Category Archives: Ethics

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.

 

Either-Or

Posted by on February 3, 2011 7 comments

A Sermon by Nathan R. Kerr

Delivered at Trevecca Nazarene University Chapel Service, February 2, 2011

Isaiah 58:1-9a
Psalm 112:1-9
I Corinthians 2:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20

Dear Trevecca Community! We have gathered here, whether we realize or not, to hear the Gospel. We have heard the Word of God read and proclaimed; we have sung that Word and spoken it. And now, whether we like it or not, we are called upon to listen to it and respond. Of course, to listen and respond to the Word of God is a thing much more easily said than done. In fact, were we to be honest we’d be quite happy if we could respond by not having to do anything at all. Or, at least, we’d be quite happy if we could respond by not having to do or think anything that we have not been doing and thinking all along. We would be quite happy if we could politely nod and say, “Oh yes, that is what I have always thought and felt in my heart of hearts.” We would be quite happy if we could smile in approval and say, “Yes, that is a righteousness that I could live for; it fits very well with my own highest ideals, my own goals for life. And better yet, it hardly requires a single change in how I go about my day!” Well, let us be honest with ourselves for a moment. If that is what we want, it is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ but religion that we desire. It is not a God who calls us to repentance and service that we want, but a God who acts as an insurance agent charged with protecting and securing our highest dreams and ideals. What we want, in short, is what the bible calls a “false prophet.” What we want is a word from God that affirms our own human affairs, preferably in the form of a sound-byte that can be played in a loop as a piece of popular public opinion and political propaganda.

And yet, with our passages from Scripture today, we start to get the sense that things might not be as they seem. Especially with the passage from Matthew that we just read, we start to get the sense that the righteousness to which we are called, the righteousness of Jesus Christ himself, does not simply reaffirm our present life, but rather challenges and confronts our life, putting to us a question that calls for a decision—a real, direct Either-Or?! “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Either the self-justifying righteousness of the Pharisees, or the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven. Either the righteousness that serves your own interest and oppresses all your workers, or the righteousness that looses the bonds of injustice and lets the oppressed go free. Either the lofty words of your own human wisdom, or Jesus Christ, and him crucified. This is why the Gospel demands that we must make a decision—not only this hour of this day, but every day, and every hour of our lives. Any so-called “Christian faith” that does not begin each day and hour anew with the decision to repent and to follow after the righteousness of Christ is a dead-end, a cul-de-sac in which we are caught within the righteousness of our own making. Any so-called “Christian faith” of this kind is an outright denial of the Gospel itself.

So, we must ask: Just what is the Word of God calling us to today? Just what does it mean to decide against the earthly well-being and security of Pharisaical righteousness, and to decide for the kingdom of heaven that comes with the righteousness of Jesus Christ? To answer these questions we will need to take a second look at our text. We must begin by noting the relation of our passage to the central theme of the Sermon on the Mount and of Matthew’s gospels as a whole. For Matthew, that theme appears with Jesus’ announcement that the kingdom of God has drawn near. The whole world has been invaded by the reign and rule of Christ’s perfect, self-giving love. This reign and rule is at the heart of the Sermon from which our passage comes. All of life is to be directed towards obedience to and discipleship of the one who embodies this love in his own person and life—Jesus Christ. “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well,” Jesus will say later in the sermon. And so this is the first point that we have to make: the kingdom of heaven has broken into this world in Jesus Christ and that kingdom demands of us our undivided surrender and service. The Sermon on the Mount is nothing if not a call to this undivided surrender and service to the kingdom—a call to follow in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

But this leads us to a second point: The entire weight of the Sermon on the Mount rests on Jesus’ command to “Repent!” The whole sermon demands that we hear in the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ a call to repentance, a call to turn from every idol that this world has to offer and that separates from God, a call to turn to God in Christ, and a call to turn with Christ to love every neighbor that is condemned, outcast, hungering, and dying at the hands of this idolatrous world. In this sense, Jesus’ call to repentance at the heart of the kingdom is radically liberating; the kingdom comes as good news because the kingdom comes in such a way as to liberate us from our enslavement to the idolatrous compulsion to self-mastery, power, and control, and to set us free for the life of abandoned, self-giving love that is found in discipleship of the crucified Nazarene.

