Monthly Archives: March 2007

Rowan Williams on True Ethics

Posted by on March 30, 2007 Comments Off

The crucial question that has to be asked in the Christian moral evaluation of act or character is, does it speak of the God whose nature is self-dispossession for the sake of the life of the other? of the commitment and dependability of the divine action towards the creation? of the divine relinquishment of ‘interest’ and claim as embodied in the life of Jesus? These are not, I think, issues that leave us with an individualized or uncritical ethic. They are matters capable of being raised in the context of sexual ethics as much as the ethics of business or international relations. And it may be that something like this is rather badly needed as the discourses of Christian ethics polarize increasingly between legalism based on the injunctions of the text and a vacuous experientialism, appealing to precisely the wrong sort of interiority for its criteria.

Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 263.

Kevin Vanhoozer on Hermeneutics & Culture

Posted by on March 29, 2007 3 comments
Performing the story of Jesus leads to an interpretive practice that challenges the predominant cultural trend. The story of Jesus is one of humiliation and exaltation, in that order. Hearing and doing the story of Jesus produces a style of life characterized by humility, service and love… The church should be the model for the right use of human freedom; the church should be the civilized society par excellence. The community of believers represents a prophetic counterculture that challenges the gods and myths of the day with regard to which world and life view best fulfills humanity. The church’s challenge will only be as strong as its expression of the biblical world and life view. Again, this is not only a matter of correct doctrine but also a matter of faithful biblical performance. The church must be the cultural
incarnation of the story of God in Christ.

Kevin Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture, & Hermeneutics, 333-334.

James Cone on Universal and Particular

Posted by on March 28, 2007 3 comments

I realize that my theological limitations and my close identity with the social conditions of black people could blind me to the truth of the gospel. And maybe our white theologians are right when they insist that I have overlooked the universal significance of Jesus’ message. But I contend that there is no universalism that is not particular. Indeed their insistence upon the universal note of the gospel arises out of their own particular political and social interests. As long as they can be sure that he gospel is for everybody, ignoring that God liberated a particular people from Egypt, came in a particular man called Jesus, and for the particular purpose of liberating the oppressed, then they can continue to talk in theological abstractions, failing to recognize that such talk is not the gospel unless it is related to the concrete freedom of the little ones.

James Cone, God of the Oppressed, 126.

Divine and Human Action: Seeking a Non-Competitive Account

Posted by on March 26, 2007 4 comments

In recent accounts of ecclesiology and ethics, certain thinkers, seeking to give due weight to the priority of divine action over the church’s response have argued that a properly theo-centric account of the church’s practices must see them merely as secondary response to God’s word – never are they seen as a participation in it. John Webster, for example is concerned to safeguard “the sheer gratuity of God’s act of reconciliation.” He sees a great danger in speaking of the church as an embodied locus of practices. Such descriptions, he argues risk a “potential moral immanence” which Webster sees as an inherent danger to “the language of practice”. Webster is reticent to acknowledge any “coinherence of the divine work of reconciliation and the church’s moral action.” For Webster, “there is an unbridgeable gulf between the reconciling activity of God and the church’s moral endeavor.” Indeed, Webster goes so far as to say that the church can “never embody” God’s redeeming word of reconciliation in its midst.

Similarly, David Fergusson has attempted to articulate an approach to ethics that argues that “the priority of God’s action must be stressed over against the secondary reality of the church’s polis.” On his view, the church’s action at best “bears the character of faithful witness and correspondence” in relation to the divine act.

What is inherent in the views of both Webster and Fergusson is a conception of divine action that is inherently competitive. This is the crucial point. For such thinkers, divine action, in order to take primacy cannot include and incorporate the church’s ecclesial response to God’s Word into the movement of it. Were it to so do, the church would in some way be responsible for God’s saving action, which is untenable. However, then the question becomes what place there is left at all for human action, given the competitive and all-encompassing nature of divine action. Does not such a view of divine action inevitably end up overwhelming any meaningful concept of creaturely freedom and action? Can such an approach, which seems to always stop with the assertion that God’s action is primary truly fund a fully orbed Christian ethic? The main point I would press against such thinkers is that despite their luadable efforts to make domatically clear that God’s action is primary in any discussion of theological ethics, if ethical reflection stops at that point we have failed in following through the task of really doing ethics. Pelagianism must indeed be forewsworn, but antinomianism is no less a danger. Any ethic that merely speaks of God’s divine action extra nos and refuses to plumb the depths of how that action bears on, shapes, and incorporates the ongoing life of the church in seeking to follow Jesus is unforgivably deficient. This is my fear with works like Webster’s on ethics. Frankly, there just isn’t much ethics there!

