Daily Archives: May 18, 2009

Why are Women Less Happy?

Posted by on May 18, 2009 4 comments

Economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers explore an interesting question:

By many objective measures, the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.

H/T: Andrew Sulivan

Barth on Preaching and the Sacraments

Posted by on May 18, 2009 14 comments

In distinguishing Evangelical dogmatics from liberal Protestantism on the one hand, and Roman Catholicism on the other, Barth spends a great deal of time focusing on the issue of proclamation and the role in plays in the life of the  church. Here seems to be one of the central points at which Barth’s ecclesiology differs from and challenges Catholic ecclesiology and, more generally, any supremely sacramental ecclesiology.

In speaking of (and commending) the Reformers’ break with Rome, Barth argues that

Proclamation of the basis of the promise which has been laid once for all, and therefore proclamation in the form of symbolic action [the sacrament], had to be and to remain essential for them [the Reformers]. But this proclamation presupposes that the other [preaching], namely, repetition of the biblical promise, is taking place. The former must exist for the sake of the latter, and therefore the sacrament for the sake of preaching, not vice versa. (CD1/1, p. 70)

This seems to be one of the key issues for understanding Barth’s ecclesiology in contrast to Roman Catholicism and other strongly eucharistic traditions. For Barth the nature of grace as God’s “unfathomably free act” (p. 68) requires us to find the church’s “center” not in any act which the church possesses or hands on as if “there flows forth from Jesus Christ a steady and unbroken stream or influence of divine-human being on His people” (p. 68). Any such unbroken continuity between God’s free grace and the being of the church is to be rejected in Barth’s thought. There can be no embracing the idea of the sacrament as a “causare, continere el conferre gratiam” (causing, containing, and conferring grace, p. 69) in that the relationship between divine grace and human response cannot be one of cause and effect, but of “the Word and faith.”

Thus, at the heart of Barth’s claim here is an insistence that the church does not possess or cause grace through its own actions, even the sacraments. Rather the church’s “center” must be the proclamation of the Gospel through which God, thought the Holy Spirit brings people to faith in the event of hearing the Word. As such Barth’s ecclesiology (at least here) is strongly informed by a theology of the missio dei. The church exists by virtue of its being the passive recipient of God’s missional entrance into the world in Christ, which the church then proclaims as an act of obedience. What Barth offers is a missional ecclesiology centered on the ek-centric movement of God’s Word which the church hears and proclaims to the world rather than a sacramental eccesiology centered on the church’s mediation of grace to itself.

Up and Coming Theologians?

Posted by on May 18, 2009 25 comments

Working in publishing, one the key elements of our work is trying to acquire new books that promise to be game-changers, at least in some respects, in their field. We editors are like vultures swooping around looking for talent and then dive-bombing them until they agree to give us a book.

So, in the interest of helping me foster this mission, I wish to pose a question to my theologically-astute readership: Who do you think publishers should be trying to solicit books from? What new theologians are pursuing ideas that need attention in print? Who should my next phone call be to?

Stephen Fowl on Theological Interpretation

Posted by on May 18, 2009 1 comment

At the new Christian Theology on the Bible blog, fellow Wipf & Stocker, Chris Spinks is posting a series of quotes from Stephen Fowl’s forthcoming book on Theological Interpretation of Scripture in our Cascade Companions series. Other notable books in the series include Michael Gorman’s Reading Paul and D. Stephen Long’s Theology and Culture. This new book by Fowl is sure to be a good one.

Here’s the first quote that Chris has posted so far:

Open up virtually any biblical commentary written before the 16th century; then look at the discussion of that same passage in virtually any commentary written after 1870. The differences are so significant that a beginning student may well wonder if these two commentaries are actually speaking about the same biblical text. I can think of no better way to begin to think about the role of history and historical criticism in theological interpretation than to perform this exercise.

Pre-modern interpretation is very different from the types of interpretation you encounter in a modern biblical commentary or article. Understanding the nature of this difference is what is most important for now. If you have already been exposed to some pre-modern interpreters, they may seem less strange. For many students, however, their encounter with pre-modern interpretation can seem like traveling to a different planet. It may be tempting to think that the difference between pre-modern interpreters and us is that they had a naïvely literalistic understanding of the Scripture, that they read the gospels with harmonizing eyes such that they neglected or glossed over textual puzzles. Although there may be some examples of these interpretive flaws, they are not characteristic of pre-modern interpretation at its best. Pre-modern interpreters understood that Scripture was extraordinarily diverse, and contained various textual puzzles and obscurities.

For the most part, the various interpretive practices common in the pre-modern period arise from Christian theological convictions. Scripture was seen as God’s gift to the church. Scripture was the central, but not the only, vehicle by which Christians were able to live and worship faithfully before the triune God. It is also the case that faithful living, thinking, and worshipping shaped the ways in which Christians interpreted Scripture. At its best, the diversity and richness of the patterns of reading Scripture in the pre-modern period are governed and directed by Scripture’s role in shaping and being shaped by Christian worship and practice. Ultimately, Scriptural interpretation, worship, and Christian faith and life were all ordered and directed towards helping Christians achieve their proper end in God.

It is important to understand that the difference between modern and pre-modern biblical interpretation is not due to the fact that we are smart and sophisticated while they are ignorant and naïve. Instead, modern biblical study is most clearly distinguished from pre-modern interpretation because of the priority granted to historical concerns over theological ones. Ultimately, if Christians are to interpret Scripture theologically, the first step will involve granting priority to theological concerns. This, however, is to anticipate my conclusion.

Looks to be a good book and good blog series. Keep your eyes on it.

More on Freedom

Posted by on May 18, 2009 14 comments

In light of some recent discussions about the nature of freedom, theologically speaking, I’m going to venture a proposal here. From a Christian perspective, freedom is the translation of human beings into the triune life of God. To be free is to be united to God through Christ, and in being so united, to be liberated from any and all powers, ideologies, loyalties, and compulsions that would direct one away from union with God. Union with God here is understood as participation in the radical love the defines God’s life. To be free is to be liberated from anything that would compete with God’s love for the possession and production of human identity.

As such, “freedom” truly names the singular reality of divine grace, which, through the Holy Spirit breaks into the world and into our lives as an act of pure gift. Grace comes to humanity in pluriform ways, occurring wherever, through the Spirit, the singular agape of Christ invades and transforms human lives that had previously been in bondage to principalities and powers.

As such, freedom takes on many forms as it interrupts and transfigures human life. True freedom is an event which happens as human persons are taken up, transfigured, re-created by God’s radical grace. What this freedom looks like depends on the social situation that God’s grace invades for the purpose of transformation, but the end result is always the same: liberation into a life of missional love, the experience of God’s own non-coercive self-giving on behalf of others.

Freedom is what happens when God draws us out of those things that inhibit participation in agape. This may and will mean political and social liberation for oppressed peoples who are violently deprived of any sort of self-determining power. Likewise this may and will mean liberation of ideologically-bound human beings who are, though their affluence, enslaved to the power of ubiquitous choice, decadence, and upward mobility. In this case the experience of freedom must be an embrace of the path of kenosis, a joyful descent into self-divestment, self-limitation, and agapeic sacrifice. This is the experience of freedom that most people reading this blog need to embrace as the path for their lives in Christ.

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