Author Archives: Halden - Page 2

Christianity is not a cultural project

Posted by on August 10, 2011 24 comments

One of the central features of what we might call “post-evangelical discontent” is the general state of being sick of hearing about a “personal relationship” with God as central to the meaning of being a Christian. Talk about “personal relationships” with God is pietistic and individualistic drivel through and through, and we must move beyond it to talk about what really matters, namely embodied discipleship in the church, which is a political, cultural reality in its own right. What is vital for those seeking to move beyond their post-evangelical discontent is to stop fixating on such evangelical niceties and pieties, and understand Christian identity in terms of culture, that is the church as a specific cultural project that, through its own life and the virtues it forms in its members, embodies the kingdom in the world.

Now, to be sure I agree that talk of a “personal relationship” with God is theologically problematic, especially in its fundmentalist-evangelical use. The idea that God is primarily interested in having some sort of emotional involvement with us as precious individual snowflakes is, quite obviously stupid. However, I also find it problematic to move, through a sort of short-circuit from this insipid individual relationalism to construing Christianity as primarily a cultural project. The reason this is problematic is because Christianity is not a cultural project. To be a Christian is not to adopt some new cultural identity, ecclesial or otherwise (as the cross-cultural translatability of the Gospel message in the New Testament shows). To be a Christian is rather to be called to witness to the act of God in Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. This can happen in any culture and in many forms, which is part of the beauty of God’s ongoing work of raising up witnesses by the Spirit.

As such, we need to pause in our rightful distaste for false pieties before seeking false sanctuaries in construals of “Christianity as culture.” Statements like the following should be roundly rejected:

If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.

It may interest folks to know that this statement comes, not from the pen of leading authors who write books on theology of culture, or the meaning of being the church in the post-Christendom world, but from Anders Behring Breivik, the architect of the recent terrorist attacks in Norway. I use this quote here not to say that the advocates of Christianity as a cultural project would somehow endorse Breivik’s actions; obviously they would not. My point is more basic: Christianity is not a cultural project and to construe it as such is always to set it in the service of some ideology or politics other than it’s call to witness to Christ. Just as we must reject false pieties, so too must we reject the false security that would have us imagine that Christianity is a culture rather than a calling that breaks into all cultures and forms of social life.

More on “place,” ideology, and incarnation

Posted by on June 7, 2011 14 comments

Some of this appears in the comment tread on yesterday’s post, but I thought it needed to be expanded into a post in its own right as well. As we consider what it means to think in terms of “place” and the church’s life, I want to be clear. My point is not that the church should not seek concretely dwell in and be concerned for its particular context. Rather my point is that we need to look not to “place” as a sort of cultural-theological category but rather need to ask “What place? Which spaces?” Inhabiting the culture of suburban affluence is not the same thing as inhabiting the culture of the urban ghetto, and we cannot include them both under the rubric of “place”, at least not if we are talking about how to avoid ideology.

In some of these discussions, as is often the case the language of “incarnation” has come up. If we relativize “place,” does that amount to a denial of the incarnation, in which God in Christ comes and dwells in a particular place and culture? If we are to be in the world as Christ himself was, does that not also mean that the church ought to enculturate itself, establishing rootedness, identity and longevity by stabilizing its life in a particular place, thus imitating and participating in Christ’s incarnation?

This use of “incarnation” I take to be an extremely widespread problem in a lot of contemporary ecclesiological and missional discourse and practice. It relies on an an unbiblical expansion of “incarnation” into a theological category that neglects the actual meaning of that doctrine in terms of the concrete history of Jesus Christ. That is to say, “incarnation” does not name a broad theological principle or metaphysical-ecclesiological quality. Rather it is a doctrine about Christ’s singular person and work that is derived from the radical event of his crucifixion and resurrection. “Incarnation” must be understood concretely in terms of Christ’s own history, his concrete story.

Taken in that light it becomes clear that the incarnation does not sanctify “place” (rootedness, cultural identity, etc.), though it continues to be taken that way. Rather we learn that the Word became flesh and tabernacled (skenoo) among us (John 1). Indeed when the Word comes to those who were “his own”, those who are his own people, those who concretely dwell in the land and the Holy Place of Jerusalem, it is precisely they who “did not receive him.” The mode of God’s “dwelling” is not that of rootedness, of Temple, but rather of Tabernacle, of sojourning without a secure “place.” And thus Jesus never “roots” his ministry anywhere but rather is found traversing all sorts of places, going to the Samaritans, Galilee of the Gentiles, and even to the houses of the Romans. He does indeed come to “the holy place” — only to be reject, driven out, and crucifed outside the city gate (more on this later). His ministry is not one of “inhabiting place” but rather of traversing place, venturing into abandoned spaces with the unclean and the marginalized. As such it is a profound theological mistake to jump from “incarnation” to a vision of rootedness, stability, a sanctifying of place. That is decidedly what Jesus does not do. Rather his whole ministry consists in the relativizing of “place”, especially the Temple, which of course was a major cause of his crucifixion.