It is on this point that the whole of the difference between the righteousness of the law as understood by the scribes and Pharisees and the righteousness of the law as fulfilled by Jesus Christ is to be understood. You see, for the Pharisees, fulfillment of the law turned on the ideal of successful human performance. Righteousness for the Pharisees was understood in terms of the ways in which my actions, my religious sincerity, my pursuit of moral goodness secures for me a right position in regards to God and others. It is little wonder that Jesus will later criticize the Pharisees for their “hypocrisy.” The word “hypocrite” is not necessarily, as we think of it today, used to describe a person who does not mean what they say or does not intend what they do. The Pharisees were no doubt as serious as anyone about meaning and intending what they say and do. Rather, as the Greek word hupocrisis implies, the hypocrite is a kind of “play-actor” that constructs a false “self”; in the eyes of God the hypocrite is one who is deluded into thinking she can work to make herself good, when in reality such work is mere play-acting before God. In today’s world, we would look at such people and call them “pious” or “devout.” We might even say, in our delusion, that they’re “holy” or “sanctified.” But these do not enter the kingdom of heaven; their religion is their own reward. And so, the scribes and Pharisees are those who use the law to construct a religion and a religious life according to their interests and concerns. Naturally, such are those for whom “righteousness” and their own sense of personal “goodness” are one and the same. For the Pharisee is the one for whom the meaning, power, and comfort of the law depends upon the ways in which it accords with what she wishes to do and to think.

Now, let us be clear about what is going on here. Not only is the righteousness of the Pharisees a righteousness of their own making, but it is equally a righteousness that is impotent to challenge the injustices of this idolatrous and murderous world. The religion of the Pharisees is the religion of the status quo; and so it is no wonder that the greed and self-indulgence of the scribes will eventually lead them into collusion with the Roman Empire for the sake of bringing Christ to death. Their idolatrous concern for righteousness of self will lead them to an equally idolatrous concern for the powers of political convention and religious bureaucracy, a concern that deafens them to the cries of those who are oppressed and dying at the hands of these powers. “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,” the prophet Isaiah says, “and oppress all your workers.”

But let us also be clear about something else (and this will no doubt hit closer to home). This is not just the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day. If we are honest with ourselves, this is the righteousness of white, Middle class American Christianity. We may think that because all this concern for pious performance and religious devotion took place two millennia ago in a land far, far way away that it is not so directly relevant to us; surely Christianity has moved beyond such Pharisaical hypocrisy in 2,000 years! Well, if that is the case, we might as well slam the Bible shut. The truth is, our world today is every bit as obsessed with right performance, self-mastery, and control as the world of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. And we have gotten just as good at constructing a Christianity that meets our own concerns and interests as any Pharisaical usage of the law ever did. We have gotten quite good at constructing a kind of piety and devotion that allows us to go on feeling good about ourselves even as we participate in the most destructive and abusive power structures that this idolatrous world has to offer.

How long, I say? How long will we continue to proclaim that in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, while we continue to support racist legislation that makes it easier to imprison or deport blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims because of the perceived threat they pose to our comfortable middle class lives? How long will we continue to recite verses about hospitality and welcoming the stranger while supporting legislation that allows us to discriminate against the undocumented immigrant while profiting from their cheap labor? How long will we continue to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is freedom and peace for all nations while blindly pledging allegiance to and flying in our churches the flag of a nation whose economic system depends upon the violent exploitation and rape of the third world’s workers and natural resources? How long will we confess with Paul that in Christ there is no longer male and female while continuing to allow patriarchal attitudes towards sexuality and gender to determine one’s fitness for Christian service? How long will we go on with such self-righteousness? How long, indeed?

But praise God, there is genuine good news! God in God’s mercy has not left us to our own religious devices? God in Christ has not left us to perform the law for ourselves, but in Christ has fulfilled that law, transforming the law from being a tool for self-mastery and religious and political control, and into being a way of freedom from ourselves and our own idolatrous compulsions, a way of freedom for loving, self-giving service to all God’s creatures. In this way, the law is not the means for our own religious self-righteousness, but is the lived expression of a greater righteousness, another kind of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ’s kingdom. Such righteousness comes not by blindly clinging to the letter of the law in concern for pious self-fulfillment. Such righteousness comes rather through repentance, the kind of repentance in which God’s grace frees me from the tyranny of religious and political achievement, and frees me for love of my neighbor, especially that neighbor that has been tyrannized and oppressed by my own concern for such achievement in the first place.

