Monthly Archives: January 2007

Theses on Sexual Identity and Christian Ethics

Posted by Halden on January 31, 2007 33 comments

This series of theses should not really be taken as a response to Kim Fabricus’ list of propositions on same sex relationships. While that brought the issue to the surface in recent discussions, these are thoughts that I’ve had floating around for a long time and hopefully will lead to a more substantial and lengthy piece of theological reflection on this contentious question.

I don’t have any theses about the importance of civil dialogue between different sides, hating the sin but loving the sinner, or any other such statements that often come close to being throwaway lines. What I hope these theses offer are some constructive theological points from which more authentic theological discussion might be derived. That all should be dealt with graciously and that dialogue is essential, I simply take for granted, as I think all should.

Any discussion about the ethical viability of homosexual unions must be placed within a distinctly theological framework, specifically on the basis of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, and the Sacraments. To allow such a discussion to take place on the basis of an previously determined ontology of freedom and liberation is to circumscribe the discussion within a politics foreign to that of the church. Put differently, to frame the discussion of homosexuality in terms of the liberation of homosexuals for sexual fulfillment, is to eliminate the possibility of a truly theological discussion. If ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ are predetermined at the outset (as is often the case in gay liberation theology), there is no possibility of conversation in any real sense.
In the Christian tradition, the church has univocally affirmed two paths for Christians to take in regard to sexual activity, celibacy and the sacrament of marriage. The theological question that is at the core of the issue of same sex unions is, given a properly theological (i.e. trinitarian, christological, and sacramental) definition of marriage: Can a union between two persons of the same sex be theologically understood as falling within that definition?
A theological position which maintains that the restriction of sexual activities by the church is oppressive and deprives persons of their “full humanity” assumes that our sexual identity and attractions are the center of personal identity. Christian theology must explicitly reject such a sexually-centered definiton of human identity. For Christians, our identity does not primarily lie in our sexuality, let alone our affectional orientation, but in Christ and his body. Our “full humanity” is established, not by sex or marriage, but by baptism! Eucharistic communion, not sexual intercourse is the ultimate form of “erotic” communion. It is within the sacramental practices of the church, not sexual intercourse that we come to fulfillment as persons in Christ and no one is impoverised or diminshed by lacking a sexual partner. To say otherwise is essentially to call those who embrace the Christian vocation of celibacy less than fully human.
Given this frame of reference, the burden of proof is on those who would argue for a revised understanding of the sacrament of marriage. For proponents of the full inclusion of same sex unions within the church to make their case, they must show theologically how the Christian understanding of marriage has “theological room” for non heterosexual unions. It is precisely this constructive theological project that has scarcely been taken on by homosexual Christians. The core of this issue does not revolve around New Testament hermeneutics, though that question is not unimportant. The essence of this question is ecclesial and theological. Any resolution that will come can only come from constrictive theological reflection.
Sexual identity is far more complex than the polarities of homosexual and heterosexual and the common language of biological determinacy allow for. If we take seriously a Christian theological anthropology in which the self is formed in and through relations with the other we must acknowledge that sexual identity, like all other facets of our being is not a static given, but a dynamic reality which is “always-already” imbedded in and shaped by a network of social and political relations. This understanding of the construction of sexuality is widely shared and is championed by many gay scholars.
One of the greatest social influences that has contributed to the construction of contemporary sexual culture in the west is consumer capitalism. In a culture shaped by the market, sexuality is commodifed and objectified in accordance with the reigning ideology of consumer preference. Above all, in a market economy, sex is conceived as something to which one has a right. Thus, the suspension or regulation of sexual practices by a narrative which claims to supersede that of the market is regarded as oppressive, dogmatic, and archaic.
A Christian understanding of sexuality and sexual practices must, by definition reject the capitalist construction of sexuality. Sexual satisfaction is not something to which any of us have a right by virtue of our affectional orientation, sexual drive, or perceived relational needs. Christianity affirms that the call of Christian discipleship requires all who would follow Christ to die to themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus. Jesus does not promise us fulfillment on our own terms, he promises the way of the cross and resurrection. Jesus’ lordship and his call for us to submit ourselves to his body supersedes any and all of our felt needs for sexual fulfillment.
Christians whose practices, sexual or otherwise which bring about a sundering of communion within the body of Christ for the sake of another agenda cannot be considered to be operating by the Spirit of God. The movement of the Holy Spirit in the church is towards and for unity. To be sure, movements of dissent within the church have their role (i.e. the Reformation), but such movements, if they are indeed the work of God’s Spirit must take place within a broader vision of catholicity and the ultimate aim of unity-in-difference within the body of Christ. The question is, do Christian proponents of homosexual inclusion manifest this vision of catholicity and unity, or is there another agenda that carries the day for them?

