The superb International Journal of Systematic Theology has posted the theme for the 2009 Colin Gunton theological essay contest, which is: Does ecumenical theology have a future?
I think I may actually enter an essay for this one. I’ve thought about doing it for previous years but have never found the topics interesting enough until now. So, for the time being, what says my readership? Does ecumenical theology have a future? If so, what is it?
One of the things that I’ve noticed after a few years of blogging is that it sometimes threatens to absorb all of one’s regular writing. Since I’m no longer a professional student, I’m not regularly writing things of essay length, and believe it or not, I’m not automatically inclined to draft monographs in my spare time. I still read as much as possible, of course. And I blog about it. But that tends to be the bulk of my writing, at least in terms of theological writing.
Now, on the one hand this is fine and good. There are actually a great many virtues to the kind of writing that theological blogging is. But, there is clearly something to be said for regular writing that is less as hoc and more extensive in scope.
But the real point is that blogging lacks patience. That’s probably one of the main reasons I like it. The payoff–such as it is–is pretty immediate. The writing of theological essays, in contrast to blogging, has a better chance of teaching us the sort of patience that is necessary to the task of Christian theology.
Dave Horstkoetter offers a good reminder that today marks the anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero. Romero is one of only two bishops who have ever been assassinated while performing the Mass, the other being Thomas Beckett. Both of these men were instituted into their positions on the assumption that they would be fairly docile and pliable to the whims of the political establishment. In both cases, the powers that be proved mistaken and found themselves resorting to lethal violence to silence them.
Romero’s final words before being shot in the process of consecrating the Eucharistic elements were these:
“May this Body immolated and this Blood sacrificed for Mankind nourish us also, that we may give our body and our blood over to suffering and pain, like Christ–not for Self, but to give harvests of peace and justice to our People.”
“Liberty, then, is liberated when one is taken up in the liberating acts of God. Where? In history of course! After all, our God is not a Baal, who is fettered to a certain portion of the world and who cannot get our of the way, who has no say outside his territory, who cannot even get there.
Our God is not a temple dweller. In the strict sense of the word he is not even a church god. He advances through time; ever again he lets the new conquer the old. He is not a God of the status quo, but rather the Lord of the future, King of the history of the world, and, as such also Head of the church.”
~ J.C. Hoekendijk, The Church Inside Out, 70.
Oh the depths to which we Christians will sink:
Rick Lemons is a pastor in Texas. He’s able to relate to Christians by drawing parallels with NASCAR. In fact, he wrote a book: The Race.
Is your spiritual engine running on fumes? Do you feel like you’re falling behind in the race of life, or that you’ve hit the wall? Get ready to start your engine once again. In The Race-From Pit Row to Victory Lane, author Rick Lemons offers timely and comprehensive insights that will fuel your relationship with God. Join him as he parallels the Christian life to NASCAR racing.
Just as NASCAR teams work together to improve a car’s performance in Pit Row, God has provided all we need to drive a victorious race. Lemons points out that we have a pit crew-other believers-and a crew chief in God. By making frequent pit stops for God’s Word, Worship, Fellowship, Prayer, Accountability, and Encouragement, we equip ourselves for ultimate performance. He explains how these are like fuel, new tires, a strong battery, receiving instructions from the Crew Chief, listening to your spotter, and receiving a refreshing drink during a NASCAR event.
But it’s not all fun and games:
Lemons also warns of accidents resulting from debris that Satan throws our way; Satan wants to put us on the “dnf” list-did not finish. Lemons forewarns of wreckage that can disqualify us. NASCAR teams understand that having the best car does not guarantee victory on every race day. Forty-three cars begin each race, but not all will finish.
H/T: Andrew Sullivan
“The nearer a civilization comes to its death pangs, the more diverse and conflicting the philosophies of civilization that it spawns. Such philosophies strike the best-seller lists, enter into dining room discussions, and become the stock-in-trade of jesters and newscasters. so it develops that everyone who discusses current affairs becomes a philosopher of history, and coteries form around the more vociferous and persuasive interpreters. Fearing at any moment the eruption of volcanoes, men carry with them a portable seismograph and try to interpret the movements of the nervous needle. Almost hysterically they follow its jerky course. And they choose their authorities by finding a name of importance to support their own graph. . . . Under these conditions any of these interpretations becomes a fad.”
~ Paul Minear, The Kingdom and the Power, 24.
“The edifying principle in Protestantism rests on a process of downward leveling: before God and from the divine perspective, all human activity, all so-called religion, is nothing but idle sin and inanity. For man, the only genuine humility that saves is for him to acknowledge this and cling exclusively to God’s grace. The edifying principle in Catholicism rests on this: that the omnipotence of grace is so great that it can take into account even man’s powerless striving, and that, although God does everything, still this never happens without man.”