What is needed, I would contend is a more thoroughly trinitarian account of divine action, based on the mode of God’s self-giving in the economy of salvation as seen in Christ and the Spirit. Stephen Holmes has helpfully pointed out that “The particular ways in which God has chosen to be present to the world as Son and Spirit are ways which, in God’s sovereignty, do not overwhelm the world…these ‘kenotic’, or perhaps better ‘self-limiting’, modes of presence do not threaten his existence as God.” It is precisely in this direction that I think theological discussions of this issue must go. What is needed is a distinctly non-competitive account of divine action that is grounded in the kenotic life of the Trinity. Here, I think von Balthasar helps us in ways that Barth does not. On such an account we are able to avoid both “moral immanence” and an abstract transcendence. When we see divine action in such a non-competitive manner, we realize that discussions about God’s action extra nos and our form of ethical praxis must occur in the same breath. Then and only then can we really follow through on Barth’s contention that dogmatics is ethics.

Tanner’s 2007 Warfield Lectures

Posted by on March 26, 2007 3 comments

David, Chris, and Travis have all collaborated to bring us non-Princeton students some excellent summaries of Kathryn Tanner’s recent lectures at Princeton Seminary, the theme being “Christ as Key”. Tanner interects with a variety of themes, largely connected to the Trinity, the Kingdom and social and political theory (with a forray into the atonement). A recurring element in her thought is her rigorous critique of social trinitarianism. All of this is dedicated to exploring how a distinctly Christological approach might fund the way we imagine crucal aspects of these doctrines.

I hope to post something in response to these lectures at some point. I think, based on what I’ve read of Tanner and the summaries of these lectures that she has some fairly significant conceptual problems in her thought, particularly in her trinitarianism. I hope to explore that further in a future post.

For now, congratulations and thanks to David, Christ, and Travis for bringing these thought provoking lectures to those of us spead through the theo-blogosphere!

John Howard Yoder on the New Society

Posted by on March 25, 2007 3 comments

When He called His society together, Jesus gave its members a new way of life to live. He gave them a new way to deal with offenders – by forgiving them. He gave them a new way to deal with violence – by suffering… He gave them a new way to deal with a corrupt society – by building a new order, not smashing the old. He gave them a new pattern of relationships between man and woman, between parent and child, between master and slave, in which was made concrete a radical new vision of what it means to be a human person.

John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays in Christian Pacifism, (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1998), 29.

Christ as Culture: Against the Logos Asarkos

Posted by on March 24, 2007 8 comments

A crucial question that daunts theological engagements with culture is how it is that Christ is present to the cultures of the world. Is Christ totally removed from the cultures of the world or does he permeate them in such a way that all cultures have some level of communion with God through Christ? Such questions have been the source of much debate.

Commensurate with this question is that of how Christ is related to the church and how Christ, church, and culture are all to be configured in relation to one another. In what follows I would like to argue the following: the church as the body of Christ mediates through its own ecclesial culture, the presence and redeeming power of Christ to the world and its cultures.

Christ is present to the world precisely as the church, which is his body. With Karl Barth, we must say that there is no logos asarkos. Christ is always present to the world in his embodiment. Christ does not ever relate to the world outside of his embodiment. This is the essence of the incarnation of the Son and the centrality of the church as the body of Christ. It is essential that we affirm that the Son’s individual embodiment as a human being has ascended into heaven with the Father (however we construe the doctrine of the ascension. Thus, the question becomes, if Christ’s individuated human body is not longer present to the world, how is that he offers the world his bodily presense? The solution is to se that it is through his embodied ecclesial and sacramental body that he remains present to the world in a tangible, bodily way. This contention is, of coursed bound up with nuances of Christology that center on the perennial Reformed-Lutheran debate. As should be clear from this formulation, the model presented here owes more to the Lutheran than to the Reformed understanding of the two natures and the comunicatio idiomatum. Such issues must be acknowledged, though of course they cannot be settled here.

