Monthly Archives: July 2007

The Logos Eternally Incarnandus

Posted by on July 31, 2007 10 comments

The fundamental truth of the incarnation is that the human man, Jesus of Nazareth belongs to the eternal identity of God as the Son of the Father. This means that everything that Jesus is is part of the eternal Triune life. If we say that the incarnation is something that only takes place because of some contingent events in history (the fall), then God’s very being is made contingent upon human action.

In other words, if Jesus really is the Trinitarian Son and if the Trinitarian Son’s becoming incarnate as Jesus is just a band-aid fix for repairing human sin, then the incarnation introduces a radical change into the being of God, such that God becomes what he was not before, and thus Jesus is not as such the Logos, rather the Logos somehow subsists ‘in’ Jesus, but is not, strictly speaking identical with Jesus.  It should not even need to be said that this is heretical.  If Jesus of Nazareth is not exclusively and without remainder identical with the Son of God, then we are still in our sins. 

However if Jesus simply is the Son of God – rather than some nonsense about the Logos subsisting ‘in’ Jesus – then Jesus’ incarnate humanity is eternally part of the Triune life. Thus, the Son is eternally incarnandus.  This is not to deny that the Word became flesh in time.  Rather it is to deny that something which has a temporal begining cannot also be eternal, for if the incarnation reveals anything it is that God’s Triune time is not incompatible with created time.  The becoming flesh of the Word as (not in!) Jesus did indeed happen at a point in space and time.  However, that event in space and time occured within the broader framework of the eternal Triune relations.  The Trinitarian Son can become flesh in history because the eternal being of the Triune God is in becoming and that eternal becoming eternally includes his incarnation.  The incarnation, on this reading does not introduce a “change” into the being of God, or rather the change that it introduces is but a ripple from a pebble within a mighty waterfall.  God’s life is an ocean of overabundant becoming into which the incarnation is eternally and seamlessly enfolded. 

Ultimately on this Christological issue we’re left with one of two choices: either the reality of the human Jesus is eternally included within the identity of God, or the incarnation is only a response to sin and therefore human sin radically changes the being of God into something different that who God has been eternally.  With Irenaus, Barth, and von Balthasar I choose the former option.  Jesus is the Logos.  Period.

My Peace I Leave with You: Exploring Theological Pacifisms

Posted by on July 31, 2007 1 comment

In the next few weeks I will be starting up a series of guest posts from Christian pacifists of different traditions. As John Howard Yoder observed in his book, Nevertheless, there are many kinds of Christian pacifists whose commitments to peace and nonviolence derive from many different ecclesial and theological commitments.

I hope to explore some of those varieties here by listening to a number of different theobloggers who have come to embrace the Christian peace witness and have found their convictions to be shaped and formed by their respective traditions. Starting in the next couple weeks I will be posting brief essays from people across the spectrum of ecclesial traditions to discuss what their “pacifism” means to them, theologically and personally and how their views on that topic are informed by their particular ecclesial and theological tradition.

I am still open to other contributions if that interests you. Please feel free to contact me if you wish to have your own perspective represented. Hope you all find the series enjoyable!

The Christ & Culture Question

Posted by on July 30, 2007 5 comments

Three brief proposals for thinking about the “Christ and Culture” question. 

  1. There is no Christ or culture in the abstract, but only the Jewish Jesus of history and particular cultures.  We cannot abstractly talk about the relationship between “Christ and culture” as if Christ and culture are static givens which can be coordinated vis a vis each other.
  2. The relationship between Jesus Christ and culture is technically a question about how Christ related to the particular culture(s) he inhabited, not a question about how God is related to the various cultures of throughout space and history.
  3. Thus, when talking about the relationship between Christians and the cultures they inhabit we cannot pose such questions under the rubric of “Christ and culture”, since Christ’s relationship to culture is his unique and irrepeatable historical life amonst first century Palestinian and Greco-Roman culture.  To speak of the relationship of Christians to culture(s) is to pose a different question altogether, namely the question of church and culture.  

