A while back I reviewed Paul Louis Metzger’s excellent new book Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church. The kinds of discussions that this book enters into are now being furthered by the newly-launched Consuming Jesus Blog, which will feature posts from a variety of people, including some of my fellow-students here in the Northwest who are dedicated to theological and cultural engagement. I recommend folks head over and take a look. There are sure to be some fruitful discussions here.
Monthly Archives: January 2008
Consuming Jesus Blog
Posted by Halden
on January 31, 2008
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Jenson, Jüngel, and the Resurrection
Posted by Halden
on January 31, 2008
1 comment
In my recent re-reading of the works of Eberhard Jüngel I’ve noticed a far stronger connection that I saw before between his theology and the theology of Robert Jenson. While there are certain central differences between the two (most notably in their respective understandings of justification, the sacraments, and eccleisology), they are extremely close in their understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in particular the relationship between Jesus and the Trinity.
For Jenson and Jüngel, Jesus is indispensable to a proper account of the immanent Trinity. For both of these theologians, Jesus is, in the strongest possible terms identical with the eternal Logos. Following Barth, particularly his development of the doctrine of God in CD II/2, they both argue that God’s being is constituted by his eternal self-determination, which includes his determination to be God for us in Jesus. Thus, for Jenson and Jüngel Jesus simply is the Logos. The eternal, communal event of decision whereby the triune God is God is identical with God’s determination to be God for us as Jesus. Therefore, since God is the act of his own decision – his being and act being one – Jesus himself is the presupposition of God’s own triune eternity.
The crucial difference I see between Jenson and Jüngel on the issue of Christology lies in their respective narrative orientations, so to speak. Both of them are thoroughgoingly historicist in their understanding of the Christ and the Trinity, however the narratival lens they utilize in drawing forth a proper understanding of Christ is slightly different. For Jüngel the central point is God’s unity with death and perishability in the crucifixion of Christ. It is God’s identity with the Crucified one that is the central point of Jüngel’s theological ontology, his doctrine of the Trinity, and his Christology. For Jenson, however it is Christ’s resurrection that had the most pronounced dogmatic significance. It is the event of Christ’s resurrection by the Father in the power of the Spirit that is the very event of the eternal triune being.
This is not to say that either theologian ignores the resurrection or the cross, but rather to note a fundamentally unique flavor to their respective theologies. For Jüngel what we behold in the transition between cross and resurrection is the “union of death and life in favor of life.” It is the taking of death up into the being of God, whereby God creatively involves himself with nothingness, bringing the no-thingness that is sin and death into the plenitude of divine life, thereby suffusing death with the eternal life that is the trinitarian communion of mutual otherness. For Jenson however, what we behold in the death and resurrection of Christ is not so much the taking up of death into life as it is the invasion of death by the inexhaustible power of life. Death is not so much brought up into God for Jenson. Rather the life of God apocalyptically invades, defeats, and overturns death. God does not so much absorb death as explode it through the resurrection of Christ.
Certainly the respective flavors of Jenson and Jüngel are probably not incompatible. Rather they serve to open up divergent vistas on the central mystery of the Christian faith that contribute to our appreciation of its panoramic beauty. All theologians seek to intellectually involve themselves in the process of moving from death to life, from cross to resurrection. Jenson and Jüngel offer two supremely helpful examples of precisely this transitional mode in which theology must be done.
Jesus as God’s Self-Interpretation
Posted by Halden
on January 30, 2008
7 comments
One of the central theses of Eberhard Jüngel’s book God’s Being is in Becoming is that the doctrine of the Trinity is our interpretation of God’s own self-interpretation. For Jüngel, God’s revelation perfectly corresponds to Godself. The triune God is the one who corresponds to himself. His being is his act, and the revelation of the Trinity in Christ and the Spirit constitutes God’s self-interpretation. The economic Trinity is God interpreting himself before us, it is God’s act of saying who and what God is within the realm of created being.
