Monthly Archives: February 2010

Theology and Apocalyptic: Call for Papers

Posted by Halden on February 24, 2010 1 comment

The Theology and Apocalyptic Group has put out the following call for papers for this year’s upcoming AAR meeting:

The “Explorations in Christian Theology and Apocalyptic” working group invites individual paper proposals for an “additional meeting” at the 2010 American Academy of Religion meeting on the following topic: “Engagements with the Political Theology of Johannes Baptist Metz.” We especially welcome proposals that engage the turn to apocalyptic within Metz’s theology and the ideas particularly associated with this turn in his theology, such as: the “eschatological reserve”; “dangerous memory”; the Second Coming; discipleship; mysticism and prayer; the relation of the Kingdom of God to history; the nature and definition of “the political” and political authority/sovereignty (particularly “the authority of those who suffer”); and martyrdom/witness. We also encourage proposals that explore these themes by bringing Metz into critical conversation with other political and liberationist theologians (such as Jürgen Moltmann, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Jon Sobrino); political theorists (such as Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, and Giorgio Agamben); and prominent political activists and theologians (such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, William Stringfellow, Jacques Ellul, and Will Campbell). Paper presentations will be ca. 20 minutes in length and the panel will include an invited respondent. Proposals should include your name, institutional affiliation, and the title(s) of the proposed paper(s), as well as a 250 word abstract for each proposed paper. Proposals should be submitted via email to Nathan Kerr (nkerr@trevecca.edu) and/or Philip Ziegler (p.ziegler@abdn.ac.uk) no later than March 22, 2010.

Also, there will be a panel on Christopher Morse’s new book, The Difference Heaven Makes:

This will be a panel discussion of Christopher Morse’s new book, The Difference Heaven Makes: Rehearing the Gospel as News (Continuum, 2010). Panelists will include Katherine Sonderegger (Virginia Theological Seminary), Nancy Duff (Princeton Theological Seminary), Trevor Eppehimer (Hood Theological Seminary), and Donald Wood (University of Aberdeen). Christopher Morse himself will be present to reply. Phil Ziegler (University of Aberdeen) will chair the session. Details of time, place etc. will follow in due course.

The new and alien kingdom

Posted by Halden on February 23, 2010 1 comment

Sean the Baptist pulls out some great quotes from one of my all-time favorite books, Between Cross and Resurrection, by Alan Lewis. They simply must be re-posted:

“What frightens and frees us simultaneously about this new and alien kingdom of God which Jesus preached and told of is the simple fact that it is God’s and not our own. That is a dark menace to the complacency and contentment of those who flourish under the kingdoms of this world; a shining vision of release and new beginnings to the victims of the present order; and perhaps also a mocking rebuke to the programs, projects, and pride of those who hope to create a new order by themselves. It is tragic, therefore, that a gospel which promises justice, love and peace only by insisting that these are God’s own gifts, which remain alien, foolish, and impossible except for grace alone, has continually been misconstrued and misappropriated as the goal and burden of human and Christian aspiration. Piously or politically, we cripple ourselves with the need to bring about God’s righteousness on earth, failing to hear what Jesus so vividly declares: that we need not shoulder that burden because the goal itself does not need to be accomplished. The goal is a fact, God’s fact, the fact of grace and promise. No gap divides what God says from what God does; and the stories of the coming kingdom do not offer dreams and possibilities of what the Lord might or could do, but speak indicatively, and in the present tense, of what is happening, and of what the future is becoming. The kingdom needed not – and cannot – be worked for; it may only be accepted and awaited.” (23-24).

“To be quite blunt about a matter we must soon think through to its extremity, that story [the story told of Jesus] unites the Lord God with a human corpse – with a man who has in some eyes been murdered by criminals and in others executed as a criminal . The impossible foolishness of this – that after such a fate a man should be raised to life with God, and into such a human fate God’s very self, the Lord of glory should have fallen – is the supreme test of our willingness not to conform story to what we already understand, but to reconform our understanding to the story that we hear.” (25-26).

The Revolutionary Subordination: A note from Doug Harink

Posted by Halden on February 22, 2010 1 comment

Many thanks to Doug Harink, both for his lectures which I live-blogged over the weekend, and for the great time of fellowship we got to have together. Doug has kindly sent me a follow-up note on the lectures that speaks to some key points about the matter of the “revolutionary subordination.”

