Monthly Archives: April 2009

Bit of Barth

Posted by on April 30, 2009 6 comments

“Love does not question; it gives an answer. Love does not think; it knows. Love does not hesitate; it acts. Love does not fall into raptures; it is ready to undertake responsibilities. Love puts behind it all the Ifs and Buts, all the conditions, reservations, obscurities and uncertainties that may arise between a man and a woman. Love is not only affinity and attraction; it is union. Love makes these two persons indispensable to each other. Love compels them to be with each other.”

~ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 221. (H/T: Jason)

The Morality of Freedom

Posted by on April 29, 2009 1 comment

“The gospel’s specific morality is a matter of opened opportunities, of what we may reasonably do that otherwise would have been foolish. The normal morality is a matter of imposed constraints, of what we must do, that otherwise we would have liked to not do. Given Christianity’s record of legalisms, it is hard to credit but is true nevertheless: the gospel’s specific morality is a morality of freedom. Insofar as the gospel moves us, we do what we do because we may, not because we ought. And a good act is one which finds the way to love, to the affirmation of the brother’s freedom. . . . It’s pattern is: ‘You may . . . because, if Jesus is risen there is no need to fear. . . .”

~ Robert Jenson, Story and Promise, 81.

Love is Fucking Stupid

Posted by on April 28, 2009 71 comments

First Corinthians 13 is one of the most famous of oft-quoted scriptures in existence. How often have all of us found ourselves at a wedding in which the folks getting married may not even be Christians in any sense in which this Scripture is movingly quoted? It’s everywhere. First Corinthians 13 is ubiquitous. Arguably, the apostle Paul never penned anything more marketable.

But seriously, has anyone ever stopped to examine this particular little Scriptural sonnet, let alone think about it? Seriously, who on earth do you know that is like this?

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

What is ironic is that just about anyone that I can think of that would match up to this description is any significant sense is really fucking boring, annoying, and dumb. Seriously, who do we know who “bears all things” or for goodness sake, who on earth “believes all things”? “Endures all things?” Please. Anyone who trusts so easily, who endures without flinching, who remains hopeful in face of hurt and betrayal is, quite literally, a moron. I mean, who on earth would actually thing think that loving means literally bearing anything that comes to you as a consequence of your love? The fact is that we all have limits that we’re not going to cross when it comes to loving others. There is some stuff that we just won’t bear. That’s how it is. If we try to deny this we are liars.

And yet, according to Paul, love, the love that defines who God is bears all things. How have we turned this into the kind of sentimental message that it now is in our popular romantic consciousness? How has the impossible task of bearing any and all hurts, wrongs, and terrors from another person come to mean nothing more than wedding day sentimentality?

Regardless of how this passage of Scripture has become coopted in this way, what is important is clear. If we take 1 Corinthians 13 seriously as a description of the kind of love that defines God and to which we are called as followers of Jesus, we have to realize that this love is fucking deadly. I don’t just mean some heroic notion that if we actually live like this the evil bad guys will want to try to kill us for being so loving. What seems clear to me is that if we love like this, we are going to wear the fuck out. We are going to be used up, depleted, empty, pathetic, gullible, dumb. If we actually believed in loving people according to this Pauline description we would die. Not because people would regard us as some sort of danger, but simply because we would be pathetic, losers, fools, awkward and unattractive imbeciles.

Who besides an imbecile would live a life that bears all things, that believes all things, that hopes all things, endures all things? It is completely unreasonable. It is completely stupid in its excessive irresponsibility. Only dysfunctional idiots endure all things.

Love, understood in this sense is the least attractive thing we can imagine. Love is fucking stupid. Love will kill you. And not in a heroic, self-validating sort of way. Love will kill you by rendering you pathetic, naive, and stupid. To love according to this Scriptural definition will inevitably result in the crucifixion of any successful and attractive mode of existence. The love that the gospel invites us into is one that does nothing less than reduce us to nothing. The gospel makes us pathetic, lonely, manipulable, vulnerable, empty.

In this is love, that we become pathetic nothings. Forlorn, forsaken, foolish, empty, and pathetic. Only so do we live. In any sense whatsoever. According to the gospel, the pathetic life of love is the only truth, the only way, and the only life.