So what does this kind of righteousness look like? It decisively does not look like a kind of achieved human moral or spiritual heroism, the kind self-construction of the righteous person through successful human performance, the kind of “play-acting” which Jesus names straightforwardly as “hypocrisy”—the kind of righteousness whereby we are clearly in control. This “greater righteousness” looks precisely like the kind of indiscriminate love with which God first loved us in Christ; it looks precisely like the kind of life lived out of our control. It looks like the forgiveness of debt in the face of a world bent on achieving profit at all costs; it looks like the refusal of violence in the face of an enemy that knows only the language of warfare; it looks like a willingness to give, and to give again and again, when repayment and return are not only unexpected but impossible; it looks like welcoming the undocumented immigrant into your house and naming her a sister in Christ, when everyone around you seems hell-bent on expelling her from their homeland and naming her a stranger and alien. This is what it means today to “loose the bond of injustice,” “to let the oppressed go free,” to “share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house.” This is what it means to repent, to be set free from the idolatrous righteousness of religion, and to live according to the liberating righteousness of Christ’s love. To such a love we surely cannot expect the powers of this world to give their consent. But our passage for today does promise that such a love will be seen as a bright light; and it gives us hope that these powers might be given to see in this love an unexpected thanksgiving and delight, so that they too might, by some miracle, “give glory to the Father who is in heaven.”

And so, dear TNU community, today we have before us two kinds of righteousness. On the one hand, we have the righteousness of self-mastery and control, the righteousness of the religious and political status quo, the righteousness of humanly constructed integrity and self-justification. On the other hand, we have the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven, the righteousness of self-giving love, the righteousness of Christ, of a body broken and of a blood shed for the life of this world. We—You and I—must decide. It is one or the other, not both. The Gospel of Jesus Christ itself allows no middle ground. Here we are confronted with the starkest Either-Or! And so we—You and I—must decide! And if we—You and I—have been given ears to hear, if it is the Gospel that has indeed been heard, then we—You and I—must decide today, right here, right now.

Women in Theology

Posted by on November 17, 2010 19 comments

While I’m a little bit late to the party, I want to make sure to direct folks to the excellent new blog, Women in Theology (WIT). Boasting nine different authors writing from various academic and disciplinary theological contexts, this blog helps to fill a  still-wide lacuna in the theological blogosphere. There are plenty of fascinating posts from the last couple months that merit attention, but please take special note of the most recent posts which properly point out some of the mind-numbing madness involved in Milbank’s latest post on sex. Thank you!

I look forward to more great posts from this important blog. Keep up the good work!

Homophobiaphobia

Posted by on November 9, 2010 50 comments

There’s a lively discussion underway at Daniel Kirk’s blog in which he has called for a moratorium on the use of the word “homophobic” as a descriptor for folks whose theological and/or political positions on same-sex relationships is non-affirming. Now of course I’ll be the first to admit that I believe there are many who aren’t irrationally afraid of gay sex who have disagreements about the theological status of same-sex relationships. But the ensuing conversation around Daniel’s post brought some stuff back up for me that I think merits mention.

First, it seems incontrovertible to me that when the gay community calls certain positions or behavior from others “homophobic” they are stating something about the way in which they experience those ideas and behaviors. In other words, it is a relational term. What they experience from how these others relate to them is an experience of being reflexively feared and viewed as a source of revulsion. As such, I don’t see how it can be up to others to tell the gay community when and whether they can use the word to describe others. What they are describing is their experience of being treated a certain way by others. Now I suppose people could argue that they are wrong about all that, and they have, in fact, been being treated with love and dignity when they thought they were being treated with fear and revulsion, but it seems to me that that would have to be a pretty convincing argument. In my experience people tend to have pretty good sense of when others are afraid of them and find things about them repulsive.

Second, I’m really perplexed by why people are so desperate to avoid the term “homophobic” being applied to them. Now of course, no one wants to be accused of having an irrational fear, which is conjured up by the term “phobia.” But let us leave that aside, especially since it seems to me that the most common connotation of “homophobic” is not irrationality but simply revulsion. If same-sex activity and relationships are sins against God and nature, why would anyone shy away from despising those acts? If gay sex is just as wrong as pederasty or incest, why should we be so concerned to make sure we’re all polite about the one and not the other? Why all the fear of “homophobia” if that is, in fact, what taking sin seriously is supposed to mean?

