Month: June 2006

(See here and here for previous posts.)

Next to Anselm’s, Peter Abelard’s atonement theory may be the most criticized in Christian history, though usually by different people. Beginning with his contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux and continuing to evangelicals in our own day who uphold the indispensibility of satisfaction or penal substitution atonement models, Abelard’s theory has been characterized as “exemlarist,” “subjective,” and even “Pelagian.” In chapter seven of his Past Event and Present Salvation, Paul Fiddes sets out to rehabilitate Abelard, realizing though that there are shortcomings in his account that need to be corrected.

In Fiddes’ view, a more “subjective” account of the atonement is what we need. Not because God wasn’t acting in Jesus to redeem us, but because sin is a power that grips us from which we need to be freed. In Fiddes’ (and Abelard’s) view, we are the obstacles to reconciliation, not God. Abelard points out that it’s hard to see how the death of Jesus could have satisfied God’s justice and made him better disposed toward us since the murder of the Son of God is surely a far worse sin than Adam’s disobedience! For Abelard, we should think of atonement as first and foremost an act of God’s love, not an act constrained by some external factor like the demands of justice or the supposed rights of the Devil.

The most persistent criticism of Abelard has been that he sees Jesus as simply providing an edifying example of love which we are then called to imitate. If this is right, then he would seem to fall into the trap of Pelagianism, since such a theory would presuppose that we’re able to imitate Christ’s example. But Fiddes is at pains to show that Abelard’s theory is more “objective” than he’s been given credit for. The life and death of Jesus doesn’t just provide an example; it empowers us to repent and turn away from sin because God’s love is poured out through Jesus.

Abelard’s perception is that the showing forth of the love of God in the life of Christ is at the same time the pouring forth of love into the one who beholds it. Christ ‘illuminates’ us by his teaching, and by such aspects of his life as patience in suffering, discernment into evil, persistence in prayer, perfect obedience to God, humility in the face of malice and finally his selfless sacrifice for others in death: ‘Dispelling our shadows with light, he showed us, both by his words and example, the fullness of all virtues, and repaired our nature.’ As Abelard moves from the word ‘showed’ to ‘repaired’ he is trying to express his insight that the love disclosed is at the same time the love which recreates. … Abelard is not simply saying that the revelation of love saves us; he is saying that love as it is revealed saves us. (p. 145)

The crucifixion of Jesus reveals to us both the consequences of human sin, inciting repentance, and the depths of God’s love, thus enkindling love in response. In Fiddes’ view this is a more adequate view than some of the other traditional views because it recognizes that sin isn’t an impersonal debt that needs to be paid off, but a broken relationship that needs to be healed. God enters into our condition to bestow his love upon us and to incite a response of love in us.

Abelard is surely right that sin is a matter of the rebellion of our hearts against God, not some impersonal debt to paid off outside us, but rather a broken relationship to be healed within us. Salvation must be a healing of our wills which are resisting God here and now in the present. (p 152)

[…]

We have seen Abelard’s great insight to be that the revelation in Christ, when received by the human mind, is at the same time an actual infusion of love. The exhibition is a restoration. The manifestation is a transformation. (p. 154)

Fiddes recognizes some problems with Abelard’s account. One is that it seems too individualistic. Where is the sense that the Incarnation and Atonement have implications for the human condition as such, not to mention the broader social and even cosmic implications? Another is the role of the Holy Spirit in Abelard’s account. What role does the Spirit play in bringing us to repentance and new life in light of God’s act of reconciliation? Abelard seems to say, Fiddes says, that the Spirit prepares us for the reception of God’s revelation of love, but how does this relate to Abelard’s insight the love of God is poured out into us from the event of Christ’s life and death itself?

Finally, there is the question “why was love shown in a death?” We may be able to see how God’s love is revealed in Jesus’ teaching, healing, forgiving, and other acts, but how does his death display God’s love? It would seem that it only could if the death accomplishes something for us and, therefore, Abelard’s account would have to piggyback on some more objective account like Anselm’s.