This notion of the church as the presence of Christ to the world of culture is certainly no small matter. Most theologians, particularly of the Reformed tradition will doubtless want to continue to advocate for Christ being present outside of his ecclesial embodiment in the world. While complicated Christological issues are at work here, the reason why such an account appears unbearably problematic is that it seems to irreducibly advocate the possibility of Christ relating to the world in a disembodied way, a de facto logos asarkos. If the church is indeed the body of Christ on earth and Christ comes to us only as the logos ensarkos, Christ must be present to the world only in a tangible and embodied way. None of this is to say that the church is identical with the person of Christ without remainder, only that it is in fact his body. The body of Christ is a culture permeating the cultures of the world. Thus, Christ himself is a culture, namely the culture embodied in the ekklesia, his body. As Robert Jenson points out, “if the church is the body of Christ, that is, if the church is the availability of Christ in and for the world, and if this body of Christ, the church is a culture, it follows that that Christ is a culture. And the sense of the ‘is’ in ‘Christ is a culture’ will be the sense that each of us must say that he or she ‘is’ his or her body.”

Such an account of Christ as the ecclesial culture being present to the world requires much more work and substantiation. The looming question is how, if at all, the cultures of the nations experience the grace of the Triune God if the church is the only embodied medium of Christ’s presence in the world. An answer may lie in a more developed trinitarian approach with emphasis on the work of the Spirit in the world in relation to Christ. Hints of this are already present in the work of Lesslie Newbigin. I think it is unproblematic to say that the Spirit is prevenient, in that the Spirit goes “in front of” Christ and the church, drawing them in his wake to follow where he leads. This is not to seperate the works of the Triune persons, only to acknowledge that the form of their indivisible activity does not prohibit ascribing particular acts to the particular persons.

While an approach such as this, which takes with absolute seriousness the nature of the church as Christ’s only embodied presence the world between ascension and parousia may appear to give license for the church to withdraw from the world, nothing should be further from the truth. Rather, since the church is the embodied presence of Christ, the church’s missional vocation must be caught up into Christ’s own pattern of self-giving service to the world’s cultures in all their brokenness and beauty, thereby participating in the missio dei and being drawn into the plenitude of God’s own trinitarian life.

The question I would put to those that have problems with an account such as this would simply be this: if Christ can be present to the world during his ascended session at the right hand of the Father outside of his ecclesial body, how do we avoid the problem of the logos asarkos? I really don’t see how we can.

Jenson on Dissent & Facism

Posted by on March 23, 2007 Comments Off

Political nihilism is called “facism.” It seems unlikely that America will experience the metaphysical spasm of a European-style facist government. But the dread possibility is that our unmetaphysical nation may reach the other side of facism without faving to go through the spasm. We may now be achieving the self-sustaining chaos which was facism’s distant goal: a police state in which “proper dissent” can be “tolerated” because it makes no difference, a military state in which “civilian control” remains because the civilians are militarized, a racist state in which oppressed minorities are allowed to fight apermanent losing war for their rights.

Robert W. Jenson, Story and Promise: A Brief Theology of the Gospel about Jesus (Ramsey, NJ: Sigler Press, 1989), 99-100.

I would just call attention to the fact that Jenson first penned these words in 1972. This paragraph strikes a particularly prophetic tone with me. Unfortunately Jenson has turned out to be right, I think.

Francis Cardinal George on Sectarianism

Posted by on March 23, 2007 1 comment

The community of Jesus Christ does not seek to take over the reigns of political power, rather it seeks to create a culture. The debate over the relationship of church and state has become now a conversation on the relationship of faith and culture. The faith creates culture by being boldly and unapologetically itself…In the next millennium, as the modern state is relativized and national sovereignty is displaced into societal agreements still to be invented, it will be increasingly evident that the major faiths are the carriers of culture and that it is more sectarian to be French, American or Russian than to be Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist.

Francis Cardinal George, “Catholic Christianity and the Millennium: Frontiers of the Mind in the 21st Century”, (Unpublished essay delivered at the Library of Congress, 1999), 12-13.

Against the Simulacra

Posted by on March 22, 2007 6 comments

The vocabulary of soteriology has been applied by theologians to the contemporary realities of the nation-state, capitalism, consumerism, and globalization. The basic case is that the political arrangements that have arisen out of the modern nation-sate have an intrinsically soteriological pretension built into them. The modern nation-state, and the market of global capitalism that has emerged from it are here to “save” us. And chiefly, of course the modern nation-state is here to save us from that fanatical practice that is religion!