I always find it interesting how the anti-gay sex position always wants to insist on a polite, measured, and properly ordered civil dialogue about the issue. They claim that to toss around terms like “homophobic” is to distract from the “real issues” and inhibit conversation. Honestly I’m pretty convinced that the real diversion from substantive dialogue is the insistence on keeping everything all tidy and polite. To try to sanitize everything in advance and make sure no one gets called any names sounds innocent enough, but it is hardly a neutral move. To insist that things never get heated and self-involving is to cast the argument, in advance, as one in which all participants are good, honest, basically forward thinking folk that just need to speak more clearly to each other. But its an open question whether that is in fact that case. The gay kid who got the shit kicked out of him all through high school, often by Christians, may not feel like he can extend that sort of open hand of politeness, and who are we to say that he has to?

Anyways, my main point is that the desire to sanitize this discussion is itself an ideological move. If we’re really talking about things as important as both sides think we are, there’s no reason to assume that this should be some sort of polite conversation. According to traditional Christian teaching, non-heterosexual sex is a sin against God and an nature, which, like all sins can send you to hell. That’s serious. According to the movement for same-sex rights today the traditional view of homosexuality is degrading, oppressive, and inhumane. That’s serious too. If we’re talking about things that really are that serious, lets let them be serious rather than trying to keep everything nice and contained for the sake of appearing polite and agreeable. To do that is simply to be dishonest about the nature and severity of the disagreement. And that serves no one, at least in terms of furthering discussion and understanding.

Two extremes

Posted by on October 6, 2010 13 comments

If you want to read something incredibly stupid, make sure to check out Mark Tooley’s dreck, “Mennonite Takeover.” This lovely piece of “writing” wonders if the malignant Neo-Anabaptists of today will someday repent of all the mean things they say about “traditional American Christianity,” you know, since mainline Christians have apologized profusely for killing all those Anabaptists back in the day it seems only fair. . .

On the other hand if you want to read something incredibly good, check out the second part of K.J. Swanson’s three-part article critiquing the politics of gender in evangelicalism and the Twilight series.

9/11 and fear

Posted by on September 13, 2010 5 comments

Gil Anidjar has an excellent article up at the ABC Religion and Ethics page, which speaks well to the culture of fear that continues to be inculcated in America after 9/11. Well worth a read. Here’s a segment:

One thing the prophets, poets, and philosophers of old did not endlessly rehearse is, “Be afraid, be very afraid! There is danger everywhere. Remember what was done to you and how it has hurt and, above all, frightened you. Build onto yourself higher walls, therefore, make bigger bombs and better security gates, for your own exclusive care and protection. And make sure those immigration laws are tighter than what is inflicted on them bankers!”

It should be obvious that, though we can all-too easily be persuaded otherwise, we are not all vulnerable in the same manner. We are not exposed to the same risks and we do not all have the same life expectancy.

Those among us who are more privileged, more protected, as it were, may or may not have a choice in the emotional response we experience with regard to the state of the world. But it does seem like we might have some choice in what we embrace and condone by way of our collective behaviour, our politics.

On the anniversary of 9/11, therefore, I remember the schoolchildren who, over the course of the Cold War, were taught fear on their flesh by crouching under their desks. And I remember the role played by shoes today in the pedagogy of fear.

That is why I want to believe that the American president might address the nation and the “international community” with the following words:

“My fellow Americans, and fellow Westerners, do not be afraid. Verily, I say unto you: Do not fear the shoes of our neighbours. Do not fear them at airports first. Perhaps, you will learn not to fear them at the entrances of mosques. For the love of God, or that of the poor (the downtrodden), the widow (the refugee), and the orphan (the immigrant).”

The evangelical-vampiric construction of femininity

Posted by on September 9, 2010 2 comments

Among the new articles just published at TOJ, one of the most helpful is K.J. Swanson’s critique of the various evangelical Christian responses to the Twilight series. Given all the evangelical (and Catholic, lets be equal opportunity offenders here) uproar over the Harry Potter series it is pretty amazing that most Christian responses to the Twilight series has been at at most neutral and often glowingly enthusiastic.