Likewise, in the New Testament the incarnation never functions as a way of describing the scandal of the Gospel, rather it is an afterthought, a doctrine that is a mere consequence of the earth-shattering fact of the resurrection of the Crucified One. The notion that God would come and dwell with his people is not the scandal of the Gospel; that was Israel’s earliest hope as well attested throughout the Old Testament. The Scandal of the Gospel was that God would come among Israel as the Crucified One, the one cursed under Torah (Deut 21:23). It is Christ Crucified, not “Christ incarnated” that is the scandal of the Gospel. And it is always to crucifixion-resurrection, not “incarnation” that the Apostles call the church. That’s why I’m hesitant to allow “the incarnation” a sort of independent status to determine the nature of the church and its ministry. The pattern of the New Testament gospel is not from incarnation to “incarnational ministry”, but is rather from crucifixion-resurrection to cruciform self-abandonment. We need to understand “incarnation” from the cross, not the other way round.

Thus I must say again that the call to discipleship of the crucified leaves us in an unstable relationship with “place” and “rootedness” and “culture.” I’m haunted by statements like those in Hebrews: “Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb 12:13-14). Jesus comes among us, not as one who “inhabits place”, but as one who is driven out of the security and peace of “place”, rootedness, culture, etc. He is found outside the city gates, driven into the abandoned spaces along with the lepers, prostitutes, and the godforsaken. If, as Hebrews suggest, our calling is to “go to him outside the camp”, I think that should orient us, not towards the lure of stability, place, and culture, but towards the forgotten and hidden spaces in this world, the spaces that “place” crowds out and paves over, where the despised and the worthless of this world, “the poor of Jesus Christ” are abandoned, having no “place” to lay their head. That, it seems to me is where the church should be found, and towards which it should continually move.

Just so people know

Posted by on June 6, 2011 4 comments

The very best in collaborative theology blogging these days is going on at Women in Theology (WIT), who have been on a roll of fantastic posts lately. Also be sure to check out Memoria Dei for other top quality stuff from a great group of bloggers.

Also, people should keep their eye on the most recent solo blog to be added, that of Michael Gibson of IVP. There looks to be more good stuff coming our way from him as well.

“Place” and ideology

Posted by on June 6, 2011 133 comments

A while back David Fitch posted some thoughts on the power of “place” to overcome ideology in the life of the church. He states his argument, briefly as follows:

. . . it is only through “place” that we can break the cycle of ideological church. It is only through engaging in the practices of being the local expression of Christ’s body that we can break out of the entanglements of ideological cynicism. It is only in being the church of Jesus Christ, whose belief and practice is grounded in the Triune relation of God in the world, that we can avoid being ideologized. It is only in building communities that have their own internal integrity built in the on-the-ground participation in the Reign of Christ – that we can escape the ideologization of the church.  No longer dependent upon ideological structure – we can then discern – resist- participate in the world in non violent non-antagonistic ways. This of course (I would argue) is the nature of the incarnation and incarnational communities.

Now, I want to say at the outset that I understand that Fitch is emphasizing “place” (as many missional and new monastic folks do, including myself) in an attempt to combat certain elements of the contemporary evangelical church, such as suburban commuter churches in which the congregates don’t share much in the way of meaningful common life. In the face of churches whose members may live anywhere and not necessarily anywhere near one another, the call to “place” seems to make some sense. Certainly the church is not faithful if it construes itself as a sort of abstract meeting place that does not call us into common life and mission together.

However, I’ve grown increasingly less confident in the notion of “place” to do the sort of heavy lifting that is often asked of it. First of all, in contrast to what Fitch seems to suggest, I don’t see how its possible for us to construe “place” in and of itself as giving us a way to “break the cycle of ideological church.” “Place” speaks of location, stability, longevity, peoplehood, cultivation, it conjures up the images of land and home. But this seems to be part of the problem: Is not commitment to “place” the greatest source of ideology in human history? Are not wars fought precisely in the name of “place”? Is not the effort to carve out and secure “place” at the very center of ideological conflict? To speak of “place” is speak of establishment, and as such, far from becoming a site of resistance to ideology, it forms the place of its very birth. Could not the call to seize upon “place” have the exact opposite effect as Fitch intends? Might it not drive the church towards a territorialism, a possessiveness, that insists upon securing its own “internal integrity”?

We do well to remember that “place” is not neutral. “Places” are created by blood, by division, by violence. It is decidedly easy for the images of belonging and stability that “place” conjures up to imagine that it is simply benign and beautiful. But the truth is that it is not enough to call the church to embrace “place.” Rather the church must be called to critically question and act in response to the forces and powers that divide the world. It is not enough to say “place”; rather we must critically examine the nature of the different spaces in which we find ourselves. The “place” that is the urban ghetto is a decidedly different space than the suburbs or the uptown. They are not really “places” at all, but rather are spaces, created by various forces of social and political (and spiritual!) power. Embracing the “place” that is the urban ghetto is decidedly not the same thing as embracing the “place” that most middle class churches inhabit.

It seems to me that the more pertinent call to the church is not simply to embrace “place”, as if that were some overarching category. Rather the church must discern how different spaces are created in this world, how the principalities and powers seek to divide, enslave, and dehumanize those for whom Christ died and in whom he still suffers. It is into those spaces, the spaces claimed by the idolatrous powers that the church must be found if it is to be counted faithful to the Messiah who proclaimed salvation and restoration to “the least.” In entering these spaces we are not promised the security of “place.” Quite the opposite: “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Discipleship calls us, I believe, not into the security of place, but into the insecurity of obedience, of suffering with and bringing the good news to those who are being ground under the oppressive wheel of the powers. It may be that “place” is not a gift we will always be able to claim or assume upon. It may be instead that we are called to die to the security of “place,” and be driven, by the Spirit to pour ourselves out as a drink offering with, for, and alongside those who are driven out of “place.”