Let me express my heartfelt and enthusiastic gratitude to Halden for generously live-blogging on my lectures on 2 and 1 Peter. I have read the blogs, and I must say that Halden’s parsing of my lectures is really spot-on—indeed, I think Halden has often stated the matter more clearly and succinctly than I did in the lectures. So maybe the live blog is better than the real thing! In any case, great job, Halden.

There is just one point I want to make about the discussion of “revolutionary subordination,” that I perhaps did not emphasize sufficiently in the lectures. Peter makes clear that the members of the messianic communities to which he is writing are free: “as free… yet as God’s servants” (2:16). This freedom is bestowed by the gospel that Peter has described in detail in chapters 1 and 2 up to this point. Such freedom comes through participation in the apocalyptic power of the gospel, and that means freedom with authority. To be a free person as God’s servant (“being aware of God”, 2:19) is to live in the messianic power and authority of the gospel, which power and authority, in conformity to the crucified Messiah, is exercised most precisely at the moment of submission. So also the gospels show that Jesus’ authority is most clearly displayed at the moment when he stands before the powers that be who will crucify him. He is neither resentful, nor a victim. (Cf. also John 13:3-5: “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table…and began to wash the disciples’ feet.”). Likewise Peter’s instruction to “submit” or “be subordinate” is a call to those who share in the authority and power of the messianic age, which share is revealed most perfectly in the grace that the messianic person shows to everyone else, regardless of their place in the social order. Such grace is the opposite of resentment or victimhood.

God’s preferential care

Posted by Halden on February 22, 2010 7 comments

Todd at Memoria Dei has a helpful post on the notion, put forth in liberation theology, of God’s preferential option for the poor. In conversation with Stephen Pope’s work he argues that the notion of God’s preferential love, he argues must be understood in connection with the concept of care. Here’s a quote:

[Stephen] Pope argues that we must clarify God’s “preferential love” with another concept: care. Care is the response of love to someone in need. Love necessarily involves care in the face of suffering but it is not reduced to care since love can exist in the absence of need. Thus, it would be more accurate to speak of God’s “preferential care” or “preferential loving care” towards those in need. The latter would preserve the fact that the source of the preferential option is love but without seeming to limit the scope of divine love. The parables of the Good Samaritan, the Last Judgment, and Lazarus and the Rich Man all point to God’s preferential care for those in need; and “need” (and thus care) should not be restricted to material poverty as is shown by Jesus’ invitation to the outcasts, women, and tax-collectors. God’s preferential care extends to all victims and “non-persons” of history. Furthermore, this divine praxis of preferential care is not only grace for those who receive it but also a demand for those who follow Christ.

The messianic mission

Posted by Halden on February 20, 2010 2 comments

Harink claims that the call, in all its dimensions, to “be subordinate” is the messianic mission to which they are called. The messianic mission of the church is to love as Christ loved. That means to be subordinate. To become a servant. To give one’s life away in love for the other, even for the wicked and evil. The call to subordination is not a call to remain in the place that the powers place us in. Rather it is the very shape of our participation in the war of the Lamb.

Of course this message is deformed whenever it is viewed as anything less than the collective calling of all those who would follow Jesus. Whenever subordination is something that you need to do, rather than something to which we are all called together as companions in the Gospel it has become something utterly different. The call to subordination, “to every human creature” (1 Pet 2:13 — not “institution”) is nothing less than a call to each and every one of us to embody Christ’s radical love which gives oneself away, even to the point of death. This is the messianic mission. This is the truly “revolutionary subordination.”

Subordination as a messianic war against injustice

Posted by Halden on February 20, 2010 8 comments

For Harink, 1 Peter’s (and Paul’s) call to subordination is not a call to acquiescence in the face of injustice. Rather it is the radical commitment to the belief that Christ’s own movement of self-giving love in the face of oppressive power is the only true way to be liberated from the oppression of the powers. Subordination means nothing less than participation in Christ’s own mode of being, his embodiment of the Trinitarian love in the world of death and slavery.

Of course this can only make sense or sound credible if one truly believes that Christ’s action is indeed “the original revolution.” If that is not true, then indeed the only real mode of power is violence. But if the gospel is true, the call to “subordination” is the call for us to enter into God’s own life itself. It is our participation in the messianic war of liberating love that cannot be held or constrained by the powers of death.