As you might expect this divergence has everything to do with sex, particularly Twilight’s portrayal of female sexuality. Says Swanson:

Beth Felker Jones explains in Touched by a Vampire, “the themes of Twilight are all about what it means to be female.” This question of what it means to be female is one evangelicals have been trying to help girls answer for years. Whether it’s the formidable Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood or the franchised Every Man series, the evangelical media has produced an entire industry of relationship advice books that are not primarily about managing one’s love life, but are, rather, instructional guides to help readers personify “authentic” masculinity and femininity. And with the publication of books about Twilight written by evangelical Christian authors for adolescent girls, the evangelical conversation about Twilight has actually merged with the genre of evangelical relationship texts for young women. The manner in which such books respond to the cultural impact of Twilight follows the evangelical trajectory of placing gender at the heart of Christian faith, normalizing and spiritualizing patriarchal interpretations of femininity.

Be sure to check out the whole article and the two forthcoming installments which will complete the series. One final parting shot from Swanson’s apropos critique:

It is ultimately fitting that Twilight should be so often called a “guilty pleasure,” for at the very core of its narrative, we find guilt being linked to pleasure; a teenage girl wooed into physical intimacy but denied that intimacy the very moment she acts on her feelings. The mixed message of Edward’s pattern of seductive arousal, followed by shaming rejection, puts Bella in the position of needing to break Edward’s rules in order to honestly express what she feels. Bella is called a “bad girl” not because she is kissed, but because she kisses back. Kurt Bruner worries that Twilight will teach young readers that “even good girls are eager to have sex before marriage,” but he has no words of critique for Edward’s erotic pursuit of Bella. The cost of evangelical praise for Twilight is a deepening of the split between sexuality and spirituality wherein young girls have no recourse but to remain frozen like an obedient Bella would or become “bad” by reciprocating as Bella actually does. Either choice allows shame to reign where dignity should abide.

Best. Review. Ever.

Posted by on June 29, 2010 13 comments

Its been a while since I’ve indulged in something linking to a movie review, but this is just too damn good to pass up. Drew McWeeny’s review of the latest Twilight schlock is just utterly fantastic:

Here’s where I have a problem.  I don’t care if they get married or not, because in this film, “get married” is just code for “now we can do it.”  Their marriage isn’t about building something together or creating a family.  Their marriage isn’t about time they’ve spent together and time they want to spend together.  It’s all hormonal.  It’s all impulse.  Bella Swan is defined as a character purely by who she wants to sleep with, and I don’t care if she actually consummates the act or not.  This movie is driven from start to finish by the real estate between her legs, and if that sounds blunt or harsh, good.  I want it to sound ugly, because I think it is ugly.  Deeply ugly.  She’s the weakest, most dependent lead in a film that I can imagine.  There is nothing interesting about Bella aside from her desire for these two boys.  It is a narcissistic teenage fantasy taken to a disturbing depth.  Nothing in the world of these movies matters beyond the resolution of whether or not Bella is going to bone Edward.  And when.  And how.  And whether she’s going to bone Jacob as well.

There is talk of love, but there is nothing like love in these movies.  These are not stories about love.  They are stories about infatuation, temporary teenage madness.  And, hey, man… I may be ancient at this point, but I remember what it’s like when you’re a teenager and everything feels so important, and I’ve seen films that get that frenzy just right and they still manage to feature real character work and stories that are interesting and actual events.  You can make a great movie about the rush of teenage love.  You can use it as a backdrop for all sorts of stories.  But for that to be the thing that holds us as an audience, we have to believe that there’s something behind it.  I have yet to see anything in any of these movies that would connect these characters beyond narrative convenience.

Bella doesn’t love these men because of things they have done together.  Instead, everything they do together is because they “love” Bella.  It’s a pissing contest.  And both of the guys are just as poorly defined and as grotesque as Bella in what they represent.  Edward is her “dream man,” and as depicted in the films, he’s basically a control freak who treats her like an object to possess.  He lies to her.  He manipulates her.  He is unable to tolerate her interacting with anyone else.  Ladies… if you have a chance to marry a man who acts like Edward while you’re dating, do it.  And then you can look forward to broken bones and mysterious bruises and a slow and methodical separation from friends and family until you exist only for him.  Which is obviously what you’re looking for, right?  Ooooh, romantic.