If this is correct, then I contend it requires us to severely question, if not completely abandon any and all typologies of “Christ and culture”.

Can there be a Christian Constantine?

Posted by on July 30, 2007 7 comments

In his book, Against Christianity, Peter Leithart argues (well, he doesn’t really argue, he articulates a vision in a self-consciously  piecemeal manner, actually much akin to theoblogging) in a very Radically Orthodox manner that the church is supremely political in its own being.  The church is, itself a culture, having its own sociology (which is theology) and its own politics (which is ecclesiology).  In the course of his writing he writes “against” Christianity (the Christian faith turned into an apolitical religious activity), ethics (Christian moral practice as understood separately from the totality of life in community), theology (Christian thinking systematized and dehistoricized), and sacraments (ecclesial practices as mystical transaction between God and the interiorized self). 

However, at the end of all these various things that Leithart is “against”, he ends his book with a chapter entitled, “For Constantine”.  In a surprising move, his emphasis on the political and cultural nature of the church leads him to insist that if the church, the civitate dei, is indeed a full-orbed challenge to the powers that be, a truly alternative polis, it must be capable of integrating and ordering all of the political, economic, and social aspects of the wider world.  Thus, Leithart argues here against Yoder, Hauerwas, and company by arguing that Constantine is the logical and theological outcome of the gospel.  If the church is truly the polity of God, then the church’s polity must ultimately end up ordering any and all earthly polities.

I think Leithart, despite his many great points and fascinatingly Reformed version of ecclesiocentric politics is off on this point, and I think he is off because of an overly optimistic eschatology.  In fact, I wonder if it is the older versions of Reformed postmillennialism, which optimistically thought that church would bring in the Kingdom of God that is operative in his thought.  His work provides a fascinating example of Radical Orthodoxy being cast into a conservative (but highly creative, mind you!) Reformed mold that is highly ecclesiocentric.  I certainly commend his work, if for no other reason because I don’t think there’s anything else quite like it out there.

But what think you?  Could there ever be a Christian Constantine?  Or has there already been? Can the church truly be said to be a polis in the fullest sense of the world if it does not offer a program for regulating the political and economic life of the rest of the world?

A Thought on Eucharistic Ethics

Posted by on July 28, 2007 2 comments

I’ve spoken earlier about the ethical significance of the trivial.  The suggestion put forth is that taking time for the trivial things in life, such as eating a meal, cooking, playing an instrument, cultivating friendships, and so on are all activities in which we make peace by taking time to live our lives free from the powers that would seek to determine them.  If this is true, I would suggest that the church’s practice of the Eucharist is the paradigmatic form of a properly ethical practice of triviality.  Nothing is more ordinary than eating – though, through the Eucharist we come to know that there is also nothing more extra-ordinary than eating in peace.  To eat the Eucharist is to waste time in an menial act that doesn’t demonstrably “change” the world.  It makes little sense for us to waste time receiving the Eucharist if the powers that seek to determine our existence actually do so determine it.  However, if the cross and resurrection determine our existence, our trivial activity of eating together in peace, remembering our Lord has cosmic significance.  This is seen in Jesus’ serving his disciples the last supper.  Only if the powers that sought to determine his existence were in fact powerless would have made sense for Jesus to waste his time on the night he was betrayed by just sitting down and eating with his disciples.  And that is exactly what he did.

The Weekly Hauerwas: Why We Must Trivialize Ethics

Posted by on July 27, 2007 2 comments

In Stanley Hauerwas’ 1988 book, Christian Existence Today, one of his best essays, “Taking Time for Peace: The Ethical Significance of the Trivial” makes some fascinating points about what it might mean for Christians to live a ‘normal’ life given the reality of weapons of mass destruction.  He notes that the attitude that is encouraged, or tacitly enforced in a culture that lives “after the bomb” is one in which all decisions about human life and flourishing now must be made in reference to the bomb.  There is no going back to life before the bomb.  Instead today we must live in light of the fact that we have the capacity to destroy all life as we know it, and all our decisions about life must in some way or another be determined by that reality.   After the bomb, according to the conventional wisdom, neutrality is impossible.  You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.

