Coram Deo and the Hours of the Day (1 of 2)

There is a Latin phrase the Reformers seized in the sixteenth century and made into a watchword. Coram Deo. The phrase had been in use long before — the medieval church used it routinely, and its theological roots run back through Augustine into the Psalter — but the Reformers gave it a centrality it had not had before. They put it in the mouth of the cobbler at his bench, the farmer behind his plow, the mother nursing her child, the schoolboy at his lessons. They said it described the whole of life and not only the sacred hour. They were right.

The phrase does more work than it might seem. Coram is a Latin preposition that means in the presence of, in the sight of, face-to-face with. Deo is the ablative of Deus — God. Coram Deo. Before-the-face-of-God. The phrase claims that all of the disciple's life is lived face-to-face with God, whether the disciple is aware of it or not. The presence is not summoned by religious activity. The presence is not entered by going to church. The presence is the structure of the disciple's being. The disciplines of awareness are the disciple's adjustment to that structure, not the construction of it.

This is the practical shape of the abiding the previous chapter described. The branch that remains in the vine remains there in the kitchen at six in the morning and in the meeting at ten and in the parking lot at five and on the couch at nine. The connection does not have a schedule. Coram Deo is the descriptive name for the connection considered from the disciple's side of it. The disciple's life is lived in the presence because the presence is where the disciple is.

And this is where John 17:3 finally lands. The verse the volume has been pointing at from the first chapter. Jesus is praying His great prayer in the same Upper Room from which he has just spoken about the vine and the branches. In verse 3 He gives, in His own voice, the definition of the thing He came to give.

"Now this is eternal life – that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent." — John 17:3 (NET) (NLM verification: confirmed)

The verb is ginosko. To know. Present tense. Continuous action. Not have-known. Not will-know. Know — right now, ongoing, in the present moment of every moment. And the object of the knowing is not a doctrine, not a proposition, not even a story. The object of the knowing is two Persons. The Father. The Son. The Spirit, who is not named in this verse, is the One who makes the knowing actual, as Chapter 10 of this volume worked out. The present-tense knowing of John 17:3 is the relational form taken by the present-tense indwelling of the love that 1 John 4:8 names as God's essence. The two verses are not running on parallel tracks. The knowing of John 17:3 is what love-as-essence does when it has taken up residence in a human heart — it joins the beloved to the relation it is the bond of. Eternal life is the image-bearer's present-tense participation in that bond.

This changes what Christianity asks of the disciple in the present moment. It is not asking him to be working toward a future state in which he will know God. It is asking him to recognize that he already does — that the knowing is happening, that the Spirit is in him doing the work, that the Father is present to him and the Son is present to him because the Spirit is the bond between them and the Spirit indwells him. The recognition is the work. The disciplines of awareness are not the construction of the relationship. They are the recognition of a relationship that is already the case.

But what does this look like Tuesday at 3pm? The disciple is in a meeting that has gone too long. The conference room is too warm. The slides are tedious. The person across the table is being difficult. The disciple's attention is fraying. He has not thought about God since the alarm went off at six. The knowing of John 17:3 is supposed to be present. It is, apparently, not.

Or is it. The disciple's awareness of God has fluctuated through the day, as awareness fluctuates. The knowing has not. The connection has not. The Spirit has not vacated the body for the meeting and re-entered it on the way home. The fact has been the fact through the whole day, including the parts of the day in which the disciple has not been registering it. Coram Deo names a reality that is the case whether the disciple notices or not.

This is the point most easily misread. Coram Deo is not the disciple's achievement of continuous attention to God. The disciple cannot achieve that. Continuous conscious attention to anything is beyond the finite mind's capacity. Coram Deo is the fact that the disciple is in God's presence whether attending to Him or not. The disciplines of awareness are the disciple's adjustment to that fact, not the creation of it. The disciple is not asked to do the impossible. The disciple is asked to recognize, again and again through the day, what is already the case between recognitions.

The Reformers seized this phrase, and it is worth saying why. The medieval Church, by the late Middle Ages, had developed in practice a vocabulary in which sacred life and secular life were distinguishable categories. The monastery was the place of sacred life. The world was the place of secular life. The practical effect was that most ordinary Christians had been trained to think of God's presence as something they entered for an hour on Sunday and departed from when they went back to their work.