Or if Edward’s love isn’t the right kind for you, then maybe you can get lucky and earn yourself a Jacob.  A guy who is hot enough that he knows you will love him, and if you don’t, then it’s just a matter of time.  After all, look at his abs.  He doesn’t offer anything more substantial than Edward in terms of emotion or support, but he does have those abs.  He’s also got body heat, so obviously he is a better choice for Bella.  He has one scene where he actually tells her that he has not imprinted on her as a mate, as is the way with his kind, but that doesn’t matter.  We’re still supposed to believe that this is important, that this struggle over this pathetic, empty dishrag means something.

I love women.  I love all sorts of women.  And because I love real women, actual flesh and blood human being that happen to have a slightly different arrangement of chromosomes than I do, I despise these movies.  I hate them for what they offer up as a value system.  I hate them because there are girls who mistake their own chemical response to the male leads in the movie as an actual affection for the story that’s being told.  They invest on the surface level, and in the meantime, there is this poisonous cancer, this vile insidious message that’s being sold to them underneath.  I hate these movies because they tell girls that this is their value in the world.  Who you bang defines you.  You are worth your vagina and nothing more.  You are who your man is.  That is all.

I just want to point out that this is the first time that the categories of “awesomeness” and “Things that make you want to gouge your eyes out with your pinky, shove scalding hot pokers in your ears, and repeatedly slam the door of a 1950s-vintage, American-made sedan on your head” have become unified in one post.

H/T: Brad E.

Yoder’s Warsaw Lectures

Posted by on June 25, 2010 36 comments

In the last year, several books by John Howard Yoder have been posthumously published, all concerned in various ways with the issue of nonviolence. The biggest of these is, of course, Yoder’s Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution. The most anticipated, however, may well have been The War of the Lamb. Less heralded is the most recently published of the three, Nonviolence: A Brief History. However, I would perhaps recommend Nonviolence even more highly than The War of the Lamb.

There are several reasons for this. First of all, Nonviolence and The War of the Lamb have significant overlap—in terms of subject matter, actual content, and size/approachability. They both contain the same chapters—“From the Wars of Joshua to Jewish Pacifism” and “The Science of Conflict”—which to my mind is indicative of how closely tied the books are, yet also how different they are, editorially speaking. It’s the editorial difference that leads me to commend Nonviolence over The War of the Lamb.

My concern is that the editors of The War of the Lamb seem to have taken too many liberties in their work of crafting the book form of these essays. Comparing the shared chapters between the two volumes is quite revealing. In Nonviolence, for example, there are a total of 6 footnotes in “From the Wars of Joshua to Jewish Pacifism,” all of which the editors make clear in their introduction are their own addition to the text. In The War of the Lamb, by contrast, “From the Wars of Joshua to Jewish Pacifism” contains 16 footnotes, many of which speak in the first person, as though they are in fact from Yoder himself, though they appear to be editorial additions (The War of the Lamb also contains some footnotes that the editors claim as their own).

These differences between the books makes me worry that the editors of The War of The Lamb took some liberties that served to blur Yoder’s voice with their own. In particular, it seems that Glen Stassen’s “just peacemaking” project lurks in the background of certain editorial decisions. For example, the back cover summary, Stassen’s introductory essay, the unspecified editorial additions to the footnotes and subtitles of the chapters—these all work to give the impression that the argument of Yoder’s book supports Stassen’s own project, which is centered around a rapprochement of the just war tradition and pacifism. Indeed, the back cover “summarizes” the book as arguing that the “Christian just war and Christian pacifist traditions are basically compatible.” As I have argued on this blog, this reading of Yoder’s work is patently false. Most distressingly, the text of The War of the Lamb actually refutes the back cover’s summary of it. Yoder is straightforward that his dialogical approach to the just war tradition is not because he thought it complementary to pacifism in any sense:

I know from having tested it for thirty years from inside that the just war tradition is not credible. I don’t dialogue with it because I think it is credible, but because it is the language that people, who I believe bear the image of God, abuse to authorize themselves to destroy other bearers of that image. (p. 116)

Fortunately, as the above quote demonstrates, Yoder’s voice rings through, and thus the book still has very real and indispensable value. However, those of us interested in Yoder’s work being disseminated simply for its own sake and in its original form have reason to be disappointed by the way in which this book was packaged and slanted towards bolstering a project that was not, in any explicit sense, Yoder’s own.