This has a certain level of surface plausibility to it, but as Hauerwas points out, such an idea is inherently totalitarian.  “Those who argue that every aspect of our lives must be determined by the bomb seem to be making this kind of suggestion – namely, that we live in a totalitarian situation where the bomb determines every decision we make” Hauerwas notes how the nuclear scare of the 20th century was utilized by the powers that be to cultivate a culture of fear that determined all aspects of people’s daily living.  What was recommended was “that we voluntarily tyrannize our lives in the interest of survival” (p. 255). 

I believe that Hauerwas’ comments regarding the fear of nuclear holocaust are quite germane to the current culture of fear that is propagated in the United States in response to the threat of terrorism.  Either you are for winning the war on terror, or you are on the side of the terrorists.  Neutrality is impossible and you will either be part of the solution, and help America rid the world of evil, or you will be an Islamofacist sympathizer dedicated to the murder of innocents.  In a way that is not different than the red scares of the Cold War, we are encouraged again today to voluntarily tyrannize ourselves by allowing all aspects of our life together to be determined by the threat of terrorism.

Hauerwas’ response to the determinative nature of the atomic age is to point to an alternative.  It may seem that our lives simply are, in fact determined by the atomic age and by the threat of terrorism, no matter what we do.  However, as Christians we must argue that nothing is ultimately determinative for our lives other than the God we find in Jesus Christ.  It is here that Hauerwas develops his main point:

I believe we do have an alternative to the desperation that fuels our fear of nuclear war.  That alternative is, quite simply, the need to reclaim the significance of the trivial.  For it is my belief that there is no more powerful response to totalitarians than to take the time to reclaim life from their power.  By refusing to let them claim every aspect of our life as politically significant, we create the space and time that makes politics humane.  Therefore there is noting more important for us to do in the face of the threat of nuclear war than to go on living – that is, to take time to enjoy a walk with a friend, to read all of Trollope’s novels, to maintain universities, to have and care for children, and most importantly, to worship God.  (p. 256-257)

Hauerwas notes that by reclaiming the trivial aspects of life we resist the totalitarianisms that would seek to claim every aspect of our lives.  This, he claims is the most ethically significant thing we can do in the face of the threat of nuclear war (and now, the war on terror).  Moreover, “such a suggestion is only intelligible and moral if God really is the being whom Jews and Christians have affirmed” (p. 257).  If God is indeed who Christians believe he is, then our lives are not determined by the bomb, or by terrorism, but solely and completely by cross and resurrection of Christ, which are the power and wisdom of God.  The reason our lives are not so determined is because, according to Christian theology, God has given us space and time in Christ to live, and thus to live in peace (cf. Eph 2). 

Thus, in a world of war where powers seek to determine all aspects of our lives, the way in which we work for peace is to take time for the trivial.  In preparing a meal, eating with others, reading books, riding bicycles, and taking the time to get to know others, we free essential practices of our humanness from the determinations of the powers.  As such, our greatest contribution to bringing about peace in this world is to take time for peace. 

Peace takes time.  Put even more strongly, peace creates time by its steadfast refusal to force another to submit in the name of order.  Peace is not a static state but an activity which requires constant attention and care.  An activity by its very nature takes place over time.  In fact, activity creates time, as we know how to characterize duration only by noting that we did this first, and then this second, and so on, until we either get somewhere or accomplished this or that task.  So peace is the process through which we make time our own rather than be determined by “events” over which, it is alleged, we have no control. (p. 258)

I think Hauerwas’ point is most poignant in our current culture of fear in which an administration with hegemonic ambitions seeks to determine more and more aspects of its citizens’ existence.  Reclaiming the ethical significance of the trivial is vital to us becoming a people who have taken the time for peace and thus know how to offer a peace worth having to the world.   The only question I would put to Hauerwas’ account is as to when our reclaiming the ethical significance of the trivial becomes bourgeois indulgence.  Certainly taking time to be in relationship to others, and work our personal reconciliation and forgiveness cannot easily become a bourgeois activity, but often things like preparing meals, going for walks, and taking care of lemur colonies (one Hauerwas’ examples) can become a domesticated practice of having hobbies.  We must indeed reclaim the ethical significance of the trivial and never allow ourselves to be determined by the fears and desperations that a totalitarian culture seeks to impose on all aspects of life.  However, on the same hand, we must not allow or practices of triviality to lapse into sentimentality.  On this, I’m sure Hauerwas would agree.