Fiddes’ response is that the Incarnation and the crucifixion are God’s entering into our condition and predicament and undergoing the suffering that is part of human life. “God, we may say, shows his love by enduring to the uttermost the estrangement of his own creation. This is the depth of God’s identification with us” (p. 157). Fiddes recognizes that this response was not available to Abelard since, like the majority of the Christian theological tradtion, he viewed God as impassible and unable to suffer. But Fiddes says we should follow recent theologians in seeing this as a Greek imposition on the Biblical concept of God.

Quite apart from the philosophical questions this rasies (I’m less happy than Fiddes about jumping on the passibility bandwagon of recent theology; David B. Hart has some very trenchant criticisms of Robert Jenson on this score in his Beauty of the Infinite), one might ask why suffering as such is an expression of love. Surely suffering is only valuable if it’s necessary to some greater good. There’s something a little disconcerting about the desire in recent theology to make sure God suffers too! Is it true that we can only love God if we see him suffering?

It might be more accurate to say that suffering is (as Anselm said) simply the natural result of God entering into our fallen world rather than something that has intrinsic value. Death on the cross is the inevitable (in some sense) outcome of the life of perfect obedience to the Father that Jesus lived. Following this path to the bitter end “even to death on a cross” is the way that Jesus united humanity to divinity in his own life, or “God’s identification with us,” as Fiddes puts it. And the Resurrection and outpouring of the Spirit are both the Father’s response of this gift of the Son and the way in which we are incorporated into the life of the Trinity.

Further Thoughts (6/25):There may be a Luthean twist that can be added here. Luther is usually taken to adhere to either a Christus Victor or satisfaction model of atonement, but I think there’s a case to be made that, for Luther, our problem with God is that we don’t trust him. This is our original sin – that we refuse to trust God and his purposes for creation. The unrevealed God is always a God of wrath for us, because we don’t know what he’s up to. In order to create faith and trust, then, God comes to us in the form of the suffering servant, forgiving our sins and healing us. The “love” of the unrevealed God is always an abstract and unknown quantity. So God comes to us concretely in Jesus and (as Gerhard Forde put it) does God to us. He pours out his love on us in the messy, concrete details of our lives. This may have been, Forde says, the only way for God to get through to us.

Fiddes is right, then, to defend the Abelardian from the charges of exemplarism for, as he points out,

The humble love of God, in which he opens himself to pain and joy in the world, is not just revealed like a fact in a scientific textbook. The revealing of his love is at the same time God’s opening of himself, for revelation can be nothing less than the self-unveiling of the being of God. … Only God can link the revelation of love and the outpouring of love, because revelation is always an encounter with the ‘person of God speaking’. (pp. 160-1)

God’s coming among us and identifying with us in our human condition is at the same time God’s pouring out of his forgiving love upon us. And it’s that love which empowers the human response, which creates faith and trust. So, I think the charge of Pelagianism is also avoided.

Hey, we found WMD in Iraq! Oh wait, not really.

This may put me on the fringe (if I wasn’t there already), but I always thought the WMD business was a red herring in the first place. I recall reading an article Gregg Easterbrook wrote back in 2002 – in The New Republic of all places – arguing that “WMD” conflates biological and chemical weapons, which are very difficult to weaponize and use effectively to kill large numbers of people, with nuclear weapons, and that only the latter really deserve to be called weapons of mass descruction. And even before the war, the evidence that Saddam had an advanced nuclear program was scanty at best. So I was never prepared to concede that the mere possession of “WMD” was sufficient grounds for war.

In focusing so much on the WMD issue, anti-war people may have actually made a tactical error since they’ve effectively conceded that possession of WMD would justify war if there had actually been any.

There’s been a minor tempest in a blogspot in some quarters over the fact that the newly elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori preached a sermon in which she referred to Jesus as “Mother.” Surely, we’re told, this is the death knell of kooky liberal mainline Protestantism which has finally sold its soul to neo-pagan postmodernist relativism!

In response, the blog Kinesis has a nice roundup of quotes from saints, sages, and mystics (not to mention the Bible) showing that feminine language for God has ample precedent in the church. (via Guanilo’s Island)

It’s entirely possible and consistent to uphold the use of the traditional Trinitarian name and yet want to expand our language and imagery to include feminine terms and images (which is in many cases a recovery, not an innovation).

