He was very influential and apparently tried to join christian values with the philosophy of Aristotle.
However these values are labelled, they do seem christian to me and I consider myself holding these virtues sometimes and in some form at least. Faith, in terms of complete trust and confidence, rather than the belief in a god, based on spiritual conviction. Love, no doubt about it. Hope is a bit more tricky. I mainly believe in and try to live by creating my own destiny, being proactive, knowing what is in my circle of control and being the writer of the story of my life. Hope seems not congruent with this, although I find myself oftentimes hoping for many things. Hope comes in for me for things that are not in my circle of control. And for that hope is just fine.
Now these values are straight forward in today’s modern context. I am wondering if there are nuances to these values back 2.000 years ago that would completely change the direction in which these values could be thought of.
Anyhow, these values might be the very basis of christian values, although they are not exclusive in that sense, as followers of other religions would not object to these virtues (I hope). I have not elaborated (deliberately) on agapē or love for that matter. It is a start to uncover the background to my values. Christian values don’t end here to be honest (mine don’t end here as well) and I am foregoing the sermon on the mount altogether in this post. Much to uncover.
I am looking forward to my child’s baptism. To be continued.