Following William Cavanaugh and others who have taken this tack in critiquing the modern nation-state, I would agree that a theological narration of globalization and consumerism through the lens of soteriology is indeed possible, and I would add essential for the church today. The current realities of globalization, consumerism and visual media are best understood theologically as the embodiment of a false soteriologybuilt upon a pseudo-theology falsely masquerading as a “secular”, “neutral” reality. These global realties, driven as they are by their false soteriology seek to subvert any social body which would claim to embody an alternative vision of human redemption. It is in this context that these global forces have sought – and largely achieved – the fragmentation and compromise of the church.

The soteriology of global consumerism is in large part the culmination of the project of the modern nation-state in which the soteriology of global consumerism had its genesis. This soteriology centers around two key foci, that are, I would argue, parodies of central elements of the church and its narrative. These parodies are embodied by (1) the displacement of Christ in favor of a messianically conceived nation-state and (2) a totalizing global market economy in place of the church catholic. Corresponding to this, the three central practices of the church, the radical reorientation of life brought about in baptism, the sustaining consumption of the Eucharist and the proclamation of the Word are replaced with allegiance to the nation-state, consumerism and the indoctrinating word of propaganda through pervasive visual media.

I think it would be helpful to examine precisely how these parodies take place in contemporary culture. Is the contemporary political configuration in the West truly a simulacra of the body of Christ. How is allegiance to the nation-state (patriotism) a parody of baptism? How is consumerism a parody of the Eucharist? How is the ubiquious nature of visual media and propaganda parody of Christian proclamation of the Word? Doe these correspondences hold up under scrutiny? I invite any comments on this.

More on the New Monasticism

Posted by on March 21, 2007 7 comments

In my last post on the new monasticism, quite a lively discussion was generated regarding the viability of Protestant ecclesiology in general. I’d be curious about further discussions related to this whole topic.

Now, this movement as a whole is broadly ecumenical, the first book bearing “new monasticism” in the title included essays from persons from numerous different denominations and communities, both Catholic and Protestant. The whole thrust of the different communities that are seeking to live in this new monastic way is one of repentance. There are numerous affluent and semi-affluent Christians in America who are coming to see that maybe there are some fundamental ways in which the church in America is unjustifiably compromised with the dominant culture. And yet, these Christians, among whom I include myself are left in a quandary as to how to repent in the context of the culture we inhabit. If we are complicit in the structures of racism & classism, for example, how do we best repent of that in a non-artificial way? There’s really nothing counter-cultural about remaining affluent and just finding ways to have friends from different races, for example, as good a thing as that might be. Likewise, is becoming a “white liberal activist” (such as the many who worked in the civil rights movement) the right course?

To put it another way, it often seems that Christians such as myself see the injustices of our culture, and yet are at a loss for a meaningful way to speak Christianly toward these injustices in light of the fact that they are on dominant side in most of these conflicts. New monastic forms of living are, I think an important way in which Christians in these positions are trying to repent of their middle-classness. It is a way of trying to avoid the problems of faith that is simple activism on one hand or quietism on the other. It is not a matter of trying to solve the problems of the world through utopianism, nor is it a method of withdrawal from the world into interiority. Rather it is a statement that what we need, if we are to bear faithful witness is to construct an alternative space within the world in which we become free to divest ourselves of the idolatries of the dominant culture in such a way that we may live a life that bears the stamp of what we believe true justice and shalom looks like. Only then will we have a meaningful word to speak to the world we wish to critique.

An early example of this is the Koinonia Farms that were led by Clarence Jordan in the 1950s and 60s. Jordan was simply a conservative Southern Baptist who ended up with a Ph.D in New Testament Greek. And, in the process of studying the New Testament toward this end, he came to the conclusion, rather matter-of-factly that the Bible had a lot to say about peace and community between members of different races. So, he and a band of followers proceeded to buy some farm land and together, black and white began to live together in communion with one another, working side-by-side. Nearly a decade before MLK proclaimed his dream, it was being lived out by a small community in Machen, Georgia.

This is the vision that the new monasticism seeks to emulate. It is about constructing concrete, stable, and committed ecclesial communities that live in proximity with close relationship between all the members thereof. This, in my opinion is how Christians such as myself need to repent of the idolatries of our culture. It may be that if we were in a different culture something very different than a new monasticism would be necessary. But, I think it is necessary here, in this day and this time.