The Independent Institute has posted an “Open Letter on Immigration” with over 500 signatures from economists and other social scientists, including five Nobel Laureates. These folks come form across the political spectrum, but support the idea that immigration has been and continues to be a net gain for the U.S.A.

(See here for previous post.)

In chapter 3 of his Past Event and Present Salvation, Paul Fiddes tackles the question of the historical Jesus and how our knowledge of his earthly ministry should shape our understanding of atonement. He rejects the view, associated with Bultmann and others, that we can’t know much of anything about the Jesus of history, a view that drives a wedge between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith.” Fiddes also argues that how we see the atonement should be of a piece with the character of Jesus and his ministry as we have it in the Gospels. At some points in Christian history Christ’s work on the cross was treated in near isolation from his earthly ministry and teachings, and Fiddes wants to correct this imbalance.

Moreover, the great acts of God can’t be detached from the historical (and political) context in which they took place. Despite the fact that God’s acts transcend the categories of history and are not strictly susceptible to the historian’s investigations, it doesn’t follow that history is irrelevant to faith:

If God has really become flesh in our world, in the very marketplace where Pilate struts with his petty power, then an investigation of the scene on which God has acted is bound to be relevant to faith. A historian can only tell us about the worldly setting for God’s mighty acts, but this must throw light upon the meaning of the event as faith perceives it. (p. 37)

Understanding the ministry of Jesus, and the conflicts that it engendered with the prevailing religious and political authorities, then, will help us understand the meaning of God’s act of reconciliation on the cross. Fiddes finds the center of Jesus’ mission in his conflict with the established interpretation of the Law and the way it divided people into respectable and not respectable, clean or unclean. Not only did Jesus welcome “the poor” or the common people into his fellowship, but also sinners – tax collectors, prostitutes, and the like.

Jesus, Fiddes says, exhibited a profound freedom with respect to the Law, both in offering the Father’s free forgiveness and acceptance to sinners and in his “reduction” of the Law to its essential purpose – that of loving God and neighbor. He cut through the thicket of legal requirements by “incarnat[ing] the intention of moral rules in flesh and blood, as a skillful speaker of a language fills out the aims of the rules of grammar in his speech–and often sits loose to the letter of the rules the more beautiful and effective his speech becomes” (p. 47).

Jesus cannot be pinned down in either the simple category of a law-supporter or a law-breaker. He escapes our labels, and ‘fits no formula’. The whole thrust of his ministry was to cut through the maze of moral rules, even of the highest quality, in order to offer forgiveness and the acceptance of the Father. Even if the phrase ‘but I say to you’ is not from Jesus himself, he clearly laid claim to an astonishing authority, assuming that rules could be waived for those who accepted him as the agent of the kingdom. There is no need to set up the scribes and Pharisees as either hypocrites or unbelievers in the divine mercy in order to explain the conflict between them and Jesus; the question was who was right about the way that God was acting. In the parable of the prodigal son there is no suggestion that the elder brother was a moral hypocrite, or that he thought it impossible for his rake of a brother to be forgiven under any circumstances; he just failed in sympathy with the outrageous generosity of the father. (p. 47)

How we understand the atonement, then, should be consistent with how we understand the thrust of Jesus’ ministry. To take one example, it seems, at least on the face of things, difficult to see why the Father required Jesus’ death before he could forgive sins when Jesus seemed to freely forgive sins during the course of his earthly ministry. The atonement, Fiddes argues, should be of a piece with the character of Jesus’ ministry:

Since the act of atonement on the cross sums up and completes the whole course of Jesus’ life, the controlling aspect of any doctrine of atonement must be the forgiveness and acceptance of God. As Jesus showed a sovereign freedom over the way of the law, so a doctrine of atonement must be free from any notion of a ‘transaction’ which somehow satisfies the demands of the divine law code. It hardly makes sense that the Jesus who declined to give law any final importance and who was certified as being in the right about this when God raised him from among the dead should have died as a means of satisfying law. (pp. 47-8)

Jesus’ proclamation of the rule of God was profoundly threatening to the established powers, both religious and political. In addition to calling into question the established rules about how people are to be made right with God, Jesus’ life and death also call into question the way political power is exercised in our fallen world:

Jesus was crucified because he called the ultimate claims of human power ‘there and then’ into question, insisting upon the final demands of the rule of God. If we believe that through this death God was bringing salvation, this must have relevance for the situation of those oppressed by human powers ‘here and now.’ (p. 51)

Fiddes admits that no historical account of Jesus’ ministry can carry certainty. But part of the risk of faith is acting on incomplete knowledge. History can’t prove faith, but it can help shape and give content to faith rooted in a contemporary encounter with the risen Christ. The risen Christ, if he is not to become an abstraction, must be seen as continuous with the human pre-resurrection Jesus of Nazareth, and the character of Jesus should act as a control on our doctrinal formulations.

