It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that throughout the ages since the Reformation Luther has tended to be viewed primarily as the harbinger of an entirely new form of Christianity, standing in radical discontinuity with all preceding Christian tradition. On the standard reading, Luther “was haunted by a question for which traditional catholic Christianity could provide no answers.” This standard narrative posits that Luther’s primary problem – for which the church dividing Reformation was the inevitable answer – “was a deep sense of the inauthenticity of our works before God; thus Luther could find no lasting peace in the edifice of catholic faith and practice, organized as it was around sacramental practice, dogmatic faith, and mystical aspiration”. Thus, on the standard reading, what precipitated the Reformation for Luther was a virtually complete revolution in the very concept of Christianity itself. It is purported that in Luther we find instantiated a new form of Christianity that came to characterize protestant modernity. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the great saint of liberal Protestantism described the matter thusly,
In so far as the Reformation was not simply a purification and reaction from abuses which had crept in, but was the origination of a distinctive form of Christian communion, the antithesis between Protestantism and Catholicism may be provisionally conceived thus: the former makes the individual’s relation to the Church dependent on his relationship to Christ, while the latter makes the individual’s relation to Christ depended on his relation to the Church.
Such notions, which Schleiermacher refrains from pushing back into the intentions and actions of the Reformers themselves have come to be a rather common sensibility among both Protestants and Catholics in regard to what was really going on with Luther and the Reformation. This has unfortunately come to be a rather common ecumenical sentiment as well, leading to an unfortunate conundrum for discussing the ecumenical implications of Luther’s theology. Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) reflects the standard narrative of Luther and Protestantism in his argument that,
…according to Luther, the church can neither assume the certain guarantee for personal salvation nor decide definitely and compellingly on matters (that is, the content) of faith. On the other hand, to the Catholic, the church is central to the act of faith itself: only by communal belief do I partake of the certainty on which I can base my life. This corresponds to the Catholic view that church and Scripture are inseparable while, in Luther, Scripture becomes an independent measure of church and tradition. This in turn raises the question of the canonicity and the unity of Scripture.
As David Yeago notes, such a reading of Luther over against his contemporary Catholic milieu renders the conflict between the Reformer and the Roman Catholic hierarchy as in effect a conflict between two “different religions.” Ecumenically, this way of telling Luther’s story is in fact “quite conservative in its effects, even though it presents Luther as a radical, because it functions as a legitimation of things as they are; it makes the present division of the church seem normal and inevitable to us.” Ironically enough both liberal Protestants and conservative Catholics find themselves attracted to the standard narration of Luther as some sort of proto-modern individualist, precisely because such a characterization allows us to avoid asking more difficult questions about what exactly Luther was really up to and whether or not those of us who stand in the tradition of the Reformation are in fact being faithful to the theological and ecclesial vision of the first Reformer.
I call to the stand Barry Taylor’s new book Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy. First of all, I have no idea what a “New-Edge Spirituality” might be and even less of an idea how something so described could ever be a good thing in any sense. Anyways, sure, there is plenty of interesting cultural exegesis in the book, but that said it seems to just be waiting to become useless. It’s already stopped being cool to talk about the theological/philosophical aspects of The Matrix, let alone Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. He who marries the coolness of today is destined to become the dateless nerdlinger of tomorrow.
After all, would we even be reading Aquinas and Augustine today if all they wrote about was how ancient Mediterranean architecture actually had theological implications or how the latest performance of Homer’s plays have some sort of Christological undertone? And does not finding God hidden within various cultural phenomena inevitably enshrine a new sort of natural theology? Does it not make God necessary to the world rather than, as Jüngel would say, “more than necessary”? Many of these theological engagements with contemporary cultural often seem to be little more than attempts to show how Jesus fits seamlessly into the spiritual longings and intuitions of our culture. Any Jesus that could really fulfill this function would certainly be a false Christ.
The Christian calendar begins its year in Advent, in anticipation of Christ’s coming. It moves from anticipation to joy in the incarnation of Christ at Christmastide. In light of the incarnation, the church celebrates the life of Christ, rejoicing in the manifestation of his glory as the Son of God throughout the season of Epiphany. The church then journeys with Christ toward his sufferings in Jerusalem during the time of Lent and Holy Week. The church then rejoices as she is raised with Christ in his glorious resurrection during Easter and finally rehearses the coming of the Spirit to constitute the church in the celebration of Pentecost. All of these seasons, and the holidays inserted into each one of them serve as a means of participation on the part of the church in the story of God in Christ. The church, through her liturgies and celebrations offers a form of deep language, of thick description, through which she is invited to understand herself as a part of the story of Scripture. In celebrating the Christian year, one’s fellow citizens cease to be one’s fellow Americans (or British or Chinese, or what have you), and instead become the holy martyrs, prophets, patriarchs, and apostles of the Christian faith. In and through the rhythms of the Christian year, the church ceases to view the biblical story as some remote part of ancient history which they then apply to their lives, but rather discovers their lives recast into the biblical story itself, locating themselves within the triune drama of salvation.
Through immersing herself in the rhythms and seasons of the Christian year, the Christian community seeks to instill into her members an eschatological consciousness which generates a particular understanding of the nature and purpose of the church in the world. By viewing herself as a participant in the drama of the triune God, the church comes to understand herself thoroughly with reference to the kingdom of God rather than through the various reigning political orders in which she finds herself. As Scott Bader-Saye notes, in discussing the French Revolutionaries’ introduction, not merely of a new regime, but a new calendar, “Despite the rise of modern conceptions of time as uniform, the revolutionaries understood that calendar functioned to name a politics and define a people.” By naming time in the way that Christians do in their practice of the Christian year, they invoke a specifically eschatological imagination which encodes a particular politics, the politics of the kingdom of God. The Christian calendar, like the secular calendar should not be underestimated in its politically formative power. Through measuring each and every year in and through the life of Christ rather than through the veneration of the heroes and myths of America, the church has the ability to profoundly shape an eschatological imagination which calls into question the idolatries and sins of our world.
Recent Comments