A few questions:

How should our practices of life and livelihood bear the stamp of repentance? I think this has particular relevance to Christians in academic pursuits. How might we configure our lives to tangibly bear an alternative shape to that of dominant culture?

How might communities who are not of this new monastic strip learn from those who are? What does it have to offer other Christians in ecclesial contexts where repentance from the idolatries of our culture may look different?

How far is too far? While we often like to rake the Enlightenment notion of autonomy over the coals, are we really willing to give up self-determination in terms of things like career and lifestyle? Don’t we often really fear the idea of letting others discern and speak into how we should live?

Theology in Lenten Time

Posted by on March 20, 2007 Comments Off

What does it mean to repent from the idolatries of our culture? This is certainly one of the central questions of Lent. And here I think we need to learn a lesson from Monasticism. Monasticism has always been a movement within the church universal. A movement of protest. Monasticism has always insisted that, contrary to what many Christians so firmly believe, it is possible to live the way Jesus calls us to live.

The world insists that we must live lives of autonomy, of control, of self-gratification and self-protection. It insists that we must ultimately look out for ourselves (and maybe our spouses, but only to a point). All relationships, all commitments, anything that would hinder us from doing what we must do to fulfill ourselves are provisional. There’s no better reason to move from one place to another than for a better job in our world. And the idea that someone should turn down a lucrative job to stay within a particular community of believers whom might need her is ludicrous and offensive to the modern mind. We want our autonomy and when push comes to shove, we want to be able to fulfill our dreams, whatever they may be.

The witness of the monastics is that we don’t have to live in this world. That Christ has indeed created a real alternative in which we can live in freedom from the tyrannies of our culture. In Christ there is a new space created within which we don’t have to take and grasp for ourselves, because we believe that God’s gifts are “exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that we could ask or imagine.” (Eph. 3:20) In this space we are free to give up our lives to one another for Christ because we have no fear of losing ourselves “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col. 3:3) In this space we are free to take time, to live free from the desperation and frenzy of our world, because God has given us time in Christ. What monasticism proclaims to us is that we have no need to fear self-denial because God’s gifts flourish in our emptiness. God desires us to be empty vessels through which his fullness may flow. We are free from the roots of possessiveness in our culture that insists that our identity is our possession and that we only live by guarding ourselves, by throwing up walls to keep out what might threaten or diminish us. What Christ tells is that “I am the Vine, you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing.” So what then shall we be? Leaves grasping after the wind? Trying to get some sort of life for ourselves that we can control, free from the trunk that is the source of our life. If we do that we may let the wind take us away, but just like the leaf that is blown off of a branch and still looks alive, we will have only the glow of life fading away into nothingness.

Christ, however has created the space within himself for us to be and to live, not as grasping after life, but as giving it away as he has done for us. In Christ we see the truth about God and the world fleshed out for us in the greatest of dramas. Christ holds nothing back of himself, he gives his life away completely, to the fullest. His whole self is expended for others, such that even in his last dying breaths he begs the Father to forgive his murderers. In all of this he holds onto nothing of himself. He gave it all, not to the Father, but to us! And what is the truth about one who lives in that way? Does self-expenditure for the sake of others leave us alone, dark and non-existent, simply echoes in a void? No! This is the truth of resurrection. In Christ we see that this is how flourishing happens, how true life is born, not through control and calculation but through ultimate surrender and trust. Christ expends himself completely, and as the blood and water run from his side on the cross they become a living gushing fountain of life that swallows up death, hate, and sin. Christ’s self-expenditure for us is not the end of him or his abnegation, but his glorious flourishing in the beauty and wonder of the life of the Trinity!

So what does this say to us? Most centrally it says that this space that has been opened up for us to live as Christ has lived is his body, his church. And as his body we live in the pattern of cross and resurrection. We even “fill up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” We live in the same space that Jesus lives in with the Father. A space in which life can be given away without fear. Though of course we still fear. We still tremble like Jesus in Gethsemene sweating drops of blood. The prospect of giving up our lives for one another still strikes fear into our hearts and our autonomy and longings for grasping after our desires remain. And yet, there is this space made, which we can come back to in our weakness to be sustained. The body of Christ, broken on Calvary becomes our common life, where others stand in the thick of it with us and surrender themselves for us, showing us faithfulness, friendship, love and loyalty. Within Christ’s body we see the very hesed of Yahweh made concrete in the faces of our brothers and sisters. Even in the face of our fears and the rearing of sin’s ugly head in our lives, we can rest in the assurance that the mountain of sin is always already overshadowed by an even greater superabundance of redemption. “Where sin increased, Grace abounded all the more. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