[This post has been edited slightly]

Noam Chomsky delivering a lecture on just war theory to a group of cadets at West Point. Makes for interesting listening/viewing.

Via Red State Son.

I just received a copy of British theologian Paul S. Fiddes’ Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement. As the title indicates, Fiddes is concerned with the relationship between the historical event of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and how the salvation those events make possible is appropriated in the present.

Here’s a snippet:

Salvation happens here and now. It is always in the present that God acts to heal and reconcile, entering into the disruption of human lives at great cost to himself, in order to share our predicament and release us from it. This may seem obvious, and if we examine the hymns of popular piety we can often detect just such an appeal to a present experience of atonement, expressed in phrases like ‘Jesus saves.‘ It is ironic, however, that when this devotion has been translated into sermons it has often emerged as more equivalent to ‘Jesus saved.’ For there is a great deal of difference between believing that God ‘saves’ through Christ, and believing that we simply claim the benefits of a salvation that has already happened, a deal that has already been concluded. Salvation in the present tense has frequently been depicted as if it were merely picking up a ticket to paradise which was issued long ago, and which has been waiting through long ages on the counter of a celestial travel agent. But a transactional view of atonement like this is highly impersonal. If salvation is the healing of a broken relationship between persons, then it must actually happen now; it must involve the human response as an intimate part of the act of atonement. (p. 14)

Any adequate understanding of the atonement, Fiddes thinks, has to keep both the “objective” and “subjective” aspects in view. God was doing something on the cross of Christ, something essential for our salvation, but its goal is the restoration of a relationship between God and us, which requires our participation. Fiddes thinks that Peter Abelard’s so-called subjective theory of the atonement can help us here:

Earlier theories of atonement (with the partial exception of Abelard’s) tended to begin at the objective end of the spectrum of understanding with some kind of transaction, and then added a subjective appendix. Modern ideas have tipped the balance the other way; they tend to begin at the subjective end with the present human response to God, and then to affirm an objective focus for response. This, I believe, is basically the right orientation for Christian thinking today. If we are to serve our age and our culture–though this includes being prepared to challenge it at some points as well as being shaped by it–we must learn from insights of the human sciences into the nature of relationships and personality. We are bound to understand reconciliation by analogy with the process of healing rather than by analogy wiht a legal or commercial transaction. Using traditional terms this might be called ‘subjective’, but it will work hard at understanding the ‘objective focus’ of God’s activity, both in past and present events. This means, I believe, understanding the cross of Jesus as an event which has a unique degree of power to evoke and create human response to the forgiving love of God. An event of power like that goes far beyond an ‘example’ or ‘window into God’s love,’ important descriptions though these are. (p. 29)

I think Fiddes is right that any satisfying account of atonement has to take the “subjective” dimension into consideration. Sometimes the atonement has been presented in ways that make salvation an event that happens “over our heads” in some heavenly transaction between the Father and the Son (or between God and the Devil!). But if reconciliation means the restoration and healing of a relationship, then it seems like it has to be a process in which we are intimately involved, not something entirely “external” to us.

As I work my way through Fiddes book I hope to post on some of his ideas in more detail.

Andrew Greeley thinks so (via Conservative Green):

The United States is not much good as an imperial power because it lacks two of the qualities essential for effective imperialism: a population that is ready to absorb serious casualties in the cause of the empire and leadership that is sufficiently cynical to abandon moralism when there is a chance to deal.