A Thought on Catholicity

Posted by on July 26, 2007 1 comment

The term ‘catholic’ means something akin to ‘according to’ (kata-) ‘the whole’ (holos).  Usually this is taken to mean ‘universal’ in that a church is ‘catholic’ if it is connected to ‘the whole’, i.e. the one universal people of God.  However, I wonder about another possible way of understanding the term.  Perhaps it means not merely diachronic connection to the whole people of God, but also refers to the church’s bearing the wholeness, the fullness, the abundance of God’s gifts.  If that’s the case, perhaps we should consider catholicity to be a way of talking about shalom.  Shalom is relational and communal wholeness.  So, if the church is catholic (partakes of the whole abundance of God’s gifts), then to speak of the catholicity of the church is to speak of it as the reality of shalom made present throughout the world.  If that’s true then to claim that the church is catholic is not merely to proclaim that it is one, but that the quality of the church’s existence is one of peace, wholeness, and reconciliation in which all the gifts of God to the world in Christ are present.  In short, the claim to catholicity (and the frequent failure of the church to be faithfully catholic in this sense) is not merely a theological statement about the unity of the church, but an ethical statement about the quality of the church’s life.

J.P. Moreland & the Psychoses of Evangelical Cultural Engagement

Posted by on July 25, 2007 27 comments

I recently did something that I make it a point to never, ever, ever do.  I picked up a copy of a book by J.P. Moreland, Kingdom Triangle.  I was wrong to do it and I should have stuck to my guns and just put the book on the shelves after cataloging it at work.  But alas, I did not.  Instead I skimmed through the whole thing and am now thoroughly convinced of one important theological point: the only difference between Radical Orthodoxy and contemporary evangelicalism is that RO has more rhetorical flourish and has read some western literature and continental philosophy.  Other than that, they are the same.  Both of them consist of asserting that the contemporary cultural zeitgeist is inherently nihilistic, irrational, barbaric, and stupid and the Christian worldview, or metanarrative (which they understand with absolute perfection) is the only solution to the world’s woes.  Or, more specifically, the only solution to the infinite nihilism and vicious solipsism of the horrifyingly secular world is for the Christian worldview/metanarrative to take over the world with the church regaining cultural dominance and power.  In short, they are both so terrified of modernity that Christendom sounds super wonderful and awesome.  So let’s do that!

I’ve already wrote enough on RO about this for the time being, so evangelicalism, and particularly Moreland are really in my crosshairs right now.  His book opens with this following statement:

The year 1974 was declared the Year of the Evangelical.  Apparently no one was listening.  The year came and went as our culture continued slouching towards Gomorrah.  Fast forward to 2007.  Islamic terrorism threatens our borders, our political discourse is shrill and spoken in sound bites, and an epidemic of pornography addiction threatens the very possibility of healthy relationships between men and women.  People have to think twice about whether saving aborted babies or snail darters are more important.  We can’t agree about the sexual makeup of a healthy family. (p. 12)

Moreland goes on to say that the reason evangelicals didn’t rise to the occasion in 1974 is because the cultural revolution of the 60′s was still so recent that we hadn’t yet reached the bowels of Gomorrah and seen the fullness of horrors that has resulted from our culture’s rejection of the “Judeo-Christian worldview”.  However, now that we have seen all those aforesaid horrors, we must now rise to the occasion:

Since the mid 1800s, there has never been a greater window of opportunity for us to seize the moment and, by our lives and thought, to show our culture the way forward.  Now is the time for us to stop being thirty years behind the times.  Now is the time for us to gather our confidence and lead. (p. 12)