We are given hope. We are assured by the Spirit that it is possible to live as Christ commands, that any who give up houses or mothers, fathers or brothers, will receive from God and abundance of even greater life. Houses, brothers, sisters and mothers, children and lands, and in the coming age, eternal life. This is the witness that the monastics are to us. They insist that it is true that we can live free. And that is how we see our central vocation as the church being fleshed out. Can we be a living witness, the living proof that life laid down is richer than life grasped after? Can we be the living proof that the denial of self is more nourishing and sustaining that the indulgence of the self?

That is how all this relates to Lent. Lent leads us into the high drama of the Christian year, Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. It is an embodied way of us remembering and participating in Christ’s way of being toward us. It allows us in some small way to follow after the pattern of life laid down, of self denied, of life given to others. That is why practices such as Lent are a central part of what it means for us to be witnesses, for us to be missional. As we participate in Christ’s pattern of laying life down, of denying self we live into the reality that is God’s mission to the world. God’s mission is to unify all things in Christ. To bring about reconciliation, wholeness, shalom. God’s mission is that all would together be drawn into the covenant relationship with himself in which life is freely given one to another where nothing is held back for one’s self.

When we strive to live in that way, in the Lenten patterns of discipline and self-giving, we find our lives being shaped within the mission of God to the world. We become living witnesses to the world of autonomy, of indulgence, of self-gratification and self-protection that there is another way. That through the grace of Christ and the sustaining of the Spirit we can be a different people. We can say no to the powers, we can lay life down and still live. We can give our money away and still trust that God will care for us. We are given a life of ultimate freedom! Freedom not from, but for and in obedience. A life in which we discover that ultimate freedom is life laid down for one another and received as a gift from one another. If we cannot live this way then we have no gospel for the world. Lent is a timeful, embodied, and practical way for us to strive to live in the pattern of Christ’s self-giving. It is a time for us to deny ourselves, trusting that God will take care of us, it is a time
for us to nourish others, trusting that God will nourish us, it is a time to die with Christ, because we believe that we will also live with him.

Lenten time is no mere exercise in giving something up for the sake of personal piety, let alone self-improvement. Lent is a call to us about what it means for us to live as the people of God. A people who freely lay down their lives, who don’t insist on their own way, who live fully for others, trusting in inexhaustible abundance of God’s gifts to take care of anything they need. Lent is a way of living the missional life, as we embody the will of God for the world that Christ has shown us. Being the community of reconciliation, of life laid down, of self given away for others is what God is doing in the world. It is this end that all people are invited into. And thus it is the most missional thing in the world to be this community. To be the cruciform body that truly lives as Christ calls us to. Without that living, embodied reality in which the truth of Christ is shown in our flesh and blood poured out and given to one another, we have no authentic gospel to preach to the world. Our proclamation must be our common life in which, for all our failures we continue to believe that the way of Christ is no mere ideal, but must become the shape of our life as a body. In this season we are invited into a tangible way of learning again how to shape our lives into the cruciform pattern of Christ’ death and resurrection.

In Lent we are invited to learn again what it means to give our lives to one another for the sake of Christ. To learn again that God’s abundance leaves us in freedom to give our lives away without fear. To learn again that we are free to climb the mount of Calvary and join Christ on the cross, sharing his sufferings and awaiting and trusting in the resurrecting love of the Father.

Theological Reading in the Christian Year

Posted by on March 16, 2007 7 comments

I’ve often thought of what it might mean for Christian intellectuals (i.e. aspiring theologians like myself and, I imagine most of my readership here) to try to shape their academic/theological reading in a way that orients it properly toward worship. This led me to wonder how it might be possible for theological reading to take shape in a way that cohered with the dramatic structure of the celebration of the Christian year with its various emphases on different elements of the Christian theological narrative.

I came up with a rough sketch a while back of what this might look like. I’d love some input on it as there are still some holes in parts of the year that I have trouble placing theological reading into (such as Epiphany).

