N.B. This is the first of a series of posts which come from articles written for the King’s Academy (Oregon City) newsletter. Each deals with a different aspect or application of Homo Adorans, and is meant to generate discussion, encouragement, and criticism. Please feel free to do any of the above in the comments section.
By Dennis R. Tuuri
In Christianity, worship has been considered by most Christians to be the central act of Christian identity throughout history. Many Christian theologians have defined humanity as homo adorans, that is, the ‘worshipping man,’ and thus the worship of God is at the very core of what it means to be human. (Wikipedia) 1
Well, it’s official. When even Wikipedia is using the buzz phrase homo adorans, it’s a real deal. But what does it mean in the context of Christian education?
To begin with, a common misperception is to think homo adorans means that man is only a worshipper. Current usage of the term homo adorans comes from Alexander Schmemann’s wonderful little book entitled For the Life of the World. (This book is available from Exodus Provisions in Oregon City.) Here’s a relevant quote from his book:
[M]an alone…is to respond to God’s blessing with his blessing. …in the Bible to bless God is not a ‘religious’ or ‘cultic’ act, but the very way of life. …All rational, spiritual and other qualities of man, distinguishing him from other creatures, have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to bless God, to know, so to speak, the meaning of the thirst and hunger that constitutes his life. ‘Homo sapiens’, ‘homo faber’…yes, but first of all, ‘homo adorans’. The first and basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands at the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God….2
Homo is Latin for man. Sapiens comes from the Latin word sapientia, meaning wisdom or intellect. And faber is a person who builds or makes something. We can see the English word “adore” in adorans and “fabricate” in faber.
So, while Schmemann prioritizes homo adorans (man as worshipper), he recognizes that man is also (secondarily) homo sapiens (man as thinker), and homo faber (man as maker).
By keeping this sense of balance in mind, we can avoid falling into a mistaken conclusion—the idea that the curriculum and methods of a homo adorans educational model will downplay academic excellence and preparation for vocation. The opposite is actually true. Our model does not trivialize the aspects of our life that are not directly linked to formal worship. It does not denigrate the balance of our creaturely activities, our work (homo faber) or our thinking (homo sapiens). The model does not ultimatize formal worship, nor place it in opposition to the other aspects of our humanity. Rather, it heightens those secondary aspects by seeing them as flowing out of, and undergirded by, our worship of God. Instead of dragging down the importance of vocational skills, a worship view of our humanity raises our sense of importance of these skills. A proper stress on education that equips for excellence in various vocations will enable us to worship Him even more gloriously. In a general sense, all of life is re-sacralized in a homo adorans model, and is, as a result, richer and even more important.
Now, it is true that the homo adorans model is both informed by and leads back to formal worship. But this leads us to a specific tie between homo adorans and homo faber (as well as homo sapiens) which we can see by examining the liturgy of formal worship. A proper liturgy on the Lord’s Day includes the offering, the New Testament equivalent of the Levitical tribute offering.
The Old Testament tribute offering is described in Leviticus 2, where the King James version mistakenly translates it as the “meat offering.” Other translations refer to it as the cereal offering. While it is indeed a grain (or cereal) offering, the Hebrew word here means the tribute paid to a sovereign. The interesting thing about the tribute offering was that it could not be offered in its natural state. It had to be processed in some way – made into flour, cooked, fried, grilled, or baked. The worshipper had to “add value” to the grain, to transform it. It represented the labor of the worshipper.
In like fashion, our tithes and offerings brought in response to the powerfully transformative preached Word represent our labor, the transformation of that part of the world that God has called us to work in. The implications of this are profound. Our labor is not “secular,” since it is symbolically accepted by God as we draw near to Him in formal worship. And the natural state of the world is not good enough. God wants us to transform the world, and bring it back to Him in worship for His approval. Our “normal” work is both required and accepted in our formal worship.
This means that education must equip us to transform the world. This transformation requires us to be homo sapiens, thinking about our vocations and maturing in them thr0gh the proper use of our intellect. And it requires us to be homo faber, forming and transforming the world through our labor. To be truly homo adorans, then, we must also be homo sapiens and homo faber. Our intellect and labor must be undergirded and motivated by our desire to worship our Creator and Redeemer. We bring the transformed world to God as the result of our wise labors as homo sapiens and homo faber.
So, SATs, vocational skills, etc. are very important! The student is trained for “secular” work, but this work is always put before the student as “sacred” work. The student will be prepared to worship in his vocation, and also to bring the fruits of his labor to God in formal Lord’s Day worship. If we produce a student body that can all play musical instruments and sing beautifully in formal Lord’s Day worship, but has not been trained to use their minds and hands to transform the world vocationally and bring it back to God as tribute, we have radically misunderstood homo adorans.