It seems to me that Jüngel’s construal of the Trinity as God’s self-interpretation might offer a helpful way to mediate the various debates surrounding the relationship between the man Jesus and the eternal trinitarian Son. If Jüngel is correct that the economic Trinity is God’s self-interpretation, could we not argue that Jesus is the self-interpretation of the eternal trinitarian Son? Thus, it isn’t strictly accurate to speak of the Logosas having an incarnate and an unincarnate state in a static sense. Rather, the man Jesus himself is the eternal self-interpretation of the Son. From all eternity the Son of the Father interprets himself as Jesus of Nazareth. And because God’s act of self-interpretation is identical with God himself, the Son’s self-interpretation of himself as Jesus means that Jesus simply is the eternal trinitarian Son without remainder.
And thus, as Jüngel says, God’s self-interpretation, the event of decision to be the God that he is identical with the eternal being of God. God is the event of his own decision and that decision is “not to be understood only as a decision for God, but also . . . as a decision for humanity” (p. 81). This “decision for humanity” which is eternally included in the event of the triune God is precisely the decision we see actualized in the man Jesus. A proper understanding of the second person of the Trinity requires us to begin and end on this point. If we grant that the actualistic ontology of Jüngel (and Barth, and perhaps Aquinas as well) is the most appropriate theological construal of being, then we are forced to conclude that the man Jesus is the eternal self-interpretation of the trinitarian Son. Everything that we behold in Jesus belongs to the eternal identity of the triune God. The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is the Nazarene.
Identity Politics Exposed
Posted by Halden
on January 30, 2008
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“For each identification (the creation or cobbling together of identity) creates a figure that provides a material for its investment by the market. There is nothing more captive, so far as commercial investment is concerned, nothing more amenable to the invention of new figures of monetary homogeneity, than a community and its territory or territories. The semblance of non-equivalence is required so that equivalence itself can constitute a process. What inexhaustible potential for mercantile investments is this upsurge — taking the form of communities demanding recognition and so-called cultural singularities — of women, homosexuals, the disabled, Arabs! And these infinite combinations of predictive traits, what a godsend! Black homosexuals, disabled Serbs, Catholic pedophiles, moderate Muslims, married priests, ecologist yuppies, the submissive unemployed, prematurely aged youth! Each time, a social image authorizes new products, specialized magazines, improved shopping malls, “free” radio stations, targeted advertising networks, and finally, heady “public debates” at peak viewing times. Deluze put it perfectly: capitalist deterritorialization requires a constant reterritorialization. Capital demands a permanent creation of subjective and territorial identities in order for its principle of movement to homogenize its space of action; identities, moreover, that demand anything but the right to be exposed in the same way as others to the uniform prerogatives of the market.”
– Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2003), 10-11.
H/T: Christian Amondson
The Risks of Theology
Posted by Halden
on January 30, 2008
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“The first risk theology runs is not the risk of being judged wrong; it is the risk of being judged meaningless. There will always be those who reject the though of the involvement of the Absolute in the sufferings of Jesus, and will deny the truth of Christianity accordingly. But when positivism rejects theological propositions (along with ‘metaphysical’ doctrines) as candidates for inclusion in the class of propositions that may be true or false and so bear a meaning, then meaningfulness becomes the predominant question. With a speech that is ‘folly’ rationality seems to collapse, and the best thing to do is laugh at it, since it does not deserve the honor of a refutation. With a speech that is ‘scandal’ the faith and hope of Israel seem to be denied, and the only thing is to excommunicate those who have made it. . . . Christian theology will claim that its third language criticizes both the Greek logos and the Jewish logos (if one may speak of such a thing), but the price paid for its critical distance is extraordinarily high. Theology thinks that it alone knows what the most important words really mean: God, mankind, world, salvation, etc. etc. But it will have to persuade us that the language it deploys is intelligible, not senseless; that it is capable of giving men and women access to a community of reasonableness, not simply following the irrational free play of emotions.”
–Jean-Yves Lacoste, “More Haste, Less Speed in Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9:3 (2007): 271-272.
The Psalms as Inter-Trinitarian Dialogue
Posted by Halden
on January 30, 2008
9 comments
A while back I posted a Christological Theology of the Psalms. At the end of that post I suggest that the Psalms can be read fruitfully as a an inter-trinitarian dialogue, that is as a conversation between the Son and the Father in the Spirit. This has a prima facie plausibility to me in light of the simple fact that the Psalms, more than any other book of the Old Testament are found on the lips of Jesus throughout the Gospels. Jesus finds in the Psalms his own prayers and speaks them as his own prayers to the Father.