Yes!  Absolutely!  Christians must take over the world for God!  Here is the quintessentially nostalgic contemporary evangelical battle cry.  We must regain control of the world and save it with our better worldview.  Moreland goes on to argue in his book that the two principle opponents of Christianity today are “naturalism” and “postmodernism” which yield a “thin” and “meaningless” world.  The solution is his “kingdom triangle” which is to 1) recover the Christian mind (aka analytic philosophy and foundationalism), 2) to renovate the soul (aka spiritual formation in the vein of Dallas Willard), and finally 3) to restore the Spirit’s power (aka to recognize that there are still miracles going on á la Jack Deere – I guess Moreland’s some kind of neocharismatic now).

I could continue to supply a litany of references from this book that reveal its totally nostalgic, fear-driven, and power-grabbing thrust.  Moreland wants evangelicals to run the world for God.  The “we” of his book is always Christians in America, and America is the subject of his hoped for Christian takeover.  His uncritically Americanized cultural polemic immediately assumes that Christians have a stake in making America work and that America somehow has a special claim on Christian’s loyalty.  This of course has everything to do with Moreland’s hopes for an Amerianized Christendom where conservative family values run the world.

However, his hopes for how this wonderous world of American Christendom  are to be realized are utterly pelagianistic and hinge on Christians having the most unassailably brilliant philosophy and strategy that we will sweep away those damn secularists and postmodernists and finally get things back to the way they were in the good old mid 1800s.  I could go on a tirade about this forever, so let me just give two main points of critique.

 First, Moreland’s proposals for cultural engagement are Pelagian and driven by an utter lack of trust in the Triune God.  The inside flap on the front cover of this book states that “the biblical worldview [is] the only hope for the world”.  Maybe this is just a faux pas on Moreland’s part, but a statement such as that is not simply wrong, it is heretical.  The only hope for the world is not a worldview, but a person, Jesus Christ.  However, I think this statement much more than a faux pas, but rather the thrust of the entire book.  Moreland’s whole agenda is for the church to save the world that is “slouching toward Gomorrah“.  There is no sense of trust and hope in the transcendent power of the Triune God to transform the world, or more accurately that in Christ the transformation of the world has already happened.  Rather, for Moreland it is our job to get God’s work done by saving the world. 

This is nowhere more evident than in his third element of the “kingdom triangle” that we are to “restore the Spirit’s power”.  What could be more pretentious and heretical than the idea that it is up to us to be restoring the Spirit’s power?  Moreland’s book seems so terrified by how culture has fallen away from his particular understanding of conservative politics and values (his “Judeo-Christian worldview”, which by the way is an abstraction, but that’s another discussion) that instead of faith in God being proclaimed, instead we are thrown back upon ourselves to renew our minds, renovate our souls and restore the power of the Spirit.  However, in the Bible it is the Spirit who blows where he wishes and now one knows where he is going or coming from (Jn. 3:8).  Likewise it is not we who transform ourselves by renewing our minds, but God in Christ who conforms us to the image of the beloved Son (Rom. 8:29, 12:2).  Moreland seems to think that these activities are not the works of the Triune God extra nos, rather we are thrown back upon ourselves to accomplish these tasks, thereby saving the world, at least in a provisional sense.  This is functional Pelagianism at best.  The irony is that Moreland hails from a Calvinistic and dispensational premillennialist school and is here advancing a proposal that is Pelagian and postmillennial.

 Second, Moreland’s critiques of contemporary culture are a bunch of bourgeois, affluent, western platitudes driven by a typically American conservativism.  Just glance at the above quote on Moreland’s litany of what’s wrong with our hellish culture.  For Moreland the symptoms of our culture’s descent into Gomorrah are evidenced by Islamic terrorists, political rhetoric(read: liberals), pornography, abortion, and homosexuality.  Now let me be clear, I don’t think any of those things are good at all.  If you’ve read this blog much you know I’m pretty conservative on sexual ethics and I think abortion is a terrible reality in our society.  That said, what does it mean when these are the issues that define what Moreland is against?  His snide comment about saving darter snails just makes light of Christians who think we should be concerned about the environment. And where is poverty?  Globalization? Consumer capitalism?  I shouldn’t even mention that racism never appears in Moreland’s field of vision – though, since he is so nostalgic about the mid 1800s maybe we better not bring that one up?  I don’t know how anyone but a white Christian could make so stupid a statement as Moreland’s implication that the 19th century was the golden age of Christianity.