The martyrdom of Stephen and narrative theology

Posted by on June 3, 2011 33 comments

In the last few weeks I’ve spent a good bit of time in Acts, and more than a little of it on the story of the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 6-7). The more I read it, the more I’m struck by its profoundly explosive nature, and especially how it stands as a witness against what we commonly think of as “narrative theology.”

Stephen’s “defense” (a more profound misnomer I’m hard pressed to think of) recounts the whole story of Israel in a new way, a deeply offensive way. Indeed there is nothing defensive about his speech. His constant emphasis is that God’s people have consistently rejected God’s agents and God’s actions and have refused to obey. All this culminates in their rejection of Jesus, the presence of God himself. This is very crucial to see: Stephen tells the story of God’s people against themselves. He narrates their history as a history of their failure and refusal of God’s intentions and actions. In effect, his telling of the story of Israel is his own attempt to rob them of their assumed possession of that story.

It is a common tenet of most accounts of narrative theology that the telling of stories is crucial to how communities fashion and shape their life. We tell our stories as myths that support and sustain us; our telling of our story is a source of coherence, stability, and formation. Stories are meant to reinforce, strengthen, form us into a common identity, and that is how the church is directed to appropriate its Scriptures and traditions.

Interestingly, Stephen does the exact opposite of what we normally think of as “narrative theology.” He tells their story to literally “undo” them and all they have built themselves up to be. He claims that what God’s people have made of themselves is a failure so great that they have become the very murders of God come among them. He tells their story, not to shape, form, and maintain a community, but rather to blow the hinges off the doors that enclose this community (note that this whole conflict arises out of a controversy involving religious/cultural divisions, cf. 6:1). In his witness to the Gospel, Stephen explodes the very story that secures them, that binds them together. He is not building up, he is out to destroy. To destroy in the service of the new creation which the Gospel proclaims, to be sure, but this proclamation cannot simply be accepted (or “overaccepted”) into the existing narrative inscription, rather a break, a fracture must occur if the Gospel is to be truly spoken of and lived.

What Stephen’s opponents cannot see, and what they violently (cf. 7:54, 57) refuse to see or hear is the freedom that Stephen’s destructive narration has to offer them. The event of the resurrection, and the judgment it speaks is too much for them. They cannot accept anything other than the Old World run by Death, which is the weapon they choose to use against Stephen. And yet in the very event of wielding the power of death to try to silence his witness, the reality of the resurrection and its repetition in the martyr-witness of Stephen is made only too clear, as he dies willingly, with words of forgiveness for his killers, seeing and testifying to nothing other than the lordship of Jesus Christ, who stands at the right hand of the Father.

 

Ressentiment and the “new universalism”

Posted by on April 28, 2011 128 comments

Everybody’s buzzing about the “new universalism” these days. For my part I’m rather surprised that its taken this long for this discussion to become such a trendy subject. The most rigorous, and in my opinion, most stringent evangelical proposals for universalism are not exactly new. Books like Thomas Talbott’s The Inescapable Love of God and Gregory MacDonald’s (Robin Parry’s) The Evangelical Universalist have been in circulation for years (five years for MacDonald, over ten for Talbott). Such examples could be multiplied, and sadly it seems that with its newfound popularity, the discussions about universalism seem bound to lose theological depth and become yet another arena for various pop Christian figures to go about posturing in one direction or another. The upshot of all this the unfortunate amelioration of quality in so many of the ensuing discussions, which is partly why I’ve been so disinterested in them.

A recent example of this phenomenon is a post lambasting the “new universalists” by James K.A. Smith. While there’s certainly a lot in his post that deserves comment, I’ll just confine myself to three, one about the way he sets up his dismissal of the new universalists, and then two about his two critique-summaries of the alleged pathologies that drive people to be such universalists.

First, Jamie deems the paramount question to be “what compels one to be an evangelical universalist?” What sort of “motivation” must such people have that would possess them to want to be universalists? So the important question is decidedly not “What argument has the most merit theologically, biblically, etc.?” but rather, “What sort of emotional pathologies must people have that make them want to be universalists?”

This is an interesting mode of analysis indeed. What makes it so super awesome is that now we need not even bother about any arguments being made, now all that is required of us is to sit back and speculate about what sort of insipid motivations these new universalists might have. Why take the time to take on a theological argument when we can just as easily accuse the proponents of that argument of being a bunch of gushing sentimental liberals who just can’t bear the thought of Gandhi in hell? I suppose ad hominem has always been the easiest form of argument.

The two sub-questions that Jamie then raises, as he somehow accesses the inner motivations the new universalists, regard “imaginiation” and “hope.” The first question he clearly has the most fun with. It is, of course, the allegedly iconic statement of evangelical universalists “‘I can’t imagine’ that a God of love would condemn Gandhi to hell.” This sort of reasoning Jamie deems to be unforgivably anthropocentric, reducing God to whatever makes us comfortable and conforms with our liberal sensibilities.

Of course, it would be harder to deal with the arguments of folks like Talbott, Parry (MacDonald), and others who don’t in any way argue that it’s just so yicky and mean that I don’t want to imagine somebody as nice as Gandhi in hell. The argument, in fact, is not about how good Gandhi is, but about what Christ’s cross and resurrection means about the nature of salvation and the nature of God. But those questions — you know, the real ones — are the ones that Jamie seems decidedly not interested in engaging.