JPII on the Paschal Mystery

Posted by on April 28, 2009 Comments Off

“The events of Good Friday and, even before that, in prayer in Gethsemane, introduce a fundamental change into the whole course of the revelation of love and mercy in the messianic mission of Christ. The one who ‘went about doing good and healing’ and ‘curing every sickness and disease’ now Himself seems to merit the greatest mercy and to appeal for mercy, when He is arrested, abused, condemned, scourged, crowned with thorns, when He is nailed to the cross and dies amidst agonizing torments. It is then that He particularly deserves mercy from the people to whom He has done good, and He does not receive it. Even those who are closest to Him cannot protect Him and snatch Him from the hands of His oppressors. At this final stage of His messianic activity the words which the prophets, especially Isaiah, uttered concerning the Servant of Yahweh are fulfilled in Christ: ‘Through his stripes we are healed.’”

~ John Paul II, Dives in misericordia, par 7.

Church Order as Superabundance

Posted by on April 27, 2009 7 comments

J.C. Hoekendijk makes some interesting comments about the nature of church office and order. For Hoekendijk it is absolutely central that church order not be understood as constitutive of the church. Rather, the only thing that is constitutive of the church is the office of Christ, made present by the Spirit, manifest in mutual agape. Thus, according the biblical witness he claims that “it is of the essence that the offices, which we see functioning in great diversity [in the New Testament], be relativizes as a matter of principle.” Rather, “the church lives through the Spirit; it structures itself through the manifold spiritual gifts; it is ‘complete’ in Christ, where the Spirit and love rule, and it is definitely not in need of any further church order.”

Does this leave one with a negative and denigrating view of church order? Not necessarily, in Hoekendijk’s view. “Is this to say now that the offices are superfluous? We could put it that way, but then we would put it in the language of those who seek the minimum of existence, want to be content with that, and apprehensively and suspiciously shrug their shoulders at every extra gift. What they consider superfluous is called superabundant in the terminology of the gospel. It is the extra that God cannot help but give over and above that which is necessary.”

The First Time Habeas Corpus Was Suspended

Posted by on April 27, 2009 7 comments

For all those who have an overly-romanticized portrait of Abraham Lincoln, this is rather interesting. You may remember the massive outrage about the Military Commissions Act a couple years back that stripped alleged enemy combatants of their right to trial. Turns out its not the first time its happened in the U.S. In 1861, on this very date, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for all Confederate soldiers:

Whereas, It has become necessary to call into service, not only volunteers, but also portions of the militia of the States by draft, in order to suppress the insurrection existing in the United States, and disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary processes of law from hindering this measure, and from giving aid and comfort in various ways to the insurrection. Now, therefore, be it ordered, that during the existing insurrection, and as a necessary measure for suppressing the same, all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to the rebels against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to martial law, and liable to trial and punishment by courts-martial or military commission.

Second: That the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested, or who are now, or hereafter during the rebellion shall be, imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prisons, or other place of confinement, by any military authority, or by the sentence of any court-martial or military commission.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this Twenty-fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By the President.

Not too much really changes I suppose. If anything, though this should chasten the sort of liberal outrage that erroneously seems to think that our present militarism is some sort of departure from a previous standard of goodness.

Do We Need a Theory of the State?

Posted by on April 27, 2009 6 comments

Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Centesimus annus, makes the following observation:

Pope Leo XIII was aware of the need for a sound theory of the State in order to ensure the normal development of man’s spiritual and temporal activities, both of which are indispensable. For this reason, in one passage of Rerum novarum he presents the organization of society according to the three powers—legislative, executive and judicial—, something which at the time represented a novelty in Church teaching. Such an ordering reflects a realistic vision of man’s social nature, which calls for legislation capable of protecting the freedom of all. To that end, it is preferable that each power be balanced by other powers and by other spheres of responsibility which keep it within proper bounds. This is the principle of the “rule of law”, in which the law is sovereign, and not the arbitrary will of individuals.

The part of this that interests me is the first sentence. Why is a “theory of the state” necessary for the spiritual well-being of humankind? That seems like quite an odd claim, which, if true would seem to imply that vast segments of (Christian) humanity throughout history could not possibly have had access to “normal” spiritual development.

Conservatism and Sex

Posted by on April 24, 2009 50 comments

Yesterday I pondered John Milbank’s drift towards conservatism. What seems clear about it is that the main point of emphasis in Milbank’s conservatism is sex. The issues that he is coming out on that seem to betray a drift towards the right are all issues of marriage and sexuality. Interestingly enough, the same trend is pretty visible in the pilgrimage of Richard John Neuhaus. Beginning as a liberal Lutheran minister who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., he was primed to be the next leading voice of liberal protestant social thought. However, he ended up growing more and more conservative as the path of First Things makes clear. The reason? From what I can see it stems for him rejection of the social consequences of the sexual revolution in the 60s. You can see the same tendency in the development of Robert Jenson and Carl Braaten. Just check out Jenson’s chapter “Politics and Sex” in his Systematic Theology and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

This raises a rather odd question. Is the path towards conservatism really just about one’s view of sex? For many people sex seems to be the (only?) hinge on which one’s self-identification as a conservative turns.