This agenda is a typical conservative one.  It is bourgeois and elitist to the core.  Only someone how has never had to go hungry or been unable to afford clean water has time to sit around and imagine that the gay family next door and internet porn are the biggest problems with our culture.  In a world where ethnic cleansings and genocides (which have everything to do with global capitalism and the conditions it creates) are ignored because they aren’t being perpetrated on people in the western hemisphere, if the only cultural critique Christians are able to produce is rants about sexual morality and abortion, then Christianity is in a sad state indeed.  It is self-righteous and immoral for Christians to parade agendas like Moreland’s while ignoring the “weightier matters of the law” (Matt. 23:23).  And that is exactly what this book does.

Believe it or not, I really am trying not to be too shrill with this critique, but I find Moreland’s perspective on culture to be so asinine and militant that I’m sure I get a little too revved up about it.  I hope that won’t alienate all readers.  But regardless, I think books like this and thinkers like Moreland are far more dangerous to the church than nutty atheists like Richard Dawkins.  It is the militants like Moreland who polarize Christians and cripple our authentic witness as they try to grab cultural and political power for the church.  It has nothing to do with cross and resurrection and everything to do with crossing the Rubicon.  Christians should be horrified by such a theological and political agenda.

Salvation & the Church

Posted by on July 25, 2007 4 comments

Here is my theological proposal: to speak of salvation is to speak of the church.  Or, put differently when we say that God in Christ has saved the world, what we are really saying is that he has established the church.  This is a radical claim, and I think that Ephesians 2:14-22 sheds some light on it.

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.

Here Paul’s discussion of the death of Christ and its saving significance is centered on the dissolution of divisions between Jew and Gentile and the establishment of “one new humanity”.  Reconciliation of humankind to God, for Paul means the union of inalienably different “in one body through the cross.”

So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

At the center of Paul’s understanding of the salvation that Jesus brings is the establishment of peace between previously alienated peoples.  Salvation means that all persons, regardless of differences that previously separated them are now members of the same family (“the household of God”), and the same polis (“fellow citizens”).  Previous divisions based on familial bonds and national loyalties are dissolved in salvation through Christ, which to become part of the church.

The meaning of Salvation, for Paul simply is membership in the ecclesial community.  To be sure, this is not a reduction of salvation to the current life of the church, as the next section of the passage shows, nor is it to posit the church as somehow supplementing the finished work of Christ.  Rather, understanding salvation as membership in the One Body is to understand the shape that the salvation which comes only through the mediation of Christ always and inevitably takes.  Christ is the foundation and the advocate, the center and the circumference.  There is no question of the church supplanting Christ.  For Paul the reality of salvation solely through Christ grounded and rendered intelligible his understand of the radical ecclesiality of salvation. 

Salvation is having access to the Father in the Spirit through Christ, and we enter the Trinitarian life in the this way by Christ’s work of creating in himself “one new humanity”.  It is right indeed to say that there is no salvation outside the church, not because the church possesses salvation, but because the church is the body of Christ and its life as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic body is derived wholly from the Head, Jesus Christ.  Salvation is membership in the body, because Jesus is the Head.

In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Salvation means to be made into a communal body in which the Triune God dwells.  In saying that salvation means the church, we are not saying that the church as it is now is the fullness of salvation.  Rather, the church is being built by God into the fullness which eschatologically awaits it.  The church is properly called the locus of salvation because what is present proleptically in the church is the eschatological destiny of the world.  The future of the world is to become church.  What awaits the world is not simply the restoration of God’s initial creation of the world, but rather the ekklesialization of the world in which all of humanity and all of creation is transfigured into the dwelling place of God.  The future of the world is the fullness of God’s Triune presence which is proleptically realized in the church’s sacraments and common life.  When we see and experience those realties, we taste the powers of the age to come.  In the end all things will be gathered into one body and God will be all in all.  What awaits the world is the ubiquitous catholicity of divine-human communion.  