Ironically, though, even as he ignores the true theological questions in favor of casting his opponents as bleeding-hearted liberals, Jamie decides that the appropriate counter-argument is simply to affirm the inverse of the one he has just lambasted. Thus, borrowing from yet another rather ill-thought out column by Ross Douthat, Jamie asks us if we’re really comfortable with the idea of Tony Soprano in heaven. Are we really down with the idea that bad, mean, wicked people are just going to be forgiven and accepted by God? What should we say about that?

Well first of all, lets get one thing straight: Tony Soprano is fictional character for God’s sake. So I really don’t expect him to be turning up at the pearly gates. Please, if we’re just going for cheap shock value can we just go all the way with the super cool rhetoric and make it Hitler? That’s what we mean, right? So now that that’s out of the way, it seems that the counter-question Jamie wants to pose via Douthat is “If we’re uncomfortable with Gandhi in hell, why aren’t we uncomfortable with Hitler in heaven?” The real irony of this line of argument however is that is no less anthropocentric and Feuerbachian than the (imagined) argument it is designed to counter. “I can’t imagine a God who would dare to place Hitler at the banquet table alongside those he murdered!”

The argument is loaded with indignation that God might dare to unilaterally act to reconcile Nazis and their victims, Klansmen and the blacks they lynched, etc. Now who’s projecting? Are we really to believe that a vision animated by the overriding hermeneutic of retributive justice where the good guys (us) win and the bad guys get their just deserts is somehow countercultural Gospel truth, standing against the all-too-human tendency to want a God of our own designs and makings who . . . saves us along with our enemies? Seriously?

The second question Jamie lodges relates to “hope.” Namely whether or not its ok to “hope” for something that is contrary to Scripture. Of course this line of argumentation begs the rather gargantuan question of whether the hope for the salvation of all creation is really so obviously unbiblical. Of course such questions are not engaged by Jamie’s post (and really we couldn’t expect that from a post). However it bears mention that works like Talbott’s, Parry’s, and others have done serious work, both in terms of textual exegesis and theological hermeneutics on the very questions that, at the outset of his post Jamie claims such universalists don’t care about. If one is interested in really knowing what is going on in this debate, it will be necessary to go beyond the latest Rob Bell craze, and really read the substantial work that is being done in the field. That would certainly help mitigate the multiplication of posts like Jamie’s that do little more than make meta-critiques that, in reality, have no real target to find.

The real problem, I believe, that the whole buzz about “the new universalism” represents — and it is particularly typified in Jamie’s post — is the refusal to engage these questions theologically. Instead it is all a matter of figuring out who the sappy liberal is, and finding a clever way to make the accusation. If people are really interested in exploring the theological issues at work behind the current hubub, they will need to look beyond the temptation to simply attack people’s motivations, and they will have to do more than watch that one Rob Bell video on YouTube. A good place to start would be to read some the actual work that’s been being done on this topic over a long period of time, which I’ve made reference to above. Then perhaps we could see some posts on the topic that at least get the questions right.

Resurrection

Posted by on April 27, 2011 2 comments

The final summing up of all this which is told us at Easter is: Jesus is victor! Jesus — is it not he who was born in humblest lowliness, who died on the cross crying the cry of a derelict of God, he who forgave sins but who collapsed under the burden of sin, he, the humble, smitten by his fate; and of all those laden with grief, is he not the most burdened man of Nazareth? And he is to be victor?

Yes, it is always a difficult, a dark word that scarcely can be tolerated by our ears — that word “resurrection.” That is to say, it is not necessarily hazy. What it really means is clear — too clear, plain — only too plain. It means what it says: something mighty, crystal-clear, complete. It signifies: that the world, that is life with its imprisonments and tragedies of sorrow and sin, life with its doubts and unanswered questions, life with its grave-mounds and crosses for the dead, a unique enigma, so immense that all answers are silent before it. Nothing, absolutely nothing can one do to stop it; everything is too insignificant to fill up this vacuum. Admit it; it negates everything; there is no way out! There might be  the possibility of a miracle happening — no, not a miracle, but the miracle, the miracle of God — God’s incomprehensible, saving intervention and mercy, the all-inclusive renewal that leads from death to life that comes from him, God’s creation-word, God’s life-word — and that means resurrection from the dead! Resurrection, not progress, not evolution, not enlightenment, but what the word means, namely a call from heaven to us: “Rise up! you are dead, but I will give you life.” That is what is proclaimed here, and it is the only way that the world can be saved take away this summons, and make something else of it, something smaller, less than the absolute whole, less than the absolute ultimate, or less than the absolutely powerful, and you have taken away all, the unique, the last hope there is for us on earth.

~ Karl Barth, “Jesus if Victor.” In Come Holy Spirit, 148-50.

Good Friday

Posted by on April 22, 2011 1 comment

Ethics and religion and church all go in this direction: from the human to God. Christ, however, speaks only and exclusively of the line from God to human beings, not of some human path to God, but only of God’s own path to humans. Hence it is also fundamentally wrong to seek a new morality in Christianity. In actual practice, Christ offered hardly any ethical prescriptions not already attested among his contemporary Jewish rabbis or even in pagan literature. The essence of Christianity is found in its message about the sovereign God to whom alone, above the entire world, all honor is due; it is a message about the eternally other, the God removed from the world who from the primal ground of his being has loving compassion for those who render honor to him alone, the God who traverses the path to human beings in order to find there vessels of that honor precisely where human beings are nothing, where they fall silent, where they give space to God alone.