A correct application of the model will indeed train students to worship God in song and in music. A homo adorans curriculum should certainly have music as part of its core curriculum. But it also must train the student in mathematics, science, language history, business, etc., so that the student will fulfill his created purpose of worshipping God in whatever God-given calling, he may enter into in his adult life. This is the essential meaning of homo adorans for the Christian school.
1. Wikipedia, “Christian Worship,” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_worship (Accessed November 26, 2007).
2. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 14-15.
Thanks!
You might look at this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/230598/Opus-3-TH-E-Symphony-O-History-transcripts-Typological-Hospitality-Evangelism
It’s on http://www.scribd.com, Charles Hartman.
What it tries to do it to make a tabernacle of people. She is the sign now, similar to the Tabernacle being the sign for the Decalogue, or world model. The Psalms for the Temple. This is per James Jordan.
Opus 15 under my documents at http://www.scribd.com has a better model, usinge the beatitudes, rather than the first 4 days of creation, as does Opus 3, which is a transcript of what we did/composed/played/were in a dusty ghost town is western Iowa in 1997.
One can learn to do a ’symphony of history’ (ERH) by just reciting the score of this opus 3. We plan to do this this year in Pella.
Thanks again.
Love in King Jesus,
Chuck
member/ambassador
Matt,
I hope I can add a little to what Chuck has said at a later date. One very brief comment I’ll make is there is a way of teaching and viewing Biblical chronology which can be taught to young people which will help them to see the chronological relationships God has placed in the Bible. Questions like “who was still alive when Abraham died” (answer, if I’m not mistaken: Eber); how do we untangle all the Judges (answer: there were things going on in the north, central and south of Israel, sometimes at the same time, sometimes at different times; learning Biblical chronology helps sort that out.) Etc. We’ve found a way to display the major chronological relationships from creation to Christ on a single sheet of paper, with easy call-outs to more detailed information (alas, it needs more attention, which I hope to provide this summer!).
This is a very small part of what Chuck has envisioned, and I hope as well to help him bring out his insights.
Blessings in Christ,
Doug Roorda
(elder, Christ the Redeemer Church – CREC)
Pella, Iows
Part One: Educational uses of Lectionary Historical, for example
This is based on Romans 1:21, and ‘apprehending big chunks of time’.
In this basic version, we divide 4 significant stretches of time into 49 parts. Each of the 49 parts of each of the 4 stretches is remembered each week of the year, from Celebration of Resurrection to Celebration of Resurrection.
Thus we and our children remember what GodTrinity has done, and we can properly thank Him.
The 4 significant stretches of time are:
1–Ussher’s Creation to A. D. 70–The4074 years, @ 84 years per week
(Use his book, The Annals of the World. Jordan’s chronology differs, but is close, and is not so readily available. See Biblical Chronology at http://www.biblicalhorizons.com, and/or at http://www.freebooks.com).
2–The1939, from A. D. 70 to Present (up to A. D. 2009) @ 40 years per week. (An inexpensive source would be Gonzalez’ History of Christianity. Also useful would be a book such as The 100 Most Significant Events in Christian History).
3–The6013, putting both of the first two together, @ 125 years per week.
4–TheThousandsOfGenerations, @ 2501 years per week. This takes the date of Exodus/Sinai as 2513 AM (Anno Mundi), and a generation as 40 yers, and ‘thousands’ in the Second Word to be at least 3000–per Hebrew scholars–meaning that God will bless those who love Him for 120,000 years minimum (3000 generations x 40 years) plus 2513. Dividing 122,513 by 49 gives us @ 2501 years per week.
When we have the significant events in each of these time stretches, and remember them each week, we begin to be able to apprehend big chunks of time better, and we can ’see’ what God hath wrought, and thank him more properly.
Against these 4, we can put such things as Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, the Big History of science’s 14.5 billion years (Teaching Company and Ray Kurzweil), the longer stretch of Vedic history (Cremo, Forbidden Archeology), etc.
Future topics. How to pray the Psalms through the year–based on Jordan’s Psalms Conference lectures.
Prayer O Day. Another way of praying history, using Rosenstock-Huessy’s schema, and Jordan’s (from Crisis, Opportunity, and the Christian Future).
Why rename the days? Because we have a new firmament, the churches, and because after a big change, the universe is retuned.