If it is indeed the case that the Psalms can legitimately and fruitfully be read in this figural way, I wonder what we might glean from them in terms of trinitarian doctrine. In other words, if the Psalms are a discourse, a conversation between the Son and Father in their common Spirit, how might these Scriptures reshape and nurture our affirmations about the being of the triune God? I have two thoughts about where such reflections might lead us.
First, if the discourse between the Psalmist and Yahweh in the Psalms is reflective of the eternal conversation of Jesus and the Father, we are forced to think of the divine life in an intensely personal and dynamic manner. The pleas throughout the Psalms for divine help, even a prayer as radical as “take not your Holy Spirit from me!” (Ps. 51:5), if read trinitarianly propels us to think about the divine life of communion between the Father and Son, not a static given, but a dynamic being given. The Son does not posses the Father but stands ever in need of the Father. The Father likewise stands in need of the Son, without whom he will be without praise, love, and adoration. Without the living Son, there is none to behold the Father’s radiance or declare his reality to the world (cf. Ps. 30:9). We could say, on the basis of the Psalmic discourse that the Son is the visibility of the Father, without whom the Father cannot be himself. One of the fascinating (and perhaps ontologically radical) implications of the Psalms for trinitarian doctrine is that essential neediness is not foreign to the life of the Trinity. The sort of vulnerability, instability, and dependence that we experience as creatures is not a reality that is foreign to the life of God. Rather, in God the reality of ontological neediness is embraced in an overabundant life of gift. In the Trinity, being is not a given, but a dynamic being given which can only be received through the embrace, rather than the eschewal of need and dependence.
Second, if the Pslams reflect the eternal trinitiarian conversation, they testify to the irreducible historicality of God’s way of being God. The eternal trinitarian conversation includes the history of Israel, the church, and the world. God’s eternal discourse between the Son and the Father in the Spirit includes, grounds, and sustains the world of chance and change. Indeed, on the basis of the Psalms we can say that God’s way of being God is identical with his being God for us. The immanent, eternal discourse between the Son and the Father includes, embraces, and upholds creaturely reality. God’s immanent life is found, not above, but profoundly within history, or rather history itself is found within the triune discourse. The self-abnegating hesed of Yahweh, and the kenosis of Jesus are the elocutions of the triune discourse through which creation finds its being as an inflection, a rhythm, a non-necessary participant within the eternal conversation that is the triune God.
There is certainly much more that could and must be said about a Christological and trinitarian reading of the Psalms. What other vistas and horizons of discovery might there be for theological interpretation if we approach the Psalms as inter-Trinitarian discourse? If people have thoughts, I want to continue such a conversation. Who knows, such a conversation might even catch and experience a few of the inflections within the historical and eternal triune discourse!
The Church in Public or the Church as Public?
Posted by Halden
on January 29, 2008
5 comments
Much ink is constantly being spilt on the nature of the “public role” of the church. I have a few problems with the way that such discussions of “public theology” are often framed, however. The main issue is that the church is not “public” by virtue of participating in a somehow wider “public sphere” where it must lobby for justice, rather is itself a public in the fullest sense of the word. As Reinhard Hütter argues, the church is itself a distinct public by virtue of the fact that “the triune God has bound his communion to the ecclesiastical koinonia.” Through the missions of the Son and Spirit in the trinitarian economy of salvation, God binds his own life of triune communion to the social reality of the church, constituting it as a distinct public, and distinct social and economic space. Moreover, “what distinguishes it from other publics and makes it recognizable as church” is the fact that the church participates in the soteriological telos of the trinitarian missions.
Understanding the church as a public has the virtue of preserving the uniqueness of the church as a social reality constituted and rendered as a public solely through God’s trinitarian missions. Thus the church is not simply part of a wider polis, nor simply another alternative polis, but rather a “polis sui generis” which fundamentally transcends standard conceptions of the public and the political. This understanding encapsulates the radically social nature of the church wherein the dichotomies established in secular political life are transcended. Hütter shows particularly well how the NT conceptions of the church included the imagery of both polis and oikos. The radicality of this lies in that such social divisions were central to the politics of the world into which Christianity was born. Women, slaves, and other marginalized groups were excluded from the polis and confined to the oikos. Yet the radical public nature of the church lay in the fact that it was at once described as polis and oikos. “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19).