Here the light of eternity falls upon that which is eternally disregarded, the eternally insignificant, the weak, ignoble, unknown, the least of these, the oppressed and despised: here that light radiates out over the houses of the prostitutes and tax collectors . . . here that light pours out from eternity upon the working, toiling, sinning masses. The message of grace travels over the dull sultriness of the big cities but remains standing before the houses of those who spiritually speaking are satisfied, knowing, and possessing. It pronounces upon the death of people and nations its eternal: I have loved you from eternity; stay with me, and you will live. Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued. What is weak shall become strong through God, and what dies shall live.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Essence of Christianity.” In Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928-1931. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. pp. 354-55.

Explorations in Christian Theology and Apocalyptic: Call for Papers

Posted by on April 20, 2011 Comments Off

Call for Papers

The Explorations in Christian Theology and Apocalyptic working group invites individual paper proposals for an Additional Meeting to be held during the 2011 American Academy of Religion meeting in San Francisco, November 19th – 22nd, 2011.

The group will host a panel session on the theme:

Jacob Taubes and Christian Theology.

The organizers would especially invite proposals for papers which engage in constructive theological reflection on the themes and arguments of  Taubes’ Occidental Eschatology (Stanford University Press, 2009) and the essays collected in From Cult to Culture: Fragments toward a Critique of Historical Reason (Stanford University Press, 2009).

Paper presentation will be approximately thirty minutes in length.

Proposals should include your name, institutional affiliation, and the title of the proposed paper, as well as a 250 word abstract.

Please submit your proposal via email to Doug Harink (doug.harink@kingsu.ca and/or Philip Ziegler (p.ziegler@abdn.ac.uk) no later than April 30, 2011.

Details of the Call can be reviewed on the Explorations in Theology and Apocalyptic group weblog here.

Barth and the primacy of the family

Posted by on April 6, 2011 13 comments

Thanks to Melissa for sending this gem from Karl Barth my way:

If along the third main line of the texts in question we have to do with the overcoming, proclaimed with the incursion of the kingdom of God, of the false separation between man and man revealed in the friend-foe relationship and concretely expressing itself in the exercise of force, along a fourth line we have, conversely, the dissolution of self-evident attachments between man and man. It is a matter of what in popular usage, although not in that of the Bible, is usually described as the family. The relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, etc., are not questioned as such. Man would not be man if he did not stand in these relationships. What is questioned is the impulsive intensity with which he allows himself to be enfolded by, and thinks that he himself should enfold, those who stand to him in these relationships. What is questioned is his self-sufficiency in the warmth of these relationships, the resolving of their problems and the sphere of their joys and sorrows. What is questioned is his imprisonment in them, in which he is no less a captive than in other respects he may be to possessions or fame. The message of liberation comes to him in this captivity to the clan. Thus the excuse of the invited guest: ” I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come ” (Lk. 14:20), is seen to be on exactly the same level as those of others who had bought land or oxen which claimed their prior interest. And in the same connection Jesus gives the remarkable reply to the man who was ready to be a disciple but first wanted to bury his father: ” Let the dead bury their dead but go thou and preach the kingdom of God ” (Lk. 9:59f.). To the same series belong all the provocative sayings of Jesus about the leaving (apheinai), dividing (dichazein), disuniting (diamerizein) and even hating (misein) which are involved in the discipleship of Jesus – not destroying the relationships as such, but certainly dissolving the connections which continually arise and obtain in them. According to Mk, 10:29 we have not only to leave house and lands but even brother or sister, mother or father or children (the ” or ” shows us that we are dealing with individual cases), for His sake and for the sake of the Gospel. Jesus also warns us against the view that He has come to bring peace on earth (Mt. 10:34f.). He has not come to bring peace, but a sword. And if a man loves father or mother, son or daughter, more than Him, he is not worthy of Him. Or, according to the parallel passage in Lk. 12:52 : ” For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.” The strangest possible expression is used in Lk. 14:26 : ” If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Hate ? It is not the persons that are to be hated, for why should they be excluded from the command to love our neighbors ? It is the hold which these persons have and by which they themselves are also gripped. It is the concentration of neighborly love on these persons, which really means its denial. It is the indolent peace of a clannish warmth in relation to these persons, with its necessary implication of cold war against all others. The coming of the kingdom of God means an end of the absolute of family no less than that of possession and fame. Again, there is no general rule. No new law has been set up in competition with that of the world, which points so powerfully in the opposite direction. But there is proclaimed the freedom of the disciple from the general law as it is given to him, and has to be exercised by him, in a particular situation (by the particular direction which he receives). There can be no doubt that in its fear of the bogy of monasticism Protestantism has very radically ignored this proclamation of Jesus Christ, as also that of other freedoms. To a very large extent it has acted as though Jesus had done the very opposite and proclaimed this attachment – the absolute of family. Can we really imagine a single one of the prophets or apostles in the role of the happy father, or grandfather, or even uncle, as it has found self-evident sanctification in the famous Evangelical parsonage or manse ? They may well have occupied this role. But in the function in which they are seen by us they stand outside these connections. In this respect, too, no one is asked to undertake arbitrary adventures. But again, no one who really regards himself as called by Jesus to discipleship can evade the question whether he might not be asked for inner and outer obedience along these lines. The life of the new creature is something rather different from a healthy and worthy continuation of the old. When the order is given to express this, we must not refuse it an obedience which is no less concrete than the command.