~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat, 93.
“Our view of death is itself the point where the two antithetical conceptions of time collide. The defeat, suffering, and death of the messiah constitute, according to one conception of time, the end of the Messiah, the termination of his career in time, and the defeat of his earthly purposes. The primacy of the element of succession in the notion of time is in fact one of the factors which make his defeat a final defeat and his suffering a final suffering. The apparent defeat of the Messiah can become a real triumph only though the revelation of a new time in which all things become new. If historians recognize that this has actually happened, how can they remain content with an historical methodology that implicitly embodies a sense of time they recognize to be false? Will they not be forced to recognize that the historiography of the Pentateuch or in Acts is superior to that of Herodotus or Tacitus? Will not a huge chasm be opened between their own historiography and that of their secular colleagues? What has changes is not simply the picture of early Christian history but also conceptions of time, persons and events, and of success and failure. And this change is produced by faith in ‘the God . . . who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist’ (Rom. 4:17).”
~ Paul Minear, The Bible and the Historian, 57.
There’s a good review of Robert Smith’s new book, Doctrine that Dances at Theology Forum. Now, I’m sure there are some good things about the book, but man, if there was ever an example of how theologians pick the worst metaphors, this is it. Smith argues that the doctrinal preacher (the book is a plea for “doctrinal preaching”) is best described as an “exegetical escort” and a “doxological dancer.”
I mean, I know a lot of preachers can be rightly described as whores, but lets not run with that metaphor, ok? Preaching is hard enough without reimagining it in metaphors that sound derived from the sex trade.
The folks at the Church and Postmodern Culture blog have put out a call for bloggers to come on board and join them in exploring the interesection of “theory” and “on the ground” church practice and mission. So far there hasn’t been much response, at least in the comments. Those who are interested in the imporant conversations taking place over there, and have the time and commitment should really think about joining up with the team over there. I for one would love to see more output from that particular blog.
In an article on the legacy of J.C. Hoekendijk, Bert Hoedemaker gives a concise statement of Hoekendijk’s idea of the nature of mission:
“Mission” came to mean for Hoekendijk the vicarious existence of the whole people of God for the world, presence and service wherever the divine initiative with regard to the world manifests itself in world history, and witness as a postscript to the “self-evident” movement of this message toward the poor. On this basis he dreamed of a missionary existence and a missionary theology in which all compartmentalization and mutual suspicion between a traditional missionary establishment and a traditional church establishment would disappear.
Hoedemaker also notes that the key theological figures that Hoekendijk associated with during his later years were Johann Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann.
Lovely quote about the role male friendship is generally portrayed on the sliver screen:
The usual conceit of the Apatow-era romantic comedy is that male friendship is a given. In Knocked Up, for example, the squalid house that Seth Rogen shares with his roommates is a kind of cozy swamp from which his character must emerge to take on the adult responsibilities of fatherhood, and it’s Katherine Heigl’s character who’s excluded from the regressive fun. What’s subversive about I Love You, Man (directed and co-written by John Hamburg, who also shared writing credits on Zoolander and both Meet the Parents movies) is the way it treats straight masculinity as an awkward construct, a code that must be mastered. In the early stages of Peter and Sydney’s friendship, Syd functions as a kind of guru of guyhood, coaching Pete on how to access his inner dude. But once the barriers have fallen and they’ve jammed on that Rush song together, Pete also helps to bring out Sydney’s fruitier side, convincing him to apologize for his sometimes offensive candor and even, eventually, to watch Chocolat. By movie’s end, they’re processing their friendship in meta-conversations worthy of any pair of female friends and exchanging extravagant endearments: “I love you, Tyco Bra-he.” “I love you, Broseph Goebbels.”
I must admit to having a man crush on Paul Rudd. I love you, Brosario Dawson.
Revolutionary sanctions of death cannot overcome the social purpose of death in any status quo. In any revolution, the means of death cannot transcend death, much less defeat or destroy death. At the most, it can alter the guise of death or make death appear more attractive. This remains the reality even though a revolution is represented in the loftiest human idealism, or where the provocations to revolt have become humanly intolerable and revolution seems the only recourse, or where the cause is humanly just, informed by worthy intentions and sensible precautions against corruption, abuse, and scandal.
The issue here is the vitality of the moral power of death in the origins of revolution, and not merely one of distortion or abandonment or compromise of initial revolutionary aims, nor one of subsequent counterrevolutionary events undoing a splendid revolutionary charter.
William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, 123.