K.O.L.Yom, SardisYom, PergamosYom, EphesusYom, PhiladelphisYom, ThyatiraYom, SmyrnaYom. When we combine this with the eras of ‘Old Testament’ history that each church in Revelation is about, we amen all of history, since Revelation is recapitulatively proleptic. That is, what hapens in Revelation sums up the whole Bible, portrays the events from Pentecost to A. D. 70, and is typological of the time from A. D. 70 to The Great Day of Final Judgment.
In HouseOfSingingTimesSuperCalendarHOST 30 covenant sequences are rhymed. The key one is naming the weeks after the books in JBJ’s 49-book Bible, and proceeding through the eyar from Resurrection to Resurrection retuned and ‘backwards’, with the Exodus at the end, maturing us by having us Christians live in the light of the last day, as Jesus must go to Jerusalem to accomplish his demise (exodos in Greek). I also amen Revelation by having holidays similar. The whole integrates Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s 4 types of calendars also–community/tribal, work/empire, ecclesiastical/Israel, academic/Greek.
The Season are based on the Beatitudes, 7 seasons. Peacemakers, Persecuted, Ye Persecuted are put together at the end, when the portrayal of Satan’s Loosing To Deceive All Nations is made, and all kinds of things come together.
These are all teaching and transforming tools, based on rites of transformation as written about in Jordan’s Through New Eyes cahpter of that name.
Well, this is too long already, and many more things are to come. The best ones are two attempts to portray the next eras, based on ERH and JBJ. The SymphonyOfHistory and MaeDay80.
Summation:
Transcendence, First Word: How can love conquer death? ERH (rhyming)
Hierarchy: Lectionary Historical, Second Word
Ethics: The Symphony Of History, Third Word
Oath and Sanctions: HouseOfSingingTimesSuperCalendarHOST, Fourth Word.
Succession: M’aidezMaydayMaeDay80, Fifth Word.
Thanks for letting me blog. The material is posted at http://www.scribd.com, the url above, and here http://www.scribd.com/doc/33383/HOST6733Rhyming-Covenant-Sequences.
Later, we’ll get organized!
It will be good to get the stuff we’ve worked on out and being used by people on the front lines.
It will be even better to see the great improvements that are made.
This will be similar to what is talked about on Tape 11 in JBJ’s OT Survey, Part One. First there is a covenant of an individual man (though my stuff is therapy, learned at the Post Office, from JBJ, ERH, GKN, and Jay Abraham).
Then, after death and resurrection–the changes people will make as the baby grows–comes a more glorious covenant of woman (the glory of the man) and community.
That’s maturity–it will hurt, but it will hurt ‘good’!
Love in King Jesus,
Chuck
member/ambassador
edencity@aol.com
As best as I remember, Schmemman also considers the garden through the lens of receiving a gift given versus grasping what has not been given. Instead of receiving the gifts of the garden with a heart of gratitude, man grasps the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
As I think about your discussion of homo adorans in relation to education, I think this idea of gift versus grasp. I think of the myth of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans as an image of the origin of arts and culture.
So I think you’re discussion of adorans as the source and the focus of our educational and cultural activities, provides an excellent contrast with the idea of grasp. This is the passion of excellence proceeds from worship and returns to worship as a celebration of God’s generous and ever surprising gifts of life and love.
‘Translating’ Leviticus: How would one go about preparing a calendar that better points the way toward the second coming of Jesus, as the Levitical festival calendar pointed toward His first coming?
Dear Elder Tuuri and All:
Your wise comments about the tribute offering bring to mind two, yea 3, things:
1–Wise men have said that one of the most necessary projects today is a better translation of Leviticus.
2–And Lord’s Day 6 of the Heidelberg Catechism, , Question 19, indicates that one of the ways we know our Mediator is by the foreshadowings by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the Law.
3–This brings up the question of the calendar(s) of the Israel of Old. How did the festival calendar, especially, point to Jesus’ coming?
And given that, how should our festival calendar point to Jesus’ coming again?
This is important for homo adorans because things such as a church year, and/or worshiping every 7 days are very important.
Surely, calendars shape our actions. Community events, work schedules, the above ecclesiastical organization of times, the academic semesters, etc. are all very important.
I have proposed an answer, in the form of a calendar, elsewhere.
But my question to the group is this: How would one go about preparing a calendar that better points the way toward the second coming of Jesus, as the Levitical festival calendar pointed toward His first coming?
This ‘translation’ would not be of the words only, but of the purposes of the Levitical festival calendar before Jesus’ first coming, translated into the time after His first coming, and before His second coming.
Love in King Jesus,
Chuck
member/ambassador