~ Karl Barth, CD IV/2 549-550

 

Embittering the eucharist

Posted by on March 30, 2011 15 comments

I’ve heard it said many times in various theological discussions that, given the divided state of the church, the eucharist should taste “bitter” to us when we partake of it. What was supposed to be a sign and sacrament of our unity out to taste bitter and penitential, given our manifest disunity. Seems straightforward enough, and on one level I don’t mind such assertions. Certainly we should never minimize the sin of refusing fellowship to one another in disobedience to Christ’s work of making all things one in his Crucified body.

But, really, should the current ecclesiastical state of affairs really make our experience of the eucharist more “bitter” than it would otherwise be? Should the sign of Christ’s complete and total self-giving for us and our salvation be an occasion in which we, bitterly, reflect on our ecclesiastical shortcomings? On one level, sure, its never a bad thing to lose sight of where we stand before God, but this would be the case whether or not the church was structurally united. If there is any bitterness in the eucharist it cannot be any bitterness other than our sorrow at being those who crucify the One who loves us utterly. Whatever bitterness the eucharist has does not derive from our subsequent ecclesiastical failures, but from the event of the crucifixion itself in which we are the crucifiers.

To leap too quickly from the proper, Christologically-founded penitence that should attend our remembrance of Christ’s self-giving to an ecclesiological lament over the church’s sundered structure seems to me to be something of an adventure in missing the point.

Denying the gospel

Posted by on March 22, 2011 27 comments

I’ve already mentioned Mohler’s recent vocalization of a common evangelical predilection for despising and distrusting single people in positions of church ministry. As I’ve also noted, this whole evangelical (and in some ways more broadly Protestant) obsession with getting all ministers “safely” married and childrened is decidedly anti-biblical. The universal testimony of Jesus and Paul in the NT accounts is that, while marriage isn’t wrong, its decidedly disadvantageous to the life of discipleship. So there’s that.

But more pointedly for me is the fact that the belief that marriage is somehow safer, more adult, and more responsible for Christian ministers seems to me to deny the truth of Gospel. I don’t mean to put too fine a point on this, but is it not true that the Gospel declares that, in Christ, old “natural” divisions and restrictions are no longer sovereign? Does it not proclaim that it is the Holy Spirit who distributes gifts to the body just as God desires, irrespective of social location?

To say that there is any inherent superiority — in any way — in Christian ministers being married is not only to contradict the scriptural witness; it is also to deny that the reality of God’s work in Jesus Christ really happens the way the Gospel claims it does. To argue, as folks like Mohler do, that a social-cultural institution (however good it may be in many ways) is the dominant norm for those who would proclaim the Gospel is to deny what the Gospel proclaims, namely that in Christ social-cultural divisions, whatever they might be no longer “are.” What is something, the Gospel says, is “a new creation.”

To say that pastors need to be married is to say that there is no new creation, no presence and action of the Spirit, and indeed, that Christ is not truly Lord. It is to deny that “the form of this world is passing away” and claim instead that “all things continue as from the beginning” and therefore we cannot believe the Gospel in a way that calls forth actual action and faith. Instead we are left to simply defend cultural status quos and the various forms of domination they propagate. That is what Mohler and his ilk peddle and proclaim: The denial of the Gospel and its replacement with a project of cultural conservatism. It is idolatry of the worst sort and should be repudiated by all Christians.

 

As if it needed to be said

Posted by on March 21, 2011 40 comments

It’s good that a recent NY Times article has drawn attention to the unending evangelical idolatry of marriage and family and their correspondingly shameful treatment of single pastors, and especially of single women pastors.

Well known theological hack and neocon ideologue, Al Mohler gives us a rather striking display of his own idolatrous and anti-biblical views on the matter saying that “if [students seeking to enter the ministry] remain single, they need to understand that there’s going to be a significant limitation on their ability to serve as a pastor.”

It seems to me that the Apostle Paul believed the exact opposite of the shit that Mohler’s spouting here (1 Cor 7:28-38). Funny how explicit rejection of the clear teaching of the NT can be made to go hand in hand with blustering proclamations about inerrancy. Add it to  the laundry list of evangelical self-contradictions I guess.

The End of Ecumenism

Posted by on March 14, 2011 125 comments

By Halden Doerge and Ry Siggelkow

In recent discussions around here the issue of ecumenism has come up, and in particular the question has been raised about what we are to think theologically about the question of the church’s tangible disunity. In light of these discussions, my friend Ry Siggelkow and I spent some time working through what we think are some of the vital issues at stake in this important theological question, and to that end we offer these reflections in the hope that the cause of the church’s unity may in some small way be served.

That our concern is unity may not at once be obvious, as it is our contention that the most important way in which we can contribute to Christian unity and mission today is by actively working towards the end of ecumenism. Let us be quite clear about this, by “end” we do not mean “telos” or “goal.” We speak here not of working for the ultimate outworking and fruition of the project of ecumenism. Rather we are calling for the abandonment and termination of this project as such. Moreover it is our contention that this is necessary precisely for the sake of the unity of the church.