It will do no good to lecture the American people on their obligation to endure substantial loss of life in a cause that the leadership thinks is a national duty. Americans will rise up in righteous anger if they have been attacked and destroy the foe, make no mistake about that — as the Japanese did in 1941. But they quickly become impatient with the endless, small wars, in which young Americans die without any clear purpose and without any “light at the end of the tunnel.”

That may be immature of Americans, but that’s the way we are. We lack the stern moral determination that the Wall Street Journal preaches to us several times a week. We are not exactly passivists, but we are isolationists. We always have been isolationists. Tell us that we must do something about Darfur or Kosovo or Rwanda and we ask: Why us? If the rest of the world is interested in doing something, OK, but don’t expect us to go it alone for long. After Korea and Vietnam, that should have been clear.

We went along with the Iraq invasion because our leaders were able to persuade us that it was a war to punish the Sept. 11 terrorists when in fact it was about the belief that a “democratic” Iraq would shift the balance in the Middle East.

I think it’s probably more accurate to say that people supported the Iraq war because they were convinced that Iraq posed a serious threat to our security. But beyond that, I think Greeley’s on to something here. In fact, this may be where the division between the elites and the rest of us that David Brooks was getting at may have some real traction. Despite disagreements over specific conflicts like Iraq, the one thing that our political elites agree on is repudiating “isolationism.” No major politician today would dream of running on a platform of “Come Home, America” as George McGovern did in 1972.

However, Greeley is, I think, giving short shrift to what’s been called America’s nationalistic “Jacksonian” impulse. This visceral patriotism is ready to kick ass and take names when necessary and believes in the essential righteousness of America and her ways. I think a lot of post 9/11 foreign policy gets its support from a union of this Jacksonian impulse among ordinary people with the technocratic globalism of the elites. True Jeffersonian isolationism is, I suspect, rarer than Greeley thinks. (See here for a clarifying discussion of various strands in America’s ideological DNA.)

There have been some great comments on the Eucharistic adoration post, much better informed and more insightful than the original post, in fact!

On a related note, here’s the text of the sermon that was preached at The Church of the Advent on Corpus Christi.

Yesterday we worshipped at Trinity Church (Episcopal) in Copley Square. This church is considered by many to be the most beautiful church in Boston. It was designed by architect H. H. Richardson in a style that came to be known as “Richardsonian Romanesque.” A friend of ours who studied historical preservation described it as an attempt to incorporate elements that specifically evoked America into the basic Romanesque style.

Here’s more:

Richardson’s work was — and remains — truly original. While he named the eleventh century Romanesque churches of Central France as his inspiration, he called Trinity a “free rendering” of those sources.

The three-dimensional effect of its massive open interior, for example, bears no historical precedent. The centralized space seems to rise from the modified cruciform perimeter straight into the tower, one vast, coherent vessel — an unbroken cross reaching to heaven, an open, static, serene, massive pyramid of space and light.

But Richardson knew the More of worship required more than sheer volume. So he balanced this massive openness with personal moments of color, detail, and storytelling, intimate notes struck in the murals and stained glass designed of John La Farge. His work, too, sought the spiritual center of the congregation for guidance. It is said that Phillips Brooks, preaching from the pulpit near the chancel entrance looked often for inspiration to La Farge’s stunning tripartite Christ in Majesty windows, where the translucent figure rises resplendent against the western light flanked by lancets of voluptuous aquamarine.

On the exterior we are reminded by the quiet voice of Richardson’s Massachusetts contemporary, Emily Dickinson, that “the Outer — from the Inner Derives its Magnitude.” Just as Brooks put liturgical necessities in the service of the sturdy, sure weight of Christ’s good news, ornamental detail in Richardson’s exterior got sacrificed to the sturdy lithic masses, round arched openings, the mass and void, and the color, texture, and scale typical of Romanesque concerns. Since the site was free-standing and the church thus would be seen in the round, Richardson employed these devices to full sculptural effect, inviting the subtle play of his restrained chromatic selection with the muscular quietude of his elemental forms.

See here for a good slideshow.

Directly across from the church on the other side of the square is the Boston Public Library, itself an example of of American Classicism, so the result of the square is the feel of an Italian piazza.

Almost.

Next to the church is the Hancock Tower, a striking glass skyscraper standing in sharp contrast to the old-world feel of the square. I’m not sure if I like the ultra-modern intrusion of the Hancock Tower, but it definitely makes Copley Square unique.