Mr. Deity and the Really Big Favor

Posted by Halden on January 20, 2007 3 comments

Recent Discussions on Homosexuality

Posted by Halden on January 19, 2007 Comments Off

In the last few days there have been a number of interesting conversations going on in the blogosphere about Christianity and same-sex relationships. The always thought provoking Kim Fabricus recently posted 12 Propositions on Same-Sex Relationships and the Church which has generated no small amount of conversation (68 comments at the time of this writing). In response The Blue Raja has posted a few anti-theses on same-sex relationship.

Meanwhile Michael has been laboring for sometime at Levelers on a series on the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the church as well.

Also, Douglas Knight recently posted an excerpt from this excellent article by Oliver O’Donovan, which I think deserves a wide reading.

I plan on offering my own thoughts on all of this discussion soon. Regardless, however it’s been interesting to see some constructive dialogue about this very contentious issue.

Merton on Sin

Posted by Halden on January 19, 2007 1 comment

Posted at nothing new under the sun:

There is nothing interesting about sin, or about evil as evil.

And this evil is not a positive entity but the absence of a perfection that ought to be there. Sin as such is essentially boring because it is the lack of something that could appeal to our wills and our minds.

What attracts men to evil acts is not the evil in them but the good that is there, seen under a false aspect and with a distorted perspective. And the good seen from that angle is only the bait in a trap. When you reach out to take it, the trap is sprung and you are left with disgust and boredom – and hatred. Sinners are people who hate everything, because their world is necessarily full of betrayal, full of illusion, full of deception. And the greatest sinners are the most boring people in the world because they are also the most bored and ones who find life most tedious.

- Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, 76.

After seeing this quote I went straight out and bought the first copy I could find. Thanks to Byron for this! What an amazing and truthful statement about the nature of sin.

Kasper on Faith

Posted by Halden on January 16, 2007 1 comment

Faith is therefore not a simple act of understanding (an acceptance-as-true) or of the will (trust) or of feeling; it is rather a life-project that lays hold of all these powers and includes them, and a comprehensive mode of existing. Faith is at the same time an act (fides qua creditur) and a content (fides quae creditur). Faith is the comprehensive re-action of the human being to the prior action of God in revealing himself; it is trusting in God and a building on God, a gaining a foothold in God, a saying of ‘Amen’ to God, with all the consequences this entails. To have faith is to take God seriously as God, without reservations; it is to give him the honour and to glorify him as Lord; it is to acknowledge his lordship with praise and thanksgiving.

Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 122.

Calvin on the Visible Church

Posted by Halden on January 15, 2007 Comments Off

But because it is now our intention to discuss the visible church, let us learn even from the simple title “mother” how useful, indeed how necessary, it is that we should know her. For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh we become like the angels. Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives.

John Calvin, The Institutes of Christian Religion, trans. John McNeil, p. 1016.

David Bentley Hart on the Church as Christ’s Counterhistory

Posted by Halden on January 14, 2007 1 comment

Christ’s moment of most absolute particularity – the absolute dereliction of the cross – is the moment in which the glory of God, his power to be where and when he will be, is displayed before the eyes of the world. When the full course of Christ’s life is completed and is raised up by the Father, his “hiddenness” is shown to be a different kind of substantial presence, one that is only in being handed over in love, surrendered, and given anew; thus his “hiddenness” is in fact that openness with which his presence is embodied in the church’s practices, the exchange of signs of peace, the sacramental transparency of the community of the body of Christ. The church exists in order to become the counterhistory, nature restored, the alternative way of being that Christ opens up: the way of return. It is in this sense, principally, that the Word assumes human nature (as Irenaeus understood): by entering into the corporate identity of the body of the old Adam, the body of death, to raise all humanity up again in his body of glory.