So here’s the skeleton of such a theological reading plan:

Advent – Reading in Eschatology (Recommended: Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God)
Christmas – Readings on the Incarnation (Recommended: Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Jenson, Systematic Theology, I)
Epiphany – Readings of Divine Glory/Beauty (Recommended: Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, I)
Lent – Readings on the Theology of the Cross & Martyrdom (Recommended: McGill, Death and Life, Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale)
Easter – Readings on the Resurrection & Forgiveness (Recommended: Williams, Resurrection, Jenson, Story and Promise)
After Pentecost - Readings on the Holy Spirit, the Trinity & the Church (Various, as this is the long season of ‘Ordinary Time’ there’s a lot that could fit here)

So, what do people think of this as a possible way of framing theological reading in way that it can be more readily inclined toward worship? What additions would you recommend for different seasons?

Against Disembodiment: Why H. Richard Niebuhr was Gnostic

Posted by on March 15, 2007 10 comments

Questions of the relationship between Christ, the church, and culture are as old as the church itself. However, way in which such questions have been framed over the last century has been undoubtedly shaped in large part by the landmark study of H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture. It would be hard to overestimate the importance and influence of Niebuhr’s work for subsequent theologizing about the relationship between the church and the world in which it lives.

Despite its importance and influence, I contend that Niebuhr’s typology in Christ and Culture is deleterious to a proper Christian perspective on the nature of the church and her relationship to the cultures in which she finds herself. In contrast, I believe we must search for a more adequate paradigm which takes the plurality and particularities of culture seriously and is rooted in an incarnational Christology. In contrast to Niebuhr’s Gnostic tendencies (namely that of denying the inculatratedness of Christ, his human particularity), such a framework would offer constructive resources for the church to preserve her missional identity as she seeks to embody and bear witness to Christ among the cultures in which she finds herself.

Essentially, Niebuhr’s study seeks to investigate the different positions that parts of the church throughout history have taken in response to culture. Thus Niebuhr talks about those who held to “Christ against culture,” who completely rejected all elements of the wider world. Then there are those who identify Christ with a given culture, holding to “the Christ of Culture.” Then there are mediating positions (“Christ above culture” and “Christ and Culture in Paradox”) which offer some sort of synthesis between Christ and culture. Finally, there is what is clearly Niebuhr’s favorite approach, namely “Christ the transformer of culture.”

Niebuhr’s typology, like all typologies does not claim to be absolute in its accurateness. Niebuhr freely admits that his account, though “historically inaccurate”, “helps us to gain orientation as we in our own times seek to answer the question of Christ and culture.” (Christ and Culture, 44. Hereafter, CC) Pregnant within this statement are two essential elements of Niebuhr’s approach. Firstly, though his account is something of a historical study, it is not ultimately a descriptive study and if read as such would be seen to be woefully inaccurate. Conversely, Niebuhr seems to intimate here that his approach, despite masquerading as a historical study, in fact has a prescriptive agenda, namely to help his readers answer the question of “Christ and culture.”

There are numerous lines of criticism that have rightly been leveled at Niebuhr’s account. Among the central problems of his work lie in his essential presuppositions about the nature of “Christ” and “culture.” His very way of framing the question is what is most disturbing. To speak of the relationship between “Christ” and “culture” seems to clearly assume that in comparing the two, one is dealing with two different spheres or identities that must be somehow coordinated in relation to one another. “Christ” is one thing and “culture” is another. Inherent in this way of framing the question lies the barely concealed assumption that “Christ” lies outside the realm of cultural, creaturely reality. For Niebuhr, culture is simply, the “total process of human activity.” Culture is a human product, created by humankind and results in “civilization.” (CC, 32) Moreover, Niebuhr’s concept of culture which he is concerned to coordinate in relationship to Christ is admittedly monolithic. He is concerned, with culture, not as “a particular phenomenon but the general one.” (CC, 31)

That culture is such a monolithic reality for Niebuhr is seen in how he evaluates the proponents of his different models. Tertullian, who Niebuhr places among those who hold to “Christ against culture,” is faulted for being inconsistent in that he was a radical critic of culture and yet “could not emancipate himself” (CC, 55) from it. That culture might be a variegated reality, some aspects of which could be embraced, while others rejected is not regarded as a possibility for Niebuhr, rather views culture as a monolithic totality, “you must either withdraw from it all, transform it all, or keep it all in paradox.” (Yoder, “How H. Richard Niebuhr Reasoned,” 54-55) This monolithic abstraction that Niebuhr presents as “culture” which Christ must be understood in relation to is a gaping weakness in his contribution.