A Thought on Fiction

Posted by on July 24, 2007 16 comments

Christians have a bad track record in being good readers of fictional literature.  Often Christians evaluate whether fictional books should be read based on whether they cohere with their version of “the Christian worldview”.  In other words, for many Christians, fiction simply serves the instrumental purpose of bolstering Christian convictions and books that don’t do that should be ignored, at best.  However, I think this is just a very impoverished way to live.  Reading fiction should not primarily be about reinforcing our beliefs about God and the world, but about learning how to inhabit, play, and imagine inside of a fictional world.  Certainly some fiction is ideological, but most good fiction isn’t about pushing an agenda, it’s about inviting the reader to imaginatively enter another world, simply for its own sake.  I propose that Christians shouldn’t seek to strictly measure the Christian-ness of their fiction reading.  The purpose of fictional reading is to not have a purpose, it is simply to read and play in another world.  In fact, I suspect that if Christians were able to read fiction in this playful manner of learning to indwell a fictional world, we might learn far better how to read the Bible.

A Theology of Ribs

Posted by on July 23, 2007 15 comments

One of my passions is learning the fine art of smoking various meats and learning the nuances of regional forms of barbecuing.  I have now become known as the guy in my congregation that wants to throw parties centered on everyone eating brisket and well-rubbed and smoked ribs.  From the double-dry rubbed ribs of Memphis to the pulled pork and coleslaw topped with pepper-vinegar sauce in North Carolina, I love all things barbecue.  In the spirit of perhaps the single greatest contribution of America to the world: ribs, I offer this theology of ribs.

Firstly, to eat ribs is to live in the mode of receptive doxology before God as we receive from God a gift of new life and promise.  It should be noted that in the story of the Bible, meat is not given to humankind to eat as a result of the Fall, rather it is given after God’s covenant with Noah that he will never again destroy the earth (Gen. 9:2).  Thus, the eating of meat is an act of celebration and confidence in God’s gratuitous promise to preserve, sustain and nurture our lives.

Secondly, to cook and eat ribs is to resist the consumerist zeitgeist of this present age.  Smoking meats is an inherently timeful activity, requiring patience and the discipline of submitting oneself to learning the skills and virtues necessary to produce properly tender and delicious meats.  As such it is an embodiment of discipleship which requires Christians to timefully commit to learning the hard art of the craft of discipleship.  In a world of instantly prepared Big Mac’s, Christians must be found amongst those timefully smoking racks of baby back ribs if they are to be counted as true disciples.

Thirdly, to cook and eat ribs is an act of subversive solidarity with the poor and the oppressed.  It is not often known, but the most delicious and treasured forms of barbecue, particularly ribs are, historically speaking, the product of slaves and peasants.  It was those members of society who were at the bottom which were given these cuts of meat because the larger cuts of boneless meat were treasured by the rich.  Thus, the enslaved, the poor, and the oppressed developed methods of slow-cooking over smoke that tenderized and rendered mouth-wateringly delicious these “less desirable” cuts of meat.  Thus, to eat ribs is to participate in an ancient tradition of solidarity with the oppressed.

Fourthly, to cook and eat ribs is to participate in the hospitality of the Triune God.  To engage in the timeful process of preparing ribs is to be turned outside of oneself toward welcoming others into the joys of mutual feasting.  No one cooks a rack of ribs for themselves.  To prepare ribs is to live ek-statically and in the inherently ecclesial mode of koinonia.