Compassion, Homosexuality, and Platitudes

Posted by on April 23, 2009 12 comments

A USA Today opinion piece on Christianity and homosexuality strikes me as rather boring–and a little annoying. The author is a young Southern Baptist who writes about faith and culture and appears to be into Christian environmental advocacy. What we have here is a plea for evangelical Christians to stop being ridiculously homophobic and love gay people even if they don’t agree with their lifestyle. Well that’s just dandy and I’m sure there are plenty of neanderthal evangelicals out there who have a visceral hatred of all things gay who need to hear it.

But. Is anyone else getting tired of this kind of semi-progressive evangelical way of talking about this stuff? Why on earth is it so earth-shattering for Christians to be saying that we need to be loving towards people, irrespective of their sexual exploits and identities? All too often these sorts of “pleas” come off as far too self-congratulatory and confident. They assume that the issue is closed, settled, and certain and all we need to do now is be nice and loving about how we deploy our settled correctness. What looks like sensitivity and opposition to bigotry is, in fact false humility.

At least the crazy fundamentalist bigots that the author derides are quite obviously unsettled by homosexuality. The author is placidly unaffected by it. He is secure in his belief that its wrong to have gay sex, but the presence of gay people doesn’t bother him. He is enlightened, patient, and loving, undisturbed by the presence of the otherness of gays. This posture makes alarmingly clear that the problem of homosexuality–or the issue of Christian sexual ethics more generally–is just not a problem for him. Its all something that he can easily handle, processing it in a paternalistically compassionate and calmly measured manner.

But shouldn’t we disturbed by issues like this? Isn’t a total lack of conceptual unsettledness a glaring sign of ideology? This is why mainline liberalism and mature compassionate evangelicalism are two sides of the same coin when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. For both the actual presence and issues of gay Christians are an afterthought. What counts is ideological advocacy for the correct, settled, true position. This is precisely why, to my mind, Rowan Williams is taking precisely the right course in regard to these issues. He is refusing to allow ideological advocacy, in either direction, to determine how the church faces these issues. Only by starting there, and by taking seriously the challenge of actual gay people in the particular reality of their lives can we begin to address this issue in a way that doesn’t fall into ideological platitudes that do little more than validate us in our sense of self-certainty and correctness.

What Gives with Milbank?

Posted by on April 23, 2009 31 comments

Ok, Milbank obviously rejoices in being esoteric. Like all the time. But, there seems to be a serious about-face that has taken place in his thought regarding sexuality. Consider this recent article on Milbank’s current theological-political work:

He urged the movement’s followers to “grasp the hands of labour unions, feminists, gay and lesbian activists”, and warned that “if they remain content, as I fear some of them do, to carp and posture before gatherings of the anointed, then the movement will become at best a beloved clique and at worst another academic vaudeville show”.

The groups mentioned may not want to shake Milbank’s hand: he opposes gay marriage (“I don’t want to get into the situation where we deny there is something special about being attracted to the opposite sex”).

He says he is concerned about working-class women being left to raise children alone, “in part – alongside economic factors – because of the collapse of the male ethos of supporting the woman”, and has written most stridently in opposition to in vitro fertilisation treatment for single women.

Or again, the somewhat older piece from The Other Journal:

So by supporting the total disjuncture of sex and procreation, the left is really supporting a new mode of fascism. ‘Women’ are lined up with science and choice in order to produce a new kind of ideal human subjectivity—male and autonomous and yet pliant in ‘female’ manner. The newly envisaged female body is the final site of the coming together of scientific objectivity and absolute freedom of choice. Perhaps one could even speak here of a new racism of the human race as such—it’s to be made the object of an endless ‘objective’ improvement and expression of a will to freedom/will to power. Of course this also means that the specific phenomenology of the female body is destroyed. It’s denied that this body is inherently linked both to the male body (as also vice-versa) and to another body that is itself and yet becomes not itself—the baby. Having denied the link of babies to men and also to women save as objects of their (‘male’) choice, babies thereby become pure consumer objects and all human personhood is abandoned.

Now, this is a pretty conservative framing of Christian sexual ethics coming from Milbank. Žižek, in a brief conversation mentioned to me that he believes that the reason for Milbank’s current trend against gay marriage and toward a broadly Roman Catholic theology of the family stems from recently falling under the influence of Pope Benedict. Perhaps so.

