Daily Archives: June 11, 2009

Summer Reading

Posted by on June 11, 2009 24 comments

Since everyone else in the friggin blogosphere is posting lists of things they’re hoping to read this summer, here’s mine. I tried not to get too carried away. If I can do this, I will have done plenty:

  • Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics—Keep/get back on track with my reading plan (I’m about three weeks behind right now, for those who have been wondering)
  • John Howard Yoder
    • Read the new edition of Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution
    • Finally read Preface to Theology all the way through
    • Same for The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited
  • Warren Carter—Some great New Testament stuff I’ve been meaning to get to, especially on the gospel of John as a counter-imperial document
    • John and Empire
    • John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist
    • The Roman Empire and the New Testament
  • Articles to Write
    • Something for PTR on J. Kameron Carter’s book on race, possibly dealing with his use of analogy
    • An entry for this year’s Colin Gunton Memorial essay contest on whether or not ecumenical theology has a future (I am planning on giving a clear answer to the question)

Yoder on Just War 2

Posted by on June 11, 2009 Comments Off

John Howard Yoder was a profound ecumenist and ethicist. In the course of his work he engaged substantially with virtually all Protestant traditions and Roman Catholicism. A substantial part of this engagement occurred in conversation with Christians who subscribe to just war theory. Yoder’s patient, respectful discourse with proponents of just war theory has given some cause to speculate that ultimately Yoder felt that consistent just war theorists and Christian pacifists are so close in their position that the two schools of thought were basically compatible. This is a significant misreading of Yoder’s engagement with just war theory.

In his important essay, “Christ, the Light of the World,” (published both in The Original Revolution and in The Royal Priesthood–my page references refer to the latter) Yoder makes some significant statements about the just war tradition. One of his first observations in expressing his own messianic pacifism is that

In the personal case of Jesus it is made clear that he rejects not only unjust violence but also the use of violence in the most righteous cause. It is no longer possible to misinterpret his teaching as simply a call to vigilance or to sensitivity in excluding improper use of violence; what Jesus was really tempted by was the proper use of violence. It was concerning the use of the sword in legitimate defense that Jesus said that they who take it will die by it. (p. 186)

Here is a crucial point. For Yoder, what Jesus specifically rejected and called upon his disciples to reject if they were going to name him as Lord, was the just use of violence. Jesus’s lordship is defined, not by only utilizing violence in conformity with just regulations, but rather its disavowal in favor of an ethic of kenotic love (see also, The Priestly Kingdom, p. 145) for more on the importance of kenosis for Yoder’s ethical thought).

Having laid out his own messianic theology of nonviolence, Yoder proceeds to critique two other approaches to the question of war, just war theory and Reinhold Niebuhr’s advocacy of political realism. He clearly takes just war theory with much more seriousness than Niebuhr’s advocacy of political realism, arguing that “the doctrine of ‘just war’ must be dealt with far more respectfully than most pacifists have been willing to do. It takes seriously as the other available thought patterns do not, that there can be an ethical judgment upon the use of violence in the name of the state” (p. 186-7). However, in the midst of his respectful analysis of just war, Yoder does not shrink away from searing critique. For him, just war theory, like other non-pacifist approaches to the question of violence

make or presuppose a case for placing our faith in some other channel of ethical insight and some other way of behaving than is offered us through Jesus as attested in the New Testament. All these approaches thereby justify my trusting myself to have the wisdom to know, for example when I may properly sacrifice the life of my neighbor to the righteousness of the cause that I represent. All of them thus find in this other channel of ethical insight also another substance of ethical instruction. Whereas Jesus instructed his disciples to return good for evil, this other light demands or permits returing a certain amount of evil. While Jesus told his disciples that they should expect to be persecuted, this other light indicates that in some grounds under some circumstances we should cause others to suffer. (p. 188-9)

The crucial point here is that Yoder is clear that the acceptance of just war theory as a mode of Christian moral reasoning is predicated fundamentally on the rejection of Christ’s own normativity for ethics. What we have here is not merely an interpretive squabble within a largely coherent tradition but something far more serious. “What we have to do with here is fundamentally nothing other than a competitive revelation claim. If I say  it is my duty to make history come out right, appealing to a concept of ‘creation’ or of ‘love driving me to take political responsibility’ or to the call of ‘the situation,’ in all of these cases I am setting up over against Jesus another imperative and another source of imperatives” (p. 189).