At the outset we must be clear what is meant by “ecumenism” as such. Certainly there are a variety of ways in which different churches and theologians have spoken of and pursued ecumenical endeavors, and there would be different lines of critique and engagement necessary in regard to many of the different forms that ecumenical impulse has taken in the history of the church. However, speaking broadly—but not, we contend, inaccurately—ecumenism can be properly understood as the effort of churches who, finding themselves not in fellowship with other churches, seek to bring about the unity that is lacking between them. Ecumenism speaks of the attempt, on the part of separated churches, to acknowledge and seek to address the reasons for their separation from one another.

What is important to see about the nature of ecumenism here is twofold. Ecumenism is fundamentally premised on the recognition of other churches as truly Christian, and on the recognition that, for various reasons, unity between these separated groups of Christians does not exist. Ecumenism involves the affirmation both of common belonging to Jesus Christ as Lord, and the affirmation that, despite this common belonging, we are not reconciled with one another for various reasons. The ecumenical problem, and its efforts to solve this problem are premised on this central conviction, that we are indeed brothers and sisters, but we are not reconciled and thus must work, through dialogue to become so reconciled.

As such, ecumenism inevitably takes the form of a sort of negotiation. Different communions, entering into dialogue with each other, learn to speak of the distinctives (theological, ethical, political, etc) that separate them so as to see if there might be a way beyond that division. Could it be that we are just misunderstanding each other? Or could we agree on a more basic compromise that would allow us to enter into full fellowship with one another? It is precisely these sorts of negotiations that make up ecumenism as we know it (a good example of this sort of effort can be seen in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation).

Over the past thirty or forty years postliberals of all stripes (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish) have sought to rethink the nature and purpose of ecumenism after “modernity.” The postliberals have rejected the traditional paradigm, with its concern for doctrinal propositions, as well as the old liberal paradigm that sought common ground on social and political fronts or in “religious experience” more generally. On the one hand there is no doubt that the unpopularity and rejection of these ecumenical visions has, at least to some extent, been bound up with the decline of mainline Protestantism. Yet, there has also been an acute sense felt among many that, although much headway has been made in official agreements and “declarations” between separated churches, this has failed to “trickle down” to the local, congregational level. Indeed, many have felt that too much ecumenical dialogue takes place among church leaders and officials at the expense of the interests and concerns of the laity and the local churches. The general trajectory of ecumenical dialogue in the postliberal vein has been a skepticism about “official” ecumenical dialogues toward a “local is better” approach.

Spurred on at least in part by George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine ecumenical dialogue in a postliberal vein has made a distinct turn away from the “abstract” and “universal” toward the “concrete” and the “particular.” In this perspective, what is needed for ecumenical dialogue to move forward is to attend to the commitments of particular communities and their practices, and to do this within a “grassroots,” lay context. The postliberal critique of liberalism (e.g., MacIntyre and Hauerwas) has shed light on the traditioned and culturally-conditioned character of all practices and convictions, whether liturgical, political, or theological. In this view, unity must be sought from the ground up so to speak, not by way of formal doctrinal agreement but by worshipping and reading Scripture together. It is by attending to these common practices that some shared vision may arise organically. This view finds the liberal view of “tolerance” distasteful, or worse, as a veiled form of oppression, but it places a high degree of value on difference and honoring the particularity of traditions. The hope is for a kind of mutually-enriching interpenetration of the treasures of each particular faith tradition. To avoid a naïve “foundationalism” each tradition is often understood as kind of self-contained whole—a “culture” in its own right. Against an overly speculative or dogmatic approach to ecumenical dialogue this approach moves forward primarily at the “practical” level by way of learning one another’s “culture” and “language” and the practices that flow from it and that inform it. In this view, little attention is given to formal doctrinal agreements, but there is rather a hope that if we begin to speak each other’s languages and learn each other’s culture through a set of common practices (e.g., reading Scripture together) then something fruitful might come out of it—hopefully some form of unity.

Much is to be commended in the postliberal turn to the “concrete” and the “particular,” perhaps especially its skepticism of hierarchy and formal doctrinal agreements, as well as its positive emphasis on the involvement of the laity. However, we are convinced that postliberalism still operates within the form of ecumenism as negotiation. In part, the problem is that postliberalism is unable to decisively break with the old ecumenical paradigm. In its turn toward the community and traditional practices as the site of ecumenical conversation, like the liberal paradigm postliberalism still works within the framework of a fundamental immanence. In its turn toward the “concrete” and against the “abstract,” like the traditional paradigm postliberalism tends to drive a wedge between doctrine and practice. The disregard of doctrine has often led to a strictly sociological perspective on the church and its practices so that the church in its visible empirical form becomes self-grounding and self-justifying.

The central problem with ecumenical dialogue in all forms is that it begins with the assumption that the empirical reality of the divided churches has fundamental theological import and that such division is something that we are charged to fix. The problem with ecumenical dialogue is that it assumes that we are the agents that bring about Christian unity. Ecumenical dialogue is unfaithful insofar as it assumes that the church as a configuration of practices is the active subject in bringing about visible unity. It is unfaithful not on account of its reliance on human agency, but because of a fundamental lack of faith in what has decisively been accomplished in Jesus Christ.