However, no matter what the reason, the anti-liberal Red Tory Milbank is a far cry from the Milbank of Being Reconciled with its talk of the “trancendental homosexuality” of angels. Its not every day you see high-profile theologians getting more conservative on sexual issues these days. Any idea why Milbank is swinging that way?

Three Arguments against the Kindle

Posted by on April 23, 2009 18 comments

From Micah White at Adbusters:

Argument one: The Kindle destroys the trace of the author. After the death of the individual author, books continue to live. They carry the trace of the authors life and thoughts on the page and show this trace through the physical existence of the book. If you hunt for books in bookstores instead of libraries, you may not realize that every age has bound its books differently, used different papers and inks and decorated the page in various ways. The materiality of the book gives us a taste of the author and the time when the book was made. Each book is different and an avid reader can often remember the color of their favorite book or the feel of its pages. The Kindle destroys this because it divorces the text from the book. It displays every book the same. While the text on the screen may changes the physical object in one’s hands stays the same. This has some troubling consequences for our relationship to the author’s words because what the Kindle really displays is one long book — simply a long stream of endless, digitized words.

Argument two: the Kindle destroys the community of readers which books engender. The Kindle has been devised by a society that wants to make profit each time a text is read rather than each time a book is purchased. In the old system, once I bought a book I owned it as an object. I could read it as many times as I liked and give it to friends who may give it to their friends. That is the basis behind public libraries, we all share books because we understand that there are more books we’d like to read than we’d ever be able to afford to read. This creates a community of readers who circulate books amongst themselves for the benefit of all. The Kindle is the end of that, no more sharing books, no more public libraries, no more sitting in a bookstore and reading a book without buying it. The Kindle is a prison for words.

Argument three: the Kindle denies the call to deep, meditative reflection. Books have a magic power in that they can draw us into the world of the author and make time pass quickly while we are immersed in the text. The book is the ideal format for presenting complicated, philosophical arguments that require the reader to pause between paragraphs and reflect. The Kindle is the opposite — it is merely a television for reading text, a computer that will distract us. Furthermore, the adoption of the Kindle will destroy the culture of reading that sets aside sacred places for study: libraries. The Kindle makes these special places unnecessary because it argues that the library will be carried in our pocket. But with the loss of quiet study places for the public will come the loss of the public’s capacity for quiet study. This is why some commentators have already reflected that the Kindle is best for trashy novels. But if the Kindle becomes widespread, all we will have is trashy novels.

The Kindle is the devil.

Bit of Bonhoeffer

Posted by on April 22, 2009 Comments Off

“The Word of God seeks out community in order to accept it. It exists mainly within the community. It moves on its own into the community. It has an inherent impulse toward community. It is wrong to assume that one the one hand there is a word, or a truth, and on the other hand there is a community existing as two separate entities, and that it would be the task of the preacher to take this word, to manipulate and enliven it, in order to bring it it within and apply it to the community. Rather the Word moves along this path of its own accord. The preacher should and can do nothing more than be a servant of this movement inherent in the Word itself, and refrain from placing obstacles in its path.”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (DBW4), 228.

Exploring Ecclesiology

Posted by on April 21, 2009 7 comments

Anyone who frequents this blog knows how much talk and thought goes into questions of ecclesiology around here. Well, for those with an eye toward such topics, there is an important new book out from Brazos Press, Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical Ecumenical Introduction by Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger.

The books is a distinctly trinitarian treatment of the church from a broadly evangelical perspective that is carefully attuned to ecumenical issues. For those wondering if evangelical ecclesiology could ever be a real thing, this book is a must read.

Featured Posts

Posted by on April 21, 2009 1 comment

Thanks to my snappy new theme, I’ve added a new feature that will, hopefully, help me to highlight important posts. From now on in the sidebar there will always now be a list of “featured posts.” This category will serve to help me accentuate the stuff that I think is actually a bit more important among the things I write on the blog.

For now, I’ve just put some of my personal favorited in the featured category for those who are interested.

Excellence in Theological Commentary

Posted by on April 21, 2009 3 comments

Phil has posted a good quote from Brevard Childs on what makes for a good commentary:

  1. Does the commentator do justice to the coercion of the biblical text, or does the author’s private agenda overshadow the text itself?
  2. Does the creative imagination of the commentator lead the reader back to the biblical text or away from it?
  3. Does the interpretation reflect the needed patience and empathy to wrestle with the elements of the Bible that at first seem strange, distant, and even offensive to modern sensibilities?
  4. Has the commentator learned enough from the history of interpretation to retain a sense of modesty regarding his or her efforts and a critical respect for those who have illuminated the way in the past?

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