Thus for Yoder, the adoption of just war theory, from the standpoint of Christian discipleship is not simply a minor failure to not be fully consistent in our ethical calculus. Rather it is the acceptance of a structurally different source and norm of our whole view of history, Christ, and politics. As such, in no sense can Yoder be seen to be recommending or tolerating just war theory as viable from the standpoint of an ethic of discipleship. To be sure, consistent just war theory is preferable to all other approaches to war, but it too buys into a source of ethical evaluation and substance that is opposed to the politics of Jesus.

Why Sex Doesn’t Matter

Posted by on June 11, 2009 7 comments

“What is baffling and sometimes outrageous to the modern reader is just this assumption that, in certain circumstances, sex can’t matter that much. And I want to suggest that the most important contribution the New Testament can make to our present understanding of sexuality may be precisely in this unwelcome and rather chilling message. We come to the New Testament eagerly looking for answers, and we meet a blank or quizzical face: why is that the all-important problem? Not all human goods are possible all the time, and it would be a disaster to think that there was some experience without which nothing else made sense. Only if sexual intimacy is seen as the last hiding-place of real transcendence, to borrow a phrase from the American novelist, Walker Percy, could we assume that it mattered above all else.”

~ Rowan Williams, “Forbidden Fruit”, in Martyn Percy (ed.), Sexuality and Spirituality in Perspective (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997), pp.25-26.

Yoder on Just War 1

Posted by on June 11, 2009 1 comment

In John Howard Yoder’s The Christian Witness to the State, Yoder offers a brief analysis of just war theory, in the context of his examination of “examples of political judgment.” In this section, Yoder is investigating and exploring the logic of various forms of ethical-political analysis that diverge from the calling of Christian discipleship, but must be understood in the context of the Christian engagement with political powers.

Thus, Yoder claims at the outset that just war theory is among “certain concepts,” which are unequivocally “illegitimate for guiding Christian discipleship.” However, these same concepts, which while categorically excluded for Christians, are “still relevant in the elaboration of an ethic for the state.” In other words, given that the state,  by definition utilizes violent force, the just war theory is one of a number of concepts which might be good for the state to adopt to minimize the spread of violence. As a Christian Yoder has an interest in minimizing state violence as much as possible and this informs his recommendation of just war theory as an ethic for the state.

However, in regard to the path of Christian discipleship, Yoder is clear. “That there can be a just war in the Christian sense of the word just or righteous is, of course, excluded by definition; we can make the point only negatively. When the conditions generally posed for a just war are not fulfilled, then a war is unjust to the point that even a state, resolved to use violence, is out of order in its prosecution. This is the basis of our condemnation of the atomic bomb even for the warring state.” (p. 49)

Thus, for Yoder just war theory is not an acceptable mode of Christian faithfulness, but rather the least malignant form of unfaithfulness that Christians should expect from the state. As such it can be given a penultimate recommendation as far as the state is concerned, but must be roundly rejected by all Christians as a possible path of faithfulness.

The Catholic Mark Driscoll

Posted by on June 11, 2009 11 comments

Funny, in all the blogs I’ve done about Mark Driscoll’s antics I’ve never thought that his craziness might be embodied in non-Protestant traditions. However, apparently American Catholics have a similar iconic figure in the person of one Christopher West. West has, apparently made a career out of propagating JPII’s Theology of the Body and holding it up as the ultimate sex manual for Catholic Christians. He got particularly well known for comparing the Pope to Hugh Hefner in a Nightline interview in which he seemed to argue that the Hefner and JPII, together, rescued sex from prudish Victorian sensibilities. He, like good ole Driscoll refers to the Song of Songs as “the Bible’s centerfold.”

To his credit, West doesn’t seem to be as belligerent as his pomo fundamentalist cousin; but certainly no less sex-obsessed. I can’t help wondering though, if this passionate frenzy about sex among strongly conservative church leaders does more to fetishize sex than anything that ever happened under the tyrannical regime of Victorian sensibilities.

I mean, seriously, JPII and Hef aren’t even talking about the same thing when they talk about sex! The notion, so present in these sorts of circles, that a central duty of the church is to make sure that all its married parishoners are having fireworks going off in the bedroom every night seems to me to indicate the degree to which we’ve all bought into the kind of sexual obsession that creates the problems of frustration and fantasy in the first place.

Why the hell can’t Christians just let sex be ordinary?? That would be something radical.