David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 327.

J. Kameron Carter on Baptism, Christology, and Black Theology

Posted by Halden on January 12, 2007 9 comments

In a recent post, I referenced the Duke Divinity School professor and potential rising star of black theology, J. Kameron Carter, whose work I greatly admire. The discussion centered on how Carter approaches the modern question of race as a distinctly theological problem. Here is an extended quote from an essay entitled “Christology, Or Redeeming Whitness: A Response to James Perkinson’s Appropriation of Black Theology.” This article encapsulates a few of his key perspectives on a theological account of race. Full text of the article is found here.

This brings us to an alternative scriptural interpretation of the meaning of baptism and, thus, an alternative for understanding Perkinson’s claim that the problem of racism “is as deep as the body one inhabits.” That alternative is this: Baptism is induction into a different mode of being in the world, one that surpasses the mode of being whose nodal points are the hegemonic and the counterhegemonic. Christ, under this alternative, does not symbolize the existential possibility of receiving the other into oneself so that one no longer lives hegemonically. He does not symbolize how whites can be “redeemed” by expanding their existential horizons so that “black pain and power [might be] at work” in them. For, in actuality, this is not immersion into the other at all. It is the other being subsumed into the constituting “I,” an “I” that has chosen, in an egalitarian gesture, to expand its borders from being a “mom and pop” store to being a shopping mall. Inhabiting or being received into Christ’s actual body in such a way that one lays no claim to naming oneself and, therefore, in which one holds nothing of oneself back in self-possession-this is what baptism represents in this second alternative. Baptism in this second alternative involves handing oneself over to God in Christ so as to receive oneself back as gift. This is the deeper meaning of Christ’s baptism, which cannot be severed from the event of the Cross. On this important point, Perkinson is right, though his insight must be redirected. For, from the first, even in its Marian incubation, Christ’s life is cruciform. It is the ultimate drama of handing over and receiving back. In this sense of the full weight of the Latin term traditio (to hand over), Christ’s life is “traditioned” and, in bringing initiates into it, it is “traditioning” and “habituating” (habitus). To receive oneself back through baptismal handing over is to be co-mission-ed inside of Christ’s eternal mission. Christ’s mission is eternal in that his temporal mission is but a translation into the terms of creaturely existence-being, time, space, history, culture, and so on-of his trinitarian generation from the Father, through and out of which proceeds the Holy Spirit. To receive oneself back from God, through baptism, is to receive Christ himself, but in such a way that the self is, in fact, established inside of Christ’s mission. The self is itself precisely insofar as it becomes a person in Christ and, therefore, like a tuning fork, intones the one Word in an inflection that is irreplaceably unique and specific to the one newly made a mission-ary.

Thus, baptism in this second sense is transparent to God’s trinitarian way of being God. In this way of being, the divine persons hold nothing of themselves back as “private property,” as it were, in the divine life. Thus, for example, the Father as the paternal arche (foundation or beginning) of the Trinity, in generating the Son, hands himself over completely to the Son, without losing himself as Father. This handing-over is so thorough that the one who would know the Father can do so only by knowing the Son. Hence, the Father receives himself back in the overfulfillment of himself-an overfulfillment that is the eternal Son in the Holy Spirit. The other trinitarian relationships can be explained in similar ways. For our purposes, what is important to see is that baptism’s inner logic, on this second interpretive alternative, is fundamentally trinitarian: In baptism, the initiate is inducted into Jesus’ own self-surrender, through the Holy Spirit, back into his Father’s hands-only so that the Son receives himself back again in his own overabundance. This overabundance in the economy of redemption is the mystical and real body of Christ. The mystical body of Christ is creation united to Christ and, therefore, as rapt up into the trinitarian life, through union with Christ, its Exemplar. The empirical church, being founded in the Holy Spirit, is the real anticipation of the mystical body. Baptism-entry into Christ precisely as entry into his body-is induction into a power-ful existence. This, to return to Perkinson’s language, is the body the baptized are to inhabit. The inner dynamism of this movement of power is trinitarian love as the unity of power and powerlessness.