The church explodes alternative conceptions of the public and the political by being an embodied, public reality instituted by Christ and constituted by the Spirit. The public character of the church is shaped thus by a “christological corporeality and pneumatological creaturliness.” By virtue of being established by Christ through his formation of a community of disciples the church bears a distinctly visible, public character. Likewise, through the mission of the Spirit who meditates Christ, the church is constituted “in the Spirit” as an ongoing social reality wherein the divisions broken down by Christ continue to be purged from the life of the church, embodying and experiencing the truest form of liberation: participation in the Triune life through Christ in the Spirit. Any discussion of the nature of the church’s “public role” must start from a proper understanding of the distinct public that the church is. If this is not done, our “public theologies” are more likely than not to simply become ways in which the powers that be subvert the ecclesial mode of being in the world to which we are called in Christ.
Love Alone can Involve itself with Death
Posted by Halden
on January 28, 2008
1 comment
“Resurrection means the overcoming of death. But death will cease only when it no longer consumes the life which excludes it, but when life has absorbed death into itself. The victory over death, which is the object of faith’s hope on the basis of God’s identification with the dead Jesus which took place in the death of Jesus, is the transformation of death through its reception into that life which is called eternal life. For that reason the death which was turned around on the cross of Christ is called a ‘Phenomenon of God.’ It is only short-circuited criticism which wants to see here a final triumph of death. Rather, what happens here is that turning around of death into life which is the very essence of love. The issue here is the truth in the profound statement (1 John 3:14): ‘He who does not love abides in death.’ Death is not turned around apart from love, because love alone is able to involve itself with the complete harshness of death.”
–Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 364.
Reclaiming Christ’s Time
Posted by Halden
on January 28, 2008
20 comments
Throughout the history of the Christian church, one of the crucial ways in which the church has fostered is particular ethos and distinctive identity has been through the rhythms and celebrations of a particular calendar. The Christian liturgical year embodies a way of ordering time which is distinctively shaped by the Christian narrative. The seasons of the Christian year offer a way of ordering time which reflect a distinctively Christocentric and Trinitarian shaping of ecclesial life. Through a narrative-Christological ordering the celebrations and festivities of its people, the church constructed a powerful mode of ecclesial formation that orients its members toward an explicitly theological and ecclesial understanding of their identity and the practice of everyday life. An analysis of the social and political lives of nations and other socio-political bodies bears out that the way in which a society structures time (and particularly festivities and holidays) distinctively shapes its members into a certain kind of polity, both politically and economically.
However, the distinctively Christian way of shaping time offered by the Christian liturgical year has been largely lost in the contemporary evangelical church, the life of which has rather become dominated and determined by the calendar of the nation-state and market (which tell us, above all, when we must shop). The fragmentary nature of evangelical identity testifies to the need for a recovering of the church’s liturgical year as a powerful tool of ecclesial formation and Christian education. Through a recovery of the liturgical year, Christian churches have an opportunity to reclaim a holistic and missionally oriented ecclesial self-consciousness which is vital to the faithful witness of the church in the culture of late-modern capitalism.
Jüngel: The Poverty of Jesus and the Being of God
Posted by Halden
on January 27, 2008
1 comment
“If one understands the divinity of God out of its unity with the poverty of the existence of the Crucified One, then God’s being can no longer be thought as infinite in contrast with every finitude, and certainly not as independence in contrast with every dependence, and obviously not as an eternity which excludes time, not as a highest essence which does not know nothingness. The God who is in heaven because he cannot be on earth is replaced by the Father who is in heave in such a way that his heavenly kingdom can come into the world, that is, a God who is in heaven in such a way that he can identify himself with the poverty of the man Jesus, with the existence of a man brought from life to death on the cross.”
–Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 209.
Israel in Christian Theology
Posted by Halden
on January 25, 2008
5 comments
One of the issues I often come back to in seeking to understand the overarching flavor of various theologians is the way in which Israel as the people of God functions within their various theologies. I suggest a couple preliminary points about how one’s theology of Israel affects one’s overall theology, particularly ecclesiology.