Jesus’s Independence

Posted by on June 11, 2009 10 comments

In a couple different blog contexts, the question of John Howard Yoder’s assertion of Christ’s independence (especially as expounded by Nate Kerr) has been raised. What is meant by “Christ’s independence” is multifaceted, but the short version of it is, as Yoder says that Christ lived among the powers of this age in a manner that was intensively “morally independent of their pretensions” (Politics of Jesus, p. 145). Jesus is thus a singularity within the history of humanity. He lives a life of moral freedom from the fallen powers (i.e. ideologies, structures, etc.) that enslave and determine human existence. He lives in independence from them, breaking their mythological yoke and opening up history to the life of God’s abundant freedom (i.e. the Spirit, Pentecost, Parousia).

What is meant by the independence of Jesus, then, is this radically irruptive singularity. This term signifies the way in which Christ’s moral existence was free from the machinations of the powers that sought to determine human history. Because Christ lived independently from all human powers, structures, ideologies, and authorities, he has exposed their rebelliousness and their contingency. In his resurrection, Christ’s life of moral independence from the powers was shown to be the truth of all of history. His independence from the powers goes all the way down to their most ultimate weapon: death.

Now, the question that often gets raised against this construal of Christ’s independence is the question of the Torah and of the history of Israel. Is not Christ conditioned, determined, and only intelligible within the framework of the history of Israel and its tradition? Does stressing Christ’s independence lead to some sort of Marcionism?

There are a few things that should be pointed out here. First, the notion that Israel and Torah constitute a prearranged “framework” for Christ’s intelligibility seems to me to be inherently supersessionist. If Israel and Torah are there to facilitate Christ’s mission in an instrumental sense it seems that they are, well, merely instrumental. This is a problem. Second, the notion that Jesus is made intelligible by his historical location in Israel and Judaism relies on a rather myopic reading of the Gospels. It doesn’t take that much of a heavy reading to see that Christ was clearly an irruptive presence within the national, social, and religious conventions of his context. However, in the midst of fairly clear interruption, revision, and inversion of many tenets of the Torah, Christ also claimed, not to be annulling it, but fulfilling it. What might this mean?

I think all of this, and the more important point about Jesus’s independence points us to a different construal of the relation between Christ, Israel, and the Torah. Rather than conceiving of Israel and Torah as a sort of framework that prepares the world for Jesus (as, for example T.F. Torrance does), we would do better to understand them as retroactive effects of Jesus’s own independent singularity. I have argued for something like this before in arguing that “we should see the biblical history of Israel and the nations, as preverberations, if you will, of Christ’s apocalyptic recreation of the world in the event of death and resurrection. Such a theology of recapitulation would see the apocalypse of Christ as the macrocosom, the mesoform within which created reality has its being and freedom.” In other words, Christ is not a predicate of Israel and Torah, rather they are retroactive events that irrupt from the very singularity that Christ is.

This ties into another important point that Kerr makes regarding his fundamental theological proposal that we understand divine action in Christ through the logics of singularity and excess. It is Christ’s singular reality, his independence which “unhands” and breaks open history, opening it up to the “more” of God, namely the Pentecostal mission of the Holy Spirit. Christ’s singular, apocalyptic reality is the very event which, by defeating the powers, opens the world to God’s radical love poured out in the Spirit. From within this logic of singularity and excess, we are able to propound a different and more fruitful reading of Israel and Torah than a conventional salvation-historical approach.

Rather than seeing Israel and Torah as precursors to Christ who make the way for him and his mission, we ought to see them as events of God’s own irruptive excess which Christ’s own singularity unleashes. Christ’s defeat of the powers liberates not only the future, but retroactively, the past. Torah and the history of Israel, like the history of the church is the story of the way in which Christ’s disruptive singularity, his independence from the powers has opened up the world to the freedom of the Holy Spirit. Israel and Torah are not conditions of Christ’s intelligibility or agency. Rather they are effects of his very particular singularity.

This is to take the distinctly Pauline idiom, “he is before all things and in him all things hold together” with the utmost seriousness. Likewise it is to insist that the Johannine, “before Abraham was, I Am” means exactly what it says. Indeed, stressing Christ’s independence is, in a cosmological and metaphysical sense, a way of talking about his eternality. Here we have the very specific historicality of Jesus coupled with the affirmation, grounded in the resurrection, that this singular one is before, above, and beyond all powers and realities. Christ’s independence means the adoption of an apocalyptic and doxological cosmology. It means understanding the world, politics, and history—including biblical history—as predicates of Christ’s own singularity. “He is before all things.” That is what it means to speak of Jesus’s independence.

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