More Thoughts on the Best in Contemporary Theology

Posted by Halden on January 11, 2007 7 comments

As I’ve thought more about Patrik’s “The Best in Contemporary Theology” meme, I thought I’d expand on it a little since after all, making long lists is the easy thing. So, what I’ve got here are key categories in contemporary theology and two books from 1981-2006 (though I tried to be as recent as possible, even cheating and including one book that’s technically from 2007) that I think are essential reading in that field. Maybe it’s cheating to include the full sets of Jenson, Jones and Pannenberg, but whatever. They’re still essential reading.

American Mainline Theology

Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, 2 Vols.
Joe Jones, A Grammar of Christian Faith, 2 Vols.

American Evangelical Theology

Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine
Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

German Theology (Protestant)

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 Vols.
Juergen Moltmann, The Crucified God

British Theology (Protestant)

John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory
Colin Gunton, The One, The Three, and The Many

Catholic Theology

J.-M.-R. Tillard, Church of Churches
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

Eastern Orthodox Theology

John Zizioulas, Being As Communion
David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite

Liberation Theology

Daniel Bell, Jr., Liberation Theology After the End of History
J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account

Theological Ethics

Stanley Hauerwas, With The Grain of the Universe
Samuel Wells, God’s Companions

Old Testament

Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament
Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments

New Testament

N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God
Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament

Best Contemporary Theology Meme

Posted by Halden on January 10, 2007 Comments Off

Patrik has started up another meme that will likely spread throughout the theo-blogosphere:

Name three (or more) theological works from the last 25 years (1981-2006) that you consider important and worthy to be included on a list of the most importantw orks of theology of that last 25 years (in no particular order).

Here’s my contribution to the effort. I had to include at least 5 books.

T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God
Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, 2 Vols.
John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory
Colin Gunton, The One, The Three, and The Many
Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe

Power in Weakness: Alan Lewis on Holy Saturday

Posted by Halden on January 9, 2007 Comments Off

“It is a very different God, and a very different power, that we have discovered in the story of divine self-emptying, God’s capacity for weakness, the ability - without loss of Godness – to suffer and perhaps to die. This is the triune God of Jesus, fulfilled, majestic, glorified through self-expenditure in the lowly ignominy of our farthest country. There is power here, resurrecting, death-destroying, Devil-defeating; but it is the power of love, defying human expectation, which flowers in contradiction and negation, allowing sin its increase and giving death its day of victory, but only the more abundantly to outstrip both in the fecundity of grace and life. To live in the face of death an Easter Saturday existence, trusting in the weak but powerful love of the crucified and buried God, is itself to be objective, turned outward, away from self-reliance and self-preoccupation, away from our own determination to conquer death, which is in fact self-defeating and destructive. Instead, we are invited bravely and with frankness to admit or own defenselessness against the foe and entrust our self and destiny to the love of God which in its defenselessness proves creative and victorious.”

Alan Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 431.

New Year Blogolutions

Posted by Halden on January 2, 2007 2 comments

To the tiny but elite group that reads this blog, thanks for your comments and feed back this year. Here are a few topics you can expect posts on this year:

Henri de Lubac
Hans Urs von Balthasar
J.-M.-R. Tillard
Liturgy and Ethics
The analogia entis
Monasticism
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (yes, I do hope to complete my notes on his Ethics at some point)
Wolfhart Pannenberg
John Zizioulas
Forgiveness
Communio Ecclesiology
Theological Aesthetics
Radical Deomocracy
Nihilism
Homosexuality

Top Theological Books: 2006

Posted by Halden on January 2, 2007 Comments Off

There were indeed a lot of great books that came out in the last year. Here are a few of my personal selections.