Thus, if we are to speak of the unity of the church we must begin anew, and most importantly, begin theologically. We submit that, theologically speaking, the one and only question that matters in regard to the church’s unity is: Is any given division between Christians something that, in Christ, is real? In Christ—in his work of breaking down the dividing wall of hostility, of calling those who were far off, and those who were near—is the division between, say, Protestant and Catholic a reality? Or, to put the question more biblically, “Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor 1:13). This and this alone must be our question when we seek to address the unity of the church. The one and only question before our eyes must be the question of what, in Christ, is truly real. So therein lies the question: Is the division between Protestants and Catholics something that is real in Christ?

If our divisions are not real in Christ, then we have no business living as if they were. If, in Christ, we are in fact truly one, then any reason whatsoever that we might have for refusing full and unconditional fellowship with one another is illegitimate. The only way there could ever be a “legitimate” division between Christians would be if that division reflected something that is in fact a reality in Christ himself. This is precisely why the quest of ecumenism as negotiation must be abandoned. If anyone is in Christ, none of us can ever have a legitimate reason for being separate from one another. Any negotiation we might have cannot but be disobedience from the start if, in Christ, our divisions are not real. All such forms of ecumenism as negotiation, whether they admit it or not, ultimately proclaim that our divisions from one another are real. This is to speak against the Gospel. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is not that through his work we are now able to be at peace with one another, rather it is that “He is our peace” and that he, himself has “broken down the dividing wall of separation” (Eph 2:14). The Gospel is not that this reconciliation is a possibility that we may achieve, but rather that it is an actuality that we may joyfully affirm. Ecumenism as negotiation is a betrayal of this proclamation.

Where then, does this leave us? If we are to reject ecumenism as negotiation in all its forms, what then remains of the visible unity of the church? What is our task amidst the church’s radical and manifest brokenness and division? First and foremost our vocation is to name the situation truthfully, namely that all division between Christians is a betrayal of the Gospel and a refusal to acknowledge it as true. This of course is not proper ecumenical manners, but theologically it is imperative. All divisions must be acknowledged and confronted as refusals of the Gospel. They are our sinful and rebellious refusal to affirm the actuality of the reconciliation established in Christ. They are not, theologically speaking, conflicts of interpretation or misunderstanding. They are acts of rebellion (perhaps unintentional and ignorant rebellion, but rebellion nonetheless) against the Gospel and as such we must constantly test ourselves as to whether or not we are in the Faith (cf. 2 Cor 13:5).

Secondly, since all ecumenical negotiation is an exercise of refusing the Gospel, the next important step in living towards the reconciliation actualized in Christ is for us, as bodies of believers to cease to live under the regulations imposed by such ecumenical forms. The lines of division that are drawn and proclaimed between the churches are not something to be “resolved” through dialogue. Rather they are part of the form of this present world which, in Christ, is “passing away” (1 Cor 7:31). As they are not part of the new creation that is in Christ (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15), we have no business acknowledging their power or seeking to appease it.

What is the upshot of this? It can mean nothing less than a call to all Christians and churches to “Welcome one another as God in Christ has welcomed you” (Rom 15:7). It means ignoring any pronounced wall of division that any person or community might seek to erect between Christians, no matter what its ecclesiastical source. It means we can never faithfully say “You are my sister or brother, but I cannot take eat with you for these reasons . . .” Such reasons are invalid in Christ. In Christ there is no longer any division and therefore any division that we acknowledge is to be counted among principalities and powers that crucified Jesus. To acknowledge them as legitimate is to betray the cross and the reconciliation it proclaims and effects.

The end of ecumenism is a risky proposition indeed. It calls us to attend first and foremost to the truth of Gospel, that in Christ, all our divisions, our violence, our alienation is done away with. And it calls us to cease living as if that were false; as if there were still some divisions that we need to negotiate our way through, as if there were still some alienations that Christ has not crucified in his own flesh. The end of ecumenism means the beginning of obedience, the obedience which refuses to say anything other than an unqualified Yes to fellowship, partnership, koinonia, indeed to living and dying with all those who follow after the Crucified One naming him as Lord.

Remember that you are dust

Posted by on March 14, 2011 6 comments

Last Wednesday I facilitated much of our church’s observance of Ash Wednesday, leading out in the reading of Scripture, confession, and the application of ashes. I have done this many years before and it has always been a profound time of mediation on the salvation of the Gospel, but this year it was unique. For the first time it was I alone who applied the ashes, meaning that I got to apply them to every person in the congregation (a mere 20 people, perhaps not a great feat by conventional counting standards, but still).

This meant not only applying the ashes and declaring to my loved ones (almost all of whom I’ve known deeply for years), “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” but helping many of them kneel and get back to their feet without falling down. In the time I’ve known so many people in my church I’ve seen people get much further along in years and watched their health change (and watched one sister die). Declaring their mortality to them as I supported their weight, clasping their arm to keep them from falling or slipping — that was a different experience. The proclamation of mortality was so much more deeply real, not because of anything in the liturgy, but because of the truly real, truly tangible presence of Christ to me in these concrete people with whom I am united.

Feeling the trembling hands and supporting the feeble knees of people I have known for years,  telling them that they are destined to return to dust, and that our sole hope lies in God’s utterly new act of resurrection from the dead, that was something beautiful and frightening to me. I knew as I applied the ashes and spoke those words that I would walk with these people through their deaths and visit their graves when they quite literally have returned to dust. I knew then, once again, how deeply vulnerable and defenseless we all are before the ravages of this broken world. And I knew then, once again, that in these broken vessels, in the process of returning to dust, was the light of Christ, the bringer of new creation, new life, and unlimited hope, a hope that is not seen.

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