First, how one views Israel will largely determine how they view the nature of redemption and the church. If our understanding of Israel is a purely intrumental one, namely that Yahweh elects Israel merely for the purpose of fixing the fallen creation, then our ecclesiology is likely to be fundamentally instrumental as well. Israel and the church are viewed as means to other ends, rather than as loci of God’s action and presence. On these readings, God’s work in salvation history is really something other than what is happening in Israel and the church. They may witness to that other end, or be some sort of tool in God’s toolbox to get the world there, but they do not really participate in, or embody that end.
Second, how one views the way in which the church’s identity is mediated through Israel will largely determine the political character of the church polity and practice. If the (largely Gentile) church understands itself as being grafted into the reality of Israel through the Spirit, it will understand its own polity in a fundamentally Israel-like way. Most specifically this view of ecclesial identity inclines the church towards a diasporic self-understanding. On the contrary, a supercessionist view in which the church replaces Israel as the people of God tends to find the church’s idenity mediated through other political structures, such as the state. This is to suggest that how one understands the continuity of Israel and the church will largely determine how one views the political identity and practice of the church in the world.
Jesus Joins the Blogosphere
Posted by Halden
on January 25, 2008
6 comments
So apparently Jesus Christ himself now has his own blog. It consists of pretty much nothing but the sayings of Jesus on various social issues like wealth, violence, love of enemies, etc. The funny thing about the blog is the litany of conservative evangelical commentators on the blog that decry what’s being said as “hippie” and ”peanic” forms of “works-righteousness”. Maybe the whole thing, comments and all is just a satire, but if so, it’s hard to tell. Either way, It’s fairly entertaining to read the inane comments.
Also, you should definitely read about the “first” Emerging Amish Church. Generous orthodoxies everywhere just got more beardy.
Our Existence in its Questionableness: The Nature of Theology
Posted by Halden
on January 25, 2008
2 comments
“Christian theology is not a detached, purely theoretical abstraction, which has somehow to be made practical. It itself is the voice of man’s actual existence in movement from darkness toward the light. We cannot treat the ignorance and confusions of our rational minds as merely preliminary problems, which if once solved, still leave us unfructified by the gospel. They are an essential part of the evil from which Christ redeems us. Coming to an understanding – a coherent understanding that can be shared with others – of God’s work in Christ is as such a share in his life. For the questions investigated by theology, such as the question of suffering considered above, are not intellectual questions, devised by the mind out of its own imperial curiosity. They are the questions of our existence, the are our existence itself in its questionableness. That is why the discovering of light by means of our reason in these matters belongs to the very heart of our fellowship with God. However technical its language or abstract its concepts, theology should never have to be made ‘relevant.’ From beginning to end it is embedded in the most relevant process in the world: God’s transfiguration of human existence.”
–Arthur McGill, Suffering: A Test of Theological Method (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1982), 122.
What Makes a Sacramental Theology “High”?
Posted by Halden
on January 24, 2008
10 comments
One of the things that often gets kicked around in ecclesial discussions is the issue of a “high” versus a “low” sacramental theology. However, there are some interesting ambiguities that I note in most of these discussions. In the first place, I find it odd that whenever we are talking about “sacramental theology” we are invariably talking almost exclusively about the Eucharist and very little else. Especially when discussions of sacramental theology interface with questions of ecclesial unity, the question of Eucharistic communion is pretty much the central question. However, in the New Testament is is Baptism, rather than the Eucharist which is the common sacramental marker of the church’s unity: “One Lord, One faith, One baptism”.
Also interesting and odd is the way in which “high” sacramentology is equated with a certain sort of stress on the mode the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist. In other words, one’s theology of Eucharistic presence seems to often be the only way in which we ascertain whether one’s sacramental theology is “high” or “low”. I find this a problematic tendency because it is myopic. If we allow theologies of real presence to be the litmus test for what constitutes a “high” sacramental theology, it seems to me we will always end up with reductive accounts of sacramental theology as a whole. We end up with a sacramentology gives inadequate attention to baptism, the proclamation of the Word, and the reality of the gathered people of God as central elements in what constitutes a truly high sacramental theology.
This is not to say that the Eucharist is not the “sacrament of sacraments”, only that it can never be considered in isolation, and that our theologies of Eucharistic presence do not establish our sacramental theologies as “high” or “low”. Only a full-orbed understanding of the sacramental practices of the church presented in their wholeness and intimate innerconnection can give an adequate picture of what constitutes a truly high sacramental theology.
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