Finally, to cook and eat ribs is to anticipate, through the Spirit the final eschatological consummation of all things in the great messianic banquet.  Some vegetarian Christians may insist that in the eschaton there will be no more eating of meat.  However, the prophetic visions insist that this is not the case:

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine– the best of meats and the finest of wines.  On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations;  he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. (Isa. 25:6-8)

Thus, I believe we can confidently say that we will all feast on ribs eternally.  And thus we shall find ourselves, rapt in Triune goodness enjoying forever the luminescent symphony of savor: smoked ribs and barbecue sauces from all tribes, tongues, and nations in the fullness of perichoretic delectability.

The Weekly Hauerwas: Pietism & the Christian Intellectual Tradition

Posted by on July 21, 2007 17 comments

I’ve been reading Stanley Hauerwas for quite a few years and have read most of his many and scattered writings.  And I think it’s about time I start posting a bit more on his theology, as I probably know his work better than any other theologian’s.  So, I’m going to start bringing all seven of my devoted readers a weekly post of some kind on Hauerwas. My copy of his newest book The State of the University finally came yesterday.  It is vintage Hauerwas, with some great gems and always enjoyable theological witticisms.  Here’s one that I particularly liked:

We Methodists are heart people.  Baptists have no hearts at all.  Instead Baptists have the Bible which they use as a club to beat one another into submission.  In this respect I am on the side of the Baptists.  (p. 132)

This quote occurs in the context of Hauerwas’s discussion of the inability of Christian universities to sustain their distinctively Christian character.  He lays the blame for this reality largely at the feet of pietism, and I think he’s absolutely right.

One of the great deficiencies of pietism was the belief that the Christian intellectual tradition could be left behind.  No more did Christians need to quarrel about the two natures of Christ.  Moreover, pietists often had little use for the church.  Christian doctrine as well as an overemphasis on the church from the perspective of pietism only leads to conflict, it not religious wars.  Of course pietism did develop an intellectual tradition.  It is called Protestant liberalism, which means Protestants became advocates of the universalism that the growth of the modern state found so useful.  (p. 132)

Pietism always denigrates the intellectual and the theological in the name of experiential-expressive forms of religious devotion.  Hauerwas is right that pietism has always been useful in modernity to aid in the construction of social-political structures which have their own hidden theological agenda, generally that of the divinization of the state and/or market.  An amorphous attitude of piety can be channeled to serve a variety of political ends.  And thus we have the fervor of the religious right and the passion of the German Christians.  Both are examples of how the enthusiasm of a pietistic faith can be channeled to server the powers that be.  That is why I cannot stomach pietism and think it a detriment to the church.  On this point, Stanley is right on.  

Nice

Posted by on July 21, 2007 1 comment
You scored as Harry Potter, You can be a little reckless and hot-headed at times, but a more brave and courageous friend would be hard to find.

Harry Potter
80%
Sirius Black
75%
Remus Lupin
75%
Albus Dumbledore
70%
Draco Malfoy
70%
Hermione Granger
65%
Ron Weasley
60%
Ginny Weasley
55%
Severus Snape
45%
Lord Voldemort
30%

Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is…?
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A Thought on Language

Posted by on July 20, 2007 5 comments

Why is there any debate whatsoever about whether we can ever know something that is “extra-linguistic”?  How could there be anything more commonsensical than the fact that the only categories we ever do any developed thinking in are linguisitic categories?  There is no way for us to ever come to know anything outside of a linguistic framework because we think and know things in and through language.  And why should this bother Christians?  We believe that the world is constituted by the God who is identical with his Word.  The idea that everything is linguistically mediated has its genesis not in modern philosophy of language, but in Christology.

Irenaeus on the Visio Dei

Posted by on July 19, 2007 Comments Off

For as those who see the light are within the light, and partake of its brilliancy; even so, those who see God are in God, and receive of His splendour. But His splendour vivifies them; those, therefore, who see God, do receive life. And for this reason, He, although beyond comprehension, and boundless and invisible, rendered Himself visible, and comprehensible, and within the capacity of those who believe, that He might vivify those who receive and behold Him through faith. For as His greatness is past finding out, so also His goodness is beyond expression; by which having been seen, He bestows life upon those who see Him. It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; but fellowship with God is to know God, and to enjoy His goodness.  (Against Heresies IV.20.5)

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