The service at Trinity was definitely “lower” than at the Advent and felt more similar to a traditional Lutheran service. They appear to be between rectors at the moment, but the preacher delivered a good sermon on Jesus’ parables of the growing seed and the mustard seed and what they would’ve meant to His hearers, to Mark’s community, and what they might mean for us.

A really nice church, but I don’t think we’d make it our regular church home. The fact that it is such a tourist attraction (complete with daily tours and gift shop!) kind of makes it feel less like a worshipping community than a museum. Though attendance at the service we were at was good, it didn’t seem as tight-knit as the group of people we met at the Church of the Advent.

After church, we walked out on the square to see people setting up for what was apparently some kind of pro-Israel rally. There were people holding “We Support Israel” signs and a guy with a beard and a yarmulke playing guitar up on a stage. There were also lots of police and guys dressed in black suits with sunglasses and earpieces, so someone quasi-important must’ve been scheduled to speak. Turns out it was the annual Boston Celebrates Israel rally.

There were also some pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered. Actually anti-Israel might be the better way to characterize these particular protesters. Their slogans of “Racist, sexist, antigay, Nazi bigots, stay away” struck me as less than helpful, to say the least. I mean, who are they trying to convince with that kind of rhetoric? I’m not exactly an ardent Zionist and I found it offensive. I can only imagine what the folks gathered there must’ve thought. That’s one of the things that has always bothered me about some forms of protest. Too often it seems like it’s more about smugly demonstrating one’s own righteousness than about trying to convince others of the rightness of one’s cause.

Anyway, we beat it out of there and had brunch with a friend at The Paramount in Beacon Hill, a fantastic place for breakfast. Great omelets and pancakes.

Rod Dreher and others have been discussing David Brooks’ (he of the pithy generalizations) new political typology of “populist nationalists” vs. “progressive globalists” (The original Brooks column is available to NY Times subscribers only). Populist nationalists, in Brooks’ account, see themselves as “the ordinary, burden-bearing people of this country. … the ones who work hard and build communities” who “recognize that our loyalty to our fellow Americans comes first.”

The policy positions that follow from this are, in Dreher’s words:

1) no more waste of blood and treasure on fantasies of democratizing the Middle East; 2) securing our borders against terrorists and illegal immigrants; 3) standing up to “the big money interests who value their own profits more than their own countrymen;” 4) supporting a government that will “stand up to Internet porn and for decent family values; and 5) the defense of government programs that help ordinary people bear the burdens that threaten to wipe them out (e.g., health-care costs).

On the other side are the “progressive globalists” who supposedly favor free trade, open borders, international institutions, and an interventionist foreign policy with a Wilsonian cast. This is the ideology of cosmopolitan coastal elites in business, government, and the arts (Christopher Lasch’s revolting elites, you might say).

As Leon Hadar points out, this dichotomy doesn’t exactly map onto reality. Many people who would be describable as populist nationalists support the Iraq venture for instance. Indeed, the degree to which post-9/11 foreign policy has tapped into a deep strain of American nationalism doesn’t seem to be appreciated by Brooks. Meanwhile, many among the foreign policy elites, especially those of an internationalist-realist bent opposed the Iraq war (many of the old hands from the Bush I administration, for instance, as well as conservative internationalists like Sen. Chuck Hagel). Brooks is basically characterizing any opponent of the Iraq war in particular and the Bush brand of interventionism in general as someone who favors a “closed” society which has shut its doors to foreign trade and foreign immigration. This may accurately describe some people (Pat Buchanan comes to mind), but there’s no necessary connection between those positions. It’s possible to be in favor of free trade and immigration and opposed to preventive war and nation-building. (This was in fact the stated position of candidate George W. Bush in 2000 which suckered me into voting for him. Sigh.)

In some ways this is another variation of the slur occasionally made against opponents of the Iraq war that if you oppose our invasion and nation-buiding project there it must be because you don’t think Iraqis are suited for democracy and therefore you’re racist. As though it was racist to oppose bombing foreigners!

Contra Brooks, in other words, the possible choices are not exhausted by either closing ourselves off to the rest of the world or trying to dominate it.