Nonviolence is a different matter altogether. Many of the same themes are covered in similar depth, but the editorial judiciousness is deeply refreshing. The editors of Nonviolence, no less than Stassen, are invested in advancing arguments about how Yoder ought to be read and the direction of his thought. However, none of this agenda is brought to bear on the text of the lectures in the way that Stassen’s just peacemaking seems to appear in The War of the Lamb. For this kind of editorial judiciousness, I am very grateful.

Both of the books are indispensable and very helpful. I highly recommend both. My preference for Nonviolence reflects my judgment that scholars ought to separate clearly the tasks of presenting Yoder’s own thought from offering their own reflections upon it.

Family problems & the church

Posted by on May 25, 2010 63 comments

You gotta give it to the great Texan when it comes issues regarding the role of “the family” in the Christian life:

The assumption that the family is an end in itself can only make the family and marriage more personally destructive. When families exist for no reason other than their own existence, they become quasi-churches, which ask sacrifices far too great and for insufficient reasons. The risk of families that demand that we love one another can be taken only when there are sustaining communities with sufficient convictions that can provide means to form and limit the status of the family. If the family does stand as a necessary check on the state, it does so because it first has a place in an institution that more determinatively stands against the state—the church. (After Christendom, 127)

Of course I could argue a few things about the way Hauerwas characterized the nature of the church here, but perhaps we’d do better if we simply took Hauerwas’s altogether appropriate chastening of the family here and extended it a step further:

The assumption that the church is an end in itself can only make the church more personally and communally destructive. When churches exist for no reason other than their own existence, they become quasi-nation-states, which ask sacrifices far too great and for insufficient reasons. The risks of being the church that demand that we love one another can be taken only when there is the miraculous work of the Spirit of Christ which transforms us, revealing the limit of our status as the church. If the church does stand as a necessary check on the state, it does so because it first has a place in an eschatological reality that more determinatively stands against, and has defeated all principalities and powers—the Kingdom of God.

Conversations on “Just War”

Posted by on May 21, 2010 63 comments

For those who haven’t seen it yet, our own R.O. Flyer has a great review up at The Other Journal of Dan Bell’s recent book, Just War as Christian Discipleship. Here’s a quote to whet the ole appetite:

As Christians, our allegiance is first of all to Christ, not to the just war tradition. If the concern of Christian discipleship is ultimately faithfulness to Jesus of Nazareth, then neither the church community nor its many traditions are free from critique. In times of great moral uncertainty like ours, plumbing the depths of the wisdom of the theological tradition in a fresh manner can often open up fruitful paths of inquiry to help guide us in our contemporary context. Such plumbing, however, if it remains open to the voice of the Spirit, may lead us to call into question and even challenge the wisdom and faithfulness of our inherited moral and theological tradition. Although it is imperative that contemporary Christians listen with a spirit of generosity to our mothers and fathers in the faith, there may be times when, precisely because of our boundedness to Christ and with respect for the faith of our predecessors, we will be led to reject rather than retrieve a particular trajectory of thought taken in the past.

Interestingly Dan Bell has responded extensively in the comments, leading to further response from Ry and myself. Check out the conversation.

On taking sin seriously

Posted by on May 6, 2010 24 comments

In my recent, and utterly long sermon I quoted from Robert Jenson about the nature of the Gospel’s morality, a quote that I find vital and illuminating in many ways:

The gospel’s specific morality is a matter of opened opportunities, of what we may reasonably do because Jesus lives, that otherwise would have been foolish. The normal morality is a matter of imposed constraints, of what we must do, that otherwise we would have liked not to. [. . .] the gospel’s specific morality is a morality of freedom. Insofar as the gospel moves us, we do what we do because we may, not because we ought. And a good act is one which finds the way to love, to the affirmation of the brother’s freedom.

We hear the from the gospel what we may do, when the gospel affirmatively interprets the hopes and fears that move our lives. The gospel makes our hopes possibilities by making them hopes for the love that is indeed coming. When the gospel is spoken to a [person] or a community, it speaks to the particular inhibitions that keep that [person] or community from [. . .] their own humanity. The gospel dismisses those inhibitions. It’s pattern is: “You may . . . because, if Jesus is risen, there is no need to fear . . .” [. . .]