Most important theological book:

Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church by John Zizioulas

Most creative constructive theology book:

The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God by Douglas Knight

Most pleasantly surprising theology book:

Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping Community by Simon Chan

Best book of essays:

Liturgy, Time, and the Politics of Redemption by Randi Rashkover and C. C. Pecknold

Best book(s) on ethics:

A Precarious Peace: Yoderian Explorations on Theology, Knowledge, And Identity by Chris K. Huebner

AND

God’s Companions: Reimaging Christian Ethics by Samuel Wells

Von Balthasar: The Heart of the World

Posted by Halden on January 2, 2007 Comments Off

I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the writing of Hans Urs von Balthasar for the last couple of years have now acquired most (or at least the majority) of his many writings. Despite the magisterial scope and intellectually dazzling (or befuddling) nature of his theological trilogy, I’ve found that some of the greatest works of Balthasar’s are his smaller books. Mysterium Paschale remains one of the greatest books to be written on the great Triduum. Love Alone Is Credible is perhaps the best exposition of the Christian faith in a context that is at once theological, philosophical, and poetic. I have long recommended these books to those seeking to acquire a basic grasp of Balthasar’s theology.

However, in my most recent excursion into Balthasar’s writings I think I have found the most profound and powerful book yet to emerge from his pen. In his Heart of the World Balthasar truly bares his own heart in a series of theological meditations that bear out all the theological richness of his trilogy and simultaneously flow to the reader as gently and beautifully as R.S. Thomas’ poetry, Wendell Berry’s novels, or T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. In it the great theme of Balthasar’s theology, namely the infinite abyss of triune love that is God washes over the reader in a torrent of ecstasy and sorrow, delving into the depths of the tragic estrangement of sin, death, and the life of humanity that is incurvatus in se while always moving beyond the tragic into the tragicomic drama which is the descent of the Son of the Father into the world, swallowing up the abyss of sin into the infinitely deeper abyss of God’s love and light.

Here the aesthetics, the drama, and the logic of Balthasar’s theology coinhere in the beautiful synthesis of the theopoetic. This book is, I would contend the apex of Balthasar’s theology precisely because its form corresponds to the form of God’s revelation in Christ to which Balthasar always sought to bear witness. Balthasar’s constant contention has been that the revelation of God in Christ displays the divine glory of the triune life which is infinite love, and being thus disclosed we perceive it as infinite beauty. Thus, for Balthasar theology must by its very nature bear the form of the revelation to which it bears witness. The beauty of theology is not a stylistic addition to the “actual” content thereof, but its very form without which it has no connection to the revelation of the divine love – which is beauty – at all.

Any of those who wish to understand Balthasar must read this book. In it the entire shape of the story of God in Christ is told and re-told in all its depth and beauty. I’ve never come away from a book so stirred both by the intellectual depth and compellingness of Christianity and its infinite beauty. This book is exactly what theology should look like, for in it the beauty of God is beheld, the drama of God and humanity is told, and the logic of revelation and hope is communicated.

Here’s just one quote from the book:

Who can grasp the Lord’s meaning in his creation and beyond it? Who can tie up with a short string the unbounded bouquet of wisdom? Who can tame the jungle of his incomprehensibility? See how man’s spirit and whole being lies, like the bowl of an impetuous fountain, under the downpour of so many mysteries. Let it gush! By letting it gush you will grasp what you can, and what you can is to be a bowl for the flood. Open up heart and brain and do not attempt to clutch tightly. By being washed out you will become purified. The strange thing that flows through you is precisely the meaning you seek. The more you give away through renunciation, the richer your wisdom becomes. The more you receive by holding out your hands, the stronger your power becomes. See: Everything wants to bewilder you so that, out of the abundance of bewilderment, you will know the superabundance of love. Everything wants to empty you out, so that you become a hollow space for the superabundance of faith. Everything wears you through like a cloth so that, by becoming threadbare through constant friction, you will be transparent to the superabundance of light. (pp. 211-212)

Inhabitatio Dei

Where creeping anti-institutionalism eviscerates thick confessional identity