Theological Commentary: 1 John 2:1-2
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. In one of many statements that the Elder makes as to his reason for writing, he claims that one of his purposes is sanctifactory. He writes to aid the congregation to refrain from sin. The liberating implication of this is clearly that sin can, in fact, be avoided. It is possible to walk in the light and not in the darkness. Liberation is a reality that can be experienced and practiced. As the rest of the treatise goes on to make clear, what is central in the Elder’s definition of sin is a failure to love one another and make truthful confession regarding Christ. Thus, one of the key purposes of the treatise is to drive its readers into a life fully suffused by the Love that flows from the triune God. Indeed, despite its heavy concentration of “sin” language, there is nothing whatsoever that is moralistic about 1 John. For the Elder sin is the refusal of love. In the thought of the Elder all moralizations of sin are undone. There are simply two options: to refuse participation in the Love that God is, or to accept it with joy and thanksgiving.
And this all coalesces in one overriding theological point: not sinning is not a moral accomplishment. Rather is it simply a life of fullness, a life that participates in the plenitude of God’s Love. As such, it is important to say that on one level, not sinning is easy–to not sin simply names the posture and practice of saying Yes to God’s infinite Love.
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. The Elder is not naive, of course. He knows how deep the human “No” to God runs. Our slavery to sin, our perverse and irrational necrophilia is endemic. Living into Christ’s defeat of death, while liberating, joyful, and infinitely delightful, is difficult for us precisely because it is so utterly and apocalyptically new. The adjustment of our eyes to the fullnes of the God who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5) is not simplistically achieved. The vestiges of the old age that is passing away still vie for our allegiance.
But in full knowledge of the reality of the depths of the human “No” to God, the Elder reminds his readers of the infinitely greater depths of God’s “Yes” to us in Christ. Even in the fullness of our rejection of the Love that is God, Love goes further. Christ, the man for others is our advocate with the Father. This should not be understood as Christ interceding with an angry God on our behalf. Christ is not rescuing us from God, but from our own darkness. The emphasis in the Elder’s statement is not the Christ is holding God back from angrily dealing with us, rather the emphasis is that our advocate, the one who stands for us is with the Father. The one who loves us is in the very presence of the fullness of God’s transcendent mystery. His closeness to the Father, to the source and goal of all things is our hope. No other power can be higher than the power that is with the Father. There is no sovereignty that extends beyond or above this.
And he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. Not only is Jesus our advocate, according the the Elder he is also the sacrifice for out sins. What this means is, of course, a very complex thing to search out, as many have done in different and conflicting ways. Jesus is a hilasmos according to this verse; the meaning of this phrase is not clear. It likely has some connection with the Jewish day of atonement (cf. Heb 2:17; 9:5). The point, however, is that whatever else Jesus is, he is the one who solves the problem of our sin, our refusal of love, or alienation from the Love that is God. Also what is crucial to note about this verse is that it claims that Jesus is the hilasmos for our sins, just as he is the parakletos with the Father. Christ’s sacrifice, however we construe the matter is not something that just happened “then”; it is something that “is.” Christ’s reality towards us as “sacrifice” is a present reality, not simply a past event. Christ is our sacrifice. What might this mean?
In one of his most fruitful suggestions, Colin Gunton argues that we ought to construe God’s own trinitarian life in terms of sacrifice. The triune God embodies an economy of mutual sacrifice in which sacrifice is construed as gift. Here sacrifice is not to be understood as the diminution of one for the sake of the other, at least not as if that dynamic were a zero sum game. Rather the very economy of God’s being is one of total and complete self-giving, a life of absolute, ek-static gift. As such, to say that Christ is our “atoning sacrifice” is to say that in Christ the infinite life of God’s mutual self-gift is opened to us in all its fullness. We are invited into the “sacrificial” economy of God’s own trinitarian life of joy and rejoicing. This is also why the Scriptures speak at length of our call to offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice of praise (e.g. Rom 12:1-3). Praise, doxology, is the appropriate response to our graced participation in God life of infinite excessive gift. Because Christ is our sacrifice, the sacrifical opening out of the triune God to embrace the world, we are freed into a life of sacrifice–a doxological life centered on loving one another (as the Elder emphasizes) and worshipful confession of the lordship of Jesus.
It is precisely the ek-static trinitarian understanding of sacrifice that lends intelligibility to the Elder’s further statement that Christ is the sacrifice, not for our sins only, but for those of the whole world. The trinitarian life of sacrificial gift is so excessive in its vitality that it cannot be concerned with less than the entire world. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it (John 1:5). Rather the light overcomes all darkness. The excessiveness of light, the superabundance of Love that is the triune God cannot be terminated, even by the human “No” to God’s liberating Word of life. Christ is the sacrifice for the whole world. They excessiveness of God’s trinitarian agape could not allow him to be anything less.