Thus the specific morality of the gospel is not a mater of “laws.” The gospel’s moral discourse does not say “Do this and do that because you ought/must/would be best advised/will be rewarded.” It does not have the “if . . . then . . .” form. It imposes no conditions whatever, on anything at all. It does not say “Do . . . , because otherwise you won’t get into heaven.” It does not say—with a bit more religious sophistication: “Do . . . , because, although of course God will accept you anyway, that is what good Christians do.” It does not even say: “Do . . . , because virtue is its own reward.” The moral discourse of the gospel says only: “You may do . . . , because Jesus lives” (Robert Jenson, Story and Promise, 81, 82).

Obviously this approach to ethics is extremely liberating. The divine word does not impose constraints, make demands, and level requirements. Rather it simply frees. The Gospel forbids nothing, it merely liberates us for lives of true fullness.

Of course to many this will seem woefully inadequate. Is this not simply a cover for moral libertinism? Does not all this fanciful talk of “opened opportunities” merely mask a maneuver that seeks to use “freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence” (Gal 5:13)?

Actually, no not all. In fact this resurrection-centered understanding of the nature of the Gospel’s morality is the only way I can possibly imagine to take sin seriously. This notion insists that all sin is never a matter of some “thing” I can do that I ought not to do. Rather sin is always and everywhere a falling into slavery. The Gospel does not, therefore “forbid” us to sin — what real sense would it make to say that we are “forbidden” to enslave ourselves, mutilate ourselves, denigrate ourselves? — rather the Gospel frees us from sin.

The problem with the traditionally “serious” way of talking about sin and ethics is that it ends up simultaneously not taking sin seriously and making it far too interesting. If we view sin simply as bad, but nearly always seductive and at least fleetingly pleasurable things we ought not to do, we at once make sin interesting and rather unserious. If however we take the logic of the Gospel seriously we must understand sin always and only as slavery, as domination, denigration, and futility. We are not “forbidden” to be enslaved, we are freed from our slavery. We are not “commanded” to no longer dominate and denigrate ourselves and one another, we are freed from that infantile and dreadful compulsion.

This, it seems to me is the only way to really take sin seriously and to recognize how uninteresting it is. Sin is simply the slaveries we subject ourselves and one anther to. It is a world of striving, suffering, and death. God doesn’t come to us with commands not to do such things, God in Christ breaks the power of these forces and frees us from them. The Gospel closes down no true opportunity for anything interesting, rather it always on only opens opportunities and creates new possibilities. It is always and only a liberation. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything else simply doesn’t take sin seriously.

The sex-crazed Luther

Posted by on March 9, 2010 12 comments

Luther had some pretty crazy views about sex and marriage. For him, marriage is basically a medicine for the animal lust that is the human sex drive. The desire for sex is simply always sinful and marriage is given as a way to satiate that sinful desire in a somehow not sinful way.

This had some rather wild implications. On at least one occasion, Luther castigated a man who married a woman without revealing beforehand his impotence. Luther viewed the man’s deception as completely and utterly outrageous. Since he wasn’t able to fulfill his husbandly duty, in Luther’s mind he was not a real husband at all. Thus, Luther advised the woman to simply start a sexual relationship with someone else (though he did think she should ask her legal husband’s permission first). But he also said that if her husband wouldn’t allow it, then she should simply bolt in the night and find a new husband somewhere else (See WA 6, 558–59).

However, Luther was equally hard on the women who didn’t want to give out as much sex as their husband’s felt like (Luther advised sex at least 2-3 times per week in marriage, by the way). If a wife isn’t open to fulfilling her husbands needs, then according to Luther, “. . . it is time to say: ‘If you don’t want, then another one will. If the wife does not want sex, then let the maid come.’ However, this should only be said when the husband has warned her wife two or three times, and thereafter he has informed other about her stubbornness . . . if even then the wife is unwilling, then let her go and let an Esther be given to you, and let the Vasthi go, just as King Ahasuerus did” (WA 10/II, 290, 8–14).

There’s some marital advice for you!

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God’s preferential care

Posted by 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 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.”

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