Perhaps more troubling, however is the way in which Niebuhr divorces Christ from culture at a fundamental level. For Niebuhr, Christ is one thing and culture is another. “Christ leads men away from the temporality and pluralism of culture.” (CC, 39) No matter which model he is discussing, Niebuhr is emphatic that Christ always calls people away from culture. Thus, no matter which model one opts for on Niebuhr’s account, ultimately the project is one of determining the limits to which one will follow Christ for the sake of according due devotion to culture. Thus for Niebuhr,

[Christ] is not a center from which radiate[s] the love of God and of men, obedience to God and Caesar, trust in God and nature, hope in divine and human action. He exists rather as the focusing point in the continuous alternation of movements from God to man and from man to God… (CC, 29)

Christ, on Niebuhr’s view is not “the center” of Bonhoeffer, but rather a point on which to focus in a larger continuum of divine–human encounter. (See Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center) For Niebuhr, though other sources of authority are not autonomous from God, “they are independent of Jesus.” (Yoder, 63) For Niebuhr, Christ will always call his followers away from culture, the question is how far it is appropriate for the Christian to follow. The working assumption is that, whatever Christ is, he is essentially acultural. Niebuhr has to “shift the meaning of Jesus’ criticism of creaturely rebelliousness within culture, so that Jesus’ call is not itself a real option within history and culture but rather a direction, ‘pointing away’ from the world, and therefore by definition incapable of standing alone, incapable of faithful Incarnation.” (Yoder, 64) As such, there is a fundamental Gnostic tendency in Niebuhr’s thought. For him Christ ultimately is found outside the embodied world of culture, calling people away from culture. The question is how far we will follow him out of the world. This stands in marked contrast to Bonhoeffer who held that rather than being called out of the world, following Jesus is only possible by “living completely in this world.” (Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 369-370) For Bonhoeffer, in contrast to Niebuhr, it is the radical worldliness entailed in Christ’s call to discipleship that calls one to live fully in the world. Such worldliness in Bonhoeffer is profoundly Christological and ecclesial in contrast to Niebuhr.

Thus, in the end when evaluating Niebuhr’s project we are left with a Christology that is at least functionally docetic, if not outright gnostic. The particularities of Christ get left behind as he is made into a cipher for how the otherworldly divine can be configured in relation to the mundane realities of the “real world.” However, for Bonhoeffer and hopefully for all Christians, it is Christ who is the ultimate truth about the mundane realities of the “real world.” The “real world” is the world redeemed in and through the cultural particularities of the human life of the Jew from Nazareth. It is this world that the church is united with through faith in Christ, thus becoming his body in and for the world. In this body, there is no question of how to relate “Christ and Culture” because in this body Christ has become a culture. The issue then, is not how to connect t
he spiritual realities of the Christan community with the “world of culture”, but rather to discern how the culture that is the Christian community is to bear witness amidst the various cultures in which it finds itself. After all there is no such thing as “culture” in the abstract!

The ultimate form of “worldliness” that is appropriate to Christian discipleship is precisely the ecclesial life lived within the triniarian communio poured out graciously by Christ and the Spirit in and through the ecclesial body of Christ. The ultimate form of creaturely existence is the spousal-sacramental communion that takes place in the life of the church, the form of humanity united to the Son in faith and hope. This is true culture. True food and true drink. True and authentic mundanity at its best. It is in and as this ecclesial sacramental body that the church learns what it means to be a culture amidst the nations of the world, calling all the reconciliation in and through the Cross and Resurrection of Christ. This is what it means to be culturally engaged.

Jenson on the Identity of God

Posted by on March 7, 2007 Comments Off

In Jesus’ resurrection, the identity of the God of promise became clear. The news of Jesus’ death and resurrection is a claim on behalf of a God unequivocally identified as a God of unconditional promise: of life precisely in spite of, indeed using and transforming, death; of fulfillment in spite of, indeed including alienation. “God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead” is both past tense and future tense; for it can also be stated this way: “Jesus’ life, as defined by his death, will triumph – and that triumph will be the reality of God.”

Robert W. Jenson, Story and Promise: A Brief Theology of the Gospel about Jesus (Ramsey, NJ: Sigler Press, 1989), 60.

Switch to our mobile site